I am very much obliged to you for your critical doubts. I will put out the questionable "Ecco!" in deference to your knowledge. I have a tremulous sense of my liability to error in such things.
I don't wonder at your difficulty about the modification of com into ciom. The writers of the fifteenth century, speaking of the insurrection of the Ciompi which occurred in the previous century, say that the word was a corruption of the French compère, the same word of course as compare, constantly on the lips of the numerous French who were present in Florence during the dictatorship of the Duke of Athens. The likelihood of the derivation lies in the analysis of transition in the meaning of words compère and compare, like the English "gossip," beginning with the meaning of godfather and ending with, or rather proceeding to that of companion. Our "gossip" has at least parted with its secondary meaning as well as its primary one.
The unlikelihood of the derivation lies in the modification of the sounds, and I felt that unlikelihood as you have done. But in the absence of a Max Müller to assure me of a law to the contrary, I thought the statement of Tuscan writers a better authority than inferences. I ought to have written "is stated by the old historians."
I am really comforted by the thought that you will mention doubts to me when they occur to you. My misery is the certainty that I must be often in error.
Mr. Lewes shares my admiration of the two last illustrations.—Ever yours truly,
Marian E. Lewes.
F. Leighton, Esq.
16 Blandford Square, N.W.,
Tuesday.
Dear Mr. Leighton,—Since I saw you I have confirmed by renewed reference my conclusion that gamurra was the equivalent of our gown, i.e. the constant outer garb of femininity, varying in length and cut according to rank and age. The poets and novelists give it alike to the peasant and the "city woman," and speak of the girdle around it. Perhaps it would have been better to call Tessa's gown a gamurrina, the word sometimes used and indicating, I imagine, just that abbreviation of petticoat that active work demands.
If you are going to see Ghirlandajo's frescoes—the engravings of them I mean—in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, I wish you would especially notice if the women in his groups have not that plain piece of opaque drapery over the head which haunts my memory. We were only allowed to see those frescoes once, because of repairs going on; but I am strongly impressed with a belief—which, au reste, may be quite false—in the presence of my "white hood" there. As to the garb of the luxurious classes at that time, a point which may turn up in our progress, I think the painters can hardly be believed to have represented it fully, since we know, on strong evidence, that it ran into extravagances, which are even in contrast with the general impression conveyed not only by the large fresco compositions but by the portraits. You must have had sufficient experience of the eclecticism in costume which the artist's feeling forces upon him in the presence of hideous or extreme fashion. We have in Varchi a sufficiently fit and clear description of the ordinary male costume of dignified Florentines in my time; but for the corresponding feminine costume the best authority I have seen is the very incomplete one of a certain Ginevra's trousseau in the Ricordi of the Rinuccini family of rather an earlier period, but marking even there the rage for embroidery and pearls which grew instead of diminishing.