The Truth about Dante.

Folco di Ricovero Portinari had a daughter named Beatrice, a comely and amiable child, who had just turned of nine years when her estimable father gave a fashionable party to numerous friends in his palatial Florentine residence. There came to this party, in company of his father and mother, a lad named Durante Alighieri, himself but a few months older than little Beatrice. These two children, being the only little folk at the party, took a fancy to each other, and romped and played together on this occasion, as any other two children would have played under similar circumstances. Being somewhat the elder, and considerably the stronger, of the two, little Durante, or Dante as he was called, had pretty much his own way; and having robbed little Beatrice of most of her cake and all her candies, and having threatened to thrash her if she ever told, Dante declared to his doting parents that he had never before met with so sweet a little playmate as was this same little Beatrice.

We are given to understand that from an acquaintance thus made, grew an affection that endured until death removed the two principals to another sphere. In fact, the love of Dante for Beatrice has been the theme of many a sentimental poem and emotional essay.

69The truth, however, is, that although Beatrice lived to be twenty-five years of age, Dante could at no time, during the sixteen years he associated with her, convince himself that he loved her well enough to make her his wife. It was not until he heard of her death that he became satisfied that he had loved Beatrice with an all-consuming love; and, having satisfied himself on this point, he began at once to indite elegiac verse to her memory,—a habit which, we regret to observe, he had the infinite bad taste to persist in up to the very date of his demise.

Fortunately, there have been preserved, by the genius of a Bostonian named Prang, a countless number of copies of a portrait of Beatrice made several months previous to that estimable maiden-lady’s death; and the sad beauty of the unhappy woman’s face has appealed to the compassion of all beholders. This portrait, as we interpret its expression, represents the patient Beatrice as gazing pensively into space, and wondering when Dante was going to propose.

Beatrice had been buried scarcely a year when her heart-broken lover made up his mind that the best consolation for the loss of one sweetheart was the procuring of another; and so he began paying his devoirs to a wealthy and beautiful girl named Gemma Donati, one of the belles of Florence. While he was courting this bright, pretty, and unsuspecting lady, however, he continued to indite 70whining elegies, sonnets, triolets, quatrains, couplets, etc., to the memory of Beatrice, the woman who had died of a broken heart because Dante didn’t have spunk enough to pop the question. We take it for granted that none of these mortuary verses ever reached the eyes or the ears of Gemma Donati before she was married. Otherwise, you can depend upon it, she would have given Mr. Alighieri the mitten he deserved, for she was a proud, spirited girl. She believed Dante loved her; and believing in him, and trusting in his love, she went to the altar with him.

It was not long, however, before Gemma discovered that she had caught a Tartar. Instead of the bright, happy fellow she had a right to expect in her bridegroom, she found that Dante was capricious, moody, and dyspeptic. He had a habit of sitting up late of nights, groaning and sighing, writing poetry which he industriously hid away from her, but read to everybody else,—doing, in fine, all manner of things beseeming a person afflicted with a chronic disorder of the liver and a natural wrongness of the heart. Truly, an enviable honeymoon it must have been that poor Gemma passed with this bridegroom of hers! One day, at last, she found a verse that explained much to her. It was a verse in Dante’s chirography; and Gemma read the cruel lines, and fell down in a swoon.

71“Fatto era un stagno piu secura e brutto—

O Beatrice! di quel grazzia la citta,

Altro non e dar;

Uno esperto non Gemma e l’opra

Un correger soave un pio sostegno—

Figgo del sperto solle!”

That night she taxed Dante with having deceived her, and he was mean enough to accuse her of being jealous. When he discovered that his bride was hopelessly miserable, he clinched the general cussedness of the situation by applying himself more diligently than ever before to the business of composing maudlin poetry to the memory of the defunct old maid,—“his sainted Beatrice,” as he called her in his miserable dago hypocrisy.

This delectable state of affairs continued a number of years; and meantime, in spite of his devotion to the sacred memory of his “first and only love in heaven,” Dante contrived to become the father of six children, one of whom was a girl. This girl should have been named after her estimable mother; but in order, apparently, to grind the iron even deeper into his wife’s soul, Dante stole away to a priest’s house with the baby one day, and had the little creature christened Beatrice. There seems to have been no end to this man’s indecent cruelty.

Well, having wrecked his wife’s life, Dante proceeded to make a public nuisance of himself; and 72he embarked in politics, and began sloshing around at a great rate. But dealing with a discriminating and exacting public is very different from bully-ragging a patient, submissive wife; and the first thing he knew, Dante was in deep water,—hot water too. He was banished from the province; and, although he made vigorous and persistent efforts to get back again, his fellow-townsmen were wise enough to let the decree stand. Of course Gemma sympathized with her husband in his troubles, but the burden of these troubles fell rather upon her; for now it became her duty to provide for the six children which Dante had left behind when he made his escape. A small part of Dante’s property she saved from confiscation by claiming it as her dower; and it was upon this pittance that Gemma reared and educated their children,—Dante’s and hers. It was a hard struggle, involving countless sacrifices; but it was a struggle to which Gemma applied herself courageously, patiently, and grandly,—courageous, patient, noble woman that she was!

The biographies that have come down to us are all biographies of Dante. Therefore we can only surmise at the magnitude of the suffering which Gemma endured. But we know this, that Gemma brought her six children to maturity, and that she lived to see them prosperous and honored. During all the intervening years, it was one continuous fight to make the ends meet; and every now and 73then Gemma squeezed out of her paltry savings a little money to send to her exiled husband.

Meantime, instead of trying to earn means whereby to contribute to the support of his family, Dante seems to have devoted all his time to writing poetry and things calculated to make trouble for the home-folk. His most pretentious composition was a grotesque production purporting to be an account of a visit to hell and purgatory. His dyspeptic stomach, his torpid liver, and his malignant temper, qualified him for a work of this character; and, having consistently raised —— all his life, it is not surprising that he should have left to posterity a minute description of that undesirable locality, and the industries therein abounding. With the utmost care, Dante drew his pen-pictures of the infernal regions, and introduced as figures therein all the Florentines he disliked, particularly those who were likely to be of kindly service to his wife and his children. At one time, having heard that the noble Duke della Caseras had advanced Gemma the sum of ten ducats to keep her and her babies from starving, Dante at once proceeded to represent the noble duke in hell, with his body submerged in a lake of sulphurous flame, and his legs sticking up in a preposterous manner. If any citizen of Florence was good to Dante’s wife, he was promptly put in hell by Dante himself. In fact, hell, as Dante pictured it, was peopled with men and women 74who treated Dante’s wife and children humanely. This made life rather awkward for Mrs. Alighieri and the rising generation of Alighieris; but their feelings were not to be considered, so long as Mr. Alighieri’s demoniacal spite was being gratified.

Many of the Florentine people whom Dante utilized in this scandalous manner overlooked his offences in a good-natured way. They regarded Gemma as a very worthy woman; and they were prepared at all times to do her kindnesses, no matter how rudely Gemma’s husband treated them in his spiteful poems. But there were others who refused to take kindly to Dante’s ungrateful methods. Giovanni Ferato, the baker, was one of these. “Signora,” said he to Gemma one day, “I have suffered your account to run for many months. Whenever you came for bread, or called for rolls, or ordered pie, or sent for cake, I have permitted you to have them without question; for I knew you were pressed by poverty, and I thought to do you a kindness. But your husband has paid the debt by devoting seven lines of blank verse to me and my family, representing us as floating about in a sea of molten lead, with winged devils shooting flaming darts into our bodies. You will have to go elsewhere for your pastry hereafter.”

Guiseppe Angelo once let Gemma have a load of fagots at half price, whereupon Dante represented Guiseppe as being nailed down with red-hot nails to the very floor of hell; while a vulture 75tore out his entrails, and devoured them without seasoning. When Gemma went for another load of fagots, she had to pay a double price.

In like manner, Torquato Rovera, the cobbler; Michael Levato, the huckster; Hermozo Bambino, the butcher; and a score of other tradefolk,—were prejudiced against this modest, amiable, and unoffending woman. To put the case as mildly as possible, it was, so far as Gemma was concerned, awkward.

But of all the mean, despicable things done in Dante’s career of incomparable meanness, the meanest was his allusion to his wife in the sixteenth canto of his “Hell.” Heedless of the wrongs he had done her, and forgetting all her sacrifices for him and for his children, the jaundiced ingrate left to posterity these lines:—

“—me, my wife

Of savage temper, more than aught beside,

Hath to this evil brought.”

Dante died at Ravenna. While he was ill, he wrote his wife a dismal letter, begging for money: she borrowed three ducats, and sent them to him. The gold reached him just as he lay at the point of death. He read the accompanying letter, and groaned. “She does not say who lent her the money,” he sighed. “Would that I knew his name, that I might put him with the others in that brimstone pit!”

76Then he raised himself feebly, and said to Pietro Alfieri, his friend, “Take this gold, and with it pay the printer, who delays too long the publication of my last poem.” With these words he expired.

Alfieri took the money to the printer. “Have you a poem here, the work of Dante Alighieri?” he asked.

“I have,” said Fernando Pizaro. “There is due upon it three ducats, else it shall not leave the shop.”

“Let me see the poem,” demanded Alfieri.

The printer brought forth the manuscript. It was entitled, “To My Beatrice in Heaven!”

“Whistle for your money!” said Alfieri laconically; and he threw down the manuscript, and walked out of the shop.

Pietro Alfieri was a man of decency. He sent the three ducats back to Gemma Alighieri; and with the money the frugal widow bought shirtwaists for her five boys, and a nice new jersey for her little girl.