Pepys, Lucas
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- Pepys, Lucas
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(1742 - 1830), physician, s. of William Pepys, banker; Ch.Ch. Oxf., BA 1764; phys. Royal Mx. Hosp. 1769 - 76; FRCP 1775 and pres. 1804 - 10; cr. Bt. 1784; m. 1 1772 Ldy. Jane Leslie, dau. of 10th E. of Rothes [S], 2 1813 Deborah Askew.
1767 - 8 Turin (Oct. 1767), Genoa (5 Nov.), Pavia, Milan (7 Nov.), Cremona, Piacenza (11 Nov.), Parma (12 Nov.), Modena, Bologna (four days), Florence (21 Nov. - 5 Dec.), Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, Siena, Rome (22 - 26 Dec.) Naples (29 Dec. 1767 - Jan. 1768), Rome (27 Jan. - 12 Mar.), Loreto, Ancona, Bologna, Venice (22 - 28 Mar.), Padua, Vicenza, Verona [England May 1768]
After 'an astonishing journey over the Alps' full of the 'greatest sublimity and beauty', Lucas Pepys came to Turin in October 1767. He was travelling with William Roe and William Watson. His brother, Sir William Pepys, had asked him to write home assuming complete ignorance on the part of the reader, and Lucas's twelve letters provide a full description of his tour.1 The King's Palace at Turin he found 'far superior to Versailles for richness and elegance of furniture', and the King's physician obliged him by providing letters of introductiuon to 'the principal medical people in Italy'. Genoa, though a poor republic, had many very rich families whose 'passion is to have fine palaces'. At Pavia he found the German Sergeants speaking 'worse Italian than ourselves', and he compared the University architecturally to St John's College, Oxford. Passing through Piacenza, Parma, Modena and Bologna he arrived in Florence (his party being listed as 'Peches', 'Ro' and 'Guascon').2
He stayed at Hadfield's where 'almost all the English live ... everybody pays 2/6 a day for his apartment, not quite 4/- for his dinner, 8d his breakfast or tea, 1/- fire, and if any chooses supper, it is 1/6'. He described a typical day: up at 7.30 a.m., the Italian master looks over translations, breakfast and out by 9, 9 to 1 seeing things, from 1 to 3 'dressing &c', dinner from 3 to 5 with all the English, Italian master 5 to 7, then supper, translations and discussions. He compared the Gallery with that at Oxford and discovered the apartments underneath it where the Florentine Marbles are made ('pictures in different coloured stones'). His appreciation of the statuary ('which far exceeded all my expectations') was much enhanced by his anatomical knowledge and by touch. He attended Horace Mann's conversazioni every Monday, and was visited by Lord Cowper. Bagni he considered 'the Brighthelmstone of Italy'. At Leghorn, 'well built and populous', he found seventeen established English Houses, although trade was declining with only half the usual number of ships in the harbour. Siena was 'a miserable, poor, large city', and Lake Bolsena 'next in point of beauty to Loch Lomond and Loch Ness'. On their way to Naples they spent four days in Rome (where they saw Cardinal York celebrating the Christmas Mass).
At Naples, 'one of the most delightful spots in the world', William Hamilton introduced them to the King whose new palace was under construction at Caserta; they climbed Vesuvius and saw the theatre at Herculaneum '100 feet below the surface [with a] larva [deposit] near 80 feet in thickness'. They were back in Rome for the Carnival and Pepys described the Masquerades and the Corso at length; he noticed only eighteen English visitors (perhaps because of the ensuing Election) - 'usually in Lent there are near 40' - and described their activities ('getting into company') with some cynicism. He described his routine at Rome: 'Up at 7, shave, put on shirt and Frock dress ... Breakfast and out by nine: ... From 9 to 1/2 after 1, feasting the eye ... Return and dine a little before 2 and after 2 hours repose, for selves and horses; about 4 o'clock sally out again till it is dark. We drink tea, and afterwards each of us retires ... and studies for two or three hours, a little before 10 we meet and eat an egg or some trifling thing for supper and about 11 move off to bed'. His monthly expenses were £10 each for coach and lodgings ('the best in Rome'), £2 'Firing', and 3s a head for Dinner. 'We don't spend a guinea a day apeice' he reflected, adding that 'the great expence of travelling in Italy is a joke - an Economist may do great things here for little money'. Pepys found his expectations of Rome too high 'except in the article of statuary'. Well versed in antiquity ('I have read the six last books of Virgil lately'), his greatest pleasure was to tread the same floor as Cicero, 'a kind of delightful dream ... which cannot be expressed'.
The party travelled north through Terni, Loreto and Ancona to Venice, where they arrived on 22 March 1768.3 Pepys observed how unfortunate it was that the Venetian school of painters 'whose chief merit consisted in the excellence of their colouring should have been established at Venice, the only place perhaps in Italy, where their perfection in colouring could have suffered from a moist damp air'. He was able to talk with the distinguished Venetian physician, Morgagni, but a week was sufficient for them to attend thoroughly to the 'objects of sight'. They left Venice on 28 March and early in April crossed the Brenner Pass.
1. See Pepys, 1:299 - 359. 2. Gazz.Tosc. (21 Nov. 1767). 3. ASV IS 759.