A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

RENÉE'S TROUBLES.

Such signs of the times were not lost upon Duke Hercules, and reproduced themselves in sundry painful forms in the interior of the palace. The Duchess is still found to have about her persons "of very unwholesome smell;"[53] the flock of them have to be overhauled by the Duke's new Jesuit director, Pelletario, and all those found "with the rot upon them" are got rid of. A powerful stream of pure doctrine was turned on upon the infected Duchess, and sacraments were prescribed without much success. The "miserable woman" is found with flesh–meat on her table on a Friday; and the justly exasperated Duke, at his wits' end, has to shut her up in her apartment, with two attendants only, and send her daughters to a convent. "Now, though Renée was very astute," writes the historian, "far more so than the Duke and all his counsellors, yet it is not permissible to attribute wholly to her cunning the surprising conversion that was operated in her, immediately after she was shut up."[54] The imprisoned lady, under plainly miraculous influence, sent suddenly for her husband's priest, made a full confession, placed her conscience entirely in his keeping, and asked for the sacrament from his hands. So efficacious a spiritual agent is a little persecution, that astute as the patient was, and temporary as the conversion was proved in the sequel, the historian cannot believe but that some genuine spiritual effect was produced by it.

It at all events had the effect of releasing Renée from her durance, and restoring her daughters to her. For the Duke, delighted at the success of his discipline, "admitted her to sup with him that same evening."

But amid all this, in a family so constituted, and living under such conditions, young Olympia must have been placed at times in strange positions, have witnessed some suggestive scenes, and altogether have had offered to her ripening intelligence matter for meditation on many things. As to the disputed points, and antagonistic principles and prejudices, which lay at the root of all these jars and difficulties, she seems to have been at that time effectually preserved against all the dangers of partizanship by thorough indifference to the whole subject. The arrangement by which she had become a resident at the court was to her a subject of unmixed rejoicing and exultation. The household duties which the narrow circumstances of her father's home had imposed upon her, had occasioned many a sigh over the hours thus lost to her beloved studies. Now her whole life was to be devoted under the most favourable circumstances to the prosecution of them. "Henceforward," writes Calcagnini in a letter to her, "you may give yourself up to your favourite pursuits, change the distaff for the pen, house linen for books, and the exercise of the fingers for that of the mind.... It will now be for you to preserve without flaw the good gifts which you have received from your parents—modesty, candour, and virtuous principles, and to add to them wisdom, elegance, high–mindedness, and contempt for all that is base."[55]

FIRST COMPOSITIONS.

She was, moreover, still to be under the tuition of her father in the palace, and was to share with the Princess Anne the Greek lessons of Sinapi.

Several specimens have been preserved of her compositions about this time, which indicate a very remarkable amount of acquirement. Various passages have have been quoted by her biographers with perhaps more of admiration than they merit. They were received by her contemporaries with the most unbounded and hyperbolical applause; and the modern narrators of her career seem to have taken the tone of the high–flown eulogies of these productions which they have found on record. But in reading things of this kind, of Cisalpine production, much allowance must always be made for the prevalent habit of undiscriminating and exaggerated laudation, arising from the ever–present influence of municipal rivalry. The "nul aura de l'esprit, hors nous et nos amis," principle was always at work. To a Ferrara man, Olympia was our Olympia,—"gloria Ferraræ; patriæ decus," &c., and was to be made the most of accordingly. But, secondly, still more allowance must be made for the strong tendency of the literary culture of that period in Italy to regard the form rather than the matter. Artistic love for the beauties of language leads the literary world of Italy, even at the present day, to attach an undue measure of importance to diction and style, at the expense of subject–matter. And at the flood–tide of the classical mania of the sixteenth century, correctness of classic phraseology, and perfection of mimicry of the ancients, was the alpha and omega of excellence.

And in these respects the writings of Olympia are truly remarkable. The amount of acquaintance with the classics then most in vogue, the familiarity with their modes of thinking, and the mastery of their language, attained by a girl of from fourteen to sixteen, are really astonishing. Thus we have an essay on Mutius Scævola in Greek; a defence of Cicero against some of his detractors; and, more remarkable still, lectures (!) on the paradoxes of that author.

Of the whole picture, such as we are able to realise it, of this bright and beautiful Olympia, ambitious of praise, triumphant, full of fervid poetic enthusiasm, and love of the beautiful, enchanting all eyes, and charming all ears,—approaching, one may fancy, in social position, some Siddons or Mars more nearly than any other existence known to our times; of the whole picture, these public lectures, or declamations, seem to our notions the strangest feature. Let the inmates of our "Establishments," "Colleges," "Academies," of the most finished and "finishing" category, picture to themselves a young lady of sixteen called on to lecture before an audience, composed of all the court circle, and most learned Dons of Ferrara, on the Paradoxes of Cicero!—improvising her declamation, too, in Latin and Greek, if we may believe her friend Curio, writing many years afterwards, with the enthusiastic admiration of these exhibitions still strong within him.

"Then," writes he, "we used to hear her declaiming in Latin, improvising in Greek, explaining the paradoxes of the greatest orators, and answering to all the questions addressed to her."[56]