THE PIAZZA VITTORIO EMMANUELE TO S. TRINITA

A city of trams The old market The figure of Abundance An evening resort A hall of variety Florentines of today The war with Turkey Homecoming heroes Restaurants The new market The bronze boar A fifteenth century palace Old Florentine life reconstructed Where changes are few S. Trinita Ghirlandaio again S. Francis The Strozzi palace Clarice de' Medici.

FLORENCE is not simple to the stranger. Like all very old cities built fortuitously it is difficult to learn: the points of the compass are elusive; the streets are so narrow that the sky is no constant guide ; the names of the streets are often not there; the policemen have no high standard of helpfulness. There are trams, it is true too many and too noisy, and too near the pavement but the names of their outward destinations, from the centre, too rarely correspond to any point of interest that one is desiring. Hence one has many embarrassments and even annoyances. Yet I daresay this is best: an orderly Florence is unthinkable. Since, however, the trains that are returning to the centre nearly all go to the Duomo, either passing it or stopping there, the tram becomes one's best friend and the Duomo one's starting-point for most excursions.

Supposing ourselves to be there once more, let us quickly get through the horrid necessity, which confronts one in all ancient Italian cities, of seeing the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. In an earlier chapter we left the Baptistery and walked along the Via Calzaioli. Again starting from the Baptistery let us take the Via dell' Arcivescovado, which is parallel with the Via Calzaioli, on the right of it, and again walk straight forward. We shall come almost at once to the great modern square.

No Italian city or town is complete without a Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele and a statue of that monarch. In Florence the sturdy king bestrides his horse here. Italy being so old and Vittorio Emmanuele so new, it follows in most cases that the square or street named after him supplants an older one, and if the Italians had any memory or imaginative interest in history they would see to it that the old name was not wholly obliterated. In Florence, in order to honour the first king of United Italy, much grave violence was done to antiquity, for a very picturesque quarter had to be cleared away for the huge brasseries, stores and hotels which make up the west side; which in their turn marked the site of the old market where Donatello and Brunelleschi and all the later artists of the great days did their shopping and met to exchange ideals and banter; and that market in its turn marked the site of the Roman forum.

One of the features of the old market was the charming Loggia di Pesce; another, Foggini's figure of Abundance, surmounting a column, which we saw in the museum of ancient city relics in the monastery of S. Marco, where one confronts her on a level instead of looking up at her in mid-sky.

In talking to elderly persons who can remember the Florence of many years ago I find that nothing so distresses them as the loss of the old quarter for the making of this new spacious piazza ; and probably nothing can so delight the younger Florentines as its possession, for, having nothing to do in the evenings, they do it chiefly in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. Chairs and tables spring up like mushrooms in the roadway, among which too few waiters distribute those very inexpensive refreshments which seem to be purchased rather for the right to the seat that they confer than for any stimulation. It is extraordinary to the eyes of the thriftless English, who are never so happy as when they are overpaying Italian and other caterers in their own country, to notice how long these wiser folk will occupy a table on an expenditure of a few pence.

I do not mean that there are no theatres in Florence. There are several, and one or two are very good ; and the young men can do without them : curious old theatres mostly, and all apparently built for the comedies of Goldoni. There are cinema theatres too, at prices which would delight the English public addicted to those insidious entertainments, but horrify English managers ; and the Teatro Salvini at the back of the Palazzo Vecchio is occasionally transformed into a Folios Bergeres (as it is called), where one indifferent singer after another casually renders two songs to an audience who regards her with apathy, or very frankly expresses contempt and converses without ceasing. The only sign of interest which one observes is the murmur which follows anything a little off the beaten track a sound that might equally be encouragement or disapproval. But a really pretty woman entering a box moves them. Then they employ every note in the gamut ; and curiously enough the pretty woman in the box is usually as cool under the fusillade as a professional and hardened sister would be. A strange music hall, this to the English eye, where the orchestra smokes, and no numbers are put up, and every one talks and no one seems to appreciate anything but a daring dress, and the intervals seem to be hours long. But the Florentines do not mind, for they have not the English thirst for entertainment and escape; they carry their entertainment with them and do not wish to escape going to such places only because their friends may be there.

Sitting here and watching their ironical negligence of the stage and their interest in each other's company ; their animated talk and rapid decisions as to the merits and charms of a performer; the comfort of their attitudes and carelessness (although never quite slovenliness) in dress; one seems to realize the nation better than anywhere. The old fighting passion may have gone ; but much of the quickness, the shrewdness and the humour remains, together with the determination of each man to have if possible his own way and, whether possible or not, his own say.

Seeing them in great numbers one quickly learns and steadily corroborates the fact that the Florentines are not beautiful. A pretty woman or a handsome man is a rarity ; but a dull-looking man or woman is equally rare. They are shrewd, philosophic, cynical, and very ready for laughter. They look contented also : Florence clearly is the best place to be born in, to live in, and to die in. Let all the world come to Florence, by all means, and spend its money there ; but don't ask Florence to go to the world. Don't in fact ask Florence to do anything very much.

Civilization and modern conditions have done the Florentines no good. Their destiny was to live in a walled city in turbulent days, when the foe came against it, or tyranny threatened from within and had to be resisted. They were then Florentines and everything mattered. To-day they are Italians and nothing matters very much. Moreover, it must be galling to have somewhere in the recesses of their consciousness the knowledge that their famous city, built and cemented with their ancestors' blood, is now only a museum.

Judging by the shops the principal industry of Florence is drawn linen work. Along the Arno every other window is full of table centres, d'oyleys, bed covers and lace. The intervening shops deal in tortoiseshell or antiquities. It is foolish to attempt to teach other nations their business, although much time on foreign journeys is occupied in the wish to do so ; but I can inform the Florentine shopkeepers that I, for one, should be more likely to enter their formidable premises and traffic with them if they would exhibit, instead of carefully concealing, the price of every article in the window. I refer, of course, to the shops where new articles are sold. One would not expect the antiquity dealers of the Via de' Fossi, which is a museum in itself, to do so.

The restaurants of Florence are those of a city where the natives are thrifty and the visitors dine in hotels. There is one expensive high-class house, in the Via Tornabuoni--Doney e Nipoti or Doney et Neveux where the cooking is Franco-Italian, and the Chianti and wines are dear beyond belief, and the venerable waiters move with a deliberation which can drive a hungry man and one is always hungry in this fine Tuscan air to despair. But it is more interesting to go to the huge Gambrinus in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. One curious Florentine habit is quickly discovered and resented by the stranger who frequents a restaurant, and that is the system of changing waiters from one set of tables to another; so that whereas in London and Paris the wise diner is true to a corner because it carries the same service with it, in Florence he must follow the service. But if the restaurants have odd ways, and a limited range of dishes and those not very interesting, they make up for it by being astonishingly quick. Things are cooked almost miraculously.

The Florentines cat little. But greediness is not an Italian fault. No greedy people would have a five-syllabled word for waiter.

Continuing along the Via, dell' Arcivescovado, which after the Piazza becomes the Via Celimana, we come to that very beautiful structure the Mercato Nuovo, which, however, is not so wonderfully new, having been built as long ago as 1547-1551. Its columns and arched roof are exquisitely proportioned. As a market it seems to be a poor affair, the chief commodity being straw hats, linen, and flowers, either cut or in pots very unworthy of a city called Firenze. For the principal food market one has to go to the Via d'Ariento, near S. Lorenzo, and this is, I think, well worth doing early in the morning. Lovers of Hans Andersen go to the Mercato Nuovo to see the famous bronze boar (or "metal pig," as it was called in the translation on which I was brought up) that stands here, on whose back the little street boy had such adventures. The boar himself was the work of Pietro Tacca (1586-1650), a copy from an ancient Greek marble original, now in the Uffizi in one of the corridors ; but the pedestal with its collection of creeping things is modern. For the original one you must go to the Museo of San Marco, where in a little cloister you will find it a bronze fountain covered with frogs and toads and other creatures, one of the frogs being as worn by the fingerings of little Florentines as is the big toe of St. Peter in the Vatican by the kisses of the devout. I should guess this frog to have, enjoyed a luck-bearing reputation, to account for such polish. Whether or not, I caressed it myself, to be on the safe side.

The Florentines who stand in the market niches are Bernardo Cennini, a goldsmith and one of Ghiberti's assistants, who introduced printing into Florence in 1471 and began with an edition of Virgil; Giovanni Villani, who was the city's first serious historian, beginning in 1300 and continuing till his death in 1348 ; and Michele Lando, the wool-carder, who on July 22nd, 1378, at the head of a mob, overturned the power of the Signory.

By continuing straight on we should come to that crowded and fussy little street which crosses the river by the Ponte Vecchio and eventually becomes the Roman way; but let us instead turn to the right this side of the market, down the Via Porter Rosser, because here is the Palazzo Davanzati, which has a profound interest to lovers of the Florentine past in that it has been restored exactly to its ancient state when Pope Eugenius IV lodged here, and has been filled with fourteenth and fifteenth century furniture. In those days it was the home of the Davizza family. The Davanzati bought it late in the sixteenth century and retained it until 1838. In 1904 it was bought by Professor Elia Volpi, who restored its ancient conditions and presented it to the city as a permanent monument of the past.