His Remarks Upon The Famous Pieta Of Michael Angelo Are Frank
To The Point Of Brutality.
The right of sanctuary and its
"infamous prerogative," unheard of in England since the days of
Henry VII., were still capable of affording a lesson to the Scot
abroad.
"I saw a fellow who had three days before murdered his
wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great
composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence."
Smollett, it is clear, for all his philosophy, was no degenerate
representative of the blind, unreasoning seventeenth-century
detestation of "Popery and wooden shoes."
Smollett is one of the first to describe a "conversazione," and
in illustration of the decadence of Italian manners, it is
natural that he should have a good deal to tell us about the
Cicisbeatura. His account of the cicisbeo and his duties, whether
in Nice, Florence, or Rome, is certainly one of the most
interesting that we have. Before Smollett and his almost
contemporary travel correspondent, Samuel Sharp, it would
probably be hard to find any mention of the cicisbeo in England,
though the word was consecrated by Sheridan a few years later.
Most of the "classic" accounts of the usage such as those by Mme.
de Stael, Stendhal, Parini, Byron and his biographers date from
very much later, when the institution was long past its prime if
not actually moribund. Now Smollett saw it at the very height of
its perfection and at a time when our decorous protestant
curiosity on such themes was as lively as Lady Mary Montagu had
found it in the case of fair Circassians and Turkish harems just
thirty years previously. [A cicisbeo was a dangler. Hence the
word came to be applied punningly to the bow depending from a
clouded cane or ornamental crook. In sixteenth-century Spain,
home of the sedan and the caballero galante, the original term
was bracciere. In Venice the form was cavaliere servente. For a
good note on the subject, see Sismondi's Italian Republics, ed.
William Boulting, 1907, p. 793.] Like so much in the shapes and
customs of Italy the cicisbeatura was in its origin partly Gothic
and partly Oriental. It combined the chivalry of northern
friendship with the refined passion of the South for the
seclusion of women. As an experiment in protest against the
insipidity which is too often an accompaniment of conjugal
intercourse the institution might well seem to deserve a more
tolerant and impartial investigation than it has yet received at
the hands of our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could
hardly be expected to outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth
century. The north wind blew and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was a
thing of the past.
Freed from the necessity of a systematic delineation Smollett
rambles about Nice, its length and breadth, with a stone in his
pouch, and wherever a cockshy is available he takes full
advantage of it. He describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police
arrangements of the place which he finds in the main highly
efficient, and the cruel punishment of the strappado.
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