Malmesbury, Harriet Maria (Amyand), Lady
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- Malmesbury, Harriet Maria (Amyand), Lady
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(1761 - 1830), yr. dau. of Sir George Amyand, 1st Bt.; m. 1777 James Harris (later B. Malmesbury).
1791 - 2 [Coblentz, Oct. 1791] Vicenza, Padua, Venice, Loreto, Rome, Naples (10 Dec. 1791 - 3 Mar. 1792), Rome (by 1 Apr.), Florence (23 - 30 Apr.), Milan (11 May), Turin [England Aug.]
Lady Malmesbury evidently persuaded her husband, the distinguished diplomat, to visit Italy in 1791 - 2. 'I think it very ingenious of me to bring him to a country which furnishes nothing but the things he detests - antiquities, cameos, and intaglios', she wrote to her sister, Lady Elliot, in one of a series of spirited letters from Italy.1 In October 1791 Lord Malmesbury joined her in Coblenz, with George Ellis, the man of letters who had once acted as Malmesbury's secretary in The Hague. They proposed travelling directly to Naples. At Vicenza 'Lord Malmesbury roars at the stone floors, Mr Ellis sighs and laments over England all day long', while Lady Malmesbury 'rushed out to see a famous theatre by Palladio, and did not understand it'. They passed through Padua and went by water to Venice, a seven-hour journey. They lingered in Venice, not to see the 'magnificent Titians and Tintorets' but because the washerwomen would not send home their linen. Lord Malmesbury and Mr Ellis were bored to death, but Lady Malmesbury enjoyed the Italian theatre and suggested that 'a gondola is exactly like an earwig on its back'. They eventually went on through Loreto and Terni to Rome.
The first sight of St Peter's struck them as not so fine as St Paul's from the Dover road but, from closer to, Lady Malmesbury proclaimed it 'the work of giants, and giants of exquisite taste'. Ellis meanwhile continued to lament and Lady Malmesbury didn't think her party 'very gay'. They reached Naples early in December. The weather was awful and the British colony was not 'brilliant', but there was Prince Augustus living 'on potatoes and water', the Lords Bruce and Dalkeith, and the Lords Plymouth and Malden with their ladies. They met Emma Hamilton (whose Attitudes Lady Malmesbury admired) and the King and Queen of Naples. In February the sun came out and they explored the coast; 'I long to have a thousand views', wrote Lady Malmesbury, 'but drawings are so dear', artists 'make no scruple in asking you twenty-five or thirty guineas for a landscape in water-colours. Everything here in the way of art is much dearer than in England, as there are few very good artists'. By 1 April they had returned to Rome.
She went to see Raphael's Transfiguration in S.Pietro in Montorio and realised 'how very little notion of the original is given you by any copies'. She was 'going to school' (i.e. undertaking a course of antiquities) with Lady Carnegie, and the Princess de Carignan showed her 'all the ceremonies', which in general she thought 'very little worth seeing', although the Pope was 'a remarkable handsome old man'. She bought 'trifling presents' and was surprised that Lord Malmesbury 'has not literally laid out a single guinea'. She came to consider the Romans far superior to the Neapolitans 'and civil beyond measure to all classes of foreigners'.
By the end of April they were in Florence. The Venus de Medici was exactly Lady Malmesbury's height - 'so never call me short again, as she is the model of perfection'. They again spent time with the Princess de Carignan, her uncle Prince Camille de Rohan and Madame Vig?e Lebrun. Lord Malmesbury was called back home from Florence, and was in England on 2 June.2 Lady Webster was surprised to meet Lady Malmesbury with Ellis in Turin in May.3 She completed her tour with Sir David and Lady Carnegie; they were in Milan on 11 May and returned to England in August 1792.
In Naples Lady Malmesbury had written 'I think my journey to Italy has given me a very perfect idea of the excess to which dirt, disease, and deformity may reach, without causing death, or even disgust, to some millions of human creatures'. A little later she concluded that Rome and Florence 'were, in fact, all Italy - and the only places I wish to stay at'.
1. Elliot Letters, 1:394 - 413. 2. Ibid., 412n, and Malmesbury Diary, 2:450. 3. Holland Jnl., 1:7.