The fool errant : being the memoirs of Francis-Anthony Strelley, Esq., citizen of Lucca

Front matter

i V

HiFOOL

LPA-B38A

Introduction

1. My Exordium: a Justificatory Piece

2. aurelia and the doctor

3. My Dangerous Progress

4. Fatal Avowal

5. Disaster ....

6. I Commence Pilgrim

7. I am Misconceived at the Hospital

8. The Pedlar of Crucifixes

9. I AM Humiliated, Lifted Up, and Left Curious

10. I Fall in Again with Fra Palamone

11. I Exercise Common Sense, Imagination and Charity

12. I Seek— AND Find .

13. Having Emptied my Pocket, I Offer my Hand, but

Reserve my Heart

14. My Happy Days ; their Unhappy End

15. I am in Bondage

16. Virginia and I Fall Out, but are Reconciled

17. Ercole at the Fair

18. Fra Palamone Breaks the Law, and I my Chain

19. I AM again Misconceived

20. Surprising Change in my Fortunes .

21. My Diversions: Count Giraldi ....

22. I Work for Aurelia, and Hear of Her .

9 17 23 30

39 48

55 63

78 84 96

107 116

125 132

139 147

157 164 170 viii CONTENTS

CHAF.

23. AuRELiA Forgives .

24. Virginia Vexes

25. I Prepare for Bliss

26. I Disappoint my Friends

27. I Slay a Man ....

28. Virginia on her Mettle

29. I TAKE Sanctuary .

30. I Marry and go to Lucca .

31. My Adventures at the Inn

32. We Live Happily in Lucca

33. Treachery works Against Us

34. I Fall in with the Players

35. Tempted in Siena, Belviso Saves Me

36. My Unrehearsed Effect and its Midnight Sequel

37. I Commit a Double Murder

38. An Unexpected Messenger lifts me up

39. Virginia Declines the Heights

40. I get Rid of my Enemy and Part from my Friend

41. I Return to Florence and the World of Fashion

42. I Stand at a Cross-Road

43. Agitations at the Villa San Giorgio

44. I Confront my Enemies

45. The Meeting .

46. The Discovery

47. The Final Proof .

48. The Last

174 179 186 191 198 205

215 224 231

239 244

252 263 270 278 285

INTRODUCTION

The top-heavy, four-horsed, yellow old coach from Vicenza, which arrived at Padua every night of the year, brought with it in particular on the night of October 13, 1721, a tall, personable young man, an Englishman, in a dark blue cloak, who swang briskly down from the coup6 and asked in stilted Italian for " La sapienza del Signor Dottor' Lanfranchi." From out of a cloud of steam — for the weather was wet and the speaker violently hot — a husky voice replied, " Eccomi — eccomi, a servirla." The young man took off his hat and bowed.

" Have I the honour to salute so much learning ? " he asked courteously. " Let me present myself to my preceptor as Mr. Francis Strelley of Upcote."

" His servant," said the voice from the cloud, " and servant of his illustrious father. Don Francis, be accommodated; let your mind be at ease. Your baggage ? These fellows are here for it. Your valise ? I carry it. Your hand ? I take it. Follow me."

These words were accompanied by action of the most swift and singular kind. Mr. Strelley saw two porters scramble after his portmanteaux, had his valise reft from his hand, and that hand firmly grasped before he could frame his reply. The vehemence of this large perspiring sage caused the struggle between pride and civility to be short; such faint protests as he had at command passed unheeded in the bustle and could not be seen in the dark.

Vehement indeed in all that he did was Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, Professor of Civil Law : it was astonishing that a bulk so large and loosely packed could be propelled by the human will at so headlong a speed. Yet, spurred by that impetus alone, he pounded and splashed through the puddled, half-lit street of Padua at such a rate that Mr. Strelley, though longer in the leg, fully of his height, and one quarter his weight, found himself trotting beside his conductor like any schoolboy. The position was humiliating, but it did not seem possible to escape it. The doctor took everything for granted; and besides, he so groaned and grunted at his labours, his goaded flesh protested so loudly, the pitfalls were so many and the pace so severe that nothing in the world seemed of moment beyond preserving foothold. Along the winding way — between the half-discerned arcades, palace gateways, black entries, church portals — down the very middle of the street flew master and pupil without word spoken. They reached the Pra, skirted its right-hand boundary for some hundreds of yards and came to the door of a tall, narrow, white house. Upon this door the doctor kicked furiously until it was opened; then, with a malediction upon the oaf who snored behind it, up he blundered, three stairs at a time, Strelley after him whether or no ; and stayed not in his rush towards the stars until he had reached the fourth-floor landing, where again he kicked at a door; and then, releasing his victim's hand, took off hat and wig together and mopped his dripping pate, as he murmured, " Chaste Madonna, what a ramble ! What a stroll for the evening, powerful Mother of us all ! " Such a stroll had never yet been taken by Mr. Francis Strelley of Upcote in his one-and-twenty years' experience of legs; nor did he ever forget this manner of being haled into Italy, nor lose his feeling of extremely

INTRODUCTION 3

helpless youth in the presence of the doctor, his tutor and guardian. But to suppose the business done by calculation of that remarkable man is to misapprehend him altogether. Dr. Lanfranchi's head worked, as his body did, by flashes. He calculated nothing, but hit at everything ; hit or miss, it might be — but " Let's to it and have done," was his battle-cry.

The lamp over the door of his apartment revealed him for the disorderly genius he was — a huge, blotchfaced, tumble-bellied man, bullet-headed, bull-necked, and with flashing eyes. Inordinate alike in appetite, mind and action, he was always suffering for his furies, and always making a fine recovery. Just now he was at the last gasp for a breath, or so you would have said to look at him. But not so ; his exertions were really his stimulant. Presently he would eat and drink consumedly, drench himself with snuff, and then spend half the night with his books, preparing for tomorrow's lecture. Of this sort was Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, who had more authority over the wild students of Padua than the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and Senate put together.

The same lamp played upon the comely and ingenuous face, upon the striking presence of Mr. Strelley, and showed him a good-looking, good-tempered, sanguine young man of an appearance something less than his age. He was tall and supple, wore his own fair hair tied with a ribbon, was blue-eyed and brightlipped, and had a notable chin — firm, square at the jaw, and coming sharply to a point. He looked you straight in the face — such was his habit — but by no means arrogantly or with defiance ; seriously rather, gravely and courteously, as if to ask, " Do I take your

precise meaning to be ? " Such a look was too

earnest for mere good manners ; he was serious ; there was no laughter in him, though he was not of a melancholy sort. He pondered the world and its vagaries and examined them, as they presented themselves in each case, upon the merits. This, which was.

I think, his strongest characteristic, should show that he lacked the humorous sense ; and he did. He had no time to laugh ; wondering engaged him. The life of the world on its round showed him miracles daily ; he looked for them very often, but more frequently they thrust themselves upon him. Sunrise now — what an extraordinary thing ! He never ceased to be amazed at that. The economy of the moon, too, so exquisitely adapted to the needs of mankind 1 Nations, tongues (hardly to be explained by the sublime folly of a Babel), the reverence paid to elders, to women ; the sense of law and justice in our kind : in the leafy shades of Upcote in Oxfordshire, he had pondered these things during his lonely years of youth and adolescence — had pondered, and in some cases already decided them upon the merits. This was remarkably so in the matter of Betty Coy, as he will tell you for himself before long. Meantime, lest I keep Dr. Lanfranchi too long upon the threshold of his own house, all I shall add to my picture of his pupil now is that he was the eldest son and third child of Squire Antony Strelley of Upcote, a Catholic, non-juring, recusant, stout old gentleman of Oxfordshire, and of Dame Mary, born Arundell, his wife ; and that he was come to study the moral and civil law at this famous University of Padua, like many an Englishman of his condition before him. He was twenty-one years of age, had as much money as was good for him, and much more poetry than enough, in his valise — to say nothing of the germ of those notes from which he afterwards (long afterwards) compiled the ensuing memoirs.

Dr. Lanfranchi had not said " Accidente 1 " more than twice, nor kicked his door more than half a dozen times before it was opened by a young and pretty lady, who held a lamp above her head. She was, apparently, a very young and very pretty, rather little, lady, and was dressed with some care — but not more than her person deserved — in black and white. Her

INTRODUCTION 5

dark hair, which was high upon her head, was crowned with a large tortoiseshell comb.. She held the lamp, as I say, above her as she curtseyed, smiling, in the way. " Be very welcome, sir," she said, " and be pleased to enter our house." It was charming to see how deftly she dipped without spilling the lamp-oil, charming to see her little white teeth as she smiled, her lustrous eyes shining in the light like large stars. It was charming to see her there at all, for she was charming altogether — in figure, in face and poise, in expression, which was that of a graceful child playing housewife ; lastly, in the benevolence, curiosity and discretion which sat enthroned upon her smooth brow, like a bench of Lords Justices, or of Bishops, if you prefer it. This was none other than Dr. Porfirio's wife, as he then and there declared by grunts. " Mia moglie — a servirla," he was understood to say ; and pushed his way into his house without ceremony, while Mr. Strelley, with much, kissed the hand of his hostess. The salute, received with composure, was rendered with a blush ; for this, to be truthful, was the very first hand ever saluted by the young gentleman. The fact says much for his inexperience and right instinct at once.

Quite at her ease, as if she were the mistress of a well-kissed hand, was Signora Aurelia Lanfranchi, for that was her name, and had been so for rather more than two years — quite at her ease and most anxious to put Strelley there. Relieving him of his cloak and hat, of his sword, pistols and other travelling gear, in spite of all protestations on his part, she talked freely and on end about anything and nothing in a soft voice which rose and died down like a summer wind, and betrayed in its muffled tones — as if it came to him through silk — that she was not of the north, but of some mellower, more sun-ripened land. She was in fact of Siena, a Gualandi by birth, and extremely proud of it. Strelley was so informed before he had been four-and-twenty hours in her company. But now, having spoiled him of his defences, she invited him into the salone, wooed him thither, indeed, with that sidelong head and sort of sleek smile with which you coax a cat to come to your knee. Mr. Francis would have followed her singing to the bonfire on such terms.

At the table, which was liberal, was the learned doctor seated already, napkin to chin. Mr. Strelley was shown his place, and expected to take it while the fair housewife waited upon the two ; and when he seemed timid, she raised a wail of pretty protest and dragged him by the arm towards the chair. It was absurd, it was preposterous, he was robbing her of her pride. She had eaten long ago — besides, it was the woman's place, and Nonna was in the kitchen, ashamed to appear in the state she was in. Signor Francesco must please her in this — she would be vexed — and surely he would not vex his hostess. To this wilful chant the doctor contributed his burden of " Ch^ ! che ! S'accommodi ! " and rapped with his knife-handle upon the table. Old Nonna, toothless, bearded and scared, popped her head beyond the kitchen door ; to be short, insistence went to a point where good manners could not follow. Mr. Francis sat himself down, and Donna Aurelia, clapping her little hands, cried aloud that victory was hers. " Quick, quick, Nonna, these signori are at table!" She stormed into the kitchen, and speedily returned with a steaming and savoury dish. She dispensed the messes, she poured the wine, she hovered here and there — salt ? pepper ? cheese ? yet a little bread ? Madonna purissima, she had forgotten the mustard ! No 1 it was here — it was here 1 There must have been more rejoicings over the recovery of the mustard than were made for the victory of Lepanto. Betweenwhiles she talked gaily or pathetically or intimately of things of which the guest had known nothing, but immediately felt that he now knew all ; the moral lapses of this professor or that, the unparalleled slight offered

INTRODUCTION 7

to Signora Pappagallo by Donna Susanna Tron, the storm of rain and thunder on Tuesday week — no, it must have been Monday week ; a scandal in the Senate, a duel in the Pra, how the Avvocato Minghini was picked up dead in Pedrocchi's — a meat-fly in his chocolate ! Sparkling eyes, a delicate flush, quick breath, a shape at once pliant and audacious, flashing hands with which half her spells were woven — all these, and that wailing, dragging, comicotragic voice, that fatal appeal of the child, trained by the wisdom of the wife, completed the rout of our youth. Before supper was over he was her loyal slave.

She insisted upon showing him his quarters. They were not, it seemed, upon this floor, nor the next below — no, but on the next below that. Signor Francesco must follow her as, lamp in hand, she went downstairs, her high heels clattering like Spanish castanets. She opened his door with a key which she then handed over to him : she showed him his bedroom, his saloon. " Your citadel, Don Francis," she said, " your refuge from my heedless tongue. Your chocolate shall be brought to you here, but we hope you will give yourself the trouble to dine with us. Generally my husband sups too late for your convenience. He is always at the cafe till nine o'clock. He sits there with his friends and hears the news, which he knows beforehand as well as they do. And when they have done, he tells it all over again to them. This is the way with men ; and I sit at home and make my clothes. This also is the way with women, it seems. There is no other." She stayed a few more minutes, chattering, laughing and blushing ; then with a sudden access of shyness wished him " felicissima notte," and held him out her hand. Mr. Francis stooped over it, and saluted it once more with profound respect.

He was long in going to bed. He wrote furiously in his diary after a space of restless contemplation, whenas he roamed across and across the room. But now I must leave his raptures and himself to his own pen, having got him inmate of a household where by ordinary he might have lived a blameless three years. If, however, he had done that, I don't suppose the singular memoirs which follow would ever have been written.

Chapter I My Exordium I A Justificatory Piece

If we soberly reflect upon the part which the trappings and manthngs of men have played in their affairs, we shall not hesitate, I believe, to put into that category many things which have hitherto been considered far less occasional. What is honour but a garment ? What money but a walking-stick ? What are fine manners but a wig ? If I professed, instead of abhorring, the Cynic school of philosophy, I might go on to ask what were love but an ointment, or religion but a tinted glass. I can thank my Redeemer, as I sit here in my green haven, with the stormy sea of my troubles afar off, beating in vain against the walls of contentment, that through all my vicissitudes I was never tempted to stray into such blasphemous imaginations. Fool as I have been, and fool as I have declared myself upon the forefront of this very book, I have never said in my heart. There is no God; but much and loudly have maintained the affirmative. And although I have been sadly, wickedly, detestably errant from His way, there is one divine precept which I have never failed to keep, and that is, Love one another. All other affections, additions, accidents, accessories of men, however, from the lowest, which is Money, to the highest, which is Polite Education, I have been able to discard without concern or loss of self-respect. This fact alone should furnish good reason for my Memoirs,

10 THE FOOL ERRANT ch. i

and commend them to the philosopher, the poet, the divine, and the man of feehng. For true it is that I have been bare to the shirt and yet proved my manhood, beaten hke a thief and yet maintained myself honest, scorned by men and women and yet been ready to serve my fellows, held atheist by the godly and yet clung to my Saviour's cross. In situations calculated to excite the contemptuous ridicule of the meanest upon earth I have been satisfied that I was neither contemptible nor reasonably ridiculous, and that while I might herd with ruffians, and find in their society my most comfortable conversation, I was the richer, partly for that I had lost in choosing to consort with them, and partly for what 1 had gained. As having nothing, yet possessing all things ; as poor, yet making many rich — the boast of St. Paul, the hope of St. Francis of Assisi 1 in those pithy antitheses is the sumnia of my experience.

Eldest son, but third child, of my parents, I was born upon the 4th of October in the year 1700 ; and for that reason and another (to which I shall shortly allude) was named Francis, after the great Champion of our faith commemorated upon my birthday. The other reason was that, oddly enough, my mother, before my birth, had dreamed of him so persistently and with particulars so unvaried that she gave my father no option but to change the settled habits of our family and bestow upon me the name, which he despised, of a patriarch whom he underrated. Her dream, repeated, she told me, with exact fidelity and at regularly recurring periods, was that she could see St. Francis standing on a wide sea-shore between sand-dunes and the flood of waters — standing alone there with an apple in his hand, which he held lightly, as if weighing it. By-and-by, said my mother, she saw three women come slowly over the sandhills from different points, one from the south, one from the north, and one from the west ; but they converged as they drew near to St. Francis, joined hands, and

CH. I MY EXORDIUM ii

came directly to him. The midmost of the three was hke a young queen ; she on the side nearest the sea was bold and meagre ; the third was lovely, but disfigured by a scar. When they were come before St. Francis, after reverences, they knelt down on his right hand and his left, and the queenly woman in front of him. To her, courteously, he first offered the apple, but she laughingly refused it. She of the scar, when it was held before her, covered her face with her hands and shrank away ; but the hardy woman craned her head forward and bit into the apple while it was yet in the saint's hand. Then the young queen would have had it if she might, but was prevented by the biter, and the two clamoured for it, silently, by gestures of the hands and eyes, but with haste and passion. At this point, said my mother, her dream always ended, and she never knew who had the apple. She fretted greatly because of it, and was hardly recovered after I was born.

My father, who disliked all women except my mother, and. Catholic as he was, had scant respect for the mendicant orders, hated this dream, hated to be reminded of it, hated the name which he had been persuaded into giving me, and, as a consequence, I believe, never loved me. For unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards, Ralphs, Martins ; the name of Francis was unknown to the tree ; he never ceased to inveigh against it, and foretold the time when it would stand out like a parasite upon its topmost shoot. " Your Italian ecstatic," he told my mother, " began life by running away from his father and only came back for the purpose of robbing him. He taught more people to live by singing hymns than ever were taught before, and preached the virtues of poverty, by which he intended the comfort it was for the blessed poor to be kept snugly idle by the accursed rich. It never occurred to him to reflect that, if everybody had been of his opinion, everybody would have starved, the world would have stood still, and neither St. Ferdinand of

12 THE FOOL ERRANT ch. i

Spain, nor St. Edward the Confessor, nor Don John of Austria could have become famous. As for your women and apples, the conjunction is detestable. Cain was the result of one woman's desire for an apple, and the siege of Troy that of another's. I don't wish this boy to grow up either murderer or pretty Paris."

The like of this speech, often repeated — indeed, never omitted when so I happened to fall into some childish disgrace — may be imagined. It made an outcast of me, an exile from my nursery days. I grew up lonely, sullen, moody. I could not meet my father with any comfort to either of us ; and though I loved my mother, and she me, that cold shadow of his prejudice seemed to be over my intercourse with her, to chill and check those emotions which should glow naturally when a son stands in the presence of his mother. To be brief, I was an unhappy, solitary lad, with sisters much older and brothers much younger than himself ; cut off, too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit and our chaplain ; and there were books. I was by nature a strong, healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to be studious. If it had not turned out so, I know not what might have become of me, at what untimely age I might have been driven to violence, crime, God knows what. That there was danger of some such disaster Father Danvers was well aware. My faults, as he did not fail to remind me week by week, were obstinacy and pride of intellect ; my weaknesses, lack of proportion and what he was pleased to call perversity, by which I suppose he meant a disposition to accept the consequences of my own acts. I freely admit a personal trait which will be obvious as I proceed. Trivial as it may seem, and does, at this time of writing, I must

CH. I MY EXORDIUM 13

record an instance of it, the last I was to exhibit in England.

Never vicious, I may sincerely say, convinced, rather, that women are as far above our spiritual as they are fatally within our material reach, it was by my conduct to a woman that I fell into a way of life which nobody could have anticipated. In my twentieth year, in a moment of youthful ardour, I kissed Betty Coy, our dairymaid, over the cheese-press, and was as immediately and as utterly confounded as she was. I remember the moment, I remember her, a buxom, fresh-coloured young woman, rosy red, her sleeves above her elbows, her " La, Mr. Francis, what next ? " — 1 remember all, even to my want of breath, suddenly cooled passion, perplexity and flight. It is a moot point whether that last was the act of a coward, but I can never allow it to be said that in what followed I showed a want of courage. I devoted a day and night to solitary meditation ; no knight errant of old, watching his arms under the moon, prayed more earnestly than I ; and when I had fully made up my mind to embrace what honour demanded of me, I sought out the girl, who was again in the dairy, and in solemn form, upon my knees, offered her my hand. Father Danvers, walking the terrace, was an accidental witness of my declaration, and very properly told my father. Betty Coy, unfortunate girl, was dismissed that evening ; next day my father sent for me.*

It would be idle to rehearse the interview between an angry father and an obdurate son. The more I said the angrier he got : the discrepancy between us made a reasonable conclusion hopeless from the first. When he cried. Did I mean to disgrace my name ?

* I need only say further of Betty that she, shortly afterwards, married James Bunce, our second coachman at Upcote, and bore him a numerous progeny, of whose progress and settlement in the world I was able to assure the worthy parents.

14 THE FOOL ERRANT ch. i

and I replied, No, but on the contrary I had been wishful to redeem it — '' How, you fool," said he, " by marrying a dairymaid ? " " Sir," I answered, '' by showing to the world that when a gentleman salutes a virtuous female it is not his intention to insult her." I was too old for the rod or I should have had it. As it was, I received all the disgrace he could put me to — dismissed from his presence, confined to my room, forbidden any society but that of Father Danvers and my own thoughts. My infatuation, however, persisted, and threatened to take the dangerous form of fraud. I could not for the life of me see what else I could do to recover the girl's fair fame, hopelessly compromised by me, than exhibit to the world at large the only conceivable motive of my salute. I knew, immediately I had done it, that I could not love Betty Coy, but I believed that I could prove the tender husband.

Correspondence to this effect — all on my side — with her parents decided mine to hasten my removal abroad. It had always been intended that I should study in Padua, rather than in Paris or Salamanca, if for no better reason than that that had been Father Danvers' University, and that he knew many of the professors there — among others. Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, who became my host and guardian, and had been class-mate and room-mate of our chaplain's. These things matter very little : I was not consulted in them, and had no objections, as I had no inclinations, for any particular residence in the world. Before my twenty-first birthday— I forget the exact date — the hour arrived when I received on my knees my mother's tearful blessing, embraced my brothers and sisters, kissed my father's hand, and departed for Oxford, where I caught the London mail ; and, after a short sojourn in the capital, left England for ever.

I conceive that few further prolegomena are necessary to the understanding of the pages which follow. Before I touched the Italian soil I was, in the eyes of our law, a grown man, sufficiently robust and

CH. 1 MY EXORDIUM 15

moderately well-read. I was able to converse adequately in French, tolerably in Italian, had a fair acquaintance with the literatures of those countries, some Latin, a poor stock of Greek. I believe that I looked younger than my age, stronger than my forces, better than my virtues warranted. Women have praised me for good looks, which never did me any good that I know of ; I may say without vanity that I had the carriage and person of a gentleman. I was then, as I have ever been, truly religious, though I have sometimes found myself at variance with the professional exponents of it. In later years I became, I believe, something of a mystic, apt to find the face of God under veils whose quality did not always commend itself to persons of less curious research. On the other hand, I do not pretend to have kept the Decalogue of Moses in its integrity, but admit that I have varied it as my occasions seemed to demand. I have slain my fellow man more than once, but never without deliberate intention so to do. If I have trespassed with King David of Israel, I feel sure that the circumstances of my particular offence are not discreditable to me ; and it is possible that he had the same conviction. For the rest, I have purposely discarded many things which the world is agreed to think highly necessary to a gentleman, but which I have proved to be of no value at all. I will only add this one observation more. For my unparalleled misfortunes in every kind of character and dangerous circumstance I am willing to admit that I have nobody to thank but myself. And yet — but the reader must be judge — I do not see how, in any single case, I could have acted otherwise than as I did. What, then ! we carry our fates with us from the cradle to the grave, even as the Spinning Women themselves wind that which was appointed them to wind, and ply the shears and make fruitless their toil when they must ; and all that we acquire upon our journey does but make that burden more certainly ours. What was I but a predestined i6 THE FOOL ERRANT ch. i