Leading the Blind

CHAPTER SEVEN NORTHERN ITALY

D. H. Lawrence walked to Italy, and Goethe travelled by coach, as did Beckford and Heine, and countless others, some of note, most of course not. In the latter part of the nineteenth century tourists went by train, and aircraft today make it even more effortless.

Problems only began on reaching the frontier, though the traveller no doubt hoped that later compensations would erase all memories of difficulty. Old grumble-guts Murray, in Northern Italy, 1883 tells us what to be prepared for: ‘Passports are no longer indispensable, but all travellers are advised to secure with them this important certificate of nationality.’ Baedeker, in 1897, says, ‘The countenance and help of the British and American consuls can, of course, be extended to those persons only who can prove their nationality.’ Murray remarks that at the Custom-house luggage is opened and sometimes carefully searched. ‘Even in the case of persons giving an assurance that their luggage contains no prohibited article, the concealment of which will, if discovered, entail trouble and annoyance, the examination will probably be persisted in. This severity of search has been increased under the present Italian Government, and it is especially enforced upon travellers arriving by the St. Gothard Railway.’ That is to say, British, the majority of whom used that route. One also had to note: ‘The Italian custom-house officers would consider it an insult to be offered money.’

Murray’s Switzerland, 1891, consoles the traveller with the fact that he will have little difficulty in facing the Italian customs; though he then goes on to say that, at Chiasso, ‘the head officials have made themselves notorious in the execution of their duty and discourtesy towards travellers’.

After the early Murray handbooks, in which it was assumed that travellers could afford to be extravagant, later editions positively extol niggardliness. Concerning railway travel in Italy: ‘The clerks at the stations sometimes refuse to give change; it is therefore desirable to be always prepared with the exact amount of the fare’, which is seconded by Baedeker, who adds: ‘“Mistakes” are far from uncommon on the part of the ticket-clerks or the officials who weigh luggage.’ He also says: ‘During the last few years an extraordinary number of robberies of passengers’ luggage have been perpetrated in Italy without detection, and articles of great value should not be entrusted to the safe-keeping of any trunk or portmanteau, however strong and secure it may seem.’ Anyone tempted to carry arms in defence of life and belongings while in the country was told by Bradshaw: ‘Revolvers are liable to be confiscated.’

A humantiarian view is taken by Baedeker, as shown by the following: ‘The enormous weight of the trunks used by some travellers not unfrequently causes serious and even lifelong injury to the hotel and railway porters who have to handle them.’ But the suggested remedy would also benefit thieves, who would not suffer a hernia in their attempts to carry them away: ‘Travellers are therefore urged to place their heavy articles in the smaller packages and thus minimize the evil as far as possible.’

Accommodation at hotels in the large provincial cities was generally good, Murray says, and nearly equal to those elsewhere, ‘but at intermediate stations and off the main routes they are often very dirty, and infested with vermin to an extent of which those who travel only in winter can have no idea … When off the lines of railway or main road, those who wish tea and coffee in the evening should carry milk with them from the place where they slept the previous night, as it is often not to be had at the inns on the road. The tea at the smaller inns is generally so bad that travellers will do well to carry their own supply, together with a small metal teapot.’

English travellers, here as elsewhere, were apt to be charged higher prices, and ‘it will save trouble and annoyance to fix beforehand the prices to be paid for everything. The second floor is preferable to the first, and the traveller will do well to remember that on account of the defective drainage in most towns of Italy, it is always better to incur the fatigue of ascending a number of stairs than to sleep on or near the ground floor. In the smaller towns it would be absurd to expect the comforts and conveniences of great cities: travellers never gain anything by exacting or requiring more than the people can supply; and if they have sufficient philosophy to keep their temper, they will generally find that they are treated with civility.’

Dr James Henry Bennet, in his health-seekers’ guidebook to benign climates, Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean, 1875, gives a rather idealized version of travelling by carriage, asking us to remember that ‘the driver for the time is your servant, and must do your bidding, and everything should be arranged in conformity with previous habits and laws of hygiene, provided the written agreement be not infringed. Thus the journey becomes a pleasure, and a source of health instead of a trial of strength, as often occurs.’

His plan called for the traveller to get up at six or seven, ‘to take a cup of tea or coffee, and to start at seven or eight, the carriage being closed at the top as a protection against the sun, open at the sides, and prepared for the day’s campaign by a comfortable arrangement of umbrellas, books, maps, and provisions. The latter usually consisted of a basket of bread, meat, biscuits, wine, and fruit, provided before starting, with Liebig’s extract of meat, a little of which makes bad soup good, and a bottle of Dunn’s extract of coffee which transforms any kind of milk, cow’s, sheep’s, goat’s, or camel’s, into good coffee. At nine or ten we stopped for breakfast, which can be obtained anywhere, if the traveller is contended with milk, bread, butter, eggs, and honey. Then the journey is resumed, and at twelve or one the principal stoppage of the day takes place for the dinner of the driver and his horses.’

After the traveller has eaten a solid lunch, ‘the mid-day rest becomes a period of liberty, during which he can survey all around, analyse the habits and customs of the peasantry, study the architecture of their houses, farms, out-buildings, their agricultural operations, and the local botany. Finally, if agreeable, and weather permits, he can take a good hygienic walk in advance of three, four, or more miles. When tired he has only to sit down by the roadside in some picturesque nook until the carriage overtakes him. If the driver, as is usually the case, rests for a couple of hours, and four or five miles have been got over, it is nearly three before the carriage is again resumed. To me these midday strolls in advance were the pleasantest part of the day’s journey. After that, progress is steadily made until six, when the final stoppage takes place. Then comes dinner, a walk, or a chat with your companions or some new acquaintances, a cup of tea, and an early retirement for the night.’

A favourable view of Italy and the Italians is found in the eight-volume series of guidebooks by Augustus J. C. Hare, who regrets the coming of the railways as the means of locomotion. In The Cities of Northern Italy, 1883, he says, in defence of horse-drawn transport: ‘The slow approach to each long-heard of but unseen city, gradually leading up, as the surroundings of all cities do, to its own peculiar characteristics, gave a very different feeling towards it to that which is produced by rushing into a railway station — with an impending struggle for luggage and places in an omnibus — which, in fact, is probably no feeling at all. While, in the many hours spent in plodding over the weary surface of a featureless country, we had time for so studying the marvellous story of the place we were about to visit, that when we saw it, it was engraved for ever on the brain, with its past associations and its present beauties combined.’

He almost regrets that: ‘The journey to Italy is now absolutely without difficulties, but the most desirable approach is that by the Corniche road along the Riviera. Then, after the dreary wind-stricken plains of Central France, and the stony arid hills of Provence, one enters Italy at Mentone by a portal like the gates of Paradise, and is plunged at once into the land of the citron and myrtle, of palms and aloes and cyclamen. Of course one must not expect that all Italy will be like these Riviera roads, and one is, as far as scenery goes, receiving the best first, but it is charming to feel the whole of one’s ideal realised at the very outset.’

In order to avoid disappointment in Italy, Hare tells us that it is necessary not to expect too much, ‘for it is in the beauty of her details that Italy surpasses all other countries, and details take time to find out and appreciate. Compare most of her buildings in their entirety with similar buildings in England, much more in France and Germany, and they will be found very inferior.’

Another thing to remember, so as to get the best out of travel in Italy,

is not to go forth in a spirit of antagonism to the inhabitants, and with the impression that life in Italy is to be a prolonged struggle against extortion and incivility. A traveller will be cheated oftener in a week’s tour in England than in a year’s residence in Italy. During eight whole winters spent at Rome, and years of travel in all the other parts of Italy, the author cannot recall a single act or word of an Italian of which he can justly complain; but, on the contrary, has an overflowing recollection of the disinterested courtesy, and the unselfish and often most undeserved kindness, with which he has universally been treated. There is scarcely an Italian nobleman, whose house, with all it contains, would not be placed at the disposition of a wayfarer who found himself in an out-of-the-way place or where the inn was unbearable; there is scarcely a shopkeeper, who would not send his boy to show you the way to a church, one, two, or even three streets distant; there is scarcely a carriage which would not be stopped to offer you a lift, if they saw you looked tired by the wayside; scarcely a woman who would not give you a chair (expecting nothing) if you were standing drawing near her house …

I find Hare by far the best writer on Italy and of things Italian, being able to back him up on his encomiums of general honesty. On two occasions during one of my motor trips through the country money was put back into my hand with a smile when I had inadvertently given too much. Neither can I but agree when he writes that ‘nothing can be obtained from an Italian by compulsion. A friendly look and cheery word will win almost anything, but Italians will not be driven, and the browbeating manner, which is so common with English and Americans, even the commonest facchino regards and speaks of as mere vulgar insolence, and treats accordingly … Unfortunately the bad impression one set of travellers leaves, another pays the penalty for.’

Hare gives one instance of the heartless behaviour of tourists: ‘The horrible ill-breeding of our countrymen never struck me more than one day at Porlezza. A clean, pleasing Italian woman had arranged a pretty little caffe near the landing place. The Venetian blinds kept out the burning sun; the deal tables were laid with snowy linen; the brick floor was scoured till not a speck of dust remained. The diligence arrived, and a crowd of English and American women rushed in while waiting for the boat, thought they would have some lemonade, then thought they would not, shook out the dust from their clothes, brushed themselves with the padrona’s brushes, laid down their dirty travelling bags on all the clean table-cloths, chattered and scolded for half an hour, declaimed upon the miseries of Italian travel, ordered nothing and paid for nothing; and, when the steamer arrived, flounced out without even a syllable of thanks or recognition. No wonder that the woman said her own pigs would have behaved better.’

Hare is also sympathetic to the Italians on the matter of accommodation. ‘In regard to hotel life, it cannot be too much urged, for the real comfort of travellers as well as for their credit with the natives, that the vulgar habits of bargaining, inculcated by several English handbooks, are greatly to be deprecated, and only lead to suspicion and resentment. Italians are not a nation of cheats, and cases of overcharge at inns are most unusual, except at great Anglicised hotels, where they have been gradually brought about through the perquisite money demanded by couriers.’

Baedeker, like Murray (and most other guidebook writers), airs a harder view, when he says that the second-class hotels, ‘thoroughly Italian in their arrangements, are much cheaper, but they are rarely very clean or comfortable. The inns in the smaller towns will often be found convenient and economical by the voyageur en garçon, and the better houses of this class may be visited even by ladies. If no previous agreement has been made an extortionate bill is not uncommon. The landlord is generally prepared to have his first offer beaten down by the traveller, and in that expectation usually asks more at first than he will afterwards agree to accept. The recommendations of landlords as to hotels in other towns should be disregarded. They are not made with a single eye to the interests of the traveller.’

On the obsessive topic of cleanliness, Baedeker prepares those who leave the beaten track for privations. ‘Iron bedsteads should if possible be selected, as they are less likely to harbour the enemies of repose. Insect powder, or camphor, somewhat repels their advances. The gnats are a source of great annoyance, and often of suffering, during the summer and autumn-months. Windows should always be closed before a light is introduced into the room. Light muslin curtains round the beds, masks for the face, and gloves are employed to ward off the attacks of these pertinacious intruders. The burning of insect powder over a spirit-lamp is also recommended.’

Should one wish to communicate with home, or any other place: ‘A cautious traveller will take important letters to the post-office himself, or drop them into some of the letter boxes that are now distributed through an Italian town, since if given to an untrustworthy person to carry to the post-office they run the risk of being made away with for the sake of the stamps.’

We are told how useful it would be to climb, ‘some tall steeple or tower’ so as to get an idea of the layout of a city. Sight-seeing called forth more advice from Murray about behaviour in churches: ‘The clergy do not like to have the churches considered as shows, nor are the congregations at all indifferent, as had been asserted, to the conduct of strangers, in walking about and talking during Divine Service. It might perhaps, too, be suggested to our Protestant countrymen, that they are not protesting against Roman Catholic errors by behaving indecorously in churches; and to reflect how they would like to see their own places of worship made objects of show during Divine Service.’

One of the first places the tourists made for, whether sons and daughters of manufacturers from the north of England, or offspring of county families (or anyone else for that matter), was Venice. Many no doubt had read Byron, and some Ruskin, but one assumes that nearly all had either Murray or Baedeker to browse over and take notice of. That being so, one can’t help but sympathize with those whose living depended on extracting as much money as possible from tourists and travellers, by fair means or unfair, a process certainly made difficult by Murray’s advice that: ‘Travellers should insist on being taken to the shops etc. where they wish to go, and should be careful not to be imposed upon by, or accept the recommendations of, valets de place, gondoliers, and hotel servants, some of whom are in the pay of dishonest persons … N.B. Many of the shopkeepers will take two-thirds or even less of the price asked. The prices in the Piazza of S. Mark greatly exceed those in parts of the city less frequented by strangers.’

The drinking water at Venice was said to contain ‘a small quantity of iron and some vegetable matter, the latter derived from the peaty stratum through which it niters, and strangers should avoid drinking it without wine. Mosquito-curtains are usually provided to the beds; but if not, a request should be at once made for them.’

Lampugnini’s guidebook Venice and the Lagoon, 1905, was presumably translated into English by someone whose native language was not English, since the quirkiness of style, especially in the placement of commas, is at times amusing.

‘Venice is situated at the end of the lagoons of the Adriatic Sea; the lagoons are kinds of lakes or better still of, gulfs deeply surrounded with banks of sand and the lagoon is called living or dead according to the tide which it feels more or less, from this it, becomes divided into two parts, little by little from the same extension.’

The gondola, we are told, is one of the characteristic features of Venice, being ‘a light boat long and narrow, in the centre is a little cabin which raises or lowers as you desire, the seats of the best are upholstered in leather and have seats for four persons, all the gondolas are painted black in conformity to a law of the XV century and, it is not permitted to have any colour, so it is impossible to know the mystery of a closed gondola, the gondolier remains on foot at the poop with a heavy rowlock of iron if, there are two gondoliers one is at the prow and the other at the poop, the gondola glides smoothly and rapidly on the waves, if there is only one person you feel a slight rolling at every stroke of the oar; at the corner of a canal or when nearing a bridge the gondoliers have a particular cry to warn and avoid collision.’

Murray says that all gondoliers must carry the police tariff, and show it if required. ‘Complaints for misbehaviour or overcharge may be made to the Guardie Municipale, or at the office of the Municipality.’

Lampugnini’s prose has a breathlessness which paces the blood in his account of the artistic treasures of the city. The Campanile of San Marco, we are told, ‘existed until the 14th. of July 1902; the day of its fall, was situated at the point of entrance to the square and the Piazzetta; it was commenced in the X centy and finished in 1178, it was, in gothic style and had an height of 319 feet … From the top of this belfry, which gave a splendid view of Venice, the lagoons and the Alps; was, by its fall a real artistic disaster to the city; the construction has been decreed, and the work begun but, will certainly never be possible to say of this new monument that, it will have the merit of the first one.’

Language verging on the operatic suggests an engraving by Piranesi, when he tells us that the prison by the Bridge of Sighs was built in the late sixteenth century so as to

fill in the pond of the Ducal Palace; the front of this edifice towards the canal is severe and gloomy, but the entrance towards the bank of the Schiavoni is more elegant; this part of the Palace was destined to be the residence of the six magistrates called Gentlemen of the night criminals … The terrible Pond was the antique prison for political offences, it is still existing in the cellar, with the torture room and that of execution, here you go down by the corridor stated above; here are the dark cells on a level with the soil and the level of the water above, a low door is still shown to visitors; on the canal, by which the corpses were passed through and conveyed by gondola to the Orfano canal; one of these cells served for the prisoners of Carmagnola who were tortured and then afterwards decapitated, on the Piazzetta between two columns.

Should the visitor feel the urge to swim, Lampugnini is reassuring: ‘An important thing to know about everything else, is that the Lido has not any Mosquitoes. The bathing establishment contains more than 600 rooms, placed on the sea in two long lines, from one part to the other is a very large hall, where select concerts are given every day. There is a first class Coffee Restaurant, with a ladies saloon on the terrace facing the sea which is the general rendezvous of the foreign elette society. Near the Grand Baths is erected the new Hydro-electric-Therapeutic Establishment; for massage cure, mud baths, vapour baths, light baths and the cures with the X Rays.’

Murray, on the other hand, is not at all happy with the segregational arrangements at the beach, finding that ‘the line of demarcation between the baths of the two sexes is not sufficiently observed to make the bathing pleasant for English ladies, and the authorities ought to interfere’.

On that note we will leave Venice for Verona, where we can let a tear or two fall on the tomb of Juliet, if we can find it. Murray says that ‘it certainly was shown in the last century, before Shakespeare was generally known to the Italians. That tomb, however, has long since been destroyed. The present one — on the garden of the Orfanotrofio, entered (small fee) from a little street running down to the Adige — is of red Verona marble, and before it was promoted to its present honour, was used as a washing-trough.’

Augustus Hare says that the tomb may be visited out of sentiment, but the one ‘which was shown here in the last century was all chopped up long ago by relic hunters, and French and English ladies are wearing it in bracelets’.

The next stop in Pisa, ‘that little nest of singing birds’ (when Shelley and Byron sojourned there in 1821), and where, says Hare, ‘The soft climate has a wonderfully soothing effect upon complaints of the chest, but it is horribly wet.’ During a conducted tour of the famous Leaning Tower he tells us: ‘The sensation of falling over is very curious and unpleasant. Those who ascend must be careful not really to fall over, as the railing at the top is not continuous, and very misguiding.’

A day trip by train to Leghorn would, according to Hare, be a disappointment. Should the traveller land from a steamer, ‘the boatmen and porters are peculiarly fierce and extortionate … There is nothing whatever worth seeing, though … its shops are sometimes amusing. The place is full of galley-slaves who do all the dirty work of the town in red caps, brown vests, and yellow trousers. The Cathedral has a facade by Inigo Jones.’

Murray finds the place more interesting, and remarks on the Protestant cemetery, which was ‘until the present century the only one in Italy, and contains the tomb of Smollett’. He also reminds us that in the sixteenth century Ferdinand I invited people of every nation and creed to Leghorn, ‘seeking to escape the tyranny of their respective governments; Roman Catholics who withdrew from persecution in England; and New Christians, — that is, forcibly converted Moors and Jews, — as well as Jews who adhered to their religion, then driven from Spain and Portugal by the cruelty of Phillip II, animated and assisted by the Inquisition.’

Florence is an hour or so inland by rail from Pisa, and our traveller would find there many of his compatriots studiously referring to Baedeker or Murray on their walks around the town. Murray says that at least a week should be devoted to Florence, though, as elsewhere, mosquitoes were a problem. The large Hôtel de la Paix was well situated, with a lift, but ‘some persons find the noise produced by the weir, just opposite, very objectionable’. If a hotel was inconvenient, or too expensive, there were pensions kept by Mrs Jennings, Miss Hill ‘very comfortable’ and Miss Clark — ‘excellent food and very healthy situation’.

For those who got into trouble there was an English consul; also an English club, ‘the Florence’, an English baker, three English bankers, five English doctors, three English dentists and an English nurse. One could attend the Church of England, or a Presbyterian church; or wander around the studio of the English painter, R. Spencer Stanhope, or join an Artistic Society where ‘classes are held for young ladies three or four times a week’.

An English sculptor was in residence, and whoever bought a piece from him had a choice of not less than four English forwarding agents to get it back to England. The purchaser would have to be careful, in taking the works out himself, not to travel via Chiasso where, says Murray in 1892, the customs officials ‘will detain the goods, and refuse to answer any inquiries by letter as to the means by which they can be released, a course for which they are said to have the authority of their government’.

There were two booksellers in Florence, three English chemists and two English grocers, not to mention a picture dealer and a tailor, so that one could feel quite at home there. Even the uncertain weather seemed imported from the Home Country, for the rainfall was considerable, ‘especially in the autumn and early winter. From the nature of the pavement and improved drainage it soon finds its way into the Arno; there is consequently no stagnant water in any part of the town.’ From a sanitary point of view Florence was much improved since the cholera epidemics of 1854 and 1855, ‘not only as regards drainage, but by the forbidding of intramural interments except in some very few cases’.

Matters of health are gone into in some detail, the city being ‘exempt from specific diseases or epidemics. In October and the beginning of November, as in April and May, the climate of Florence is much less relaxing than that of Rome or Naples. Chronic dyspepsia generally diminishes in intensity after a residence in the Tuscan capital; in fact, all those diseases of a non-inflammatory character requiring a bracing atmosphere appear to be benefitted in Florence. Ague and fevers similar to those of Rome and Naples are unknown, save as the result of importation, the disease having been contracted elsewhere. Measles and scarlatina, like all other eruptive diseases occurring in Tuscany, as a general rule, run a remarkably mild course.’ What all travellers had to beware of was the change from bright sunshine on the banks of the Arno to the ‘dark sunless streets, which form so many funnels for cold air descending from the gorges of the Apennines. To this source may be traced most of the indisposition from which English and American visitors occasionally suffer.’

In the early part of the nineteenth century, before railways had been laid down, one travelled from Florence to Rome by diligence, information about the route being supplied by such books as Rome in the Nineteenth Century by Charlotte A. Eaton (1788–1859), which was a sort of proto-guide in two volumes first published in 1820. The author was an erudite lady whose occasional attempts to be fair with regard to travelling conditions in Italy after the Napoleonic Wars only serve to highlight her frequent blasts of complaint. The work, one of the more popular, went into four editions.

Her 150-mile journey to Rome by vetturino took six days, and at the start she compares Italian scenery favourably to that in the south of France, but the hard conditions of travel soon heighten the tone of her justifiable strictures: ‘Wretched, indeed, is the fate of those who, like us, travel Vetturino! In an evil hour were we persuaded to engage the trio of mules, and the man, or Vetturino, by whose united efforts we are to be dragged along, day by day, at a pace not at all exceeding in velocity that of an English waggon; stopping, for the convenience of these animals, two hours at noon, in some filthy hole, no better than an English pig-stye; getting up in the morning, or rather in the middle of the night, about four hours before day-break; and when, by our labours, we have achieved a distance, often of thirty miles, we are put up for the night in whatever wretched Osterìa our evil destiny may have conducted ourselves and our mules to.’

Nevertheless, she could not deny that ‘the moon does look larger, and shines with far more warmth and brilliancy, in the sky of Italy, than amidst the fogs and vapours of England. The scenery through which we passed was singularly beautiful. Sometimes winding round the sides of the hills, we looked down into peaceful valleys among the mountains, in whose sheltered bosom lay scattered cottages, shaded with olive-trees, and surrounded with fields of the richest fertility.’

They arrived late at the little inn of Poggibonzi, and found it by no means uncomfortable; as interesting, in fact, as many posadas in Spain still were in the 1950s, especially at remote places inland: ‘To be sure, it smokes so incessantly that we are compelled to sit with open windows, though the air is extremely cold; but this is no uncommon occurrence. The house is tolerably clean, and the room I am writing in is very tastefully ornamented with some elegant angels painted in fresco, the beauties of which must beguile the time while we are waiting for the repast …’

Dinner finally comes, the waiter ‘placing on the table the minestra, or soup, in a huge tureen, containing plenty of hot water, with some half-boiled macaroni in it. If you don’t like this kind of soup, you may have bread boiled in water; it is all the same. There is always a plate of grated parmesan cheese, to mix with the minestra, of whatever sort it may be, without which even Italian palates could never tolerate such a potion. This is generally followed by a frittura, which consists of liver, brains, or something of that sort, fried in oil. Then comes the rosto, which to-day appears in the shape of half a starved turkey, attended by some other indescribable dish, smelling strong of garlic.’

Our authoress-traveller and her companions found Siena to have a somewhat antiquated appearance, though later guidebooks were to see it in a better light. ‘Its streets, or rather lanes, are lined with high gloomy old-fashioned houses, looking like jails, and called, or rather miscalled, palaces, which have fallen into decay like their possessors, who are too proud to resign, and too poor to inhabit them.’

She duly visits all the sites, including the library, ‘which contains a great quantity of books, though I would not answer for their value’, concluding that ‘Siena is a very dull place. Some English friends of ours who spent a winter there found a great want of cultivated society. There is no theatre, nor opera, nor public amusement of any kind. Life stagnates here; for its active pursuits, its interests, its honours, its pleasures, and its hopes, can have no place. No happy Briton can see and know what Siena is, without looking back with a swelling heart to his own country.’

After leaving Siena, ‘night closed in upon us long before we reached our destined place of rest, the wretched Osterìa of the still more wretched village of Buon Convento. Thither, when a wearisome pilgrimage of four mortal hours had at last conducted us, its half-starved looking denizens would not admit us into the horrible pig-stye in which they wallowed themselves, but conducted us to a lone uninhabited house on the other side of the way, in which there was not a human being. We were ushered up an old ghastly staircase, along which the wind whistled mournfully, into an open hall, the raftered roof of which was overhung with cobwebs, and the stone floor was deep in filth. Four doors entered into this forlorn-looking place, two of which led to the chill, dirty, miserable holes which were our destined places of repose; and the other two, to rooms that the people said did not belong to them, one old woman assuring us they were inhabited by nobody, while the other maintained they were occupied by very honest people. In the meantime, it was certain that the frail doors of our dormitories would yield on the slightest push; that the door of the hall itself, leading upon the stairs, had no fastening at all; that the stairs were open to the road in front, and to the fields behind, the house itself having no door whatever; and thus, that whoever chose to pay us a nocturnal visit, might do so without the smallest inconvenience or difficulty to himself.’

Worse than anything was that ‘the wind blew about us, and we could get no fire. But there was no remedy for these grievances, and we resigned ourselves to fate and to bed. The two hideous old beldames who had brought us our wretched supper, had left us for the night, and no human being was near us, when we heard the sound of a heavy foot on the creaking staircase, and a man wrapped in a cloak, and armed with a sword and musket, stalked into the hall.

‘If we had been heroines, what terrors might have agitated, and what adventures might not have befallen us! But as we were not heroical, we neither screamed nor fainted, we only looked at him; and notwithstanding his formidable appearance, and that he had long black moustachios and bushy eye-brows, he did us no mischief, though he might have cut our throats with all the ease in the world; indeed, he had still abundance of leisure for the exploit, for he informed us that he had the honour of lodging in the house, that he was the only person who had that honour, and that he should have the honour of sleeping in the room next to ours.’

Whoever he was, Charlotte treated him like a gentleman and, after several formal good-nights, ‘our whiskered neighbour retreated into his apartment, the key of which he had in his pocket, and we contented ourselves with barricading our door with the only table and chair that our desolate chamber contained; then, in uncurtained and uncoverleted wretchedness, upon flock beds, the prey of innumerable fleas, and shaking with cold, if not with fear, we lay the live-long night; not even having wherewithall to cover us, for the potent smell of the filthy rug, which performed the double duties of blanket and quilt, obliged us to discard it, and our carriage cloaks were but an inadequate defence against the blasts that whistled through the manifold chinks of the room.’ They got up at four o’clock the next morning and ‘began in the dark to wend our weary way from this miserable Osterìa’.

After several hours on the road they stopped at a solitary house called La Scala. ‘It was the filthiest place I ever beheld, and the smell was so intolerable, that nothing but the excessive cold out of doors could have induced us to have remained a single moment within it. Two hours, however, did we stay, cowering over the smoke of a wet wood fire, waiting till the mules were fed — for they could get something to eat, but for us there was nothing; neither bread, coffee, eggs, milk, meat, vegetables, nor even macaroni, were to be had; so that we might have starved, or breakfasted upon salt dried fish in oil, had not our Vetturino, more provident than ourselves, produced a store of stale loaves and hard boiled eggs, that he had laid in at Siena.’

After La Scala they toiled up apparently interminable hills: ‘The countrymen were all clothed in shaggy sheep-skins, with the wool outside, rudely stitched together to serve as a covering to their bodies, and pieces of the same were tied about their thighs, partially concealing the ragged vestments they wore beneath. Their legs and feet were bare; and this savage attire gave a strange, wild effect to the dark eyes that glared at us from beneath their bushy and matted locks. Indeed their whole appearance reminded us literally of wolves in sheep’s clothing.’

It was late when they stopped for the night at a lone house by the wayside and, after the usual description of its filth and squalor, she goes on: ‘The Vetturino had providentially brought with him our supper, or else we should have got none; and it was cooked and sent up on coarse brown earthenware. Wretched as this house was, it seemed to contain a number of inmates; and the wild, ferocious appearance of those we saw, and the hoarse voices of the men whom we did not see, which frequently met our ear in loud altercation, conspired, with the appearance of the place, and the nature of the country, to make it seem fit for the resort of banditti, and the perpetration of robbery and murder.’

The doors to their rooms having neither bolts nor locks, they again barricaded themselves in, and went to bed in fear of their lives, to be awakened in the middle of the night by the fall of one of the chairs. ‘Starting up in sudden trepidation, I flew to the door, stumbling in the dark over the empty dishes of the supper, and extinguished lamps, which rolled about with a horrible clatter; and assuming a courage I did not feel, I authoritatively demanded to know who was there, as I hastily attempted to repair my outworks. I was answered by a gruff voice, demanding admittance. In my fright and confusion, it was some time before I understood that it was for the purpose of lighting the fire, and that it was four o’clock. To us it seemed that the night had only just begun, but it was clear our repose was at an end; so, wrapping myself in my dressing-gown, and guided by the light that streamed through the numerous crevices of the door, I began to demolish the pile of chairs and tables I had raised. When the door was opened, there came in a woman with long, dishevelled hair, a dim lamp burning in her withered, skinny hand, followed by a man clad in sheep-skins, and bending beneath a burden of sticks. His face was half hid with black, bushy hair, and his eyes were overhung with shaggy eyebrows; he had shoes, but his legs were bare, and by his side was fastened a huge knife or axe, much resembling one formerly in use for cutting off people’s heads, but which I suspect he had applied to the less obnoxious purpose of cutting the wood he was carrying.’

If one looks carefully at the other side of her Gothic account it seems obvious that the people were anxious to make them as comfortable as was possible within their primitive means. But the party proceeds on its way, without breakfast, though: ‘Tea we had with us, but nothing could be got to make it or drink it in.’

On Sunday they arrived at the town of Acqua Pendente and ‘the streets were filled with men wrapped in their large cloaks, who were loitering about, or standing grouped together in corners, in that apathetic state of indolent taciturnity so expressive of complete bodily and mental inertion.

‘How unlike our English associations is a village in these countries, where a narrow street of dilapidated and windowless hovels, surrounded by filth, and inhabited by squalid wretchedness, is all that answers to the name! How melancholy and miserable do they seem, and how often has my fancy returned to the smiling villages of my own country, where neat cottages, and little gardens, scattered over the green, present the happy picture of humble contentment, cheerful industry, and rural happiness!’

And so our intrepid travellers went on their way. At one inn, where they got little or nothing to eat, the author says that the famed Muscat wine was so delicious that she hoped they would ‘not follow the example of an old German prelate, who, it seems, drank it at this inn till he died’.

A week of filthy beds and vile food did not tame her combative spirit. ‘If we did not eat, however, we were eaten; whole hosts made us their prey during the night, while we lay shivering and defenceless. This indeed is almost invariably the case throughout Italy. The people drain your purses by day, and the fleas your blood by night. They came within sight of all their endeavours!’

She was given perhaps to a fair amount of romantic exaggeration for the sake of her readers, but one must nevertheless concede that she did indeed rough it on the road to Rome. ‘Our longing eyes were intently fixed on the spot where we were told that it would first appear; when, at length, the carriage having toiled up to the top of a long hill, the Vetturino exclaimed, “Eccola!” The dome of St. Peter’s appeared in view; and, springing out of the carriage, and up a bank by the road side, we beheld from its summit, Rome!’