Starke, Mariana
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
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- Starke, Mariana
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(c.1762 - 1838), writer and traveller, dau. of Richard Starke of Epsom, Surr.; d. Milan.
1792 - 8 [Nice May 1792] Turin (May 1792) [Geneva, Nice] Genoa (14 Oct.), Leghorn, Pisa (winter 1792 - 3), Rome (Apr. - May), Pisa (by Nov. 1793 - Mar. 1794), Lucca (Mar. 1794), Pisa (by 7 Jan. 1795), Leghorn (Apr. 1796), Florence (by 30 Jun. - Oct.), Rome (Oct. 1796 - Feb. 1797), Naples (Mar. - Sep.), Rome (Oct. 1797 - Jan. 1798), Pisa (Mar.), Florence (Mar. - 12 Apr.) [Dresden Jun.]
Mariana Starke came to Italy with her elderly parents in 1792. They spent the winter of 1792 - 3 in Pisa, and frequently saw the Flaxmans in Rome in April and May 1793.1 They returned the following winter to Pisa, where her father (Richard) died on 5 March, aged seventy-four.2 On 21 March 1794, Mariana was about to join 'her friend' Lady Bolingbroke (who was then in Pisa).3 In January 1795 Captain Cochrane saw Mrs and Miss Starke and Miss Ruddle in Pisa.4 In November 1797 William Artaud told his father that Miss Starke and her mother and a Miss Ruddle had spent some five years in Italy; 'they are three of the most amiable and sensible women I ever met with. Miss Starke ... has an uncommon fund of literature and genius. She is Mistress of Latin, Greek and oriental languages ... They are people of considerable fortune and live in a very elegant style ... They are very much attached to all professors of art and literature, and their house is the rendezvous of the most rational and agreeable society'.5
But most of the evidence for the Starkes' sojourn comes from Mariana's Travels in Italy [1802] in which she mentioned spending seven years in Italy with a consumptive relative - probably her mother, since she refers to her 'endeavours to mitigate the sufferings of those most dear to me' (1:v); she also stated that her enquiries were handicapped by her 'occupation as a Nurse', and that her accounts of pictures owed much to William Artaud (1:252n).
The Travels take the form of a sequence of letters, the first of which is dated Nice, September 1792 (and the itinerary above is taken from the subsequent letters). The first seven provide a historical and at times first-hand narrative of the French invasion of Italy (which includes some documentation of the French requisition of Italian works of art; 1:1 - 181). They invaded Nice in October and the Starkes got away to Genoa, arriving on the 14th (1:48). The French next caught them up in Florence on 30 June 1796; English families had been invited by the hospitable Florentine authorities to retire into the country (1:93), but the invasion was not violent, and the Starkes did not move to Rome until the end of October 1796 (1:114). When the French reached Rome in February 1797 the Starkes chose to leave for Naples. But they returned that October (1:155) 'and discovered not, for several weeks, any cause to repent our determination'. Prices then began to rise and there were civil and ultimately military disturbances, culiminating in the exile of the Pope, who was sent to Siena on 20 February. The Starkes left Rome probably in January for Florence, and by June 1798 they were in Dresden on their way back to England.
Subsequent letters concern the principal Italian cities (Rome, for example, is described in terms of a twelve-day tour). A series of appendices provides practical hints on climate, 'things most requisite for an invalid', currency, additional details of accommodation and services in Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Naples, Sorrento, and Venice, and a timetable for travelling within Italy. Starke's manner is brisk; she could characterise the Romans, for example, as possessing neither 'the worth of the Tuscans, nor the good-humoured buffoonery of the Neapolitans'. A revised edition, Letters from Italy, appeared in 1815.
Following another visit to Italy in 1817 - 19 she published Travels on the Continent in 1820. She died in Milan in 1838.
1. Mrs Flaxman jnl.MSS 2 (11 Apr. - 12 May). 2. Leghorn Inscr., 62. 3. Bentham jnl.MSS (21 Mar. 1794, Pisa). 4. Cochrane jnl.MSS (7 Jan. 1795). 5. Artaud letter bk.MSS (10 Nov. 1797).