The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers An Annotated Anthology Edited by Manfred Pfister Amsterdam - Atlanta, GA 1996 Contents I. Introduction 1 1. "Theoria: To Go Abroad to See the World" 3 2. Anthologizing Italy 8 3. Surveying the Anthology 15 4. Thanks and Acknowledgements 20 II. Illustrations 23 Descriptive List of Illustrations 58 III. Anthology 61 1. Crossing the Alps and Arriving 63 1.1 Fynes Moryson: Four Routes across the Alps 63 1.2 John Evelyn: A Dangerous Voyage to 'the Peculiar Joys of Italy' 64 1.3 Richard Lassels: 'The Several Ways by which a Man May Go into Italy' 65 1.4 John Reresby: Crossing from the Country of the Grisons 65 1.5 Horace Walpole: Tory and the Wolf 65 1.6 Thomas Gray: Tory and the Wolf Once More 66 1.7 John Boyle, Earl of Corke and Orrery: The Passage over Mount Cenis - Less Dreadful than Supposed 67 1.8 Samuel Sharp: The Chairmen of Mont Cenis 68 1.9 William Beckford: Entering'Long-Desired Italy' 69 1.10 Peter Beckford: Feeling like Hannibal 70 1.11 Samuel Rogers: The New Simplon Pass 72 1.12 Aldous Huxley: Wanderbirds and Car-Drivers 73 1.13 Jonathan Keates:'Getting There' 75 2. II Giro d'ltalia and Other Routes 78 2.1 Roger Ascham: 'Inglese Italianato, e un Diavolo Incarnato' 78 2.2 Henry Wotton: Diplomatic Advice for John Milton 79 2.3 John Milton: A Poet and a Puritan Doing the Tour of Italy 80 2.4 John Evelyn: Naples as the TSfon Ultra1 81 2.5 Thomas Gray: "The Travels of T:G:Geht' 81 2.6 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Inundations of Boys and Governors 83 2.7 Edward Gibbon: To Naples and Back 83 V 2.8 Tobias Smollett: The Giro: A School for Coxcombs 85 2.9 James Boswell: The Giro: A Religious and Erotic Quest 86 2.10 Joseph Baretti: Advice to Go off the Beaten Tracks 91 2.11 Samuel Rogers:'Am I in Italy?' 91 2.12 John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Broughton: A Shakespearean Pilgrimage 92 2.13 Lord Byron: 'The First Rush' after the Napoleonic Wars 92 2.14 Thomas Moore: An Epistle to End All Epistles from Italy 93 2.15 Anna Brownell Jameson: St. Peter's 'Metamorphosed into a Mere Theatre' 93 2.16 Marguerite Blessington: The English Community at Naples 94 2.17 Walter Savage Landor: Outrages Commited Against British Subjects in Tuscany and Other Parts of the Levant 94 2.18 Frances Trollope: 'The General Character of English Travellers' 97 2.19 Frances Trollope: Tourist Watching 98 2.20 John Ruskin: Italy - A Book, not a Dream 99 2.21 Robert Browning: 'Italy' Graved inside the Heart 99 2.22 Francis M. Elliot: Romans and Tourists in the Forum 100 2.23 John Addington Symonds: Off the Beaten Track 101 2.24 Vernon Lee: The South 102 2.25 Norman Douglas: Travelling by Rail 'in this Land of Multiple Civilizations' 104 2.26 Percy Lubbock: An English Expatriate Lady 105 2.27 Anthony Rhodes: 'Hardly any English left in Tivoli' 105 2.28 Charles Lister: 'Perche Calitri' - Why Calitri, why Italy? 106 2.29 Richard Holmes: In the Footsteps of Percy Bysshe Shelley 107 2.30 Lisa St. Aubin de Teran: Settling in Sestri Levante Ill 2.31 Duncan Fallowell:'The Spine of Europe1 114 2.32 Jonathan Keates: In Praise of Emilia 115 3. On the Road: The Hazards of Travelling 118 3.1 Fynes Moryson: Down the Brentaby Boat 118 3.2 Fynes Moryson: The Guiles of Vetturini 119 3.3 Fynes Moryson: Making Friends with the Natives 119 3.4 Edward Herbert: The Milk of Human Kindness 120 3.5 Richard Lassels: The Dangers fromBanditi and Gabella 121 3.6 John Reresby: Being Held up by a Prostitute and the Plague 121 3.7 Thomas Gray: Journeying from Siena to Rome 122 VI 3.8 Samuel Sharp: "The Horrors of an Italian Journey' 123 3.9 JohnChetwode Eustace: The Via Appia: Then and Now 124 3.10 Edward John Trelawny: A Funeral Pyre for Shelley 125 3.11 Mariana Starke: The Hardships of Travelling in the South 126 3.12 William Hazlitt: Travelling with Books 127 3.13 William Hazlitt: 'Imaginary Bands of Brigands' 128 3.14 William Hazlitt: Beware of the Vetturini! 128 3.15 Walter Scott: A Notorious Case of Brigantaggio 129 3.16 Richard Keppel Craven: An Innkeeper Leagued with Banditti 130 3.17 Frances Trollope: Crossing the Magra 131 3.18 Charles Dickens: Doing Mantua with a Cicerone 131 3.19 Charles Dickens: The Osteria of La Scala 134 3.20 Edward Lear: How to Obtain Milk for Breakfast in Calabria 135 3.21 John Addington Symonds: The English Italophile Alienated from the Italians 135 3.22 VernonLee: The Motor-Car and the Genius Loci 136 3.23 Aldous Huxley:'A Night at Pietramala' 137 4. The Perception of Otherness 142 4.1 The Classical Heritage 142 4.1.1 Fynes Moryson: The Cave of the Sibyl of Cuma 142 4.1.2 Thomas Coryate: Virgil and Mantua 143 4.1.3 Joseph Addison: The Antiquities near Naples 143 4.1.4 George Berkeley: A Pilgrimage to the Birthplace of Horace 144 4.1.5 Horace Walpole: The Excavation of Herculaneum 145 4.1.6 Tobias Smollett: The Venus de Medicis 146 4.1.7 James Boswell: 'Sublime and Melancholy Emotions' 146 4.1.8 William Beckford: Viewing the Antiquities the Non-scientific Way... 147 4.1.9 Hester Lynch Piozzi: Reflections on the Coliseum 148 4.1.10 John Chetwode Eustace: Virgil's Tomb: 'A Lurking Place of Sbirri'.. 149 4.1.11 Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Thermae of Caracalla 150 4.1.12 Anna Brownell Jameson: The Venus de Medicis and an English Esthete 151 4.1.13 William Hazlitt: The Venus de Medicis: , 'An Exquisite Marble Doll', 151 4.1.14 Frances Trollope: Projects for Pompeii and Herculaneum 152 4.1.15 Henry George Lewes: 'Hideous Obscenity' in Pompeian Bedrooms.. 153 4.1.16 George Gissing: Lunch at Sybaris 154 VII 4.1.17 D.H.Lawrence:'The Life-Loving Etruscans' 155 4.1.18 Charles Lister: Tracing the Appian Way 157 4.1.19 Fiona Pitt-Kethley: Into the Underworld 160 4.2 Arts and Learning 163 4.2.1 Fynes Moryson: First News of Michelangelo 163 4.2.2 Thomas Coryate: A Venetian Playhouse 163 4.2.3 Henry Wotton:'The Strangest Piece of News' 164 4.2.4 John Evelyn: Gli Uffizi, 'that Renowned Ceimeliarcha' 164 4.2.5 John Evelyn: The Vatican Library 165 4.2.6 John Evelyn: An English Student at Padua University 166 4.2.7 John Raymond: Vicenza and Palladio 167 4.2.8 Richard Lassels: Academies of Wit 167 4.2.9 Francis Mortoft: 'The Sweet Singer and Eunuch Bonaventura' 168 4.2.10 Joseph Addison: The Ambrosian Library in Milan 168 4.2.11 Joseph Addison: Italian Poetry and Comedy 168 4.2.12 Joseph Spence: Libraries 'That a Lady might see with Pleasure' 169 4.2.13 Joseph Spence: The Opera Season in Rome 170 4.2.14 Joseph Spence: Musical Orphans in Venice '. 171 4.2.15 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Learned Women Appreciated 172 4.2.16 Tobias Smollett: Finding Fault with Raphael and Michelangelo 172 i 4.2.17 Samuel Sharp: The Prejudice of Italian Enthusiasm for Music 173 4.2.18 Charles Burney: A Musical Accademia 174 4.2.19 Charles Burney: Where are the Castrati Castrated? 174 4.2.20 William Beckford: A Pilgrimage to Petrach's Tomb 175 4.2.21 Hester Lynch Piozzi: 'Divine Guercino' and the Scuola Bolognese....l76 4.2.22 Joseph Forsyth: Signora Fantastici and the Art of Improwisatori 177 4.2.23 Samuel Rogers: The Stanze of Raphael, a Fricassee of Frogs &Porcupine and the Opera 178 4.2.24 Percy Bysshe Shelley: Michelangelo Debunked 178 4.2.25 William Wordsworth: At Florence 179 4.2.26 Mariana Starke: Perfect Decorum at the Scaladi Milano 179 4.2.27 William Hazlitt: At the Turin Opera House 180 4.2.28 William Hazlitt: In Praise of Guido Reni 180 4.2.29 Richard Keppel Craven: Prime Donne at Campobasso 181 4.2.30 Frances Trollope: An All-Italian Congress of Savants 183 4.2.31 Charles Dickens: Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper' 184 VIII 4.2.32 Charles Dickens: Canovavs. Bernini 184 4.2.33 John Ruskin: Revising the Canon of Italian Art 185 4.2.34 George E. Street: Giotto vs. Palladio 186 4.2.35 Janet Ross: The Pipe of Spring 188 4.2.36 John Addington Symonds: The Quest for Michelangelo 189 4.2.37 Aldous Huxley: 'The Greatest Picture in the World' 189 4.2.38 Charles Lister: Rudolph Valentino 192 4.2.39 Jonathan Keates: Orazio Gentileschi Rescued from Women's Studies 194 4.3 Religious Difference 197 4.3.1 Thomas Hoby: Jubilee Year in Rome 197 4.3.2 Anthony Munday: The English College in Rome 197 4.3.3 Henry Wotton: English Catholics in Italy - a Danger to English Travellers 198 4.3.4 Thomas Coryate: A Disputation with the Jews of Venice 199 4.3.5 William Lithgow: A Frolicsome Pilgrimage to Loreto 200 4.3.6 Edward Herbert: A Philosopher and the Inquisition 201 4.3.7 John Evelyn: Christmas in Rome 202 4.3.8 Richard Lassels: Loreto: "Nothing is Impossible to God' 202 4.3.9 Gilbert Burnet: "The Highest Pitch of Blasphemy' 203 4.3.10 Gilbert Burner: The Nuns of Venice 203 4.3.11 Gilbert Burnet: Catholicism and the Malaria 204 4.3.12 Joseph Addison: The Desolation in the Pope's Territories and the Genius of the Roman Catholic Religion 205 4.3.13 Joseph Addison: 'One of the Most Bungling Tricks that I Ever Saw'.