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                      A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

[Illustration: VITTORIA COLONNA.]

_From an Original Painting in the Colonna Gallery at Rome_




                               A DECADE

                                  OF

                            ITALIAN WOMEN.

                                  BY

                         T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE,

           AUTHOR OF "THE GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' MEDICI."

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:
                  CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
                                 1859.

               [_The right of Translation is reserved._]




                                LONDON:
               RADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




PREFACE.


The degree in which any social system has succeeded in ascertaining
woman's proper position, and in putting her into it, will be a very
accurate test of the progress it has made in civilisation. And the
very general and growing conviction, that our own social arrangements,
as they exist at present, have not attained any satisfactory measure
of success in this respect, would seem, therefore, to indicate,
that England in her nineteenth century has not yet reached years of
discretion after all.

But conscious deficiency is with nations at least, if not always with
individuals, the sure precursor of improvement. The path before us
towards the ideal in this matter is a very long one; extends, indeed,
further than eye can see. What path of progress does not? And our
advance upon it will still be a sure concomitant and proof of our
advance in all civilisation. But the question of more immediate moment
is, admitting that we are moving in this respect, are we moving in the
right direction? We have been _moving_ for a long time back. Have we
missed the right road? Have we unfortunately retrograded instead of
progressing?

There are persons who think so. And there are not wanting, in the
great storehouse of history, certain periods, certain individuals,
certain manifestations of social life, to which such persons point as
countenancing the notion, that better things have been, as regards
woman's position and possibilities, than are now. There are, painted
on the slides of Mnemosyne's magic lanthorn, certain brilliant and
captivating figures, which are apt to lead those who are disgusted with
the smoke and reek of the Phœnix-burning going on around them, to
suppose that the social conditions which produced such, must have been
less far from the true path than our present selves. Nay, more. There
have been constellations of such stars, quite sufficiently numerous to
justify the conclusion, that the circumstances of the time at which
they appeared were in their nature calculated to produce them.

Of such times, the most striking in this respect, as in so many others,
is that fascinating dawn time of modern life, that ever wonderful
"rénaissance" season, when a fresh sap seemed to rush through the
tissues of the European social systems, as they passed from their long
winter into spring. And in the old motherland of European civilisation,
where the new life was first and most vehemently felt,—in Italy,
the most remarkable constellations of these attractive figures were
produced.

The women of Italy, at that period remarkable in different walks, and
rich in various high gifts, form in truth a very notable phenomenon;
and one sufficiently prevalent to justify the belief, that the general
circumstances of that society favoured the production of such. But
the question remains, whether these brilliant types of womanhood,
attractive as they are as subjects of study, curiously illustrative as
they are of the social history of the times in which they lived, are
on the whole such as should lead us to conclude, that the true path of
progress would be found to lead towards social conditions that should
be likely to reproduce them?

Supposing it to be asserted, that they were not so necessarily
connected in the relationship of cause and effect with the whole social
condition of the times in which they lived, as that any attempt to
resuscitate such types need involve a reproduction of their social
environment; even then the question would remain, whether, if it were
really possible to take them as single figures out of the landscape
in which they properly stand, they would be such as we should find it
desirable to adopt as models of womanhood? Are these such as are wanted
to be put in the van of our march—in the first ranks of nineteenth
century civilisation? Not whether they are good to put in niches to be
admired and cited for this or that virtue or capacity; nor even whether
they might be deemed desirable captains in a woman's march towards
higher destinies and better conditioned civilisation, if, indeed, such
a progress were in any sane manner conceivable; but whether such women
would work harmoniously and efficiently with all the other forces
at our command for the advancement of a civilisation, of which the
absolute _sine quâ non_ must be the increased solidarity, co-operation,
and mutual influence of both the sexes?

It may be guessed, perhaps, from the tone of the above sentences,
that the writer is not one of those who think that the past can in
this matter be made useful to us, as affording ready-made models for
imitation. But he has no intention of dogmatising, or even indulging
in speculations on "the woman's question." On the contrary, in
endeavouring to set before the reader his little cabinet of types of
womanhood, he has abstained from all attempt at pointing any moral
of the sort. The wish to do so is too dangerously apt to lead one to
assimilate one's portrait less carefully to the original than to a
pattern figure conceived for the purpose of illustrating a theory.
Whatever conclusions on the subject of woman's destiny, proper
position, and means of development are to be drawn, therefore, from the
consideration of the very varied and certainly remarkable types set
before him, the reader must draw for himself. It has been the writer's
object to show his portraits, more or less fully delineated according
to their interest, and in some measure according to the abundance or
the reverse of available material, in their proper setting of social
environment. They have been selected, not so much with any intention of
bringing together the best, greatest, or most admirable, nor even the
most remarkable women Italy has produced, as with a view of securing
the greatest amount of variety, in point of social position and
character. Each figure of the small gallery will, it is hoped, be found
to illustrate a distinct phase of Italian social life and civilisation.

The canonised Saint, that most extraordinary product of the "ages of
faith," highly interesting as a social, and perhaps more so still as
a psychological phenomenon;—the feudal Châtelaine, one of the most
remarkable results of the feudal system, and affording a suggestive
study of woman in man's place;—the high-born and highly-educated
Princess of a somewhat less rude day, whose inmost spiritual nature was
so profoundly and injuriously modified by her social position;—the
brilliant literary denizen of "La Bohème;"—the equally brilliant
but large-hearted and high-minded daughter of the people, whose
literary intimacies were made compatible with the strictest feminine
propriety, and whom no princely connections, lay and ecclesiastical,
prevented from daring to think and to speak her thought, and to meet
with brave heart the consequences of so doing;—the popular actress,
again a daughter of the people, and again in that, as is said,
perilous walk in life, a model of correct conduct in the midst of
loose-lived princesses;—the nobly-born adventuress, every step in
whose extraordinary _excelsior_ progress was an advance in degradation
and infamy, and whose history, in showing us court life behind the
scenes, brings us among the worst company of any that the reader's
varied journey will call upon him to fall in with;—the equally
nobly-born, and almost equally worthless woman, who shows us that
wonderful and instructive phenomenon, the Queen of a papal court;—the
humbly born artist, admirable for her successful combination in perfect
compatibility of all the duties of the home and the studio;—and
lastly, the poor representative of the effeteness of that social system
which had produced the foregoing types, the net result, as may be said,
of the national passage through the various phases illustrated by
them:—all these are curiously distinct manifestations of womanhood,
and if any measure of success has been attained in the endeavour to
represent them duly surrounded by the social environment which produced
them, while they helped to fashion it, some contribution will have been
made to a right understanding of woman's nature, and of the true road
towards her more completely satisfactory social development.




CONTENTS.




  ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
  Born, 1347. Died, 1380.

  CHAPTER I.
                                                                PAGE

  Her Birth-place                                                  1

  CHAPTER II.

  The Saint's Biographer                                           9

  CHAPTER III.

  The Facts of the Case                                           18

  CHAPTER IV.

 