Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Frank Leward: Memorials

Frank to Mr. Saunders

Frank to Mr. Saunders.

Naples, Jan. 1858.

Dear Mr. Saunders I was very glad to get your last letter you dont know how jolly it is to get letters from people in England when youve been living a long time among people who dont speak your language. I thought you and Bampton would have come to Italy in the Autumn I was looking out for you all the time. Not page 274but what Ive got a lot of friends in Italy and I like Italians very much but not these Napolitani they are the lowest scum of the earth no good whatever almost as bad as the people at Alexandria I think they are the worst. Whether these Napolitani are really a different race or Whether it is because of their bad government I dont know but they are low cowardly treacherous and worse even than that. As to their government poor brutes bad as they are its too bad even for them. From the king downwards a bigger lot of nincompoops never breathed. The king though hes only a young man seems worn out and his ministers are a lot of intriguing brutes. If now and then there rises up from the common dung hill any one in whom the old Greek spirit remains at all and tries to liberate them the Government sticks him at once into a beastly fetid dungeon huddled up with a lot of others and lets him die of rot. I was reading Gladstones speech about it the other day given to me by one of the patriotic people here on the quiet and was awfully pleased he had spoken out about it. Id never heard of it before I so seldom read the papers. Its every word true. I wish some one would come and put a stop to the whole business. I suppose in time if they got a chance the people would improve and be able to govern themselves decently. Now everything is done to demoralise them and keep them down.

I landed here when I first came to Italy from Egypt but I didn't stop long it was too hot so I went to the lakes in the North and wandered about Como and the Lago Maggiore all the rest of the summer and autumn page 275I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful. You know them well so I wont try to describe them and you know how stupid I am at describing things. Then I went about the old towns in the North. I think I liked Verona the best till it got too cold and I went to Florence.

I got to know a lot of Italian families in the North from meeting my old Sardinian friends who were in the Crimea they seemed glad to see me and gave me introductions to people in Florence. By Jove how they curse and swear up there at the Austrians. They mean to have a go at them before long I should like to be there when they do. Though the Austrians arent bad sort of fellows and all the officers I met at Milan were thorough gentlemen still what I cant help thinking is what right have they got to be there at all. They arent Italians why cant they keep to their own country. They seem to have enough to do to look after that without mismanaging the people of Lombardy and others. If they go on much longer at it they will have to take the consequences and a people fighting for their own country on their own ground are stronger really although they may seem weaker than foreigners who may seem stronger and are trying to keep the others down.

Im getting to like the Italians more and more. They have been very kind and obliging to me and seem to wish to make one happy. I dont know they should be so jolly to me but even the women are as kind to me as possible. I suppose it is because I was with their friends in the Crimea.

page 276

I did like Florence I got tremendously fond of going about seeing the pictures especially in the Ufizzi gallery. I didnt care so much about the Pitti ugly grim heavy stone place I didnt think the pictures there so good. But I dont know much about them and never saw any before that I know of. I wish you and Bampton had been there to show me what was good. On jolly warm spring days I used to loaf about the Piazza Signoria under Orcagna's alcove place where the statues are it used to be awfully jolly in the morning reading there. I think that statue of Perseus with the Gorgons head by Benvenuto Cellini is the most graceful thing I ever saw. I read a lot of your old favourites I had no idea they were so jolly. I got to like Tasso most of all but Petrarch is awfully beautiful sometimes and I used to roar sometimes over Boccacio though its beastly broad I got to like them much more than I expected. I can read and talk Italian now almost like English. I dont quite understand Dante I suppose hes above me. If you would only come and explain it it would be all right. I dont think most of the Italians themselves know much about him.

We used to have long walks generally on Sunday I and one or two Italian officers to Fiesole and other places and good lunches but very frugal with a flask of splendid Monte Pulciano or Chianti on the table for nothing. These officers are as different as possible to the English and French awfully simple in their ways of living. After dinner sometimes one would buy a soldo or two worth of hot chestnuts and we used to go into a page 277wine place and have some splendid wine for a lira or so and eat the chestnuts awfully good fun we had and we could go to the opera for ninepence and hear very good music. Then I went to Pistoia for a little time they say they speak nearly the same language there as Dante wrote. I read Dante with a man they call a professor of Dante but I thought he was rather a humbug. Now Ive come here for the winter and Im going on to Sicily. The people here seem worse off than ever. There are a few like the people in the north who are determined to get rid of this degraded government but not many.

I must send this off now if they open it they wont let it go and they often do. Next time I will tell you about Pompeii and other places here. Yours very affectionately

F. Leward.