Genova,
il 4 Giugno <1> 1823
Eccomi giunto heri in questa antica e nobile città. <2> I spent two or three days at Lucca Baths very pleasantly with Fazakerley <3> & his wife, who had been there only a week, & at present had the place almost entirely to themselves. The weather was cool, & the environs were very pleasant, much more so than I thought them in October. We made an almost Alpine expedition to Prato Fiorito, a lofty meadow 7 or 8 miles off which we found as yet in early spring, covered with narcissus – At Lojano, a village near the Baths, there is a very good house which a Mr & Mrs Ellis had taken, but I could not make out what Ellis’s they were. The situation is airy, being on the top of a hill so high that when once they are got to the top I fancy they will stay there till their final departure. It took us an hour I daresay steep climbing in chesnut woods to get there – so that if Mrs Ellis should give a rout or assembly, it would be thinly attended. Massa is a pretty place; La Spezia did not come up to my expectation; the weather was partly in fault, that hid the fine shapes of the Carrara Apennines. From Spezia to Borghetto is a stage inland of 3 hours & a half, the latter half of it you have the choice of the public road or the bed of a torrent, and you prefer the latter. Quitting Borghetto the road rises high among wild mountains, in which you wander a long time, & then come down upon the sea & the pretty town of Sestri. The change is delightful – You are in the neighbourhood of Genoa as every villa and gaily painted steeple proclaims that succeed each other with hardly any interruption for the remaining 30 miles; at first on leaving Sestri you pass by the water’s edge to Chiavari a gay & cheerful town where I arrived in time to see una bellissima funzione <4> – Then begins the road of the Corniche which is excellent, among olives vines & figs innumerable, & steeples above below and all about – You descend to the sea again at Rapallo & then over a considerable hill, to cut off the promontory of Porto Fino. As we drew near the summit I observed that the road went through a tunnel or gallery, & was in great expectation of what I was to see, & I was not disappointed for on reaching it Genoa burst on my view with its thousands of white houses & villas – Three or four promontories formed the foreground & in the distance the mountains of Savona & Oneglia, mixed with clouds.
I am curious to learn your misadventures on Vesuvius – Your letter was unluckily too late for me at Florence, but I shall send for it.
Your Affte Son
W.H.F. Talbot
How comes digiunare to mean the opposite of déjeuner? <5>
à Miladi
Miladi Feilding
Poste Restante
Roma
with Messrs Freeborne Smiths Compts <6>
Notes:
1. June.
2. Here I am, [having] arrived yesterday at this ancient and noble city.
3. John Nicholas Fazakerley (1787–1852), MP; and his wife, Hon. Elinor Fazakerley, née Montague (d. 1847).
4. A most beautiful ceremony.
5. ‘Digiunare’ in Italian is ‘to fast’ and ‘déjeuner’, in French, is ‘to dine’. WHFT probably thinks that ‘déjeuner’ and ‘digiunare’ should have the same meaning because he assumes that the ‘dé’ part and the ‘di’ are both forms of the same privative prefix. However, in ‘digiunare’, one does not deal with a privative but with a word directly descended from the Latin for ‘to fast’, whereas ‘déjeuner’ as he rightly points out, means to break the fast. There is another Italian word with the same meaning (‘desinare’) which would be the equivalent of ‘déjeuner’ and also means to break the fast or to eat.
6. Written on back fold in another hand.