Copy 1, Volume 1

Familiar letters from Italy, to a friend in England / By Peter Beckford.

  • Peter Beckford
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Familiar letters from Italy, to a friend in England / By Peter Beckford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    446/472 (page 430)
    tesque appearance to the scene not easy to be - imagined. These gentlemen, to give them their due, seemed to feel all the awkwardness of a situation rendered indispensable, and were more assiduous in supplying the wants of the ladies near them, than their own. I am told, it is otherwise in a-country that shall be nameless ;— there, without any’ indispensable necessity, the gentlemen take the best places at supper, and will sit contentedly on their broad’ bottoms, while ladies, fainting with heat, and sinking with fatigue, cannot find a vacant place, or a chair to sit down upon :—if this be true, it is not only uncivil and ill-bred, but savage in the extreme; nor is it to be met with in any other civilized country in Europe. But to return to Lucca. Each night forty Anziani are chosen; but their turns of service are determined afterwards by lot: nor does any one of them know who is to be his successor til] he is chosen. A ridiculous circumstance happened at the last election. An English gentleman, with whom I was in com- pany, newly arrived from India, fell by accident into the procession of the electors, without know- ing what they were going about; and seeing those who were before him put their hands’ into a box, he fancied it was the poor-box, and, had he not been prevented, would have put in a paul. This mistake occasioned some confusion. Luckily