Glimpses of Italian Society ... From the 'Journey' of Mrs. Piozzi. With an introduction by the Countess E. Martinengo Cesaresco

Introduction

INTRODUCTION.

...... I I. TURIN AND GENOA . . . . -42 II. MILAN ....... 59 III. MANTUA, VERONA, AND PADUA . . -91 IV. VENICE . . . . . . . 102 V. FERRARA AND BOLOGNA . . . 139 VI. FLORENCE . . . . . . 1 50 VII. LUCCA, LEGHORN, BATHS OF PISA, SIENA . .179 VIII. ROME ....... 206 IX. NAPLES. . . . . . -215 X. ROME REVISITED . . . . .261 XI. RETURN TO MILAN . . . . .281 XII. LAGO MAGGIORE— RETURN TO VERONA . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE pilgrims IN ST. Peter's, after david ALLAN - Frontispiece MR. AND MRS. PIOZZI ----- 4 A LADV SPINNING. AFTER PIETRO LONGHI - - 84 VENICE : THE PIERA DEL BANDO. AFTER CANALETTO - 104 VENICE: THE ISLAND OF S. GIORGIO. AFTER GUARDI - 110 VENICE BY NIGHT. AFTER MORETTI - - - 128 A CARNIVAL SCENE. AFTER TIEPOLO - - - I32 A BARGE ON THE BRENTA. AFTER COSTA - - 1 36 ROME : THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.

AFTER VASI - - 206 THE GROTTA DEL CANE. AFTER RAPHAEL MORGHEN - 234 CHRISTMAS EVE : CALABRIAN PEASANTS. AFTER DAVID 238 ALLAN ANCIENT BATHS AT BAIÆ. AFTER RAPHAEL MORGHEN 252 A NEAPOLITAN DANCE. AFTER DAVID ALLAN - - 258 ROME : THE PIAZZA NAVONA. AFTER VASI - - 262 THE PONTINE MARSHES. AFTER RAPHAEL MORGHEN - 268 A HERMIT ON THE APPIAN WAY. AFTER DAVID ALLAN GLIMPSES OF ITALIAN SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

INTRODUCTION.

The bulk of the writers of books of travel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries approached us less nearly in feeling than did the Roman youths of an earlier age, who carried their warmest enthusiasm to the land where they could tread on history. Italy, the Greece of the modern world, found them critical and left them cold. Rabelais, for instance, could not for the life of him see what there was to admire in Florence. Had the Elizabethan dramatists depended on such reports alone, it would be difficult to understand how they managed to absorb, as they did, the idea and atmosphere of the South. But England was flooded with Italian i Introduction 2 literature and full of Italians, who taught all the arts and amenities of civilization— in which way, rather than from travellers' tales, arose the enormous debt of English poetry to Italy.

In the eighteenth century the number of English travellers vastly increased, and still more the pro portion of those who wrote books. It began to occur to everyone to take up his pen as soon as he set down his valise. Out of the mass of volumes thus produced, some have a permanent value, such as the writings of Addison, Brydone, Swinburne, Arthur Yonng, and, for musical matters, Dr. Burney. Meanwhile, Smollett and Samuel Sharpe went col lecting the opposite of roses. Sharpe's book is wholly forgotten, together with Baretti's answer or refutation ; Smollett's chapters of accidents are chiefly recollected for his comparison of the Pantheon to a cockpit with a hole atop. Only Goldsmith, who trudged on foot through part of Italy, as Tom Coryat had done a hundred and fifty years before, and who could have written the most interesting tour of all, did not write one.

How much we should like to have his account of the peasant hosts who gave him bread or polenta in return for his flute-playing ! With a public ready to read any quantity of Italian descriptions and gossip, it was a foregone Introduction 3 conclusion that so facile a writer as Mrs. Piozzi would not long withhold the results of her travels in Italy. She had several exceptional advantages for observing the ways of the people ; to begin with, she was the wife of an Italian, and the fact of her sex was in itself fortunate, for women — as has been proved since by squadrons of lady-voyagers — are more observant of small things than men. She did not bring out her book in the usual form of letters, for she says it would have been a pure piece of hypocrisy, as her old acquaintances troubled her with very few tender inquiries during her absence.

Poor woman ! she went on her journey smarting under, though by no means crushed by, the solemn outburst, after her second marriage, of that sort of moral indignation which seeks to compensate by volubility for its lack of rational ground. It may be granted that a widow with grown-up daughters does not generally do the wisest thing imaginable when she renews the marriage tie, and in Italy, among the peasants, the step might lead to her receiving one evening a serenade of tin-kettles and saucepans. But the charivaris of polite society are more cruel, and, besides, the question of whether a widow of forty should or should not re-marry had nothing really to do with the acrimony with which Mrs. Thrale was treated by people, most of whom had i — Introduction 4 strong reasons to be grateful to her.

The cause of the attack lay in the childish caste prejudices of persons who were probably no better born than Piozzi ; but, then, they were Britons, and they had never taught music, which, of course, proved their respectability. Such prejudices die hard; in this century an Italian who, like Piozzi, had made a substantial fortune by teaching music in England, had no end of difficulty in persuading a worthy English wine-merchant to become his father-in-law ; the objections were expressly based on rank, which was amusing, because the music-teacher was of an illustrious Neapolitan family. He used to tell the story of his wooing with much gusto to his friends in Italy. Mrs. Piozzi was anxious that her residence abroad should prove not only an escape from the range of those ' poisoned arrows of private malignity ' of which she speaks in her preface, but also a means of raising Piozzi in the eyes of the world by showing that he was cordially welcomed in his own country.

On his side, he had an honourable desire that they should remain out of England till Mrs. Piozzi's debts were paid, which was soon accomplished, thanks to his good management. In spite of spite, they set out in the best of spirits, provided with ' a magnificent carriage ' full of tea and books — the latter had originally comprised a Mrs. Piozzi. Signor Piozzi, From Portraits in the Possession of Signor Enrico Piozzi^ of Brescia, Introduction 5 copy of Diodati's translation of the Bible, but this was omitted at the request of Piozzi, who advised his ' dear creature ' to be content with the English version and to remember that she was travelling as the wife of a native and a papist. Much later than that, the possession of Diodati might have caused the trouble which Piozzi sensibly declined to en counter.

With all her liveliness, Mrs. Piozzi had serious religious convictions and a definite attach ment to her own Church ; but she was willing that other folk should go to heaven by the road they preferred, and her hardest remark about the Roman faith was that she would never submit to call those Catholics who excluded from salvation every Chris tian sect save their own. She was fond of the society of courtly ecclesiastics, and the interior of convents had for her the kind of fascination which a cloistered life often exercises over rather worldly people. She had scarcely arrived at Calais on this journey, when she went to renew her acquaintance with the Dominican sisters in that town, and she was mortified at finding that they had completely forgotten not only their visitor, but also her eldest daughter, whom she had taken many years before to see them.

She wondered how it was possible to forget so beautiful a child : a rather pathetic little note to have been written just then, when the Introduction 6 daughter, who inherited all Mr. Thrale's sound but somewhat chilly qualities, was not treating her mother in the most amiable manner. Mrs. Piozzi consoled herself with the story of the dervish who contemplated the possibility of his forgetting even the splendour of the Great Mogul because he was always thinking of God ; it was the same, she supposed, with nuns : ' No one is of importance to a nun, who is and ought to be employed in other speculations.' A reflection that shows a power of insight into orders of feeling different from her own, which no doubt had much to do with making Mrs. Piozzi easily popular among all sorts and conditions of men and, which is the harder, of women.

In Paris the travellers found the town mad for love of a new comedy, ' Le Mariage de Figaro,' the epoch-making play which, as Carlyle said, ' Spoke what all were feeling and longing to speak.' They were introduced to Goldoni, ' garrulous, good humoured and gay,' who was held in high estimation by his countrymen in the French capital. At eighty four the light-hearted old Venetian was busily en gaged in writing his memoirs. Little did he fore see the deluge that was going to engulf him. He died of profound melancholy in 1792, the Revolution having robbed him of his means of sustenance ; an end that reminds one of Auber's death during Introduction 7 the Commune, when a common grave received the unidentified dust of the musical veteran who had added so much to the world's gaiety. It is a wise law of nature that butterflies should live but for a day.

Mrs. Piozzi was anxious to have the opportunity of meeting Italians and of talking the language with strangers — which she did not find easy; and she derived much pleasure from the conversation of two or three well-known Milanese noblemen who were living in Paris. After three weeks agreeably spent, she and her husband left for Turin ; her description of the route overflows with a passionate delight in the beauties of nature, of which she was a better judge than of the beauties of art, though she had an equal love for both. The remarks on descriptions of scenery in general are acute. ' One half despairs of communicating one's ideas as they are ; for either well-chosen words do not present themselves, or being well-chosen they detain the reader and fix his mind on them instead of the things described.' The cattle grazing by the Yonne, whose banks were clothed with the royal purple of some wild flower, the expansive views of a productive country where vineyards covered the hills and the young wheat filled the valleys, the ceaseless variety of colouring among the foliage, bluish willows shading with gloomy beeches and golden walnuts, Introduction 8 arrested and enchanted her eyes.

Everywhere was an appearance of elegance and wealth — ' elegance, the work of Nature, not of man, and opulence, the immediate gift of God and not the result of commerce.' Her appreciation ofthe Alps is noteworthy from its date : ' I look back on the majestic boundaries of Italy,' she wrote at Turin, ' with amazement at his courage who first profaned them. Surely the immediate sensation conveyed to the mind by the sight of such tremendous appearances must be in every traveller the same, a sensation of fulness never experienced before, a satisfaction that there is something great to be seen on earth, some object capable of contenting even fancy.' While bearing in mind that Rousseau had already written, one is struck by the modernity of the passage. It is true that the view is still external ; it lacks the mysterious sense of interdependence between man and nature which makes Obermann belong so much to us and so little to his contemporaries.

On the hills, says Obermann, where the heavens are immense, the air more still and life more permanent, nature eloquently expresses a vaster order, a more visible harmony : ' La, l'homme retrouve sa forme alterable mais indestructible ; il respire 1'air sauvage loin des emanations sociales ; son etre est a lui comme a l'univers : il vit d'une vie reelle dans l'unite" Introduction 9 sublime.' Here is a note undivined by Mrs. Piozzi, but she was keenly alive to the outward aspects of mountain landscape : the lovely auburn tints, the torrents bursting from the naked rocks, the little churches perched on steep ledges with their tinkling bells calling the quiet Savoyards to prayer. She declares that even the peasants who carried her chaisc-a-porteurs seemed to take a new pleasure every time they beheld these glorious scenes, as they called one another's attention to the small changed that had taken place since last they passed.

She came upon one peasant who spoke excellent English, having occupied a good position as gentleman's servant in England, but the longing for his native hills overpowered him, and he had thrown up all to return to them. On the way the travellers stopped at Lyons, where they were excited by stories of animal magne tism, or hypnotism, as we should say, for the pheno mena related are strictly of that order. Mrs. Piozzi hoped that ' a buffoonery so mean and a practice so diabolical ' would not get into England. What would she have said to the new class of invalids, who, having allowed themselves to be hypnotized in haste, are occupied in repenting at leisure — to the two Russian girls of good family, who were lately placed in the care of Professor Branchi, of Naples, Introduction 10 for treatment on account of hypnotic trances, which come on simultaneously in each, even when they are apart ?

Mrs. Piozzi's common-sense enabled her to see that the style of entertainment, then a novel one, was calculated to bring about scarcely amusing results. She deserves praise for liking Turin — ' this lovely little city,' she calls it — in contrast with the indifference or dislike of most travellers, from Montaigne downwards. Here she first saw an Italian opera acted in an Italian theatre, a box having been lent to her by Prince della Cisterna, one of whose descend ants was to wear for a while the inauspicious crown of Spain. Here, on the threshold of Italy, every pleasure that politeness could invent or kind ness bestow was held out for her acceptance ; here Italian hospitality first consoled her for the fatigues of her journey, nor was the promise belied along all the road, for she received everywhere a full measure of the courtesy and attention lavished on British travellers in Italy until their quantity, and perhaps their quality, made it impossible to go on opening all doors as a matter of course to every wandering Englishman.

Questions of rank and position were waived in their favour. Mrs. Piozzi confided to her friends on her return to England that in Lombardy people could never quite make out how she could be Introduction 11 a lady when her first husband was a brewer — a dreadful piece of intelligence for those who affected to consider the immaculate Thrale connection damaged by the Piozzi alliance. The perplexity, however, did not interfere with the honour done to the witty and charming visitor, who manifests a gratitude which has not always been the kind of coin paid back by foreigners for Italian cordi alities. Gabriele Piozzi had been acquainted from his boyhood with the Marquis d'Aracieli, a nobleman of Spanish extraction, who lived in Milan. How the marquis came to know the Brescian lad is not explained, but he seems to have looked upon him in the light of a protege' from the time when Piozzi ran away from home because his family wanted to make him a priest.

On that occasion he took refuge in the Palazzo Aracieli, and he again took refuge there when Mrs. Thrale had been worried into dismissing him, as it appeared, finally. He was the guest of the marquis when he was recalled, though sorely against the grain, by her relations, on their be coming convinced that she would succumb to the strain of the renunciation. It was natural that the Piozzis should choose Milan for their longest stay, as this acquaintance gave them at once the entree to Milanese society. Mrs. Piozzi set to work to observe Introduction 12 the features of the life around her, and noted things honestly as they looked to her, without malice, if at times not wholly without that shade of caricature which a clever writer, and especially a clever woman, finds it hard to resist. To say that her conclusions at times need correction, is only to say that she shared an infirmity common to the most intelligent painters of foreign manners.

Take up a foreign book on English society, or a foreign newspaper which contains English gossip, and one is mostly struck by the topsy-turveydom of the writer's stand point, even when his facts are right. Foreigners are apt to be led astray even more by what they hear than by what they see ; they judge the general from the particular, accepting as final the first view or argument presented to them. Thus, when a young matron of the bourgeoise class announces that her cavalier servente pays her bills, Mrs. Piozzi jumps at the idea that this is a common practice, whereas she might have learnt from the old rhyme : ' Cavalier servente, Cavalier serpente, Cavalier del dente,' that the ' knight of the tooth ' was reputed to receive more favours than he conferred. He was frequently a humble relative — in every family were cadets too poor to marry (as they could not work for their Introduction 13 living), too worldly or too sincere to become priests — to whom cavalier servitude secured a dinner, at any rate, if they wanted one.

It was the custom to go to the theatre every evening — the box at the opera was an integral part of the household arrange ments, a continuation of the salon — only it could not be reached by ladies without an escort. The chaperon did not exist, because a woman, however old, was no escort for another woman, nor could she herself dispense with an attendant of the other sex. A dowager of sixty and a bride of sixteen had equally to stay at home if there was not a man to accom pany them. The cavalier's service was particularly in request at the theatre, but he was more or less on duty whenever his lady left her house for any purpose, with the doubtful exception of going to church. No husband outside a honeymoon could be expected to perform all these functions ; he therefore appointed or agreed in the appointment of somebody else to act as his substitute.

This was in nine cases out of ten the eminently unromantic cavalier servitude of fact. The high flown complimentary language, the profound bowing and hand-kissing of the period, combined to mystify strangers as to its real significance. Sometimes when there was really a lover in the question, the cavalier servente must have been a serious impedi- Introduction 14 ment ; he was always ' la plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers,' in the words of the witty President deuBrosses, who, though he did not wholly credit the assurances he received as to the invariable innocence of the institution, was yet far from passing on it the sweeping judgment arrived at by most foreigners. There is little doubt that habit and opportunity did, now and then, prove too strong for the two individuals thrown so constantly together. 'Juxtaposition is great,' as Clough says, in his ' Amours de Voyage ' ; but that such lapses represented the rule rather than the exception, is not borne out by either reason or record.

The institution had another variety, an ideal phase : as long as it was in vogue, it provided a frame for those deep and enduring friendships between men and women, which are of the plea santest things offered by humanity to the gaze of angels. They did not begin nor did they end with it, but it formed their setting while it lasted. If anyone smiles at the word friendship, as applied to the relations of the sexes under a southern sun, he need only be reminded of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. A nation ' capable of impressions at once sudden and durable ' — which is one ofthe best characterizations of the Italians ever made — is by its temperament not less, but more, than Introductio n 15 others fitted for affections, the permanency of which demands an unusual measure of intensity and patience.

Later on in her travels, when staying in a palace near Bergamo, Mrs. Piozzi came upon the traces of one such friendship : ' The last noble man who resided here,' she writes, ' father to the present lord, was cavalier servente to the immortal Clelia Borromeo, whose virtues and varieties of ex cellence would fill a volume.' The son still spoke of her death with tears in his eyes, and delighted in nothing more than in paying just tribute to her memory. The Countess Clelia was one of a triad of illus trious women who honoured their sex in Italy in the first half of the eighteenth century. The other two were Laura Bassi, professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna, and Gaetana Agnesi, who at twenty discussed abstruse mathematical problems in Latin with many of the first scientific men of the time, and whom Mrs. Piozzi might have known at Milan, for she was still living there in 1784 ; but she had then for many years devoted all her energies to nursing and helping the poor and sick, which had been the dream of her brilliant and courted girlhood.

The President de Brosses' account of Gaetana Agnesi, whom he met in fear and trembling of a blue-stocking, but whom he found to be simple and Introduction 16 winning as she was gifted, allows us to guess what Italian society lost by the almost total absence of young girls. Gaetana was a genius, and many who have won the name of saint have deserved it less ; but the most commonplace young girl, if she be natural, high-spirited and easily amused, does more to raise the moral standard of society than the preaching of an army of divines. We laugh at the ' young person ;' we ought to be grateful to her. In the Italy of that day, the young married woman who had just left her convent school, knowing no more of evil than a child of five, was suddenly separated by an impassable barrier from her girl companions, who would still have been her most congenial friends, and launched among married women of all ages, and married and unmarried men, whose conversation, if not their conduct, was not marked by reserve.

Her own unmarried sister, even if by chance older than she was, would not have been allowed to go and stay in her house. All this is passing away, but there are relics of it left, since many kind and affectionate parents still think it their duty to send their daughters from seven to seventeen to some convent, which they never leave even for holidays. Another drawback to a healthy state of morality was the idleness of the married women ; the servants being almost all men, house- Introduction 17 hold management fell to the master, not to the mistress, who was not occupied with the children, as they were sent out to nurse for the first two or three years of their lives, left to servants for the next three or four ; and then, if they were girls, despatched to the inevitable convent till they married, or if boys, either sent to a school without holidays, or handed over to a clerical tutor till they went to the Uni versity.

While Mrs. Piozzi was inclined to criticise both theory and practice in the matter of conjugal rela tions, she noticed with surprise the extreme respect paid to family ties. Even distant kinsfolk com manded, in the younger generation, a care and deference hardly shown to parents in England. She attributes this to the less adventurous spirit of a people that had small interest in the government or larger affairs of the community, etch individual being isolated in a little world, which to him was paramount. The spread of enterprise and a more liberal rule would, she thought, go to lessen or destroy the clannish sentiment then predominant and now, as a matter of fact, disappearing ; but the reverential love of children for their parents, and especially of sons for their mothers, which so greatly charmed her, must still impress all who have access to the inner life of Italian families.

She often Introduction 18 returns to the subject ; when present at a Christmas party in Germany, where she saw the Christmas tree, and the other elaborate preparations for the amusement of the little ones, she says that she sat trying in vain to find out the reason why paternal affection seems so much warmer in Protestant countries, and filial piety in those which remain faithful to the Church of Rome. Would she think that the rapid progress of baby-worship in Italy has anything to do with the weakened authority of the successor of St. Peter ? Our author remarks on the rigid distinctions of rank, and at the same time the familiarity allowed between servants or dependents and their masters — two things that frequently coexisted. Tom Purdies are rare in a democracy. Not only dependents, but also the members of the little bourgeoisie who were brought in contact with great families, were treated, within stated limits, with the friendliness of genuine good feeling, and it was the habit of all to speak to those below themselves ' with a graciousness not often used by English men and women, even to their equals.' It is often said now in Italy that there is less real mixing of the classes than formerly, because when everyone considers himself on an equality with his host or passing acquaintance, people narrow their intercourse to the number of persons they are willing Introduction 19 to accept on these terms, and strictly keep the rest at a distance. ' High people,' says Mrs. Piozzi, ' took an infinite pleasure in seeing the masses amuse themselves ; in England it was thought vulgar to be merry when the mob was so.' It might be suggested that the mob in Italy makes merry in a fashion less harassing to the artistic sense than did its counterpart in England in the last century.

The crowd even on an Italian racecourse exhibits no rowdy or boisterous elements. On the other hand, a fine mind will enjoy the harmless enjoyment of others, whatever be its form ; Margate on a summer day presents a spectacle which ought to be as gratifying to the inward vision as any Italian festa, though it be less picturesque. Besides, Margate (taking Margate as a type) is not vulgar ; since the essence of vulgarity is the desire to seem what you are not, and nowhere is this desire less to the fore than on those yellow sands. Mrs. Piozzi speaks more than once of the notable absence of this essential vulgarity among the Italians of her day : the poor did not try to appear rich, nor did the rich ape the airs of nobility if they had it not ; money was not worshipped, nor was the want of it ridi culed ; in conversation there was no straining after effect, or pretence to a scholarship or cleverness not 2 — Introduction 20 really possessed.

Politeness sprang from the wish to be helpful or to give pleasure, not from the wish to shine. Mrs. Piozzi admired the excellent arrangements for the comfort of the audience in Italian theatres, where each box was like a private boudoir, but she did not care for the performances, and complained of the same piece being given night after night. The ballet — no mere display of dancing, but a story told in pantomime — was then, as it has remained, an important feature ; and few who have seen these ballets, admirably acted and put on the stage as they are at the Scala or San Carlo, can wonder at the praise bestowed on them by Shelley and other Englishmen. Mrs. Piozzi, however, was not amused by this sort of entertainment, and her distaste for it reached its climax when she saw the ballet of Don Giovanni, ' a horrible history,' which she suspected might be partly true (as, indeed, it was), and which she thought anyhow too shocking for the stage.

Did she relent when Mozart, a few years later, gave the legend a new and splendid lease of theatrical existence ? The Piozzis went into Venetia by Cremona and Mantua : they do not seem to have ever gone to Brescia, Piozzi's home, though it lay hardly at all out of their route. Nevertheless, it is pretty certain Introduction 21 that Piozzi, who was much attached to his father, saw him while in Italy ; probably he invited him to Milan. He may have shrunk from imposing on his family, who were not rich, the expense of receiving the signora inglese, words which to an Italian ear suggest somebody who cannot do without comforts and luxuries which even the wealthy in Italy often dispense with. At Venice the sweetness of manners, dialect and address won Mrs. Piozzi's heart at once. She had doubted the truth of the assertion that the gondoliers sang stanzas from Tasso and Ariosto, but her incredulity was dispelled at the very moment that she committed it to writing, for the gondolier under her window began singing ' to an odd sort of tune,' the flight of Erminia in the ' Gerusalemme.' So they sang on, till the indepen dence of Venice was bartered away at Campo Formio, when they hushed their songs, and in the long term of servitude, Tasso was well-nigh forgotten, but Ariosto, if not sung, is still read aloud in the evenings at Chioggia to an admiring crowd of fisher folk.