Genoa
25 Octr 1827
Dear Henry
I find Genoa so delightful I should certainly stop here instead of going to Florence if I was perfectly at liberty it is perfect summer but we have had some tremendous thunderstorms – I like Viviani <1> very much he seems to have all sorts of information on history, pictures, & languages as well as botany – I have taken some long walks with him to see gardens & frescoes I never should have found out. In one garden which I think equal to any at Naples at Villa Durazzo I found growing in the gravel, the true Colchicum montanum of which I enclose you a specimen – quite different from mine which I shall call Apenninm <sic> if it does not turn out to be a certain C. alpinum of Allioni <2>. C. montanum has leaves as you see the only other leafy species is one in Sicily of a different aspect to judge from Vs dried specimen – & the curious one I should call mesenderioides or bulbocodioides which I remember in the garden at Oxford & which came from Wilts with green flowers & flowering in Spring look for it at Lacock There is a vernum too somewhere – Viviani knows the green one too – It is a nice little comprehensive genus & with its cousins M. & B. & A. lutea would make a pretty flowerbed – V. has promised me some corsican <sic> plants – he suffers so from his arm I do not wonder he is incapable of doing much.
Pray tell me how Lacock goes on – When the garden is in order & the walls cleared of ancestors you should come to Italy for plants & pictures to stock them I met Mr Irvine at Milan – he told me or rather agreed with me that two most useful sorts of collections were wanting in England & might be made at no great expense & within small compass as to size & numbers. One is that of oil sketches & studies if not of every master of note – at least of every school – there are a set of very good ones of Coreggio <3> selling at Casa Aldrovandi in Bologna – but rather not buying for the prices are enormous, but so far good that they are of his school & very well done – The other sort of collection is that of Gothic & Greek paintings beginning as high up as you can get them & ending with Giotto, Perugino, Francia <4>, Giambellino <5>, &c – Two such collections with one specimen of each school in its maturity would be a gallery for a king – It would be the skeleton of a collection of any size. There is a dealer here del Vecchio who lives in one of the prettiest houses in Genoa once the house of the famous Salicetti <6> who has some very good things for £1000 each –
The Govt is making roads in Sardinia <7> at great expence I mean some day to go from Piombino when the Maritima road is finished all the way to the Pyrenees or Barcellona if the coastroad goes so far. A new Narthecium (nanum) has been found in Corsica – a road is to be made from Tenda to Vintimiglia <sic> – another from Oneglia to Ceva – as a substitute for one breakneck road from Savona – The St Gothard which is to be the Commercial waggon road will be open in 2 years – & not the least difficult job, wide carriageable streets are to be made thro Genoa in various directions –
Yr Aff
W F S
V. has given me a Scilla fastigiata which seems new – where did you find Charissa – he does not seem to know it –Those who want to buy high priced & high polished pictures may go to Marchese Pasqua a Sard – who will give you a dance of muses by Raph– (the famous one at Florence is only a Julio R. <8>) & other things in proportion –
There is a very nice new promenade making here à la Cassola & a new theatre – did you ever remark the Milanese say duve & avthenticato <9> – which is very Greek – they even write bavule, pavura <10>, I had long suspected that to have been the old way from the peculiar pronunciation – Thus Davuria Dauuria Dauria Dahuria and David Davoud Daoud Pasha of Bagdad <sic> Viviani says there is a good deal of Greek in it – I saw in a posthouse in Champagne a caricature which would do for your French scrap book – “Credit est mort!” <11> I think my Colchicum is C. alpinum & yours from Switzd the same probably from the Piedmontese side it is one of Allioni’s species – I hope you will visit Abbotsbury <12> this Autumn. I found Bromus distachyus, Blitum prostratum – &c
Inghilterra
H. Talbot Esqr
31 Sackville Street
London
Lacock Abbey <13>
Chippenham
Wilts
Notes:
1. Domenico Viviani (1772–1840), botanist.
2. Carlo Allioni (1725–1804), botanist.
3. Misspelling for Antonio Allegri (Correggio) (1494–1534).
4. Giotto (1266?–1337); Perugino ( ca.1450–1523), Italian painter; Francesco Raibilini ( ca.1450–1517), known as Francia, Bolognese painter.
5. Giambellino (1426?–1516).
6. Perhaps Antoine Christophe Saliceti (1757–1809).
7. The then Kingdom of Sardinia included Savoy, that is, the southeasternmost part of France.
8. Giulio Romano ( ca.1492–1546), Roman painter, pupil of Raphael.
9. ‘Duve’ is probably a regional spelling or pronunciation of ‘dove’, that is, ‘where’, and similarly ‘avthenthicato’ is probably a regional spelling of ‘autenticato’, in Greek ‘αυθεντικο’.
10. ‘Bavule’ is a regional pronunciation of the Italian ‘baule’, that is, ‘chest’ or ‘trunk’, and ‘pavura’ is a regional pronunciation of ‘paura’, meaning ‘fear’.
11. ‘Credit is dead.’
12. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
13. Readdressed in another hand.