Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

by Edward Hutton

THE LADIES AND YOUTHS OF THE DECAMERON LEAVING FLORENCE
From a miniature in the French version of the "Decameron," made in 1414 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus. Rothschild Bequest. MS. XIV.)

The mise en scène is so well known as scarcely to need describing, for the Prologue in which it is set forth is one of the most splendid pieces of descriptive narrative in all literature, impressionist too in our later manner, and absolutely convincing. Boccaccio evokes for us the city of Florence in the grip of the Black Death of 1348. We see the streets quite deserted or horrible with the dead, and over all a dreadful silence broken only by the more dreadful laughter of those whom the plague has freed from all human constraint. Fear has seized upon such of the living as death has not driven mad, "wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and few such there were), or the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had at high rates and on unseemly terms, and being moreover men and women of gross understanding and for the most part unused to such offices, concerned themselves no further than to supply the immediate and expressed wants of the sick and to watch them die, in which service they themselves not seldom perished with their gains. In consequence of which dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk, and friends, it came to pass—a thing perhaps never before heard of—that no woman, however dainty, fair, or well born she might be, shrank, when stricken with the disease, from the attentions of a man, no matter whether he were young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body with no more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that which her malady required; wherefrom, perchance, there resulted in after time some loss of modesty in such as recovered.... What need we add, but that such and so grievous was the harshness of heaven, and perhaps in some degree of man, that, what with the fury of the pestilence, the panic of those whom it spared and their consequent neglect or desertion of not a few of the stricken in their need, it is believed without any manner of doubt, that between March and the ensuing July upwards of a hundred thousand human beings lost their lives within the walls of the city of Florence, which before the deadly visitation would not have been supposed to contain so many people! How many grand palaces, how many stately homes, how many splendid houses once full of retainers, of lords, of ladies, were now left desolate of all, even to the meanest servant!...

"Irksome it is to myself to rehearse in detail so mournful a history. Wherefore, being minded to pass over so much thereof as I fairly can, I say that our city being thus depopulated, it so happened, as I afterwards learned from one of credit, that on Tuesday morning after Divine service the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella was almost deserted save for the presence of seven young ladies, habited sadly, in keeping with the season.... The first, being the eldest of the seven, we will call Pampinea, the second Fiammetta, the third Filomena, the fourth Emilia, the fifth we will distinguish as Lauretta, the sixth as Neifile, and the last, not without reason, shall be named Elisa. 'Twas not of set purpose but by mere chance that these ladies met in the same part of the church, but at length, grouping themselves into a sort of circle, ... they gave up saying paternosters and began to converse (among other topics) on the times.... Here we tarry (said Pampinea) as if one thinks for no other purpose than to bear witness to the number of corpses that are brought hither for interment.... If we quit the church we see dead or sick folk carried about, or we see those who for their crimes were of late exiled, ... but who now in contempt of the law, well knowing its ministers are sick or dead, have returned.... Nor hear we aught but: Such and such are dead.... Such and such are dying.... Or go we home, what see we there? I know not if you are in like case with me; but there where once were servants in plenty I find none left but my maid and shudder with terror.... And turn or tarry where I may, I encounter only the ghosts of the departed, not with their wonted mien but with something horrible in their aspect that appals me.... So (she continues) I should deem it most wise in us, our case being what it is, if, as many others have done before us and are doing now, we were to quit the place, and shunning like death the evil example of others, betake ourselves to the country and there live as honourable women on one of the estates of which none of us has any lack, with all cheer of festal gathering and other delights so long as in no particular we overstep the bounds of reason. There we shall hear the chant of birds, have sight of green hills and plains, of cornfields undulating like the sea, of trees of a thousand sorts; there also we shall have a larger view of the heavens, which, however harsh to usward, yet deny not their eternal beauty; things fairer far for eyes to rest on than the desolate walls of our city.... For though the husbandmen die there even as here the citizens, they are dispersed in scattered homes, and so 'tis less painful to witness. Nor, so far as I can see, is there a soul here whom we shall desert; rather we may truly say that we are ourselves deserted.... No censure then can fall on us if we do as I propose; and otherwise grievous suffering, perhaps death, may ensue."

Pampinea's plan was received with eagerness, and while they were still discussing it there came into the church three young men, Pamfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo, the youngest about twenty-five years of age. These seemed to the ladies to be sent by Providence, for their only fear till now had been in carrying out their plans alone. So Pampinea, who had a kinsman among them, approached them, and greeting them gaily, opened her plan, and besought them on behalf of herself and her friends to join their company. The young men as soon as they found she was in earnest answered with alacrity that they were ready, and promptly before leaving the church set matters in train for their departure, and the next day at dawn they set out. Arrived at the estate they entered a beautiful palace in the midst of a garden, and again it was Pampinea who proposed that one among them should be elected chief for a day so that each might be in turn in authority. They at once chose Pampinea, whom Filomena crowned with bay leaves. Later, towards evening, they "hied them to a meadow ... and at the queen's command ranged themselves in a circle on the grass and hearkened while she spoke thus: 'You mark that the sun is yet high, the heat intense, and the silence unbroken save by the cicale among the olives. It were therefore the height of folly to quit this spot at present. Here the air is cool, and the prospect fair, and here, observe, are dice and chess. Take then your pleasure as you will; but if you hear my advice you will find pastime for the hot hours before us, not in play in which the loser must needs be vexed, ... but in telling stories in which the invention of one may afford solace to all the company of his hearers.'"

This was found pleasing to all, and so Pampinea turned at last to Pamfilo, who sat at her right hand, and bade him lead off with one of his stories. So begins the series of immortal tales which compose the Decameron.[655]

Such, then, is the incomparable design which the Decameron fills, beside which the mere haphazard telling of The Hundred Merry Tales seems barbarous, the setting of The Thousand and One Nights inadequate. That Boccaccio's design has indeed ever been bettered might well be denied, but in The Canterbury Tales Chaucer certainly equalled it. If the occasion there is not so dramatic nor the surroundings at once so poignant and so beautiful, the pilgrimage progresses with the tales and allows of such a dramatic entry as that of the Canon and the Canon's yeoman at Boghton-under-Blee. That entry was most fitting and opportune, right in every way, and though there is no inherent reason why the Decameron itself should not have been similarly broken in upon, the very stillness of that garden in the sunshine would have made any such interruption less acceptable.[656]

The true weakness of the Decameron in comparison with that of the Canterbury Tales is not a weakness of design but of character. Each of Chaucer's pilgrims is a complete human being; they all live for us more vividly than any other folk, real or imagined, of the fourteenth century in England, and each is different from the rest, a perfect human character and personality. But in the protagonists of the Decameron it is not so. There is nothing, or almost nothing, to choose between them. Pampinea is not different from Filomena,[657] and may even be confused with Pamfilo or Filostrato. We know nothing of them; they are without any character or personality, and indeed the only one of them all who stands out in any way is Dioneo, and that merely because he may usually be depended upon for the most licentious tale of the day.[658] In Chaucer the tales often weary us, but the tellers never do; in Boccaccio the tales never weary us, but the tellers always do. Just there we come upon the fundamental difference between English and what I may call perhaps Latin art. It is the same to-day as yesterday. In the work of D' Annunzio, as in the work of the French novelists of our time, it is always an affair of situation, that is to say, the narrative or drama rises out of the situation, rather than out of the character of the actors, while even in the most worthless English work there is, as there has always been, an attempt at least to realise character, to make it the fundamental thing in the book, from which the narrative proceeds and by which it lives and is governed.

In dealing with the Decameron, then, we must, more or less, leave the narrators themselves out of the question; they are not to be judged; they are but an excuse for the stories, and are really puppets who can in no way be held responsible for them, so that if now and then an especially licentious tale is told by one of those "virtuous" ladies, it is of no account, for the tales are altogether independent of those who tell them. But if these young and fair protagonists soon pass from our remembrance in the infinitely vivid and living stories they tell, yes, almost like a phonograph, the setting, the background of a plague-stricken and deserted city, the beauty and languorous peace of the delicious gardens in which we listen, always remain with us, so much so that tradition has identified the two palaces which are the setting of the whole Decameron with two of those villas which are the glory of the Florentine contado.

The first of these palaces—that to which they came on that Wednesday morning—was, Boccaccio tells us, not more than "two short miles from the city" There "on the brow of the hill was a palace, with a fine and spacious courtyard in the midst, and with loggias and halls and rooms, all and each one in itself beautiful and ornamented tastefully with jocund paintings. It was surrounded too with grass plots and marvellous gardens, and with wells of coldest water, and there were cellars of rare wines, a thing perhaps more suited to curious topers than to quiet and virtuous ladies. And the palace was clean and in good order, the beds prepared and made, and everything decorated with spring flowers, and the floors covered with rushes, all much to their satisfaction." This "estate" has always been identified with Poggio Gherardo,[659] which now stands above the road to Settignano, about a mile from that village and some two miles from the Porta alle Croce of Florence. In the fourteenth century certainly it must have been equi-distant on all sides from the roads, the nearest being the Via Aretina Nuova by the Arno and the road to Fiesole or the Via Faentina, for the way from Florence to Settignano was a mule-track.