What I Remember, Volume 2

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Such were the summer quarters of the English Florentine colony, temporibus illis. There used to be, I remember, a somewhat amusingly distinctive character attributed, of course in a general way subject to exceptions, to the different groups of the English rusticating world, according to the selection of their quarters in either of the above three little settlements. The "gay" world preferred the "Ponte," where the gaming-tables and ballrooms were. The more strictly "proper" people went to live at the "Villa," where the English Church service was performed. The invalid portion of the society, or those who wished quiet, and especially economy, sought the "Bagni Caldi."

In a general way we all desired economy, and found it. The price at the many hotels was nine pauls a day for board and lodging, including Tuscan wine, and was as much a fixed and invariable matter as a penny for a penny bun. Those who wanted other wine generally brought it with them, by virtue of a ducal ordinance which specially exempted from duty all wine brought by English visitors to the Baths.

I dare say, if I were to pass a summer there now, I should find the atmosphere damp, or the wine sour, or the bread heavy, or the society heavier, or indulge in some such unreasonable and unseasonable grumbles as the near neighbourhood of four-score years is apt to inspire one with; but I used to find it amazingly pleasant once upon a time. It is a singular fact, which the remembrance of those days suggests to me, and which I recommend to the attention of Mr. Galton and his co-investigators, that the girls were prettier then than they are in these days, or that there were more of them! The stupid people, who are always discovering subjective reasons for objective observations, are as impertinent as stupid!

The Duke of Lucca used to do his utmost to make the baths attractive and agreeable. There is no Duke of Lucca now, as all the world knows. The Congress of Vienna put an end to him by ordaining that, when the ducal throne of Parma should become vacant, the reigning Duke of Lucca should succeed to it, while his duchy of Lucca should be united to Florence. This change took place while I was still a Florentine. The Duke of Lucca would none of the new dukedom proposed to him. He abdicated, and his son became Duke of Parma. This son was, in truth, a great ne'er-do-well, and very shortly got murdered in the streets of his new capital by an offended husband.

The change was most unwelcome to Lucca, and especially to the baths, which had thriven and prospered under the fostering care of the old Duke. He used to pass every summer there, and give constant very pleasant, but very little royal, balls at his villa. The Tuscan satirist Giusti, in the celebrated little poem in which he characterises the different reigning sovereigns in the peninsula, calls him the Protestant Don Giovanni, and says that in the roll of tyrants he is neither fish nor flesh.

Of the first two epithets I take it he deserved the second more than the first. His Protestantising tendencies might, I think, have been more accurately described as non-Catholicising. But people are very apt to judge in this matter after the fashion of the would-be dramatist, who, on being assured that he had no genius for tragedy, concluded that he must therefore have one for comedy. The Duke's Protestantism, I suspect, limited itself to, and showed itself in, his dislike and resistance to being bothered by the rulers of neighbouring states into bothering anybody else about their religious opinions. As for his place in the "roll of tyrants," he was always accused of (or praised for) liberalising ideas and tendencies, which would in those days have very soon put an end to him and his tiny duchy, if he had attempted to govern it in accordance with them. As matters were, his "policy," I take it, was pretty well confined to the endeavour to make his sovereignty as little troublesome to himself or anybody else as possible. His subjects were very lightly taxed, for his private property rendered him perfectly independent of them as regarded his own personal expenditure.

The "gayer" part of our little world at the baths used, as I have said, more especially to congregate at the "Ponte," and the more "proper" portion at the "Villa," for, as I have also said, the English Church service was performed there, in a hired room, as I remember, when I first went there. But a church was already in process of being built, mainly by the exertions of a lady, who assuredly cannot be forgotten by any one who ever knew the Baths in those days, or for many years afterwards—Mrs. Stisted. Unlike the rest of the world she lived neither at the "Ponte," nor at the "Villa," nor at the "Bagni Caldi," but at "The Cottage," a little habitation on the bank of the stream about half-way between the "Ponte" and the "Villa." Also unlike all the rest of the world she lived there permanently, for the place was her own, or rather the property of her husband, Colonel Stisted. He was a long, lean, grey, faded, exceedingly mild, and perfectly gentlemanlike old man; but she was one of the queerest people my roving life has ever made me acquainted with.

She was the Queen of the Baths. On one occasion at the ducal villa, his Highness, who spoke English perfectly, said as she entered the room, "Here comes the Queen of the Baths!" "He calls me his Queen," said she, turning to the surrounding circle with a magnificent wave of the hand and delightedly complacent smile. It was not exactly that that the Duke had said, but he was immensely amused, as were we all, for some days afterwards.

She was a stout old lady, with large rubicund face and big blue eyes, surrounded by very abundant grey curls. She used to play, or profess to play, the harp, and adopted, as she explained, a costume for the purpose. This consisted of a loose, flowing garment, much like a muslin surplice, which fell back and allowed the arm to be seen when raised for performance on her favourite instrument. The arm probably was, or had once been, a handsome one. The large grey head, and the large blue eyes, and the drooping curls, were also raised simultaneously, and the player looked singularly like the picture of King David similarly employed, which I have seen as a frontispiece in an old-fashioned prayer-book. But the specialty of the performance was that, as all present always said, no sound whatever was heard to issue from the instrument! "Attitude is everything," as we have heard in connection with other matters; but with dear old Mrs. Stisted at her harp it was absolutely and literally so to the exclusion of all else!

She and the good old colonel—he was a truly good and benevolent man, and, indeed, I believe she was a good and charitable woman, despite her manifold absurdities and eccentricities—used to drive out in the evening among her subjects—her subjects, for neither I nor anybody else ever heard him called King of the Baths!—in an old-fashioned, very shabby and very high-hung phaeton, sometimes with her niece Charlotte—an excellent creature and universal favourite—by her side, and the colonel on the seat behind, ready to offer the hospitality of the place by his side to any mortal so favoured by the queen as to have received such an invitation.