Edward Hutton devoted at least two books to Tuscany. We will deal with Florence and Northern Tuscany in a future series but today we turn to Siena and Southern Tuscany, published in 1910. He began his tour at Castle-Fiorentino.
Happy Castel-Fiorentino! She was able and content to till her fields always as she does today, to tend her vineyards, to sow the corn under the olives, and to gather it in with songs, while the armies of Germany, the companies of adventure, the gay chivalry of France thundered by to destruction. Is not her story, which will never be told, one of those which should console us most in a world so busy about resounding trifles? She has no history; but in her untold story the romance of Europe lies hid—the story of men like ourselves going up and down day by day about their business, laboring in the fields in a hard partnership with Nature, chafering in the market-place, rising at dawn, resting at midday, singing at evening, loving a little and weeping much—if we could but read it!
But if Castel-Fiorentino is without a history, if she never produced a great man or a great artist, she is by no means devoid of the consolation of beauty. She herself is as charming and picturesque as can be; her churches are spacious and full of light, and there, too, you may find many a picture of a rare and exquisite country grace that only her lovers have discovered.
Among those churches was the Convent of S. Chiara.
To-day, however, the convent is in the occupation of the Osservanti. It was one of them— “a friar of orders grey,” who seemed, indeed, to have stepped out of the song, so jovial and fat was he—who, in answer to my call, came out of his siesta to show me the church. The church is delightful, filled with a country peace and scattered with sun and shade. Over an altar on the left I found one of those things I love best—a splendid Giotto-esque Crucifix into which the love and faith of the thirteenth century seem immediately to have passed….
The quiet beauty of the church, the eager chatter of Fra Lorenzo, caused me to linger here, and that was my good fortune. For just as I was about to leave, as I said farewell to Fra Lorenzo at the church door, a woman came towards us, and greeting the friar, at once knelt down on the threshold, just under the lintel of the door, and prepared herself to be churched. With her came two ragged urchins and a little black dog. In the great shady nave the children played with the dog, quite at home in the house of their Father, while Fra Lorenzo, excusing himself, went into the sacristy and brought forth a great taper, which he placed in the good woman’s hand, and a large book, all in Latin, out of which he proceeded to read some prayers. I cannot tell you what a charming and old world picture this made, recalling happier days. The children in the shadow playing with the little black dog; the good woman who had just brought forth a child kneeling in the sunshine holding her taper carefully, on the threshold of the church; Fra Lorenzo in his surplice, unctuous and sleek, reciting the Office—it was as though by some good fortune certain centuries had never happened and we were back in those scarcely remembered days when everything could be accounted for, when there was still a unity in Europe, and we accepted the love of God and the offices of the Church as matters of course. Only I seemed to be out of the picture. And so quietly I slipped away without so much as “thank you” to Fra Lorenzo, to whom I owed this consoling glimpse of life in Tuscany.
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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, New York, 1910. Pp. 4-8.
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