Italy · Summer 1867Part of: The Quaker City excursion · 13 of 39
13 · Rome · 30 Jul – 9 Aug
Is he dead?
Trip details
- When
- 8 Jun – 19 Nov 1867
- How long
- 165 days
- Who went
- Me, sixty-odd pilgrims, and the Doctor, Jack and Dan
- Stops
- 39
- Getting around
- The Quaker City, trains, a great many horses and one donkey
By the time we reached Rome we had been in Italy three weeks, and in that time we had heard the name of Michelangelo more often than the name of our Saviour, which on that ship was saying a great deal. He had designed everything. If a guide showed us a church, Michelangelo had built it. If he showed us a statue, Michelangelo had carved it. If he showed us a dome, a fresco, a fountain, a staircase or a view, Michelangelo had done it in an afternoon, in his spare time.
| What | His part | My doubt |
|---|---|---|
| St. Peter's | The dome | Granted. It is a very good dome. |
| The Sistine Chapel | The ceiling, lying on his back for four years | Granted, and I would not do it for any money. |
| David, in Florence | All of him | Granted. It is the finest statue in the world, and needs trousers. |
| A fountain in Genoa | The design | Doubtful. The fountain did not work. |
| The Tiber | The banks, in places | I lost my patience here. |
| The weather on Tuesday | Said in all seriousness | I went to bed. |
So the Doctor worked out a cure. Whatever the guide showed us, however fine, we looked at it with a face like a bucket of milk, and asked the same questions. Who did this? Michelangelo, the guide would say, trembling. And the Doctor would say: Is he dead?
We could not stop the guides from loving Michelangelo. We could only make them sorry they had brought it up.
It took about a day for it to work. You could see the guide's spirit going out of him like the air out of a bellows. He would show us an Egyptian mummy, three thousand years in its case, the finest in Rome. We would look at it a long while. Then the Doctor would say, very slowly, Is this man dead? And the guide would sit down on the step.
I will say for Rome that it is the one place where the guides are not exaggerating. The city really is that old, and those things really did happen there, and you can stand in the Colosseum at dusk and hear the crowd, if you have eaten something disagreeable at dinner. We stayed ten days. I came away knowing a great deal about Michelangelo and almost nothing about Rome, which I am told is the usual result.