At that date (1869) people used still to go round Venice with Byrons, just as they go round with Ruskins now. It was Byron’s Venice that attracted them—the Venice of Marino Faliero and the Foscari, not the Venice of Carpaccio. As they could not conveniently Stand Upon The Bridge Of Sighs, they used to stand upon the Ponte della Paglia, and spout the famous lines at it from there. And they all went to see the Armenian Monastery, because it was a place where Byron stayed. Hardly anybody goes there now.
My father used always to take a Byron with him, when he went abroad, and he used to write things in the margin. Thus, his comment on The Castled Crag is “Drachenfels. 31 July 1839. Good description—very correct.” I believe it was the usual thing to annotate your Byron as if it were a guide-book.
From my father’s diary, Exeter, 23 October 1838:—“When did I dream that the Ada of Childe Harold would ever appear to me as an ordinary, unnoticed and unadorned woman. I am half vexed I should have seen her, and yet would not have it otherwise.... I recollect, when I first saw Brougham, and was standing opposite to him, I could not believe he was the extraordinary man I had been accustomed to hear so much about. But, now some years have passed away, my idea of him is very little lessened by his actual presence at that time. So may it turn out here. I hope it will: but, until it does, I shall read Byron with diminished satisfaction.”
After a tour in Italy, my father writes home from Ragatz in Switzerland, 16 September 1851:—“From Italy one dared not write about the Government, for the Austrians open the letters; but the Government is the most despotic tyranny I ever heard of: an Italian cannot get a passport, or leave the country; nor can any foreign paper reach him; nor is he allowed to talk politics.
“Venice was placarded whilst I was there with a Government proclamation, by way of warning to the people, that six persons had just been sentenced to the galleys (some for ten years, and one of the persons a lady) for daring to speak disrespectfully of the Government and the Emperor. The prisons are full of prisoners for talking politics: that by the Bridge of Sighs is crammed.
“An Englishman was sent out of Florence for saying he thought the Government was right in having sentinels in the theatres. The Chief of the Police told him that the Government tolerated no remarks upon its acts, approving them or otherwise.
“One of my American acquaintance, a physician, says that Hell, as an Institution, will wholly fail, if these tyrants don’t get their deserts in the Pit hereafter. When an Englishman said at Milan he had seen, among other relics at a church, what the priests asserted was the veritable brazen serpent of Moses in the wilderness, the Doctor asked if they showed at the same time the darkness that came over Israel. When he said No, the Doctor said they might safely have offered to, as it overshadowed the whole land in the shape of the Austrian despotism.
“Venice and Milan are both under martial law, and soldiers swarm in them; and at Verona they were preparing for a review of the whole army before the Emperor.... To induce the inhabitants to attend, there was to be a lottery, and tickets given to all who chose to come. But the Italians will not be coaxed. At a previous review, not a single Italian came upon the ground.”
Writing from Frankfort two days later, he says:—“Here I encountered those evil spirits again, the Austrian soldiers. They are chiefly Hungarians and Croats, and sent to keep the people of this ‘Free’ City of the Empire from rising again.” He had gone from Darmstadt to Freiburg by way of Radstadt on 7 August 1849, and noted in his diary then:—“Baden abounds with Prussian troops: they were just shooting some of the insurgent prisoners at Radstadt.” He wrote from Interlaken, 17 August 1849:—“I saw two Prussian officers at the Wengern Alp on leave of absence from Baden. They told me their troops had now 15,000 prisoners in Baden, and every Prussian among them they were shooting. I asked why, and they enquired if I could point out anything else they could do with them: as if it were a case of no alternative.”
Having to wait a little while at Brescia station on 23 August 1869, I went into a show that was going on just outside. There was such riotous applause that I felt sure it must be something good, and I found it was the visit of General von Haynau to the brewery of Messrs Barclay and Perkins. Their brewery was one of the sights of London that all foreigners went to see, and he went to see it. The men discovered who he was, and nearly murdered him. And the Brescians were wild with joy at seeing this in the show, remembering the old Hyæna’s brutality to them in 1849.