Florence.
Society seems to be on an easy and agreeable footing in this city.
Besides the conversazionis which they have here, as in other towns of
Italy, a number of the nobility meet every day at a house called the
Casino. This society is pretty much on the same footing with the clubs
in London. The members are elected by ballot. They meet at no particular
hour, but go at any time that is convenient. They play at billiards,
cards, and other games, or continue conversing the whole evening, as they
think proper. They are served with tea, coffee, lemonade, ices, or what
other refreshments they choose; and each person pays for what he calls
for. There is one material difference between this and the English clubs,
that women as well as men are members.
The company of both sexes behave with more frankness and familiarity
to strangers, as well as to each other, than is customary in public
assemblies in other parts of Italy.
The Opera at Florence is a place where the people of quality pay and
receive visits, and converse as freely as at the Casino above mentioned.
This occasions a continual passing and repassing to and from the boxes,
except in those where there is a party of cards formed; it is then looked
on as a piece of ill manners to disturb the players. I never was more
surprised, than when it was proposed to me to make one of a whist party,
in a box which seemed to have been made for the purpose, with a little
table in the middle. I hinted that it would be full as convenient to have
the party somewhere else; but I was told, good music added greatly to the
pleasure of a whist party; that it increased the joy of good fortune, and
soothed the affliction of bad. As I thought the people of this country
better acquainted than myself with the power of music, I contested the
point no longer; but have generally played two or three rubbers at whist
in the stage-box every opera night.
From this you may guess, that, in this city, as in some other towns in
Italy, little attention is paid to the music by the company in the boxes,
except at a new opera, or during some favourite air. But the dancers
command a general attention: as soon as they begin, conversation ceases;
even the card-players lay down their cards, and fix their eyes on the
Ballette. Yet the excellence of Italian dancing seems to consist in
feats of strength, and a kind of jerking agility, more than in graceful
movement. There is a continual contest among the performers, who shall
spring highest. You see here none of the sprightly, alluring gaiety of
the French comic dancers, nor of the graceful attitudes, and smooth
flowing motions of the performers in the serious opera at Paris. It is
surprising, that a people of such taste and sensibility as the Italians,
should prefer a parcel of athletic jumpers to elegant dancers.
On the evenings on which there is no opera, it is usual for the genteel
company to drive to a public walk immediately without the city, where
they remain till it begins to grow duskish. Soon after our arrival at
Florence, in one of the avenues of this walk we observed two men and two
ladies, followed by four servants in livery. One of the men wore the
insignia of the garter. We were told this was the Count Albany, and that
the Lady next to him was the Countess. We yielded the walk, and pulled
off our hats. The gentleman along with them was the Envoy from the King
of Prussia to the Court of Turin. He whispered the Count, who, returning
the salutation, looked very earnestly at the D—— of H——. We have seen
them almost every evening since, either at the opera or on the public
walk. His G—does not affect to shun the avenue in which they happen to
be; and as often as we pass near them, the Count fixes his eyes in a most
expressive manner upon the D——, as if he meant to say—our ancestors were
better acquainted.
You know, I suppose, that the Count Albany is the unfortunate Charles
Stuart, who left Rome some time since on the death of his father, because
the Pope did not think proper to acknowledge him by the title which he
claimed on that event. He now lives at Florence, on a small revenue
allowed him by his brother. The Countess is a beautiful woman, much
beloved by those who know her, who universally describe her as lively,
intelligent, and agreeable. Educated as I was in Revolution principles,
and in a part of Scotland where the religion of the Stuart family, and
the maxims by which they governed, are more reprobated than perhaps in
any part of Great Britain, I could not behold this unfortunate person
without the warmest emotion and sympathy. What must a man’s feelings be,
who finds himself excluded from the most brilliant situation, and noblest
inheritance that this world affords, and reduced to an humiliating
dependance on those, who, in the natural course of events, should have
looked up to him for protection and support? What must his feelings be,
when on a retrospective view he beholds a series of calamities attending
his family, that is without example in the annals of the unfortunate;
calamities, of which those they experienced after their accession to the
throne of England, were only a continuation? Their misfortunes began with
their royalty, adhered to them through ages, increased with the increase
of their dominions, did not forsake them when dominion was no more;
and, as he has reason to dread, from his own experience, are not yet
terminated. It will afford no alleviation or comfort, to recollect that
part of this black list of calamities arose from the imprudence of his
ancestors; and that many gallant men, in England, Scotland, and Ireland,
have at different periods been involved in their ruin.
Our sympathy for this unfortunate person is not checked by any blame
which can be thrown on himself. He surely had no share in the errors of
the first Charles, the profligacy of the second, or the impolitic and
bigotted attempts of James against the laws and established religion
of Great Britain and Ireland; therefore, whilst I contemplate with
approbation and gratitude the conduct of those patriots who resisted and
expelled that infatuated monarch, ascertained the rights of the subject,
and settled the constitution of Great Britain on the firm basis of
freedom on which it has stood ever since the Revolution, and on which I
hope it will ever stand, yet I freely acknowledge, that I never could see
the unfortunate Count Albany without sentiments of compassion, and the
most lively sympathy.
I write with the more warmth, as I have heard of some of our countrymen,
who, during their tours through Italy, made the humble state to which he
is reduced a frequent theme of ridicule, and who, as often as they met
him in public, affected to pass by with an air of sneering insult. The
motive to this is as base and abject as the behaviour is unmanly; those
who endeavour to make misfortune an object of ridicule, are themselves
the objects of detestation. A British nobleman or gentleman has certainly
no occasion to form an intimacy with the Count Albany; but while he
appears under that name, and claims no other title, it is ungenerous, on
every accidental meeting, not to behave to him with the respect due to a
man of high rank, and the delicacy due to a man highly unfortunate.
One thing is certain; that the same disposition which makes men insolent
to the weak, renders them slaves to the powerful; and those who are most
apt to treat this unfortunate person with an ostentatious contempt at
Florence, would have been his most abject flatterers at St. James’s.