1717-1797

To RICHARD WEST

Floods in the Arno

From Florence, Nov. 1740.

Child, I am going to let you see your shocking proceedings with us.  On my conscience, I believe ’tis three months since you wrote to either Gray or me.  If you had been ill, Ashton would have said so; and if you had been dead, the gazettes would have said it.  If you had been angry,—­but that’s impossible; how can one quarrel with folks three thousand miles off?  We are neither divines nor commentators, and consequently have not hated you on paper.  ’Tis to show that my charity for you cannot be interrupted at this distance that I write to you, though I have nothing to say, for ’tis a bad time for small news; and when emperors and czarinas are dying all up and down Europe, one can’t pretend to tell you of anything that happens within our sphere.  Not but that we have our accidents too.  If you have had a great wind in England, we have had a great water at Florence.  We have been trying to set out every day, and pop upon you[1] ...  It is fortunate that we stayed, for I don’t know what had become of us!  Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down from the mountains such a flood that it floated the whole city.  The jewellers on the Old Bridge removed their commodities, and in two hours after the bridge was cracked.  The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground.  We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane.  There was a cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it drowned:  but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat hay-cock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat.  The torrent is considerably abated; but we expect terrible news from the country, especially from Pisa, which stands so much lower, and nearer the sea.  There is a stone here, which, when the water overflows, Pisa is entirely flooded.  The water rose two ells yesterday above that stone.  Judge!

For this last month we have passed our time but dully, all diversions silenced on the Emperor’s death, and everybody out of town.  I have seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos.  I have literally seen so much of love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I shall never love either again so long as I live.  Then I am got into a horrid lazy way of a morning.  I don’t believe I should know seven o’clock in the morning again if I was to see it.  But I am returning to England, and shall grow very solemn and wise!  Are you wise?  Dear West, have pity on one who has done nothing of gravity for these two years, and do laugh sometimes.  We do nothing else, and have contracted such formidable ideas of the good people of England that we are already nourishing great black eyebrows and great black beards, and teasing our countenances into wrinkles.