NEW ZEALANDERS IN FLORENCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 269, 18 August 1944, Page 14

NEW ZEALANDERS IN FLORENCE

(Written for "The Listener" by

A.M.

R.

Florence was Charles Brown. This statement is equally true if you reverse it-Charles Brown was the first man from Florence in New Zealand. He was the son of Charles Armitage Brown and "a native woman" -as Brown’s literary friends called his Irish peasant wife. Brown senior was a real cosmopolite, having lost a business in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) when whalebone superseded bristles, become a servant of the East India Company, walked 600 miles round Britain with John Keats, made his extraordinary match with Abigail Donohue, brought up his young son in Florence’ with Byron and Shelley, and finally in a bald apoplectic middle age become enthused in Plymouth to start a "New Plymouth in the wilds of New Zealand." Charles Brown junior, Irish born and Florentine bred, brought out in 1841 the machinery for Taranaki’s first sawmill; was elected M.P. at 32 and first Provincial Superintendent a year later; founded and for some time edited the Taranaki News; rose to Major of Volunteers in the Maori War; became Colonial first New Zealander in ‘Treasurer in our first responsible Government; and died only in our own century. He is New Zedaland’s sole link of note with Florence (so far as I am aware) until Kiwis entered the city last week. « $2 * * TE’ came into Florence ourselves from the opposite side, padding down a lane that was a good half-inch soft in chalky-smooth, chalky-white dust, The world-famous "City of Flowers" untolled itself from this direction as a honeycomb of ten-foot cubes of peeling plaster-- "the working-class suburbs, separate dwellings rather than tenements" as an encyclopedia ingenuously puts it. However, the centre of the city was the "Fair Florence" we had expected. The streets, some cobbled, some tarred, but nearly all swept and sprinkled, were wide by European standards, the public gardens and shrubberies were really extensive and flowery (not cracked concrete and trampled lawn-roots like some we had encountered) and the public buildings had space enough round about them to be really seen and admired. The Arno, broad to the extent of four-span bridges and with antique jewellers’ shops built on the Ponte Vecchio itself, remained an impressive stream even after one had spotted how a ladder of dams created the illusion. Cassino for significance: Rome for. history: Florence for beauty-that, with allowance for compressions, is a fair enough summary of Italian architecture. It centres in Florence at two pointsthe one medieval and _ ecclesiastical; the other renaissance and paganised. The former is, of course, the Duomo (Cathedral), Baptistery (built before 1000 A.D.) and Campanile (by Giottothe "first artist"). Its high point is the bronze "Gates of Paradise" to the Baptistery, the full beauty and mean- : ing of whose scriptural scenes may not be grasped by the casual observer. The

second centre is the wide pavement before the Podesta and Signoria Palaces. In front of the former, Michelangelo’s "David" stands immense in the open air and Hercules wrestles with Cacus. In the porch of the latter Perseus is forever Pry e exhibiting the Gorgon’s head, and the Sabine snatching his bride. But the high point of this glorification of Man’ is the modern arcade running between the palaces to the river, on each of whose 20 master columns is engraved a_ world-famous name-all citizens of Florence when she was a Republic of 1642 square miles. Here you see the creators of various arts in their mdédern forms-the philosopher of "real politics" (Machiavelli), the man who gave his name to America (Amerigo Vespucci), and the inventor of the wheelbarrow (Leonardo da Vinci). * % %* HERE were Germans in Florence in » that year also (1933), raiders who used to descend on Italy out of the Alpine passes each summer greedy to carry home its wealth-and to have a good cycling holiday, We met them in every church, library, and art gallery in the city, as well as upon the roads day and night; tall, musical young men in shorts with rucsacs and schalfsacs. Inevitably we were ourselves mistaken for Germans. "Deutsch, Deutsch, Bicycletta, Bicycletta!"’ the children would shout and come running to see the "bibicycletta" that carried two people on two wheels. A French army captain, _ apologising for having tried to turn us out of the Chateau Stanislas grounds in --.--s--s--s---TewTeeweTewTewTewseesemhmemUmUThUvY

Lorraine, had led us to expect it: "I see a camping; so I say ‘Germans’; only Germans camp in Europe." * * * ‘THIS is the first occasion, to my knowledge, that British troops have forcibly entered Florence. Sir John Harewood and his band of desperadoes struggled manfully up from Pisa in 1362, but got in only when they changed sides. Thereafter, instead of fighting for Pisa as formerly, they became the mainstay over many years of the betterpaying Florentines, both in defence and aggression.

li i i tl i ge te ll vi, tiled [N the Middle Ages, democratic Florence was constantly at war with nearby aristocratic Pisa, but disclaims any responsibility for this famous "damage":