But not only the waters here are admirable, every look from every window
gives images unentertained before; sublimity happily wedded with
elegance, and majestick greatness enlivened, yet softened by taste.
The haughty mountain St. Juliano lifting its brown head over our house
on one side, the extensive plain stretched out before us on the other; a
gravel walk neatly planted by the side of a peaceful river, which winds
through a valley richly cultivated with olive yards and vines; and
sprinkled, though rarely, with dwellings, either magnificent or
pleasing: this lovely prospect, bounded only by the sea, makes a variety
incessant as the changes of the sky; exhibiting early tranquillity, and
evening splendour by turns.
It was perhaps particularly delightful to me, to obtain once more a
cottage in the country, after running so from one great city to another;
and for the first week I did nothing but rejoice in a solitude so new,
so salutiferous, so total. I therefore begged my husband not to hurry us
to Rome, but take the house we lived in for a longer term, as I would
now play the English housewife in Italy I said; and accordingly began
calling the chickens and ducks under my window, tasted the new wine as
it ran purple from the cask, caressed the meek oxen that drew it to our
door; and felt sensations so unaffectedly pastoral, that nothing in
romance ever exceeded my felicity.
The cold bath here is the most delicate imaginable; of a moderate degree
of coldness though, not three degrees below Matlock surely; but
omitting, simply enough, to carry a thermometer, one can measure the
heat of nothing. Our hot water here seems about the temperature of the
Queen's bath in Somersetshire; it is purgative, not corroborant, they
tell me; and its taste resembles Cheltenham water exactly.
These springs are much frequented by the court I find, and here are
very tolerable accommodations; but it is not the season now, and our
solitude is perfect in a place which beggars all description, where the
mountains are mountains of marble, and the bushes on them bushes of
myrtle; large as our hawthorns, and white with blossoms, as _they_ are
at the same time of year in Devonshire; where the waters are salubrious,
the herbage odoriferous, every trodden step breathing immediate
fragrance from the crushed sweets of thyme, and marjoram, and winter
savoury: while the birds and the butterflies frolick around, and flutter
among the loaded lemon, and orange, and olive trees, till imagination is
fatigued with following the charms that surround one.
I am come home this moment from a long but not tedious walk, among the
crags of this glorious mountain; the base of which nearly reaches,
within half a mile perhaps, to the territories of Lucca. Some country
girls passed me with baskets of fruit, chickens, &c. on their heads. I
addressed them as natives of the last-named place, saying I knew them to
be such by their dress and air; one of them instantly replied, "_Oh si,
siamo Lucchesi, noi altri; già si può vedere subito una Reppubblicana, e
credo bene ch'ella fe n' é accorta benissimo che siamo del paese della
libertà_[AA]."
[Footnote AA: Oh yes, we are Lucca people sure enough, and I am
persuaded that you soon saw in our faces that we come from a land of
liberty.]
I will add that these females wear no ornaments at all; are always proud
and gay, and sometimes a little fancy too. The Tuscan damsels, loaded
with gold and pearls, have a less assured look, and appear disconcerted
when in company with their freer neighbours--Let them tell why.
Mean time my fairy dream of fantastic delight seems fading away apace.
Mr. Piozzi has been ill, and of a putrid complaint in his throat, which
above all things I should dread in this hot climate. This accident,
assisted by other concurring circumstances, has convinced me that we are
not shut up in measureless content as Shakespeare calls it, even under
St. Julian's Hill: for here was no help to be got in the first place,
except the useless conversation of a medical gentleman whose accent and
language might have pleased a disengaged mind, but had little chance to
tranquilize an affrighted one. What is worse, here was no rest to be
had, for the multitudes of vermin up stairs and below. When we first
hired the house, I remember my maid jumping up on one of the kitchen
chairs while a ragged lad cleared _that_ apartment for her of scorpions
to the number of seventeen. But now the biters and stingers drive me
_quite wild_, because one must keep the windows open for air, and a sick
man can enjoy none of that, being closed up in the Zanzariere, and
obliged to respire the same breath over and over again; which, with a
sore throat and fever, is most melancholy: but I keep it wet with
vinegar, and defy the hornets how I can.
What is more surprising than all, however, is to hear that no lemons can
be procured for less than two pence English a-piece; and now I am almost
ready to join myself in the general cry against Italian imposition, and
recollect the proverb which teaches us
Chi hà da far con Tosco,
Non bisogna esser losco[AB];
[Footnote AB:
Who has to do with Tuscan wight,
Of both his eyes will need the light.
]
as I am confident they cannot be worth even two pence a hundred here,
where they hang like apples in our cyder countries; but the rogues know
that my husband is sick, and upon poor me they have no mercy.
I have sent our folks out to gather fruit at a venture: and now this
misery will soon be ended with his illness; driven away by deluges of
lemonade, I think, made in defiance of wasps, flies, and a kind of
volant beetle, wonderfully beautiful and very pertinacious in his
attacks; and who makes dreadful depredations on my sugar and
currant-jelly, so necessary on this occasion of illness, and so
attractive to all these detestable inhabitants of a place so lovely.
My patient, however, complaining that although I kept these harpies at a
distance, no sleep could yet be obtained;--I resolved when he was risen,
and had changed his room, to examine into the true cause: and with my
maid's assistance, unript the mattress, which was without exaggeration
or hyperbole _all alive_ with creatures wholly unknown to me.
Non-descripts in nastiness I believe they are, like maggots with horns
and tails; such a race as I never saw or heard of, and as would have
disgusted Mr. Leeuenhoeck himself. My willingness to quit this place and
its hundred-footed inhabitants was quickened three nights after by a
thunder storm, such as no dweller in more northern latitudes can form an
idea of; which, afflicted by some few slight shocks of an earthquake,
frighted us all from our beds, sick and well, and gave me an opportunity
of viewing such flashes of lightning as I had never contemplated till
now, and such as it appeared impossible to escape from with life. The
tremendous claps of thunder re-echoing among these Appenines, which
double every sound, were truly dreadful. I really and sincerely thought
St. Julian's mountain was rent by one violent stroke, accompanied with a
rough concussion, and that the rock would fall upon our heads by
morning; while the agonies of my English maid and the French valet,
became equally insupportable to themselves and me; who could only repeat
the same unheeded consolations, and protest our resolution of releasing
them from this theatre of distraction the moment our departure should
become practicable. Mean time the rain fell, and such a torrent came
tumbling down the sides of St. Juliano, as I am persuaded no female
courage could have calmly looked on. I therefore waited its abatement in
a darkened room, packed up our coach without waiting to copy over the
verses my admiration of the place had prompted, and drove forward to
Sienna, through Pisa again, where our friends told us of the damages
done by the tempest; and shewed us a pretty little church just out of
town, where the officiating priest at the altar was saved almost by
miracle, as the lightning melted one of the chalices completely, and
twisted the brazen-gilt crucifix quite round in a very astonishing
manner.
Here, however, is the proper place, if any, to introduce the poem of
seventy-three short lines, calling itself an Ode to Society written in a
state of perfect solitude, secluded from all mortal tread, as was our
habitation at the Bagni di Pisa.