Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere 1

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 Thermal Physics
of the Atmosphere
Second Edition
 Developments in Weather and
Climate Science

Thermal Physics
of the Atmosphere
Second Edition

Maarten H. P. Ambaum
Department of Meteorology
University of Reading
Reading, United Kingdom

Series editor
Paul D. Williams
Elsevier
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Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Thermodynamic variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Microscopic viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Ideal gas mixtures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
CHAPTER 2 The first and second laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1 Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Energy conservation: the first law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3 Entropy and the second law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4 Thermodynamic heat engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5 Boltzmann entropy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.6 Entropy and probability: a macroscopic example . . . . . . . . . . 32
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
CHAPTER 3 General applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.1 Thermodynamic potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.2 Heat capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3 Properties of ideal gases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.4 Potential temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.5 Open systems: enthalpy flux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.6 Latent heat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.7 Turbulent energy fluxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.8 Van der Waals’ gases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
CHAPTER 4 The atmosphere under gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.1 Geopotential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.2 Hydrostatic balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.3 Adiabatic lapse rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.4 Buoyancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.5 Dry static energy and Bernoulli function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.6 Vertical coordinates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.7 Statistical mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
CHAPTER 5 Water in the atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.1 The Clausius–Clapeyron equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.2 Calculation of saturated vapour pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

v
vi Contents

5.3 Humidity variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5.4 Dewpoint temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.5 Wet-bulb temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.6 Moist static energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.7 The Penman equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
CHAPTER 6 Vertical structure of the moist atmosphere . . . . . . . . 115
6.1 Adiabatic lapse rate for moist air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.2 Entropy of moist air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.3 Finite amplitude instabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.4 Vertical structure in thermodynamic diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.5 Convective available potential energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
CHAPTER 7 Cloud drops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.1 Homogeneous nucleation: the Kelvin effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.2 Heterogeneous nucleation: the Raoult effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.3 Köhler theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.4 Charge-enhanced nucleation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.5 Drop growth by diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7.6 Drop growth by collision and coalescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
CHAPTER 8 Mixtures and solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8.1 Chemical potentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8.2 Ideal gas mixtures and ideal solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.3 Raoult’s law revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
8.4 Boiling and freezing of solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
8.5 Affinity and chemical equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
CHAPTER 9 Thermal radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
9.1 Thermal radiation and Kirchhoff’s law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
9.2 The Stefan–Boltzmann and Wien displacement laws . . . . . . . 180
9.3 Global energy budget and the greenhouse effect . . . . . . . . . . . 182
9.4 Climate feedbacks and the hydrological cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
9.5 Thermodynamics of a photon gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
9.6 Derivation of the Planck law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
9.7 Energy flux, and the Stefan–Boltzmann integral . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
CHAPTER 10 Radiative transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
10.1 Radiative intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
10.2 Radiative transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
10.3 Zenith angles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
10.4 Radiative–convective equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
 Contents vii

10.5 Optically thin layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
CHAPTER 11 Non-equilibrium processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
11.1 Energetics of motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
11.2 Diabatic effects and the second law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
11.3 Thermodynamics of forced dissipative systems . . . . . . . . . . 232
11.4 Climate thermodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
APPENDIX A Functions of several variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
APPENDIX B Thermodynamic diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Useful data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Preface

Should we view classical physics as a tool to understand phenomena in atmospheric

science, or should we view atmospheric science as an applied branch of classical
physics? Of course both viewpoints are mostly accurate, relevant, and even overlap-
ping. However, by focussing on the first viewpoint we may miss out on the profound
sense of universality, of organisation that classical physics brings to our understand-
ing of the world. Here we will focus on the second viewpoint. This book is an attempt
to present atmospheric science as one of the great modern applications of classical
physics, in particular of thermodynamics.
The present second edition of Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere has been re-
vised and expanded throughout compared to the first edition. The revision follows
from years of teaching this material to postgraduate students. Many students have
told me of their sense of achievement and satisfaction —and of relief!— on finishing
a masters level physics topic, often their first exposition to advanced physics mate-
rial. I still experience the same sense of wonder, discovering and exploring the myriad
ways in which we can use thermodynamics to understand and predict so many differ-
ent phenomena in the atmosphere. I hope the reader will share this sense of wonder.

Maarten Ambaum
Reading, United Kingdom
October 2020

ix
 CHAPTER

Ideal gases
1
In this chapter we introduce the concept of an ideal gas, a gas of non-interacting
molecules. An ideal gas is an accurate model of dilute gases such as the atmosphere.
We further introduce the notion of macroscopic variables, amongst them such
familiar ones as temperature and pressure. These macroscopic variables must be re-
lated to some property of the microscopic state of the molecules that make up the
substance. For example, for the systems we consider here, temperature is related to
the mean kinetic energy of the molecules. The linking of the macroscopic and mi-
croscopic worlds is the subject of statistical mechanics. In this chapter we give an
elementary application of it to ideal gases.

1.1 Thermodynamic variables

Consider a volume of gas. A useful mental picture is that of a gas in a closed cylinder
with a piston, similar to the driving cylinder of a steam engine, see Fig. 1.1. In this
way we can control certain properties of the gas, such as its volume or temperature,
and perform experiments on it. Such experiments are normally thought experiments,
although in principle they can be performed in the laboratory.
At the macroscopic level, the gas has some familiar properties:
• volume V (units: m3 )
• mass M (units: kg)
• density ρ = M/V (units: kg m−3 )
• temperature T (units: K, Kelvin)
• pressure p (units: Pa = N m−2 , Pascal).
The gas is made up of molecules with individual mass M1 , so the total mass of gas is

M = N M1 , (1.1)

with N the number of molecules. The number of molecules N is often expressed as

a multiple of the Avogadro number NA ,

NA = 6.022 × 1023 . (1.2)

The Avogadro number was until very recently defined as the number of molecules in
12 g of carbon isotope 12C, but is now defined as the exact integer 6.02214076 × 1023 .
Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-824498-2.00008-2
Copyright © 2021 Royal Meteorological Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. in cooperation with The Royal Meteorological Society. All rights
1
reserved.
2 CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases

FIGURE 1.1
Gas in a cylinder with piston.

The number of molecules is then defined as a multiple n of NA

N = n NA , (1.3)

where n is the number of moles. With this definition of the mol, the mass of the gas
can be written as
M = nμ (1.4)
with μ = NA M1 the molar mass. So the molar mass of 12C is 12 g mol−1 . (Although
the ‘mol’ is not strictly speaking a physical unit, it is defined by writing the Avogadro
number as NA = 6.02214076 × 1023 mol−1 .)
The temperature can be defined as ‘that property which can be measured with a
thermometer’. This definition sounds circular but it can be shown to be a perfectly
valid definition. The SI unit1 for temperature is the Kelvin (K). Temperature is often
denoted in degrees Celsius, ◦ C with T /◦ C = T /K − 273.15, or in degrees Fahrenheit,
◦ F with T /◦ F = 1.8 T /◦ C+32, see Fig. 1.2. Temperature can never be lower than 0 K,

or absolute zero; the temperature in Kelvin is also called the absolute temperature.

FIGURE 1.2
Nomogram for Celsius–Fahrenheit conversion.

Figure 1.3 illustrates the typical mean temperatures encountered through the depth
of the Earth’s atmosphere. This figure uses the logarithm of pressure as a vertical co-
ordinate because this is approximately proportional to the altitude in the atmosphere.

1 SI stands for Système International d’Unités, the internationally agreed system of units for physical
quantities.
 1.1 Thermodynamic variables 3

FIGURE 1.3
Temperature, in ◦ C, as a function of height. Tropical annual mean (thick line), extratropical
winter mean (medium solid line) and extratropical summer mean (medium dashed line).
The tropics here correspond to the latitudes between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn;
the extratropics here correspond to the latitudes beyond 45◦ in either hemisphere for the
corresponding season. Based on data from Randel, W. et al. (2004) Journal of Climate 17,
986–1003.
Going up in altitude, the temperature first decreases (troposphere), increases
(stratosphere), and then decreases again (mesosphere). The mesosphere ends at about
90 km altitude, above which the temperature starts to increase again (thermosphere). These
atmospheric layers are separated by the tropopause, stratopause, and mesopause,
respectively.
The temperature increase in the stratosphere is due to the photo-dissociation of ozone, O3 ,
which absorbs the solar energy in the UV part of the spectrum (wavelengths shorter than
about 320 nm). Indeed, the ozone itself is formed by photo-dissociation of molecular
oxygen, O2 , which occurs at wavelengths shorter than 240 nm. The maximum ozone
concentration (‘the ozone-layer’) is at about 25 km altitude.
The temperature in the troposphere has a maximum in the tropics, while in the
stratosphere it has a maximum in the summer hemisphere and a minimum in the winter
hemisphere. This latitudinal temperature gradient is reversed in the mesosphere. Note also
that the tropopause is coldest and highest in the tropics.
The thermosphere (outside this plot) is heated by absorption of UV radiation and
subsequent ionization of the molecular constituents, thus forming the ionosphere. At these
altitudes the density is so low that energy does not get thermalized effectively and local
thermodynamic equilibrium is not fully attained. The thermosphere gives way to space in
the exosphere.
4 CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases

Pressure is the force a gas exerts on its bounding walls per unit area. This does
not mean that gas only has a pressure defined at the bounding walls: the internal pres-
sure of a gas can in principle be measured by inserting some probe and measuring
the force per unit area on the probe. There are several units of pressure in use, each
with its specific area of application. The SI unit for pressure is the Pascal (Pa) which
is equivalent to one Newton per square metre. In atmospheric applications we nor-
mally use the hectoPascal (hPa; by definition, 1 hPa = 100 Pa) or millibar (mbar; with
1 mbar = 1 hPa).
A pressure of 1013.25 hPa is also called one atmosphere, the notional mean value
of mean sea level pressure on Earth. So we have 1 atm = 101325 Pa. This pressure
unit is almost exclusively used in high pressure engineering applications and, despite
its name, does not usually find application in atmospheric science. A related pressure
unit is the bar with 1 bar = 105 Pa, from which, of course, the millibar is derived.
Pressure and temperature do not correspond to a property of individual molecules.
They are bulk properties that can only be defined as a statistical property of a large
number of molecules. This will be discussed in the next section.
There are several other macroscopic variables that can be used to describe the
state of a simple gas; these are known as thermodynamic variables. If we know all
the relevant thermodynamic variables, we know the full thermodynamic state of the
gas. All these variables are interrelated and it turns out that for a simple substance (a
substance with a fixed composition, such as dry air) we only need two thermodynamic
variables to describe its thermodynamic state.2
For more complex systems we need more variables. For example, in a mixture of
varying composition we need to know the concentrations of the constituents. Moist
air is such a mixture. The number of water molecules in the air is highly variable
and these variations need to be taken into account. For sea water we need to know
the salinity —the amount of dissolved salts— because it has important consequences
for the density. Finally, for cloud drops we need to know the surface area as well as
the amount of dissolved solute, both of which have profound consequences for the
thermodynamics of the drops.
Thermodynamic variables are either:
• extensive, proportional to the mass of the system, or
• intensive, independent of the mass of the system.
Volume and mass are extensive variables, temperature and density are intensive vari-
ables. For most variables it is obvious whether they are extensive or intensive.

2 The number N of thermodynamic variables required to define the state of any system is given by the
Gibbs’ phase rule,

N = 2 + C − P,

with C the number of independent constituents and P the number of coexisting phases (gas, liquid, solid)
in the system.
 1.1 Thermodynamic variables 5

Extensive variables can be divided by the mass of the system to become intensive;
such new variables are then called specific variables. Specific and extensive variables
will be denoted by the same letter, but with the specific variable written in lower case
and its extensive equivalent in upper. For example, the volume V of a system divided
by the mass M of the system becomes the specific volume v with v = V /M. Note
that

v = 1/ρ, (1.5)

where ρ is the density. Specific volume is often, confusingly, denoted by a Greek

letter α, an apparently arbitrary notation which we will not follow here. Later we
will come across other extensive variables. For example, the entropy S of a system
is an extensive variable, so we can define s = S/M as the specific entropy. Although
temperature T is an intensive variable it is normally denoted by an upper case letter,
a convention we adopt here as well.
We have ignored internal variations in the volume of gas or material under con-
sideration. For example, we assume there is no internal macroscopic motion of the
gas, which would be associated with pressure variations and internal kinetic energy.
Clearly this is not the case for the atmosphere as a whole. The pressure and density
vary enormously through the atmosphere, usually most dramatically in the vertical:
at 10 km height the pressure is about a quarter of its surface value.
We assume that we can define the intensive thermodynamic variables locally and
that they have their usual equilibrium thermodynamic relations. We then say that the
gas is in local thermodynamic equilibrium. Local thermodynamic equilibrium is valid
if there is a large separation between the spatial and temporal scales of macroscopic
variations and those of microscopic variations. The spatial scale of macroscopic vari-
ations needs to be much larger than the mean free path of molecules, the mean
distance a molecule travels between collisions with other molecules. The temporal
scale of macroscopic variations needs to be much larger than the mean time between
molecular collisions. Near the Earth’s surface the mean free path in the atmosphere is
about 0.1 µm (about 30 times the average molecular distance) with typical molecular
velocities of several hundreds of metres per second, so local thermodynamic equilib-
rium is satisfied. It turns out that above about 100 km height, local thermodynamic
equilibrium breaks down: the density and collision rate is so low that thermal equi-
librium cannot be achieved on short enough time scales.
A small volume of gas in the atmosphere, for which the internal motion can be
ignored and which has well-defined density, temperature, and so on, is called an air
parcel. Because an air parcel is, by definition, in local thermodynamic equilibrium,
its thermodynamic variables satisfy all the relationships that are found in equilib-
rium systems. At the level of an air parcel we need not worry about non-equilibrium
effects.
6 CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases

1.2 Microscopic viewpoint

From the microscopic viewpoint, temperature is defined as the average kinetic energy
of the molecules,
     
3 1 1 1
 k B T = M1 U + M1 V + M1 W ,
2 2 2
(1.6)
2 2 2 2
with (U , V , W ) the three-dimensional vector velocity of the molecule. The brackets
. . . denote the average, a time average for a single molecule, the average over all
molecules, or the average over an ensemble of gases in the same macroscopic state.
A key assumption of statistical mechanics is that all these averages lead to the same
result. The constant kB is the Boltzmann constant,

kB = 1.381 × 10−23 J K−1 . (1.7)

In statistical physics as well as macroscopic thermodynamics, energy is the funda-

mental quantity. Temperature is a derived quantity which has been given its own
units because it is measured with a thermometer. The Boltzmann constant is merely a
proportionality constant between energy and absolute temperature. The fundamental
point is that statistical mechanics can be formulated such that the microscopic defini-
tion of temperature in terms of the mean kinetic energy of the molecules corresponds
to the thermodynamic definition of temperature.
Before May 2019 the Kelvin was defined as exactly 1/273.16 of the temperature at
the triple point of water. The standard of temperature was a triple point cell, a closed
vessel of glass which contains only pure water, kept at the temperature where the
water coexists in its three phases. Under that definition, the Boltzmann constant was
determined by measuring how much energy a molecule gains for a given temperature
change. From May 2019 the Boltzmann constant has changed from a measured quan-
tity to a defined fixed constant exactly equal to 1.380649 × 10−23 when expressed in
the unit J K−1 . This definition then ties the value of the Kelvin to the value of the
Joule, which is defined independently in terms of other fundamental physical con-
stants. The temperature of water at its triple point is now a measured quantity. Of
course it is still measured to be 273.16 K but now with an uncertainty of 0.0001 K.
The factor 3/2 in the microscopic definition of temperature reflects a classic result
in the mechanics of systems with many components, namely that each degree of free-
dom contains, on average, the same energy. A degree of freedom is an independent
variable in which the system can vary. A single molecule carries three translational
degrees of freedom: motion in the x, y, and z-directions. There can also be internal
degrees of freedom corresponding to rotations and vibrations of the molecule. The
equipartition theorem states that each accessible degree of freedom3 carries on av-
erage the same energy, and this energy equals kB T /2. Adding the average kinetic

3 Not all available degrees are necessarily accessible. Quantization of energy levels implies that there is a
minimum energy required to excite higher energy levels in any degree of freedom.
 1.2 Microscopic viewpoint 7

FIGURE 1.4
Transfer of momentum by a molecule colliding with the wall. The total momentum transfer
is twice the momentum in the x-direction of the molecule.

energies in the three spatial directions then gives the result of Eq. (1.6). The proof of
the equipartition theorem is given in Section 4.7.
Pressure is the result of many collisions of individual molecules against the walls
of a vessel or a probe. If a molecule approaches the wall with a velocity U and
elastically collides with the wall, then the molecule’s momentum in the direction of
the wall changes by 2M1 U , from M1 U to −M1 U . This momentum is transferred to
the wall. By Newton’s laws, the amount of momentum transferred per unit time is the
force on the wall, see Fig. 1.4. For an interior point we can define the local pressure
as the momentum flux density through some imaginary surface in the interior of the
fluid.
So how many molecules collide with the wall? Let the number density of
molecules, that is the number of molecules per unit volume, be denoted with ñ. We
can now write the number density of molecules with x-velocities between U and
U + dU as ñU , which is related to the total number density ñ by

ñ = ñU dU . (1.8)

Over a time δt, those molecules with positive velocity between U and U + dU that
are located within a distance U δt of the wall will collide with the wall. Therefore,
the number of such molecules that have collided with the wall will be ñU U δt A,
with A the area of the wall. To get the momentum transfer per unit time, simply
multiply this number by the momentum transfer per molecule, 2M1 U , and divide
by the time taken, δt. This is the force FU exerted on the wall by molecules with
positive velocities between U and U + dU ,

FU = 2ñU M1 U 2 A. (1.9)

To find the pressure we need to divide by A and integrate the force over all positive
velocities, U > 0, because molecules with negative velocities will not collide with
8 CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases

the wall and thus will not contribute to the pressure,


p= 2ñU M1 U 2 dU . (1.10)
U >0

By symmetry, there will be an equal number of molecules with positive and negative
U . We can therefore integrate over all velocities U , positive and negative, and divide
the result by two. The expression for the pressure then becomes

p = ñ M1 U 2 , (1.11)

with ñ the total number density. The equipartition theorem states that M1 U 2  = kB T
so that the pressure satisfies

 pV = N kB T , (1.12)

where we have substituted ñ = N/V . This is the ideal gas law.

By writing the total number of molecules N as nNA , the ideal gas law can be
written

 pV = nR  T , (1.13)

where R  is called the universal gas constant,

R  = NA kB = 8.314 J mol−1 K−1 . (1.14)

Before the microscopic definitions of temperature and pressure were known, it was
already hypothesized by Avogadro, and later confirmed to be true, that the constant
R  is the same for all types of gases, and therefore indeed universal.
The ideal gas law implies that for a particular number of molecules nNA held
in some volume V at some temperature T , the pressure is independent of the type
of molecules. This can be understood from the observation that both the kinetic en-
ergy (and therefore temperature) and the momentum (and therefore pressure) of a
molecule scale with the mass of the molecule.
Another form of the ideal gas law follows by dividing by the mass M = nμ of the
gas to find

 pv = RT , or p = ρRT , (1.15)

where R is the so-called specific gas constant,

R = R  /μ. (1.16)

This is the form of the ideal gas law that is normally used in atmospheric science.
Confusingly, the convention is to use a capital R for the specific gas constant even
though it is a specific quantity. Note also that in most physics and chemistry literature
the letter R stands for the universal gas constant; it should be clear from the context
 1.2 Microscopic viewpoint 9

which is meant. This is one of those instances where the convention used in atmo-
spheric science literature is not particularly helpful. Although the ideal gas law in the
form of Eq. (1.13) is more general, the big advantage of the form of Eq. (1.15) is that
it is formulated in terms of specific quantities: we do not need to define the size of
the system we are describing.
The ideal gas law encompasses:
• Boyle’s law: at constant temperature, the product of pressure and volume is con-
stant
• Gay-Lussac’s law: at constant volume, the pressure of a gas is proportional to its
temperature.
Figure 1.5 illustrates these laws in diagrams. These laws were originally determined
experimentally. They are only strictly valid for ideal gases.

FIGURE 1.5
The left panel illustrates Boyle’s law and the middle panel Gay-Lussac’s law. The right panel
illustrates that, for an ideal gas at fixed pressure, the volume of a gas is proportional to its
temperature; this is sometimes known as Charles’s law.

In deriving the ideal gas law, we have not considered subtleties such as inelastic
collisions, where energy transfer between the gas and the wall occurs, or the consid-
eration that the wall is not a mathematical flat plane but made up of molecules. These
complications do not alter the basic result.
We have also not considered interactions between the molecules and interactions
at a distance between the molecules and the wall. This does make a difference and
it defines the difference between real gases and ideal gases. Ideal gases are made up
of non-interacting molecules, vanishingly small molecules that are unaffected by the
presence of any other molecules.
We assume that molecules in an ideal gas do not interact with each other and also
that the molecules are in thermal equilibrium. Strictly speaking these assumptions are
inconsistent, as a gas can only achieve thermal equilibrium through many collisions
between the molecules. The colliding molecules distribute the energy amongst all the
accessible degrees of freedom and thus achieve equipartition. This process of energy
distribution is called thermalization. A gas is in local thermodynamic equilibrium
if all the available energy is thermalized. If collisions are rare, energy cannot be
thermalized effectively and the gas cannot achieve local thermodynamic equilibrium.
10 CHAPTER 1 Ideal gases

This occurs at high altitudes in the atmosphere (higher than about 100 km) where the
energy input from radiation is not thermalized due to the low number of collisions.
The ideal gas law is an example of an equation of state. Real gases are not ideal
and will therefore have a different relationship between pressure, density and temper-
ature. For example, the equation of state for real gases is more accurately described
by van der Waals’ equation,
  n 2 
p+a (V − nb) = nR  T , (1.17)
V

with a and b constants that depend on the particular gas. The term −nb represents
the reduction in available volume due to the finite effective size of the molecules.
The term a(n/V )2 is related to the average interaction energy between molecules
(which is why the term is quadratic in the number density) and it contributes as an
effective pressure; the relation between pressure and energy density will be explained
in Section 2.2, and a derivation of van der Waals’ equation will be presented in Sec-
tion 3.8. Van der Waals’ equation is more accurate for gases at high densities, and
approximately describes such important processes as phase transitions.
Densities of gases in the atmosphere are such that the ideal gas law gives essen-
tially the same results as van der Waals’ equation, so we stick to the much simpler
ideal gas law. Indeed, for low densities van der Waals’ equation reduces to the ideal
gas law,

Eq. (1.17) → pV = nR  T if n/V → 0. (1.18)

Conversely, for large pressures,

Eq. (1.17) → V = nb if p → ∞. (1.19)

So the high pressure, incompressible liquid is also a limiting case of van der Waals’
equation.
In general, an equation of state is some relationship between the variables of the
system,

f (p, N, V , T , a1 , a2 , a3 , . . .) = 0, (1.20)

where a1 , a2 . . . represent any other variables that influence the state of the system,
such as humidity in air, or salinity in water. The equation of state is dependent on
the precise nature of the system and results derived using an equation of state are
therefore only valid for that particular system. We will see that many of the results in
this book are derived without reference to an equation of state and will therefore be
valid for any substance.
 1.3 Ideal gas mixtures 11

1.3 Ideal gas mixtures

Ideal gases are defined as gases where the molecules themselves have negligible vol-
ume and have negligible interactions with each other. So if we mix several ideal gases
at the same temperature in a single volume they do not ‘feel’ each other’s presence.
This means that each constituent gas contributes independently to the pressure. The
contribution of each constituent to the total pressure is called the partial pressure. So
ni mols of constituent i will have a partial pressure pi equal to
ni R  T
pi = . (1.21)
V
The fact that these partial pressures independently make up the total pressure of the
mixture is called Dalton’s law:
p= pi . (1.22)
i
Dalton’s law is only strictly true for ideal gases. For non-ideal gases, partial pressures
cannot be easily defined in general.
Another way of expressing Dalton’s law is
pi = yi p, (1.23)

where the molar fraction yi of constituent i is defined by

yi = ni /n, (1.24)

with n = i ni the total number of moles in the mixture.

From Dalton’s law it follows that
ni R  T M ni μi R 
p= = T = ρRT , (1.25)
i V i V M μi

where
ni μi R 
R= = w i Ri , (1.26)
i M μi i

with Ri the specific gas constant for constituent i and wi the mass fraction of con-
stituent i —that is, the fraction constituent i contributes to the total mass of the
mixture (see also Problem 1.6):
wi = Mi /M. (1.27)

The specific gas constant of the mixture is related to an effective molar mass of the
mixture μ which is defined by
R 1 wi
R= with = . (1.28)
μ μ i μi
Table 1.1 lists the main constituents of air. The dry air constituents are well mixed
and long-lived which means that the bulk composition of dry air is fixed throughout
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Roman pictures
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Roman pictures

Author: Percy Lubbock

Release date: October 6, 2023 [eBook #71818]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN

PICTURES ***
 FONTANA DELLE TARTARUGHE

ROMAN PICTURES
By
PERCY LUBBOCK
Author of Earlham & The Craft of Fiction
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Made and printed in Great Britain by Charles Whittingham and Griggs
(Printers), Ltd., London.
 CONTENTS

PAGE

I. FONTANA DELLE TARTARUGHE 9

A lonely young pilgrim, Deering, a citizen of the world, his
Roman accent, the English ghetto, the real Rome, plump but elegant,
the newest culture, the raw world, the way to reality, Roman
pictures.

II. VIA NAZIONALE 23

Crowded tables, Mr. Bannock, the pride of the artist, a grievance,
the young dancer, coils of oratory, tribute to Deering, Jaff’s
sweetheart, Edna’s way, college style, the report of Buffalo, a
substantial Briton.

III. PIAZZA DELLA CANCELLERIA 38

Near the Vatican, the company of the priestcraft, the palace and
the cardinal, Cooksey, secrets of the backstairs, Father Jenkins’s
joke, Amerigo, Cooksey’s profanity, his rebuke to the stranger,
inside the fortress, a gentleman of feeling.

IV. ST. PETER’S 52

An early reveller, the hum of the pilgrims, a faltering cheer, Father
Holt, a secret society, Lady Mullinger, poor Charlotte, a very great
lady, finer shades, homage to Rome, Rome itself.

V. VIA GIULIA 65
Mr. Fitch, the Cheltenham furniture, the seminarist, Maundy’s
fancy, the path to Rome, the burnt sonnet, Gina, historical research,
the golden evenings, a point of ritual, art in the void, an uneasy
neophyte.

VI. VILLA BORGHESE 79

An aged relic, Teresa and Berta, a fluent antiphon, some English
speaking, troubles of a patriot, country days, the Virginian
 sculptress, Luigi, a gentleman in Rome, precious refinements, a
chance worth seizing, Rome the inexhaustible.

VII. VIA DELLA PURIFICAZIONE 94

A tangle of byways, the medieval challenge, Teresa at home, Mr.
Daponte, Rome on the house-tops, Teresa in London, English
freedom, Luigi on Rome, the end of his chances, a spoilt tea-party, a
prospect of Rome.

VIII. ALBANO 107

A day in the country, Teresa’s party, an English ramble, mother
and child, Mimi in society, Olga and the arts, the forgotten
pensioners, the Russian waif, despair and disillusion, a page of
Dostoevsky, a dusty road-side, the Virgilian forest.

IX. CASTEL GANDOLFO 121

Fräulein Dahl, a piece of nature, an Arcadian walk, Erda’s villa,
the great saloon, Miss Gilpin, the accent of Dante, a woman of
letters, the clever touch, a reposeful friend, the accent of Dresden,
Erda in solitude.

X. VIA SISTINA 135

Deering again, the Clarksons, privileges of travel, Mr. Bashford, a
cousin of the Marshams, golf at Torquay, the true Ruskin, an English
babe, the sheep in the bunker, Bashford’s sort, England in Rome.

XI. PIAZZA NAVONA 149

Miss Gainsborough, Lady Mullinger again, a sedulous Roman, the
old guard, majestic wrath, the imperial race-course, a British
monument,

XII. CORSO 163

A sumptuous background, familiar faces, Miss Gadge, the chant of
the pilgrims, things Franciscan, a woman and an artist, chords of the
heart, the plane of art, the youth Pole, Mr. Champerdown, a Jesuit in
a drawing-room, the moon of May, the city gate.

XIII. THE FORUM 178

 Julia’s discovery, the Professor, an inspired lecture, the origin of
Rome, Mrs. Rollesby’s attack, poetic imagination, privilege of a
scholar, the buried statue, the Professor’s secret, a divided audience,
a single-minded pilgrim.

XIV. VIA MARGUTTA 191

A studio of romance, the old Bohemian, pictures and friends, the
study of type, the eagle-feather, an artist’s wife, an honest
tradesman, dreams of an artist, business and a studio-chat, a blander
age, the light of the great days, worldly protection.

XV. VIA DELLE BOTTEGHE OSCURE 205

The great name, the Marchesa at home, Roman guile, the
Principessa, the rustle of expense, Miss Gilpin again, Madame de
Baltasar, the knightly Latin, a young barbarian, a wonder of art,
English daylight, Deering’s stroke, back to the tortoises, the end of
the quest.
ROMAN PICTURES
 I. FONTANA DELLE TARTARUGHE

I FOUND myself loitering by that pretty little Fountain of the Tortoises, not
for the first time; but this time (it was an afternoon of late April, long years
ago) I looked stupidly at the boys and the tortoises and the dripping water,
with a wish in my mind for something more. But what? I had drifted hither
and thither about Rome, from the Gate of the People to the Baths of
Caracalla—drifted day after day in my solitude through a month of April
more divinely blue and golden than the first spring-days of the world; and
whether I was in the body or out of the body I scarcely knew, for I moved in
a great bubble of imagination that I had never known the like of in all the
years (perhaps twenty) of my life before I came to Rome. I had escaped from
the poor chamber of myself; for the imagination I dreamed and revelled in
was surely none of my own. It was of the spirit of all time, livelier, lovelier
than I could say, a power and a freedom that a rather lean young soul,
ignorantly aspiring, may enter into and take possession of unconsciously,
without an effort—in Rome.
But I do remember lingering about the Fountain of the Tortoises at last,
between sun and shadow, with a wish that something now, something or
some one, would break into my solitude and my dream; not that I was tired
of either, but because my dream and my solitude would be still more
beautiful if I could look at them for an hour across an interval, across the
kind of division that is created by—yes, exactly!—by the sight to which I
presently raised my eyes, turning away from the dapple and ripple of the
fountain. A young man, passing across the square, met my blank gaze at this
moment and suddenly threw out a sign of recognition; and I saw with
surprise that it was my precious Deering, of whose presence in Rome I had
been quite unaware. Deering it was!—after four or five lonely weeks, in
which I had never happened to see a face that I knew, it was Deering who
linked me to the real world again by crossing the Square of the Tortoises at
that hour of that afternoon. I had left my shining bubble in a flash (he hadn’t
noticed it) and joined hands with common life.
We weren’t really on terms of intimacy; but in the strangeness of Rome
our little English acquaintance had the air of a cordial friendship. I gushed
over with a warmth that surprised me and that would have been impossible
at home; the fountain and the palaces and the Roman sunshine had pushed
me forward into a familiarity that I shouldn’t have ventured upon elsewhere.
He was of my own age, but so much more exquisite and mannerly that I
looked raw indeed at his side; I was an aspiring amateur, he was a citizen of
the world. At school I had tried to avoid him, because I had courted (vainly,
vainly) the society of the more fashionably and the less refined; but I was
eager enough to seize him by both hands in my new freedom and to take
advantage of his riper experience. “Why, Deering—!” He did look
experienced, with his broad-brimmed hat and his neat black clothes, as I
moved towards him and directed my greeting, a little too effusively.
He took it with a brilliant smile, he whipped off his hat and held it to his
stomach. “Eh, come sta?” he said, standing bare-headed; “è pezzo pezzo che
non ci vediamo.” He fluted the words with mellifluous assurance, and I did
my best to meet his humour with my own poor bits and shreds of Italian.
There were no flute-notes in my repertory; but I made a jest of my round
British style and mouthed out some attempt at a Roman compliment. As
quick as thought he countered it with another; and that was surely enough of
the joke—the joke of our standing there bare-headed, flourishing our hats at
each other with Italian airings; so I let loose my pent-up English talk, after
those weeks of unnatural silence, and tumbled out exclamation and question
as they came—I was voluble, enjoying the release of the tongue, and there
were forty things I wanted to say and hear, for this meeting was quite
unexpected and exceedingly opportune; and so I chattered forth my surprise
and pleasure, and then—and then I found them left upon my hands,
somehow, and I looked rather a fool.
“Ma senta, senta,” said Deering. He smiled, but he was firm. He couldn’t
deal with me on these insular terms in Rome; he made me feel it without
explanation, but the fact was that he simply couldn’t allow me to be so
inappropriate, so falsely attuned to the time and place. There we stood in the
heart of Rome, with the palaces of princes around us, secluded among
winding streets all dark with wicked history; and here was Deering,
disguised as a Roman himself, with a great black hat and a suit of dead-black
clothes; and I had stuttered out my poor innocent school-talk, college-gossip,
heaven knows what, a scrannel-pipe to the suave warble of his flute. Had I
come all the way to Rome to be still a British undergraduate even there?
Well, as for that, he very soon put it right. He was kindness itself, but he had
the upper hand of me in these foreign parts, where he was so serenely at
home and I so ecstatically at sea. His was the advantage, as indeed I quite
understood, and he used it from the first. He gently set me in my place, not
without an indulgent smile.
“Senta, senta pure,” he said—or words to that effect; whatever they were
they keenly struck me as the very words I had wanted and missed in my
ignorant solitude. That was the way to talk to a Roman; I might have missed
it for ever, but Deering had picked it up, no doubt, the first time he put on his
broad-brimmed hat. How long had he been in Rome? I was allowed to ask
that question at least, and it appeared that he had come to Rome for a week,
six months before, and had stayed on and on because he had happened to
find rooms that pleased him. They were far from the “English ghetto,” so he
said, meaning that they were far from the hotels and the Piazza di Spagna
and touristry in general; and he had just finished his siesta and was on his
way to a café in the Via Nazionale, where he usually spent some hours of the
afternoon. And I, where was I going? As a matter of fact I had vaguely
thought of wandering away and away, out of the city and into the country—
from whence I should return in the dusk, luxuriously tired, solemnly
enraptured, to climb the long stairs to my own little lodging, my Arcadian
meal and couch. But this I concealed from Deering; I felt at once I must
protect my dear sentimental delights from his ironic eye. Moreover my
lodging, which I had thought so knowingly Roman, proved to be full in the
middle of the English ghetto; I kept this too from him as long as I could.
His siesta, his café, his rooms remote from the vulgar—oh I had such a
vision, as he mentioned these, of the kind of Roman career that I had failed
to go in for hitherto. Deering lived in Rome, I had floated on the surface.
Never mind—I threw over my private romance and adopted Deering’s
reality on the spot. He seemed to be immensely informed, and there was a
charming insolence in his wisdom; I might put my tenderest fancies behind
me and screen them in his presence, but he saw that I was a soft young
enthusiast, and he patronized me with the sweetness of his coo, his smile, his
winning gesture. He delicately blasted whatever had appeared to me of
interest and renown, he showed me the crudity of my standards. I might feel
a passing twinge, for I hadn’t been used to regarding myself as a thing with
which Deering could be indulgent and amused. And yet I was flattered, I
was magnified by his fastidious irony; it brought me into a new world of
mind and taste, more exclusive than my own.
But I obviously couldn’t give way to him in the matter of being so very
Italian that we mightn’t talk our own language. He could take me into
another world, but to endow me at the same time with a new speech was a
miracle beyond him. “Ma come, ma come,” he said encouragingly; he
implied that in the real life of illumination we are all free of the golden
tongue, the tongue of the clear Latin civiltà. It seemed he could hardly frame
his lips to the uncouth noises of the northern Goth. He brought out an
English phrase with an air of handing it over to me between disgustful
finger-tips, and he relapsed unconsciously as he did so into the sweeter
idiom. Ah Deering, Deering! That unconsciousness of his was a finished
performance, I could believe he had practised it before the glass. “But you,
my dear,” he said, “you surely speak the language like the rest of us—eh
magari!” I confessed that I spoke the language like a barbarian fresh from
my native wild; I should listen to him and the rest of them with pleasure, but
to me he must talk our poor old English. “And who are the rest of you?” I
demanded.
He answered my question at some length, inadvertently recovering his
former tongue. In six months of Roman life he had made many friends; he
had fallen into a circle that suited him as aptly as his rooms. “I scarcely
know how it happened,” he said, “but I seemed to find my feet here from the
first.” He apparently attributed a great deal of his fortune to the café of the
Via Nazionale; a right instinct had taken him there in the beginning, and
thereafter all had run smoothly. He had met a journalist, he had met an actor
or a lawyer or a doctor—anyhow he had met somebody whom the ordinary
Cook-driven tourist, slaving round the ruins and the galleries, would have
missed infallibly; and so he had entered a company which belonged—he
insisted on it—to the real Rome, the city unsuspected of our gaping
countrymen. His secret was to “live the life of the place,” he said; and let
there be no mistake, the life of the place is to be found among the shops and
tramways of the business quarter, nowhere else. It must be owned that in
Rome a stranger runs many a risk of overlooking the true life on these terms,
which are the terms that Deering laid down with high lucidity; for even if
you avoid the ghetto of the tourist on one hand, and the romantic desolation
of the Campagna (to which I myself was addicted) on the other, you may
still make a further mistake—and I put it to Deering that it really depends on
what you call the life of Rome. There is the community of the “student,” for
example; and I should have thought that Deering, with his rare vein of taste
in the arts, would haunt the workshops of young sculptors, ragged painters
and poets—weren’t they as plentiful in Rome as summer flies?
 I had interrupted Deering’s exposition; he wanted to tell me more about
the ease with which he had dropped into the heart of Rome. But he broke
away from that, with another of his patient intelligent smiles, to explain to
me how much I failed to understand. There was no more any life of that kind
in Rome—no romantic art. Did I think that those horrible theatrical old men,
those bedizened little boys and girls, who still loaf upon the Spanish Steps
and waylay the foreigner—did I think they were genuine “models,” waiting
for real painters to carry them off and paint them? I supposed then that I was
living in the Rome of Hans Andersen and Nathaniel Hawthorne? He
abounded in his sarcasm. Ragged poets indeed! My notion of the vie de
Bohème was a little behind the times, fifty years or so. “Ah you live in
books,” said Deering—he rallied me on it; “in Rome you must come out of
books—I shall drag you out of Hawthorne.” As a matter of fact he knew the
young poets of Rome, he had several friends among them; it was no use my
looking for them in garrets and operatic wine-cellars near the Tiber; the Via
Nazionale was the place, vulgar as I thought it with its crowds and trams and
plate-glass—and he was off again, with his sweet flat voice and his neat
enunciation, describing the extraordinary favour that the journalists had
shown him, or perhaps the actors.
It was remarkable, he said, how they accepted him as one of themselves.
“There seems to be something of the Italian in me,” he mentioned once or
twice, “nothing to be proud of!”—and he smiled with pride. I could honestly
tell him that there was at least nothing English in his appearance, since he
had taken to powdering his nose and to clothing himself like an undertaker.
The remark about his nose I indeed reserved, but my allusion to his clothes
was a happy one. He immediately glanced with quiet approval at his hands,
and I remembered how in earlier years, when we were both small boys at
school, he had once pointed out to me that he had hands “like a Botticelli.”
He ought to have been grateful to me for the self-restraint I had shown in
withholding that confidence from the light. I had been surprisingly discreet, I
had never used his Botticelli hands against him in our free-spoken circle, and
I was glad of it now. Here in Rome, set free from the old snobberies of
boyhood, I was ready to take his hands quite seriously, and even the paste of
powder with which he had corrected the tint (inclining rather to Rubens) of
his nose. His black clothes were designed to set off his elegant wrists and
tapering fingers; and if a nose invariably scorched by the sun was a weight
on his mind, as I know it was, he found support in the well-drawn oval of his
face. He was not very tall, and unfortunately he was not very slender; it was
only too plain to see that before long he would be plump. But nevertheless
he might reasonably tell himself that his figure, as he stood by the fountain
and thoughtfully eyed his hands, had a hint and a suggestion, I don’t say
more, of something you might call—of something he hoped I was calling—a
lily-droop, swaying lightly.
I can see him bend and sway accordingly; and I can recall the bright
stream of sensation in my own mind, where the old desire to scoff at his
elegancies had apparently changed to respect and envy. What a free world, I
thought, what a liberal and charming, in which a stupid prejudice could
dissolve and drop away so quickly! Perhaps I didn’t quite understand that
my respect was not so much for Deering as for myself, not so much for
Deering’s pretty graces as for my own emancipation; but my envy of his
Italian ease and competence was indeed sincere. I would seize, yes I would,
such an opportunity of learning, discovering, experiencing; I would follow
Deering, accept his guidance and pay him his price—for his price was a
small one, merely a little tacit backing of his own view of himself. He would
expect me to agree with him that his face had a species of haunting charm;
he would expect me, at any rate, not to imply that it hadn’t. It was a trifling
indemnification for the many times he had been told in former days that he
had a face like a rabbit. I would gladly support him in abolishing the
memory of all that ribaldry; I should be rewarded by observing my own
tolerance with satisfaction and by becoming acquainted at the same time
with this “real Rome” of Deering’s—he was still fluting on about its reality.
We shuffled for a while to and fro across the sunny little square. Now and
then a bare-headed woman came pattering by, twisting her neck for a firm
round stare at us as she went; children looked on from a distance, struck
dumb in their play by our oddity. Deering talked and talked; he too felt the
relief of uttering himself, no doubt—for I could well believe that the real
Rome didn’t supply a listener who understood him as I did. Not one of those
actors or poets, for example, could measure the difference between Deering
of old, flouted and derided, and this remarkable young personage, ornament
of a strange society, who was now willing to be the patron of such as I.
Deering talked, I appreciated the difference; I did my part with a will, and he
bloomed in the warmth of my recognition. For six months, moreover, he had
been displaying the new, the very newest culture, and his associates hadn’t
really been in a position to perceive it. An Englishman who avoided the old
ruins and churches, who sat through the April afternoon at a marble-topped
table—why his companions would of course take him for an Englishman
who behaved, for a wonder, in a natural and commendable fashion; and this
was where I again came in so aptly, for I could do justice to the originality
and the modernity of his proceeding. It wasn’t as though Deering sat in a
café because he knew no better, because he was the kind of person whose
ideas are bounded by plush and gilt and plate-glass. He sat there, avoiding
the nightingales on the Aventine, the sunset in the Campagna, because he
knew all that and more, and because the rarity of the perversity of his culture
led him back again, round again, to the scream of the tramway in the
“business quarter.” I, who had watched him of old, could be trusted to
distinguish these niceties; there it was that I came into the game, and he
didn’t hesitate—he brought me into play.
“Yes,” he murmured, musing gently upon my state of romance, “yes, I
should like to drag you out of literature once for all. Come out of your
books, come to Rome—come with me.” I could truthfully say that I would
go with pleasure; and as for my books, I was quite willing to let him label
me as he chose—I accepted the part for which he cast me. I was the victim
of the romantic fallacy, and it all came of my looking for life in antiquated
fiction—in Zola even, in Zola as like as not—instead of looking for it in the
raw red world: such was the part he assigned me, and I have ever been one
to fall in with an arrangement of this kind. People, I long ago found, are
never happy till they have decided that you are this or that, some
recognizable type; and for yourself the line of least resistance is always to let
them have their way. In my time I have played many parts, acting up to the
theory and the expectation of my different companions; it saves trouble, it
spares one the effort of assertion. There are even those with whom I have
been able to assume the very attitude that Deering had now adopted towards
me, the attitude of a liberal patron towards a muddle-headed young innocent;
and then I have patronized as glibly as I now submitted. Deering saw in the
look with which I answered him the exact shade of awkward modesty that he
demanded. It was well; he approved my fluency in the part that had fallen to
me.
It was settled, then, that he was to hale me out of my sentimental twilight
into the broad noon of reality; I had lived for too long in a dream, and now
he promised himself the amusement of dispelling my illusions. So be it; I
told him I asked nothing better than to follow his lead, and I told myself that
at least I had a sharper eye for the “facts of life” (my phrase) than ever
Deering would have. We were both well-pleased, therefore; and I wonder at
which of us the spirit of Rome, glancing that afternoon over the Square of
the Tortoises, smiled and chuckled most benignly. It was Deering at any rate,
of the two of us, who made the more intricate object of study; anybody
might be drawn, even Rome, to pause and consider him as a child of his
time. When he slipped his arm through mine and daintily drew me forward
on our way—the way to reality!—I don’t think the first comer would have
guessed that he was about to become my sponsor in the raw red world. His
graceful hands seemed rather to flutter in deprecation of any world more
earthly than the sea-pallor, say, of a sunrise in the manner of Botticelli. But
that, for Deering, was just the fun of it. Of the sea-pale dawn he could
honestly say, and he did say, “J’ai passé par là”; in an earlier stage of his
culture he had duly swooned in the ecstasy of the burnished moment, the
discriminated pulse of the perfected sensation; but at that time he had worn
an Eton jacket, and years had flown since then, and by now his eye-lids were
more than a little weary of the raptures he had outlived. He, more precocious
than I, had left his books at the moment when I was making the first
discovery of mine; he no longer read any books at all, he told me, and if he
didn’t add that life was his book it was only because the phrase, when he
was about to utter it, struck him as old-fashioned and obvious. “ ‘Youth’s
sweet-scented manuscript’—you remember?”—he ventured on that,
guarding himself with a slightly acid intonation of the pretty words.
And so Deering turned me away from the ilex-shadows and grey spaces
of an evening on the Aventine and in the further country; he clung to my arm
and directed me to the clatter of the city, and that was how it all began. He
gave me a push, with his benediction, and one thing led to another, and I
started to collect some Roman pictures of a new sort. I stored away my more
sentimental bits and notes of impression, carefully saving them from the eye
of Deering; I laid them aside, and certainly they are not worth disturbing
again at this late hour. But as for these others, the new sort, I think it might
be amusing to bring them briefly to the light, one by one; though I don’t
pretend that even with Deering to point the way I penetrated far into Rome
or the world either. After all his offers to induct and indoctrinate me, nothing
came of them to speak of; I saw not a sign of rawness or redness, that I can
remember—so I suppose I must conclude that the heart of life escaped me
still. But even the fringes of life, if that is all they were, seemed strange and
memorable in Rome; nobody who lived in Rome, nobody who breathed the
golden air as a matter of course, nobody who trod the sacred soil as an
everyday affair, could be less than a wonder to a rather lean young northern
soul, whose lodging in the Piazza di Spagna had only been hired by the
month. The spring days were endless, but they flashed away faster than I
could count; presently they would all be gone, and I should have to leave
Rome to the few free happy creatures, such as Deering, who could stay
because they liked it, stay in Paradise because they happened to prefer it—I
should think they might! As Deering and I, arm in arm, left the square and
the babbling fountain, I was quite overcome by my jealousy of his
detachment from cares and ties, from the stupid thrums of responsibility that
so soon drag most of us away from the Rome of our desire.
“So here you are living in Rome,” I said dejectedly, “with nothing to
prevent you from staying for ever.” Deering was his own master, I knew, and
he sedulously cultivated a frosty indifference to any claims at home, such as
they were, that might have hampered him. I didn’t exactly admire his
ruthless way, but I certainly envied it. I should like to have had that faculty
of ignoring, blankly and serenely, what I chose to ignore; it would have been
a great convenience. All I needed was a little of Deering’s real independence
of opinion; for I can’t think I was embarrassed by many good warm qualities
of heart and temper. Deering was no unkinder than I, only bolder, more
secure in his power to stand alone. And then he had another immense
advantage; he could always be sympathetically impressed by his own
performance, he was an excellent audience of himself. “Living in Rome?” he
echoed—“you don’t know me! I shall take to the road again before long. But
you’re not tormented, as I am, by the gypsy in the blood. There are times
when I envy the like of you, the decent, the home-keeping——” He broke
off with a sigh—a sigh in which I could almost hear the involuntary murmur
of applause. Yes, the gypsy in the blood was a good stroke, and I think a new
one.