Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Samuel Rogers to Richard Sharp, 23 October 1814
‘Venice: October 23, 1814.
‘My dear Friend,—To-day, in my gondola, I vowed I
would write to you to-night, if it was only to tell you to write to me at Rome,
where I hope soon to be. You must have received my letter from Geneva long ago.
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| 170 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES | |
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An excursion to Chamouni, and another to the Lake of
Lucerne, two delicious days passed in the Isle of St. Pierre, and two more
under the rocks of Meillerie, I should like much to talk to you about, but I
don’t know where to begin. Everywhere in Switzerland, the Alps, all snow,
bounded the horizon. They shone in the sun and seemed impassable; nor was their
extent less striking than their height. Indeed, everything perhaps has fallen a
little short of my expectations but the Alps alone. They have exceeded them;
and whenever they appear they affect me as much as if I was seeing them for the
first time—I may almost say, as if I had never heard of them. But the
passage over them—of that I don’t know what to say. The road
itself, smooth as that in Hyde Park, is an object of wonder, winding like a
serpent, but in very long lines; and by bridges thrown over precipices and
passages cut through the rock, gradually approaching the summit. When you
looked back, you saw it running far below you, and in many directions, through
those bleak and dreary tracts, like the great wall in Tartary. At last you
leave the pine forests beneath you, and the water that falls by your
carriage-window and is conveyed in channels under the road freezes into icicles
as it falls there. We were ascending for eight hours, drawn by five horses, but
the descent into Italy I can do still less justice to. We instantly entered a
deep valley, and then opened, or rather shut, upon us one of the most
extraordinary scenes in Nature. For twenty miles we went rapidly down through a
pass so narrow as to admit only the road and the torrent that fell by our side.
Often the road was hewn out of ![]()
| THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF VENICE | 171 |
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the mountain, and three times it passed
through it, leaving the torrent to work its way by
itself; the passage, or gallery as I believe it is termed by the French
engineers, being so long as to require large openings for light. The road was
so gradual that our wheel was never locked, the horses were almost always in a
gallop, nor turned aside for the mules we met.
‘We left Savoy at seven in the morning, and slept in
Italy, at Domo d’Ossola, that night. The Lago Maggiore, Milan, the Lago
di Garda, Verona, Padua,—what shall I mention next? As for Venice—I
seem to wander about in a dream. Am I in St. Mark’s Place? I say to
myself. Am I on the Rialto? Do I see the Adriatic?—Nor can I tell you
what I felt when the postilion, turning gaily round and pointing with his whip,
cried out, “Venezia!” And there it was sure enough, with its long
line of domes and turrets, white as marble, and glittering in the sun. If
Venice is Venice no longer, as everybody tells me, one can, however, see what
was never seen before, at least in the way one would like.
‘This is the Hall of the Senate—this the chamber
of the Council of Ten—into that closet (and it was black as black wood
could make it) the state prisoner was brought to receive the sentence from the
pozzi or the piombi, after which he was led down that narrow, winding staircase
(and I shuddered when I attempted to look down it, for it seemed like a well)
and across the Ponte dei Sospiri to be strangled in the first dungeon on the
left.
‘All this and more I heard with believing ears, such as
I wished for at Verona when they showed us Juliet’s coffin in a convent garden.
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ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
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‘I think I have made out the best tour in the world for
you, I wish I may say for us. At all events, I hope you
will not start before my return, that I may at least have a chance. I can save
many a weary mile and much perplexity which I have experienced.
‘Mackintosh left
us at Zug, to meet his daughter at Basle; we met him again near Sion in the
Haut Valais, on his return to Italy. I hope his health is improved, but it
suffers greatly in a city like Paris, and I fear he will leave all he has
gained, in the evening conversazioni at Talleyrand’s.
‘The Hollands we
have met with at Paris, at Geneva, and at Milan. They are now, I believe, at
Florence. Ward I met in the street at Milan.
He is now, I fancy, on the road to Venice with Poodle Byng. The Princess of
Wales came up on foot to our chaise window when we were changing
horses within a few miles of Milan. She afterwards invited my sister and myself to a party there, which we
could not avail ourselves of, and I flatter myself we shall be good friends
when we meet at Florence.
‘What has become of Boddington? We have followed here and there in his track, but
never could overtake him. Has he come into Italy? I hope to meet with him in
Tuscany—I say, in Tuscany!
‘Oh, if you knew what it was to look upon a lake which
Virgil has mentioned, and Catullus has sailed upon, to see a house in which
Petrarch has lived, and to stand
upon Titian’s grave as I have done,
you would instantly pack up and join me.
‘But to talk seriously, is Fredley yours? I hope it is,
and that you by this time possess a fragment of Italian ![]()
| CORRESPONDENCE WITH RICHARD SHARP | 173 |
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landscape under English laws and
with English security. Pray write and tell me all; and believe me to be, with
great sincerity,
‘Ever yours,
‘Remember me kindly to Maltby. I read his name in the book at Schwyz. Does he
remember the Lake as seen from the landing-place, or, rather, from the inn
door at Brunnen? I shall never forget it.
‘What a strange thing is fashion! Almost every man
in Venice but myself wears boots. The men who wait upon us at dinner are
like so many jockeys at Newmarket. How inhuman to rob them of the only four
horses they had!’
Samuel Boddington (1766-1843)
West India merchant in partnership with Richard “Conversation” Sharp; he was a Whig MP
for Tralee (1807). Samuel Rogers and Sydney Smith was a friend.
Frederick Gerald Byng [Poodle] (1784-1871)
Son of John Byng, fifth viscount Torrington; he was a dandy acquaintance of the Prince
Regent and a clerk at the Foreign Office.
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
Catullus (84 BC c.-54 BC)
Roman lyric poet who addressed erotic verses to a woman he calls Lesbia.
Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840)
Whig politician and literary patron; Holland House was for many years the meeting place
for reform-minded politicians and writers. He also published translations from the Spanish
and Italian;
Memoirs of the Whig Party was published in 1852.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
William Maltby (1764-1854)
A schoolmate and life-long friend of Samuel Rogers; he was a London solicitor and a
member of the King of Clubs. In 1809 he succeeded Richard Porson as principal librarian of
the London Institution.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
Titian (1487 c.-1576)
Venetian painter celebrated for his portraits.
Virgil (70 BC-19 BC)
Roman epic poet; author of
Eclogues,
Georgics, and the
Aenead.
John William Ward, earl of Dudley (1781-1833)
The son of William Ward, third Viscount Dudley (d. 1823); educated at Edinburgh and
Oxford, he was an English MP, sometimes a Foxite Whig and sometimes Canningite Tory, who
suffered from insanity in his latter years.
