Chapter 22

This condemnatory verse is every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The Preface commences thus:

"I was made to observe at Rome some vestiges of an ancient custom very proper in those days. It was the parading of the street by a set of people called Preciæ, who went some minutes before the Flamen Dialis, to bid the inhabitants leave work or play, and attend wholly to the procession; but if ill-omens prevented the pageants from passing, or if the occasion of the show was scarce deemed worthy its celebration, these Precise stood a chance of being ill-treated by the spectators. A prefatory introduction to a work like this can hope little better usage from the public than they had. It proclaims the approach of what has often passed by before; adorned most certainly with greater splendour, perhaps conducted with greater regularity and skill. Yet will I not despair of giving at least a momentary amusement to my countrymen in general; while their entertainment shall serve as a vehicle for conveying expressions of particular kindness to those foreign individuals, whose tenderness softened the sorrows of absence, and who eagerly endeavoured by unmerited attentions to supply the loss of their company, on whom nature and habit had given me stronger claims."

The Preface concludes with the happy remark that--"the labours of the press resemble those of the toilette: both should be attended to and finished with care; but once completed, should take up no more of our attention, unless we are disposed at evening to destroy all effect of our morning's study."

It would be difficult to name a book of travels in which anecdotes, observations, and reflections are more agreeably mingled, or one from which a clearer bird's-eye view of the external state of countries visited in rapid succession may be caught. I can only spare room for a few short extracts:

"The contradictions one meets with every moment at Paris likewise strike even a cursory observer,--a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a _femme publique_, dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with a not very small crucifix hanging at her bosom;--and the Virgin Mary's sign at an ale-house door, with these words,

"'Je suis la mère de mon Dieu, Et la gardienne de ce lieu.'"

"I have stolen a day to visit my old acquaintance the English Austin Nuns at the Foffèe, and found the whole community alive and cheerful; they are many of them agreeable women, and having seen Dr. Johnson with me when I was last abroad, inquired much for him: Mrs, Fermor, the Prioress, niece to Belinda in the Rape of the Lock, taking occasion to tell me, comically enough, 'that she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured _poets_; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him; and he gave one,' (said she) 'no amends by his talk neither, for he only sate dozing all day, when the sweet wine was out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which season he kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of the maids' business to make for him, and they took it by turns.'"

At Milan she institutes a delicate inquiry: "The women are not behind-hand in openness of confidence and comical sincerity. We have all heard much of Italian cicisbeism; I had a mind to know how matters really stood; and took the nearest way to information by asking a mighty beautiful and apparently artless young creature, _not noble_, how that affair was managed, for there is no harm done _I am sure_, said I: 'Why no,' replied she, 'no great _harm_ to be sure: except wearisome attentions from a man one cares little about; for my own part,' continued she, 'I detest the custom, as I happen to love my husband excessively, and desire nobody's company in the world but his. We are not _people of fashion_ though you know, nor at all rich; so how should we set fashions for our betters? They would only say, see how jealous he is! if _Mr. Such-a-one_ sat much with me at home, or went with me to the Corso; and I _must_ go with some gentleman you know: and the men are such ungenerous creatures, and have such ways with them: I want money often, and this _cavaliere servente_ pays the bills, and so the connection draws closer--_that's all_.' And your husband! said I--'Oh, why he likes to see me well dressed; he is very good-natured, and very charming; I love him to my heart.' And your confessor! cried I.--'Oh! why he is _used to it_'--in the Milanese dialect--_è assuefaà."_

"An English lady asked of an Italian What were the actual and official duties Of the strange thing, some women set a value on, Which hovers oft about some married beauties, Called 'cavalier servente,' a Pygmalion Whose statues warm, I fear! too true 't is Beneath his art. The dame, press'd to disclose them, Said, Lady, I beseech you to _suppose them_."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Don Juan," Canto ix. See also "Beppo," verses 36, 37:

"But Heaven preserve Old England from such courses! Or what becomes of damage and divorces?"]

At Venice, the tone was somewhat different from what would be employed now by the finest lady on the Grand Canal:

"This firmly-fixed idea of subordination (which I once heard a Venetian say, he believed must exist in heaven from one angel to another), accounts immediately for a little conversation which I am now going to relate.

"Here were two men taken up last week, one for murdering his fellow-servant in cold blood, while the undefended creature had the lemonade tray in his hand going in to serve company; the other for breaking the new lamps lately set up with intention to light this town in the manner of the streets at Paris. 'I hope,' said I, 'that they will hang the murderer.' 'I rather hope,' replied a very sensible lady who sate near me, 'that they will hang the person who broke the lamps: for,' added she, 'the first committed his crime only out of revenge, poor fellow!! because the other had got his mistress from him by treachery; but this creature has had the impudence to break our fine new lamps, all for the sake of spiting _the Arch-duke!!_' The Arch-duke meantime hangs nobody at all; but sets his prisoners to work upon the roads, public buildings, &c., where they labour in their chains; and where, strange to tell! they often insult passengers who refuse them alms when asked as they go by; and, stranger still, they are not punished for it when they do." ...

The lover sacrificing his reputation, his liberty, or his life, to save the fair fame of his mistress, is not an unusual event in fiction, whatever it may be in real life. Balzac, Charles de Bernard, and M. de Jarnac have each made a self-sacrifice of this kind the basis of a romance. But neither of them has hit upon a better plot than might be formed out of the following Venetian story:

"Some years ago then, perhaps a hundred, one of the many spies who ply this town by night, ran to the state inquisitor, with information that such a nobleman (naming him) had connections with the French ambassador, and went privately to his house every night at a certain hour. The _messergrando_, as they call him, could not believe, nor would proceed, without better and stronger proof, against a man for whom he had an intimate personal friendship, and on whose virtue he counted with very particular reliance. Another spy was therefore set, and brought back the same intelligence, adding the description of his disguise: on which the worthy magistrate put on his mask and bauta, and went out himself; when his eyes confirming the report of his informants, and the reflection on his duty stifling all remorse, he sent publicly for _Foscarini_ in the morning, whom the populace attended all weeping to his door.

"Nothing but resolute denial of the crime alleged could however be forced from the firm-minded citizen, who, sensible of the discovery, prepared for that punishment he knew to be inevitable, and submitted to the fate his friend was obliged to inflict: no less than a dungeon for life, that dungeon so horrible that I have heard Mr. Howard was not permitted to see it.

"The people lamented, but their lamentations were vain. The magistrate who condemned him never recovered the shock: but Foscarini was heard of no more, till an old lady died forty years after in Paris, whose last confession declared she was visited with amorous intentions by a nobleman of Venice whose name she never knew, while she resided there as companion to the ambassadress. So was Foscarini lost! so died he a martyr to love, and tenderness for female reputation!"

The Mendicanti was a Venetian institution which deserves to be commemorated for its singularity:

"Apropos to singing;--we were this evening carried to a well-known conservatory called the Mendicanti, who performed an oratorio in the church with great, and I dare say deserved applause. It was difficult for me to persuade myself that all the performers were women, till, watching carefully, our eyes convinced us, as they were but slightly grated. The sight of girls, however, handling the double bass, and blowing into the bassoon, did not much please _me_; and the deep-toned voice of her who sung the part of Saul seemed an odd unnatural thing enough.

"Well! these pretty sirens were delighted to seize upon us, and pressed our visit to their parlour with a sweetness that I know not who would have resisted. We had no such intent; and amply did their performance repay my curiosity for visiting Venetian beauties, so justly celebrated for their seducing manners and soft address. They accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country is renowned.

"The school, however, is running to ruin apace; and perhaps the conduct of the married women here may contribute to make such _conservatorios_ useless and neglected. When the Duchess of Montespan asked the famous Louison D'Arquien, by way of insult, as she pressed too near her, '_Comment alloit le metier_?' '_Depuis que les dames s'en mèlent_,' (replied the courtesan with no improper spirit,) '_il ne vaut plus rien_.'"

Describing Florence, she says:--

"Sir Horace Mann is sick and old; but there are conversations at his house of a Saturday evening, and sometimes a dinner, to which we have been almost always asked."

So much for Walpole's assertion that "she had broken with his Horace, because he could not invite her husband with the Italian nobility." She held her own, if she did not take the lead, in whatever society she happened to be thrown, and no one could have objected to Piozzi without breaking with her. In point of fact, no one did object to him.

One of her notes on Naples is:

"Well, well! if the Neapolitans do bury Christians like dogs, they make some singular compensations we will confess, by nursing dogs like Christians. A very veracious man informed me yester morning, that his poor wife was half broken-hearted at hearing such a Countess's dog was run over; 'for,' said he, 'having suckled the pretty creature herself, she loved it like one of her children.' I bid him repeat the circumstance, that no mistake might be made: he did so; but seeing me look shocked, or ashamed, or something he did not like,--'Why, Madam,' said the fellow, 'it is a common thing enough for ordinary men's wives to suckle the lap-dogs of ladies of quality:' adding, that they were paid for their milk, and he saw no harm in gratifying one's _superiors_. As I was disposed to see nothing _but_ harm in disputing with such a competitor, our conference finished soon; but the fact is certain."

On the margin she has written:

"Mrs. Greathead could scarcely be made to credit so hideous a fact, till I showed her the portrait (at a broker's shop) of a woman _suckling a cat_."

Cornelia Knight says: "Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi passed the winter at Naples and gave little concerts. He played with great taste on the pianoforte, and used to carry about a miniature one in his carriage."

Whilst discussing the propriety of complying with the customs of the country, she relates:

"Poor Dr. Goldsmith said once--'I would advise every young fellow setting out in life _to love gravy_:'--and added, that he had formerly seen a glutton's eldest nephew disinherited, because his uncle never could persuade him to say he liked gravy."

Mr. Forster thinks that the concluding anecdote conveys a false impression of one

"Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll."

"Mrs. Piozzi, in her travels, quite solemnly sets forth that poor Dr. Goldsmith said once, 'I would advise every young fellow setting forth in life to love gravy,' alleging for it the serious reason that 'he had formerly seen a glutton's eldest nephew disinherited because his uncle never could persuade him to say he liked gravy.' Imagine the dullness that would convert a jocose saying of this kind into an unconscious utterance of grave absurdity."[1] In his index may be read: "Mrs. Piozzi's absurd instance of Goldsmith's absurdity." Mrs. Piozzi does not quote the saying as an instance of absurdity; nor set it forth solemnly. She repeats it, as an illustration of her argument, in the same semi-serious spirit in which it was originally hazarded. Sydney Smith took a different view of this grave gravy question. On a young lady's declining gravy, he exclaimed: "I have been looking all my life for a person who, on principle, rejected gravy: let us vow eternal friendship."

[Footnote 1: Life of Goldsmith, vol. ii. p. 205. Mr. Forster allows her the credit of discovering the lurking irony in Goldsmith's verses on Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 203.]

The "British Synonymy" appeared in 1794. It was thus assailed by Gifford:

"Though 'no one better knows his own house' than I the vanity of this woman; yet the idea of her undertaking such a work had never entered my head; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be numbered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapability of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from a child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance she so anxiously labours to conceal. 'If such a one be fit to write on Synonimes, speak.' Pignotti himself laughs in his sleeve; and his countrymen, long since undeceived, prize the lady's talents at their true worth,

"Et centum Tales[1] curto centusse licentur."

[Footnote 1: Quere Thrales?--_Printer's Devil_."]

Other critics have been more lenient or more just. Enough philosophical knowledge and acuteness were discovered in the work to originate a rumour that she had retained some of the great lexicographer's manuscripts, or derived a posthumous advantage, in some shape, from her former intimacy with him. In "Thraliana," Denbigh, 2nd January, 1795, she writes:

"My 'Synonimes' have been reviewed at last. The critics are all civil for aught I see, and nearly just, except when they say that Johnson left some fragments of a work upon Synonymy: of which God knows I never heard till now one syllable; never had he and I, in all the time we lived together, any conversation upon the subject."

Even Walpole admits that it has some marked and peculiar merits, although its value consists rather in the illustrative matter, than in the definitions and etymologies. Thus, in distinguishing between _lavish_, _profuse_ and _prodigal_, she relates:

"Two gentlemen were walking leisurely up the Hay-Market some time in the year 1749, lamenting the fate of the famous Cuzzona, an actress who some time before had been in high vogue, but was then as they heard in a very pitiable situation. 'Let us go and visit her,' said one of them, 'she lives but over the way.' The other consented; and calling at the door, they were shown up stairs, but found the faded beauty dull and spiritless, unable or unwilling to converse on any subject. 'How's this?' cried one of her consolers, 'are you ill? or is it but low spirits chains your tongue so?'--'Neither,' replied she: ''tis hunger I suppose. I ate nothing yesterday, and now 'tis past six o'clock, and not one penny have I in the world to buy me any food.'--'Come with us instantly to a tavern; we will treat you with the best roast fowls and Port wine that London can produce.'--'But I will have neither my dinner nor my place of eating it prescribed to _me_,' answered Cuzzona, in a sharper tone, 'else I need never have wanted.' 'Forgive me,' cries the friend; 'do your own way; but eat in the name of God, and restore fainting nature.'--She thanked him then; and, calling to her a friendly wretch who inhabited the same theatre of misery, gave _him_ the guinea the visitor accompanied his last words with; 'and run with this money,' said she, 'to such a wine-merchant,' (naming him); 'he is the only one keeps good Tokay by him. 'Tis a guinea a bottle, mind you,' to the boy; 'and bid the gentleman you buy it of give you a loaf into the bargain,--he won't refuse.' In half an hour or less the lad returned with the Tokay. 'But where,' cries Cuzzona, 'is the loaf I spoke for?' 'The merchant would give me no loaf,' replies her messenger; 'he drove me from the door, and asked if I took him for a baker.' 'Blockhead!' exclaims she; 'why I must have bread to my wine, you know, and I have not a penny to purchase any. Go beg me a loaf directly.' The fellow returns once more with one in his hand and a halfpenny, telling 'em the gentleman threw him three, and laughed at his impudence. She gave her Mercury the money, broke the bread into a wash-hand basin which stood near, poured the Tokay over it, and devoured the whole with eagerness. This was indeed a heroine in PROFUSION. Some active well-wishers procured her a benefit after this; she gained about 350_l_., 'tis said, and laid out two hundred of the money instantly in a _shell-cap_. They wore such things then."

When Savage got a guinea, he commonly spent it in a tavern at a sitting; and referring to the memorable morning when the "Vicar of Wakefield" was produced, Johnson says: "I sent him (Goldsmith) a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him." Mrs. Piozzi continues:

"But Doctor Johnson had always some story at hand to check extravagant and wanton wastefulness. His improviso verses made on a young heir's coming of age are highly capable of restraining such folly, if it is to be restrained: they never yet were printed, I believe.

"'Long expected one-and-twenty, Lingering year, at length is flown; Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty, Great Sir John, are now your own.

Loosen'd from the minor's tether, Free to mortgage or to sell, Wild as wind, and light as feather, Bid the sons of thrift farewell.

Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies, All the names that banish care; LAVISH of your grandsire's guineas, Show the spirit of an heir.

All that prey on vice or folly Joy to see their quarry fly; There the gamester light and jolly, There the lender grave and sly.

Wealth, my lad, was made to wander, Let it wander as it will; Call the jockey, call the pander, Bid them come and take their fill.

When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high-- What are acres? what are houses? Only dirt or wet or dry.

Should the guardian friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother-- You can hang or drown at last.'"

These verses were addressed to Thrale's nephew, Sir John Lade, in August, 1780. They bear a strong resemblance to some of Burns' in his "Beggar's Sonata," written in 1785:--

"What is title, what is treasure, What is reputation's care; If we lead a life of pleasure, Can it matter how or where?"

Boswell's "Life of Johnson" was published in May, 1791. It is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":--

"_May_, 1791.--Mr. Boswell's book is coming out, and the wits expect me to tremble: what will the fellow say? ... that has not been said already."

No date, but previous to 25th May, 1791.--"I have been now laughing and crying by turns, for two days, over Boswell's book. That poor man should have a _Bon Bouillon_ and be put to bed ... he is quite light-headed, yet madmen, drunkards, and fools tell truth, they say ... and if Johnson was to me the back friend he has represented ... let it cure me of ever making friendship more with any human being."

"_25th May_, 1791.--The death of my son, so suddenly, so horribly produced before my eyes now suffering from the tears then shed ... so shockingly brought forward in Boswell's two guinea book, made me very ill this week, very ill indeed[1]; it would make the modern friends all buy the work I fancy, did they but know how sick the _ancient_ friends had it in their power to make me, but I had more wit than tell any of 'em. And what is the folly among all these fellows of wishing we may know one another in the next world.... Comical enough! when we have only to expect deserved reproaches for breach of confidence and cruel usage. Sure, sure I hope, rancour and resentment will at least be put off in the last moments: ... sure, surely, we shall meet no more, except on the great day when each is to answer to other and before other.... After _that_ I hope to keep better company than any of them."

[Footnote 1: The death of her son is not unkindly mentioned by Boswell. See p. 491, roy. oct. edit. But the imputations on her veracity rest exclusively on his prejudiced testimony.]

In 1801, Mrs. Piozzi published "Retrospection; or a Review of the Most Striking and Important Events, Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the Last Eighteen Hundred Years have presented to the View of Mankind." It is in two volumes quarto, containing rather more than 1000 pages. A fitting motto for it would have been _De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis._ The subject, or range of subjects, was beyond her grasp; and the best that can be said of the book is that a good general impression of the stream of history, lighted up with some striking traits of manners and character, may be obtained from it. It would have required the united powers and acquirements of Raleigh, Burke, Gibbon, and Voltaire to fill so vast a canvass with appropriate groups and figures; and she is more open to blame for the ambitious conception of the work than for her comparative failure in the execution. In 1799 she writes to Dr. Gray: "The truth is, my plans stretch too far for these times, or for my own age; but the wish, though scarce hope, of my heart, is to finish the work I am engaged in, get you to look it over for me, and print in March 1801." She published it in January 1801, but it was not looked over by her learned correspondent. Some slight misgiving is betrayed in the Preface: