There were many agreeable people at Florence that winter and a good deal of gaiety. The Marchese Antinori presented Somerville and me to the Grand Duke, who had expressed a wish to know me. He received us very graciously, and conversed with us for more than an hour on general subjects. He afterwards wrote me a polite letter, accompanied by a work on the drainage of the Maremma, and gave directions about our being invited to a scientific meeting which was to be held at Pisa. We were presented to the Grand Duchess, who was very civil. We spent the summer at Siena, and had a cheerful airy apartment with a fine view of the hills of Santa Fiora, and with very pretty arabesques in fresco on the walls of all the rooms, some so very artistic that I made sketches of them. In these old cities many of the palaces and houses are decorated with that artistic taste which formerly prevailed to such an extent in Italy, and, which has now yielded, here as elsewhere, to commonplace modern furniture.
While we were at Siena, my mother received the following letter from Lord Brougham, who was a frequent correspondent of hers, but whose letters are generally too exclusively mathematical for the general reader. My mother had described the curious horse-races which are held at Siena every three years, and other mediæval customs still prevalent.
FROM LORD BROUGHAM TO MRS. SOMERVILLE.
Cole Hill, Kent, Sept. 28th, 1840.
I am much obliged to you for your kind letter which let me know of your movements. I had not heard of them since I saw the Fergusons.... We have been here since parliament rose, as I am not yet at all equal to going to Brougham. My health is now quite restored; but I shall not soon—nor in all probability ever—recover the losses I have been afflicted with. I passed the greater part of last winter in Provence, expecting some relief from change of scene and from the fine climate; but I came back fully worse than when I went. In fact, I did wrong in struggling at first, which I did to be able to meet parliament in January last. If I had yielded at once, I would have been better. I hope and trust they sent you a book I published two years ago; I mean the "Dissertations," of which one is on the "Principia," and designed to try how far it may be taught to persons having but a very moderate stock of mathematics; also, if possible, to keep alive the true taste (as I reckon it) in mathematics, which modern analysis has a little broken in upon. Assuming you to have got the book, I must mention that there are some intolerable errors of the press left, such as.... Excuse my troubling you with these errata, and impute it to my wish that you should not suppose me to have written the nonsense which these pages seem to prove. By the way, it is a curious proof of university prejudice, that though the Cambridge men admit my analysis of the "Principia" to be unexceptionable, and to be well calculated for teaching the work, yet, not being by a Cambridge man, it cannot be used! They are far more liberal at Paris, where they only are waiting for my analysis of the second book; but I put off finishing it, as I do still more my account of the "Mécanique Céleste." The latter I have almost abandoned in despair after nearly finishing it; I find so much that cannot be explained elementarily, or anything near it. So that my account to be complete would be nearly as hard reading as yours, and not 1000th part as good.... I greatly envy you Siena; I never was there above a day, and always desired to stay longer. The language is, as you say, a real charm; but I was not aware of the preservation in which you describe the older manners to be. I fear I shall not be able to visit Provence, as I should have wished this winter ... but my plans are not quite fixed. The judicial business in Parliament and the Privy Council will also make my going abroad after January difficult. I don't write you any news, nor is there any but what you see in the papers. The Tory restoration approaches very steadily, tho' not very rapidly; and I only hope that the Whigs, having contrived to destroy the Liberal party in the country—I fear past all hope of recovery—may not have a war abroad also to mourn for....
Believe me,
Yours ever,
H. Brougham.
On going to Rome I required a good many books for continuing my work on "Physical Geography," and had got "Transactions of the Geographical Society" and other works sent from London, The Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone who was then at Rome, was an old acquaintance of ours. He was one of the most amiable men I ever met with, and quite won my heart one day at table when they were talking of the number of singing-birds that were eaten in Italy—nightingales, goldfinches, and robins—he called out, "What! robins! our household birds! I would as soon eat a child!" He was so kind as to write to the Directors of the East India Company requesting that I might have the use of the library and papers that were in the India House. This was readily granted me; and I had a letter in consequence from Mr. Wilson, the Orientalist, giving me a list of the works they had on the geography of Eastern Asia and the most recent travels in the Himalaya, Thibet, and China, with much useful information from himself. I was indebted to Sir Henry Pottinger, then at Rome, for information relating to Scinde, for he had been for some years British Envoy at Beloochistan. Thus provided, I went on with my work. We lived several winters in an apartment on the second floor of Palazzo Lepri, Via dei Condotti, where we passed many happy days. When we first lived in Via Condotti, the waste-pipes to carry off the rain-water from the roofs projected far into the street, and when there was a violent thunderstorm, one might have thought a waterspout had broken over Rome, the water poured in such cascades from the houses on each side of the street. On one occasion the rain continued in torrents for thirty-six hours, and the Tiber came down in heavy flood, inundating the Ghetto and all the low parts of the city; the water was six feet deep in the Pantheon. The people were driven out of their houses in the middle of the night and took refuge in the churches, and boats plied in the streets supplying the inhabitants with food, which they hauled up in baskets let down from the windows. The Campagna for miles was under water; it covered the Ponte Molle so that the courier could not pass; and seen from the Pincio it looked like an extensive lake. Much anxiety was felt for the people who lived in the farm houses now surrounded with water. Boats were sent to rescue them, and few lives were lost; but many animals perished. The flood did not subside till after three days, when it left everything covered with yellow mud; the loss of property was very great, and there was much misery for a long time.
Our house was in a very central position, and when not engaged I gladly received anyone who liked to come to us in the evening, and we had a most agreeable society, foreign and English, for we were not looked upon as strangers, and the English society was much better during the years we spent in Rome than it was afterwards.