Stevens, Sacheverell
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- Stevens, Sacheverell
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(d. 1768)
1739 - 44 [dep. England 15 Sep. 1738] Genoa (14 Jun. 1739), Leghorn, Florence, Pisa and Siena (winter 1739 - 40), Rome (Aug.), Naples (Oct. 1740); Florence (Feb. 1743), Naples (autumn 1743, Aug. 1744), Rome, Bologna (by 11 Sep. - Oct.)
In 1756 Stevens published Miscellaneous Remarks Made on the Spot, in a late Seven Year Tour Through France, Italy, Germany and Holland. He had spent the winter of 1738 - 9 in Paris before arriving in Genoa on 14 June 1739 and during the next few years he visited the principal cities of Italy. They are not described in chronological sequence and his itinerary is not entirely clear.
He was in Siena and Florence in the winter of 1739 - 40 and in Florence again in February 1743, when he described the death of of the Electress Dowager of the Palatine, Anna Maria, 'the last of the illustrious house of Medici' (134). He was first in Rome in August 1740 when he witnessed the coronation of Pope Benedict XIV. In the autumn of 1743 he was in Naples; returning to Rome presumably in August 1744 he caught a glimpse of the battle of Velletri. He returned to England via Bologna (he was there when George, Viscount Beauchamp, died in September 1744). He sailed to England as George II was returning, probably therefore on 31 August 1745. His description of the Papal Jubilee of 1750 appears to be second hand.
His comments on buildings and works of art are not original (several derived from Lassels's Voyage of Italy1) and the main interest of his book lies in the observations on Italian life. In Siena, where he spent five months, he saw the famous singer Senesino's house, known as the English Folly because of the English furniture he had brought from London (99), and at Pisa he witnessed the f?te of the Battle of the Bridge (142 ff.). He was in Florence at the time of a great flood (probably that of early December 1740),2 when the image of the Virgin kept at Imprunetto was brought to the city to avert further calamity (147ff.). He mentioned the theft of a bronze satyr 'as big as life' from the fountain at the Palazzo Vecchio, allegedly by an Englishman, although 'how the Florentines could discover it was one of our countrymen, especially as the theft was done in the dark, I cannot conceive; for this I can confirm, that no nation in Europe are so well respected and caressed in Italy as the English' (109). He described at length the 'many religious processions and useless, stupid ceremonies' of Holy Week in Rome, and remarked on the licensed whores living in little houses directly opposite the Pope's gardens (229). He was critical of the Antiquaries in Rome who would pretend 'a copy to be an original', thereby procuring a handsome premium for both buyer and seller; but some could not even tell a statue or medal of Constantine .. from that of Alexander the Great' (180). English Protestants, he observed were buried by the Pyramid of Cestius; they used to be buried alongside 'the excommunicated whores, but since the chevalier de St George [the Pretender] has resided in Rome, he has prevailed with the Pope, that they may be buried near this monument; however the common pathway is over the place where they are interred, which plainly shews what great regard they have for us hereticks' (187). Stevens concluded that 'if, from the foregoing faithful account of the wretched and miserable state of slavery and subjection, both ecclesiastical and civil, both in body and soul ... one single reader should be made sensible of the inestimable blessings he enjoys ... I have not altogether laboured or lived in vain'.
1. See E. Chaney, Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion, 142. 2. See Wal.Corr., 30:3.