De Brême and I became very intimate, and I believe he is really a good friend. In the morning at 10 o'clock I went to him to help him in English, and towards the end he corrected my Italian translation of Count Orlando.[[26]] We afterwards met at his box every night in the theatre of La Scala. He gave a dinner to Lord Byron, at which were a good many or rather all my acquaintances—Monti, Finch, Hobhouse, two Brêmes, Borsieri, Guasco (translator of Sophocles), Negri (author of Francesca of Rimini, a play). The dinner was very elegant, and we were very merry, talking chiefly of literature, Castlereagh, Burghersh, etc. We got up immediately after dinner, and went to coffee; thence most to the theatre. De Brême was Vicar Almoner under the French Government. A priest came to him to ask leave to confess; Brême, knowing the subject, refused. The Princess was put to move Beauharnais, who sent for Brême and in a very angry mood asked him why he had refused leave. B[rême] said that, as he was placed to give leave, he imagined it was that it might not be granted indiscriminately, that he could not in his conscience give it, but that he was not the chief, and the Almoner, being applied to, might grant it. B[eauharnais] asked why, saying that the Princess wished it, and it must be done. De B[rême] said he had undertaken the office under the idea that his conscience was to be his guide; if not, the office should be immediately vacant; that he put it to Beauharnais himself whether a man who was buried in the vilest dissoluteness was a proper person to be entrusted with the care of young women's minds. Beauharnais said, "Right, right; you shall hear no more of it." This, and another occasion of the same nature, were the only occasions in which he saw Beauharnais privately; he avoided the court, and did not seek preferment. He twice under that government refused a bishopric, and under the new government; giving me as a reason that it went against his conscience to inculcate what he did not believe, and to add power to those who gave them, as he would be expected to side with them. He is violently for the independence of Italy. Christianity he believes not, and gives (I think) a new argument why we should not be holden to believe it. Saul, who was contemporary, who beheld the miracles etc., did not believe till a miracle was operated upon him; we at this distance cannot believe with greater facility. He has published an eulogium of Caluro, Ingiustizia del Giudizio, etc., poems, etc. Has written several tragedies; Ina made me weep like a child. He is warm in his affections, and has never recovered the death of one he loved—a young noble lady, of great accomplishments and beauty. His friendship for me was warm: it gratifies me more than any attentions, friendship, or any relation I had before, with my fellow-companions. I cannot express what I feel for him. When parting from him, I wept like a child in his arms. He maintains from principle, not from belief, all the hardships imposed upon him by his tonsure. He would have the world to see that his belief is not swayed by a wish to escape from the bonds of the clerical state. He is charitable, giving away great sums of money in charity; eats only once a day, and studies all day till the hour of the theatre; kind to all who are recommended to him; sacrificing whole days to show them what he has seen a thousand times; a great admirer of English women; has an excellent library, of which I had the use. A great friend of comic, good-natured mimicry. Has an idea of writing Ida, a novel containing a picture of the most promising movements of the Milan revolution, and I have promised to translate it. He has two brothers; his father lives yet; his eldest brother is Ambassador at Munich. The youngest is Cavalier Brême—been officer in Spain; extremely pleasant and affectionate with me. Brême was a great friend of Caluro's, and to him Caluro dedicated one of his opuscules.
Borsieri, a man of great mental digestive power and memory, superficially read; author of Il Giorno, a work written with great grace and lightness. He was very intimate with me, Guasco, and Brême. Guasco, a Piedmontese; little reading, but great mental vision and talents. He also was one who attached himself a good deal to me. De Beyle, formerly Intendant des Marchés (I think) to Buonaparte, and his secretary when in the country. A fat lascivious man. A great deal of anecdote about Buonaparte: calls him an inimitable et bon despote. He related many anecdotes—I don't remember them: amongst other things, he said Buonaparte despised the Italians much.
[This last detail is confirmed in Beyle's Reminiscences of Napoleon, published not long ago.]
These four were the usual attendants at De Brême's box.
Monti is a short, roundish, quick-eyed, and rather rascally-faced man, affable, easily fired; talks rather nonsense when off poetry, and even upon that not good. Great imagination; very weak. Republican always in conversation with us; but in the first month, after having declaimed strongly in B[rême']s box about liberty and Germans, just as they were going out he said, "But now let us talk no more of this, on account of my pension." Under the French government he gained a great deal by his various offices; by this one he has been abridged of half. He translated the Iliad of Homer without knowing a word of Greek; he had it translated by his friends, word for word written under the Greek. Easily influenced by the opinions of others; in fact, a complete weathercock. He married the daughter of Pickler, the engraver; a fine woman, and they say an exceedingly good reciter, as he is himself. She has acted in his plays upon the Philodramatic stage. His daughter is married.
Negri—Marchese Negri[[27]]—a Genoese, not an improvisatore—very chatty; has at Genoa a most beautiful garden which all the English visit. Related to me Gianni's beginning. Gianni was an apprentice to a stay-maker, when one day an Abate, going into the shop, found him busily engaged in reading. Looking at the book, he asked him if he understood it. He said yes, and, on reading, showed it by his expression. The Abate, who was an improvisatore, asked him to see him next morning; when he improvised before him, and observed that the young Gianni seemed as if his mind was full and wished to give forth. He had him sent to school, and introduced him. Gianni in the Revolution, taking the Liberal side, was obliged to leave Rome, and, going to Genoa, Negri heard by letter of it, and went to seek him, inviting him to dine with him. He refused; and Negri, who had promised his friends that he would be of the party, at the hour of dinner went and found him with his nightcap on, deeply reading his favourite Dante; and in a manner dragged him by force to his house, where Gianni pleased much—and stayed a year at Negri's house, teaching him the art of improvisation. Gianni's improvisations were (many) improvised on the spot by an Abate into Latin verse.—Negri came to Brême's box several times, and had the effect of making all except Brême burst with laughter: me he sent to sleep.
Lord Byron came to Milan, and I saw him there a good deal. He received me kindly, and corrected the English of my essay in The Pamphleteer.[[28]] He visited a good deal Brême's box. Mr. Hobhouse was with him.
Colonel Finch, an extremely pleasant, good-natured, well-informed, clever gentleman; spoke Italian extremely well, and was very well read in Italian literature. A ward of his gave a masquerade in London upon her[[29]] coming of age. She gave to each a character in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to support, without the knowledge of each other, and received them in a saloon in proper style as Queen Elizabeth. He mentioned to me that Nelli had written a Life of Galileo extremely fair, which, if he had money by him, he would buy that it might be published,—in Italy they dare not; and that Galileo's MSS. were in dispute, so that the heirs will not part with them; they contain some new and some various readings. Finch is a great admirer of architecture and Italy.—Wotheron, Mr., a gentleman most peaceable and quiet I ever saw, accompanying Finch; whose only occupation is, when he arrives at a town or other place, to set about sketching and then colouring, so that he has perhaps the most complete collection of sketches of his tour possible. He invited me (taking me for an Italian), in case I went to England, to see him; and, hearing I was English, he pressed me much more.—Locatelli was the physician of the hospital, a good unimpostoring physician. I saw under him a case of pemphizus, and had under my care an hysterical woman.
Jersey, Lady, promised to enquire of her mother, Lady Westmorland, if she would employ me as her physician; but said she thought my having been with Lord B[yron] a great objection.
[I have an impression, not a secure one, that Dr. Polidori did act to some extent as Lady Westmorland's medical adviser. It would here appear that her Ladyship was not very partial to Byron; and Byron must have repaid her dislike, for I find, in a letter of his to Murray, November 1817, that Polidori was in the way of receiving "the patronage of Frederic North, the most illustrious humbug of his age and country, and the blessing of Lady Westmorland, William Ward's mad woman." Joseph Severn the painter (Keats's friend), who saw a good deal of Lady Westmorland at one time, terms her "this impulsive, arrogant, dictatorial, but witty and brilliant woman.">[