Miller, Mrs Anne
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Miller, Mrs Anne
- Full Text of Entry
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(1741 - 81), dau. and h. of Edward Riggs, gd.-dau. and h. of Edward Riggs, commissioner of revenue in Ireland; m. 1765 John Miller.
1770 - 1 Mont Cenis (2 Oct. 1770), Turin (3 - 25 Oct.), Genoa ( - 14 Nov.), Piacenza, Parma, Modena (25 Nov.), Bologna (27 Nov. - 15 Dec.), Florence (18 - 29 Dec.), Siena (30 Dec. 1770), Radicofani, Rome (2 Jan. 1771), Naples (by 8 Jan. - Mar.), Rome (20 Mar. - 16 May), Loreto, Bologna (20 - 29 May), Venice (31 May - 17 Jun.), Padua (18 Jun.), Vicenza (19 Jun.), Verona (20 Jun.), Milan, Turin (29 Jun.)
Mr and Mrs Miller travelled in Italy in 1770 - 1, and Mrs Miller described their journey in a series of letters addressed to her mother, Mrs Riggs, who was looking after their children in France. Mrs Miller published her letters in 1776 (Miller, Letters) and, although Mrs Delany wrote they were 'very conceited, they say, and not worth buying', they convey the character of an indefatigable, slightly absurd, but tolerant tourist. She was among the earliest British travellers to display any sort of sympathy for the Italian lower classes, though such judgment tends to be overlooked among her idiosyncracies. At Pompeii she climbs up a ladder to peer into a newly-excavated villa, but falls head first through the wall, and at Rome she marches round wearing a home-made pasteboard hat to protect her from the sun. She records details of dress and decoration and minutely describes the meals they were given at inns along the way. There are many asterisks in her printed text, concealing people's names and, for example, the identity of the pictures her husband bought in Parma. Foreign quotations are frequent, nearly always, as Horace Walpole observed, misspelt.
In Bologna the Contessa Orsi presented them with a pheasant with a bouquet of carnations tied to its leg with rose-coloured ribbon, and Madama Aldrovandi sent her a curled and beribboned lapdog 'upon a magnificent velvet cushion, trimmed with gold fringe', which Mrs Miller declined so as not to disturb her own dog. The Millers' introductions included one to the Cardinal Legate, who caused a great stir at their inn when he arrived to call on them with 'his little body of 30 light horse'. They passed a night in a vast, disused hunting lodge at Radicofani, the walls green with damp, the huge table 'in a state of progression towards petrification', the sheets wet and prickly, and the blanket so dirty that 'I shall', Mrs Miller wrote, 'by means of an enormous pair of tongs, endeavour to drag it into as corner of the room, as far as possible from the bed'.
On their first brief stay in Rome they were entertained by Cardinal de Bernis and at the house of the Duchess of Bracciano and the Princess Palestrina. Mrs Miller had two encounters with the Young Pretender who 'upon the whole', she wrote, 'had a melancholic, mortified appearance'. After spending two months in Naples they returned to Rome for Holy Week. At the Easter Day Mass Mrs Miller declined to kneel at the elevation of the host: 'I turned myself towards the Pontiff, and caught his eye, but he did not look sour at me, and seemed only to notice the singularity of my standing up; nor was I reprimanded after'. They resisted the social life, confining themselves 'to give a supper twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and to ask the English principally'.
Returning to Bologna they made the acquaintance of Farinelli, who was living in his retirment in a ferme orn?e outside the city. In Venice the Millers rented sumptuous apartments in the Palazzo Contarini, which included an outer saloon 120 feet long. They attended a concert at the girls' foundling hospital and Mrs Miller was allowed behind the grille which separated the performers from the audience, but the sight of 'a dozen or fourteen beldams ugly and old; one blowing a French horn, another sweating at the bass viol, another playing first fiddle, and beating time with her foot in the greatest rage; others performing on bassoons, hautboys, and clarionets ... with several young girls who formed the choir, and one who played upon the organ', apparently deprived her of all taste for the music.
The Millers eventually returned to England, 'her head turned with France and bouts-rim?s; his with virtu', wrote Walpole.1 Mrs Miller went on to found a literary society at Bath Easton, her guests placing their poems in an antique urn the Millers had bought in Frascati, and the best three entrants were crowned with wreaths of myrtle.
1. Wal.Corr., 24:197 (24 Apr. 1776).