For the two following days London had indeed a miserable aspect—windows all broken, streets littered with fragments, shops shut, streets paraded constantly by bands of entirely victorious and triumphant ruffians, and shop-keepers, in some cases, guarding their property with revolvers.
The call for a fresh edition of my “Walks in Rome” made me suddenly determine to go to Italy at the end of February. At Florence I was the constant guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, with whom I made delightful excursions in the hills.
To Miss Leycester.
“Hotel Paoli, Florence, March 7, 1886.—France was covered with snow from end to end, yet next day we were speeding through lemon-groves laden with fruit, and carpeted with a blaze of iris and scarlet geranium in full flower. Here, after reading about the snowstorms in England, I am glad in the gardens of Arcetri to sit to draw in the shade of the cypresses, and all the hills are pink with almond-blossom. I spent one evening with the Duchess at Palazzo Torrigiani, alone with the family there, which is the most perfect type of a grand old Italian household, consisting of between eighty and ninety persons. The kind and charming old Marchesa Elisabetta has four sons, who have all married as soon as they came of age, yet none have gone farther than to an apartment of their own under the maternal roof, and eighteen children and grandchildren dine with her daily, besides other guests. The four daughters-in-law all live in the utmost harmony; the Marchesa Giulia, wife of the eldest son Pietro, and the Marchesa Margherita, who was a Malespina (which in Italy means great things), quietly giving precedence to the Marchesa Cristina, who is a princess (Scilla) by birth. All sat with work round a table, visitors dropped in, and it was most easy and pleasant.
“Another day, the Duchess, Miss Phillimore, and I went out by the steam-tram to spend a day at the Marchese della Stufa’s[421] old castle of Castagnolo. We had an amusing luncheon of Italian dishes, guitar music and singing, a walk to pick violets, with which the hedges are full, a visit to the green-houses and aviaries of rare birds, and we were taken back to the tram-line, where the station is built of sunflower-stalks, which are like bamboo in their qualities.”
I reached Rome on the 10th of March, warmly welcomed by a large circle of friends. In the hotel were Mrs. Tilt and Letitia Hibbert, very familiar to me in early days at Birtles, and with them and their very charming sister-in-law, Mrs. Frank Hibbert (née Cholmondeley), I made delightful excursions to familiar places—Tivoli, Frascati, Albano. Sir John Lumley was now reigning at the Embassy and making it delightful to his countrymen.
To Miss Leycester.
“Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 17, 1886.—What lovely June weather this is, so very hot, so unspeakably beautiful.... I find an immense deal to do in correcting and writing, chiefly, however, in taking away from my ‘Walks in Rome,’ so very much is destroyed; indeed, Lanciani, the archaeologist in power, says, ‘If they go on like this for twenty years, there will be nothing left of older Rome but St Peter’s and the Coliseum—if those.’”
