What I Remember, Volume 2

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

The Italians, I believe, were "thinking" at a considerably earlier period than that which in the second letter transcribed in the preceding chapter Mrs. Browning seems to have considered as the beginning of their "cogitating" existence, and thinking on the subjects to which she is there adverting. They were "thinking," perhaps, less in Tuscany than in any other part of the peninsula, for they were eating more and better there. They were very lightly taxed. The mezzeria system of agriculture, which, if not absolutely the same, is extremely similar to that which is known as "conacre," rendered the lot of the peasant population very far better and more prosperous than that of the tillers of the earth in any of the other provinces. And upon the whole the people were contented. The Tuscan public was certainly not a "pensive public." They ate their bread not without due condiment of compagnatico,[1] or even their chesnuts in the more remote and primitive mountain districts, drank their sound Tuscan wine from the generous big-bellied Tuscan flasks holding three good bottles, and sang their stornelli in cheerfulness of heart, and had no craving whatsoever for those few special liberties which were denied them.

[Footnote 1: Anything to make the bread "go down," as our people say—a morsel of bacon or sausage, a handful of figs or grapes, or a bit of cheese.]

Epicuri de grege porci! No progress! Yes, I know all that, and am not saying what should have been, but what was. There was no progress! The contadini on the little farm which I came to possess before I left Tuscany cultivated it precisely after the fashion of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and strenuously resisted any suggestion that it could, should, or might be cultivated in any other way. But my contadino inhabited a large and roomy casa colonica; he and his buxom wife, had six stalwart sons, and was the richer man in consequence of having them. No, in my early Florentine days the cogito, ergo sum could not have been predicated of the Tuscans.

But the condition of things in the other states of the peninsula, in Venice and Lombardy under the Austrians, in Naples under the Bourbon kings, in Romagna under the Pope, and very specially in Modena under its dukes of the House of Este, was much otherwise. In those regions the Italians were "thinking" a great deal, and had been thinking for some time past. And somewhere about 1849, those troublesome members of the body social who are not contented with eating, drinking, and singing—cantankerous reading and writing people living in towns, who wanted most unreasonably to say, as the phrase goes, that "their souls were their own" (as if such fee-simple rights ever fall to the lot of any man!)—began in Tuscany to give signs that they also were "thinking."

I remember well that Albèri, the highly accomplished and learned editor of the Reports of the Venetian Ambassadors, and of the great edition of Galileo's works, was the first man who opened my altogether innocent eyes to the fact, that the revolutionary leaven was working in Tuscany, and that there were social breakers ahead! This must have been as early as 1845, or possibly 1844. Albèri himself was a Throne-and-Altar man, who thought for his part, that the amount of proprietorship over his own soul which the existing régime allowed him was enough for his purposes. But, as he confided to me, a very strong current of opinion was beginning to run the other way in Florence, in Leghorn, in Lucca, and many smaller cities—not in Siena, which always was, and is still, a nest of conservative feeling.

Nevertheless there never was, at least in Florence, the strength and bitterness of revolutionary feeling that existed almost everywhere else throughout Italy. I remember a scene which furnished a very remarkable proof of this, and which was at the same time very curiously and significantly characteristic of the Florentine character, at least as it then existed.

It was during the time of the Austrian occupation of Florence. On the whole the Austrian troops behaved well; and their doings, and the spirit in which the job they had in hand was carried out, were very favourably contrasted with the tyranny, the insults, and the aggressive arrogance, with which the French army of occupation afflicted the Romans. The Austrians accordingly were never hated in Florence with the bitter intensity of hate which the French earned in the Eternal City. Nevertheless, there were now and then occasions when the Florentine populace gratified their love of a holiday and testified to the purity of their Italian patriotism by turning out into the streets and kicking up a row.

It was on an occasion of this sort, that the narrow street called Por' Santa Maria, which runs up from the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza, was thickly crowded with people. A young lieutenant had been sent to that part of the town with a small detachment of cavalry to clear the streets. Judging from the aspect of the people, as his men, coming down the Lung' Arno, turned into the narrow street, he did not half like the job before him. He thought there certainly would be bloodshed. And just as his men were turning the corner and beginning to push their horses into the crowd, one of them slipped sideways on the flagstones, with which, most distressingly to horses not used to them, the streets of Florence are paved, and came down with his rider partly under him.

The officer thought, "Now for trouble! That man will be killed to a certainty!" The crowd—who were filling the air with shouts of "Morte!" "Abbasso l'Austria!" "Morte agli Austriaci!"[1]—crowded round the fallen trooper, while the officer tried to push forward towards the spot. But when he got within earshot, and could see also what was taking place, he saw the people immediately round the fallen man busily disengaging him from his horse! "O poverino! Ti sei fatto male? Orsu! Non sara niente! Su! A cavallo, eh?"[2] And having helped the man to remount, they returned to their amusement of roaring "Morte agli Austriaci!" The young officer perceived that he had a very different sort of populace to deal with from an angry crowd on the other side of the Alps, or indeed on the other side of the Apennines.

[Footnote 1: "Death! Down with Austria! Death to the Austrians!">[