Chapter LXXV: Letter 345: To Mr. Hoppner

"October 29. 1819.

"The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian
manufacture,--you may judge. I only changed horses there since I
wrote to you, after my visit in June last. '_Convent_' and '_carry
off_', quotha! and '_girl_.' I should like to know _who_ has been
carried off, except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished
myself than anybody since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest and
its causes, one is as true as the other, and I can account for the
invention of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the tale of
the F * * and of Me. Guiccioli, and half a dozen more; but it is
useless to unravel the web, when one has only to brush it away. I
shall settle with Master E. who looks very blue at your
_in-decision_, and swears that he is the best arithmetician in
Europe; and so I think also, for he makes out two and two to be
five.

"You may see me next week. I have a horse or two more (five in
all), and I shall repossess myself of Lido, and I will rise
earlier, and we will go and shake our livers over the beach, as
heretofore, if you like--and we will make the Adriatic roar again
with our hatred of that now empty oyster-shell, without its pearl,
the city of Venice.

"Murray sent me a letter yesterday: the impostors have published
_two_ new _third_ Cantos of _Don Juan_;--the devil take the
impudence of some blackguard bookseller or other _therefor_!
Perhaps I did not make myself understood; he told me the sale had
been great, 1200 out of 1500 quarto, I believe (which is nothing
after selling 13,000 of the Corsair in one day); but that the 'best
judges,' &c. had said it was very fine, and clever, and
particularly good English, and poetry, and all those consolatory
things, which are not, however, worth a single copy to a
bookseller: and as to the author, of course I am in a d----ned
passion at the bad taste of the times, and swear there is nothing
like posterity, who, of course, must know more of the matter than
their grandfathers. There has been an eleventh commandment to the
women not to read it, and, what is still more extraordinary, they
seem not to have broken it. But that can be of little import to
them, poor things, for the reading or non-reading a book will never
* * * *.

"Count G. comes to Venice next week, and I am requested to consign
his wife to him, which shall be done. What you say of the long
evenings at the Mira, or Venice, reminds me of what Curran said to
Moore:--'So I hear you have married a pretty woman, and a very good
creature, too--an excellent creature. Pray--um! _how do you pass
your evenings?_' It is a devil of a question that, and perhaps as
easy to answer with a wife as with a mistress.

"If you go to Milan, pray leave at least a _Vice-Consul_--the only
vice that will ever be wanting in Venice. D'Orville is a good
fellow. But you shall go to England in the spring with me, and
plant Mrs. Hoppner at Berne with her relations for a few months. I
wish you had been here (at Venice, I mean, not the Mira) when Moore
was here--we were very merry and tipsy. He _hated_ Venice, by the
way, and swore it was a sad place.[59]

"So Madame Albrizzi's death is in danger--poor woman! Moore told me
that at Geneva they had made a devil of a story of the
Fornaretta:--'Young lady seduced!--subsequent abandonment!--leap
into the Grand Canal!'--and her being in the 'hospital of _fous_ in
consequence!' I should like to know who was nearest being made
'_fou_,' and be d----d to them I Don't you think me in the
interesting character of a very ill used gentleman? I hope your
little boy is well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate
blossom. Yours," &c.

[Footnote 59: I beg to say that this report of my opinion of Venice is coloured somewhat too deeply by the feelings of the reporter.]

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