"Bologna, June 7. 1819.
"Tell Mr. Hobhouse that I wrote to him a few days ago from Ferrara.
It will therefore be idle in him or you to wait for any further
answers or returns of proofs from Venice, as I have directed that
no English letters be sent after me. The publication can be
proceeded in without, and I am already sick of your remarks, to
which I think not the least attention ought to be paid.
"Tell Mr. Hobhouse that, since I wrote to him, I had availed myself
of my Ferrara letters, and found the society much younger and
better there than at Venice. I am very much pleased with the little
the shortness of my stay permitted me to see of the Gonfaloniere
Count Mosti, and his family and friends in general.
"I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino
and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the
beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides
the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded
one of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of
capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of
them, said, 'This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at
forty--one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren
after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime, and then
boiled it. Here it is, teeth and all, in excellent preservation. He
was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went,
he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of
him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively,
you might have taken him for a dancer--he joked--he laughed--oh! he
was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!'
"He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the
cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his
dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three thousand
persons. In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman
girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess
Bartorini, dead two centuries ago: he said that, on opening her
grave, they had found her hair complete, and 'as yellow as gold.'
Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more
splendid monuments at Bologna; for instance:--
"Martini Luigi
Implora pace;
"Lucrezia Picini
Implora eterna quiete.
Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that
can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they
wanted was rest, and this they _implore_! There is all the
helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise
from the grave--'implora pace.'[34] I hope, whoever may survive
me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the
Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two
words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of
'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall.' I am
sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix
with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive
me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would
be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. I would not
even feed your worms, if I could help it.
"So, as Shakspeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk,
who died at Venice (see Richard II.) that he, after fighting
"'Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens,
And toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy, and there, at _Venice_, gave
His body to that _pleasant_ country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long.'
"Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr.
Hobhouse's sheets of Juan. Don't wait for further answers from me,
but address yours to Venice, as usual. I know nothing of my own
movements; I may return there in a few days, or not for some time.
All this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well. My
daughter Allegra was well too, and is growing pretty; her hair is
growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mr.
Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will
make, in that case, a manageable young lady.
"I have never heard any thing of Ada, the little Electra of
Mycenae. But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should
not live to see it.[35] What a long letter I have scribbled! Yours,
&c.
"P.S. Here, as in Greece, they strew flowers on the tombs. I saw a
quantity of rose-leaves, and entire roses, scattered over the
graves at Ferrara. It has the most pleasing effect you can
imagine."
[Footnote 34: Though Lord Byron, like most other persons, in writing to
different friends, was sometimes led to repeat the same circumstances
and thoughts, there is, from the ever ready fertility of his mind, much
less of such repetition in his correspondence than in that, perhaps, of
any other multifarious letter-writer; and, in the instance before us,
where the same facts and reflections are, for the second time,
introduced, it is with such new touches, both of thought and expression,
as render them, even a second time, interesting;--what is wanting in the
novelty of the matter being made up by the new aspect given to it.]
[Footnote 35: There were, in the former edition, both here and in a
subsequent letter, some passages reflecting upon the late Sir Samuel
Romilly, which, in my anxiety to lay open the workings of Lord Byron's
mind upon a subject in which so much of his happiness and character were
involved, I had been induced to retain, though aware of the erroneous
impression under which they were written;--the evident morbidness of the
feeling that dictated the attack, and the high, stainless reputation of
the person assailed, being sufficient, I thought, to neutralise any ill
effects such reflections might otherwise have produced. As I find it,
however, to be the opinion of all those whose opinions I most respect,
that, even with these antidotes, such an attack upon such a man ought
not to be left on record, I willingly expunge all trace of it from these
pages.]
* * * * *
While he was thus lingering irresolute at Bologna, the Countess
Guiccioli had been attacked with an intermittent fever, the violence of
which, combining with the absence of a confidential person to whom she
had been in the habit of intrusting her letters, prevented her from
communicating with him. At length, anxious to spare him the
disappointment of finding her so ill on his arrival, she had begun a
letter, requesting that he would remain at Bologna till the visit to
which she looked forward should bring her there also; and was in the act
of writing, when a friend came in to announce the arrival of an English
lord in Ravenna. She could not doubt for an instant that it was her
noble friend; and he had, in fact, notwithstanding his declaration to
Mr. Hoppner that it was his intention to return to Venice immediately,
wholly altered this resolution before the letter announcing it was
despatched,--the following words being written on the outside cover:--"I
am just setting off for Ravenna, June 8. 1819.--I changed my mind this
morning, and decided to go on."
The reader, however, shall have Madame Guiccioli's own account of these
events, which, fortunately for the interest of my narration, I am
enabled to communicate.
"On my departure from Venice, he had promised to come and see me at
Ravenna. Dante's tomb, the classical pine wood[36], the relics of
antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient
pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to accept my
invitation. He came, in fact, in the month of June, arriving at Ravenna
on the day of the festival of the Corpus Domini; while I, attacked by a
consumptive complaint, which had its origin from the moment of my
quitting Venice, appeared on the point of death. The arrival of a
distinguished foreigner at Ravenna, a town so remote from the routes
ordinarily followed by travellers, was an event which gave rise to a
good deal of conversation. His motives for such a visit became the
subject of discussion, and these he himself afterwards involuntarily
divulged; for having made some enquiries with a view to paying me a
visit, and being told that it was unlikely that he would ever see me
again, as I was at the point of death, he replied, if such were the
case, he hoped that he should die also; which circumstance, being
repeated, revealed the object of his journey. Count Guiccioli, having
been acquainted with Lord Byron at Venice, went to visit him now, and in
the hope that his presence might amuse, and be of some use to me in the
state in which I then found myself, invited him to call upon me. He came
the day following. It is impossible to describe the anxiety he
showed,--the delicate attentions that he paid me. For a long time he had
perpetually medical books in his hands; and not trusting my physicians,
he obtained permission from Count Guiccioli to send for a very clever
physician, a friend of his, in whom he placed great confidence. The
attentions of Professor Aglietti (for so this celebrated Italian was
called), together with tranquillity, and the inexpressible happiness
which I experienced in Lord Byron's society, had so good an effect on my
health, that only two months afterwards I was able to accompany my
husband in a tour he was obliged to make to visit his various
estates."[37]
[Footnote 36:
"Tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quando Eolo Scirocco fuor discioglie."
DANTE, PURG. Canto xxviii.
Dante himself (says Mr. Carey, in one of the notes on his admirable
translation of this poet) "perhaps wandered in this wood during his
abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."]
[Footnote 37: "Partendo io da Venezia egli promise di venir a vedermi a
Ravenna. La Tomba di Dante, il classico bosco di pini, gli avvanzi di
antichità che a Ravenna si trovano davano a me ragioni plausibili per
invitarlo a venire, ed a lui per accettare l'invito. Egli venne difatti
nel mese Guigno, e giunse a Ravenna nel giorno della Solennità del
Corpus Domini, mentre io attaccata da una malattia de consunzione ch'
ebbe principio dalla mia partenza da Venezia ero vicina a morire.
L'arrivo in Ravenna d'un forestiero distinto, in un paese così lontano
dalle strade che ordinariamente tengono i viaggiatori era un avvenimento
del quale molto si parlava, indagandosene i motivi, che
involontariamente poi egli feci conoscere. Perchè avendo egli domandato
di me per venire a vedermi ed essendogli risposto 'che non potrebbe
vedermi più perchè ero vicina a morire'--egli rispose che in quel caso
voleva morire egli pure; la qual cosa essendosi poi ripetata si conobbe
cosi l'oggetto del suo viaggio.
"Il Conte Guiccioli visitò Lord Byron, essendolo conosciuto in Venezia,
e nella speranza che la di lui compagnia potesse distrarmi ed essermi di
qualche giovamento nello stato in cui mi trovavo egli lo invitò di
venire a visitarmi. Il giorno appresso egli venne. Non si potrebbero
descrivere le cure, i pensieri delicati, quanto egli fece per me. Per
molto tempo egli non ebbe per le mani che dei Libri di Medicina; e poco
confidandosi nel miei medici ottenne dal Conte Guiccioli il permesso di
far venire un valente medico di lui amico nel quale egli aveva molta
confidenza. Le cure del Professore Aglietti (cosi si chiama questo
distinto Italiano) la tranquillità, anzi la felicità inesprimibile che
mi cagionava la presenza di Lord Byron migliorarono così rapidamente la
mia salute che entro lo spazio di due mesi potei seguire mio marito in
un giro che egli doveva fare per le sue terre."--MS.]
* * * * *