Little Novels of Italy/The Duchess of Nona/Chapter 1
"L'Anima semplicetta, che sa nulla,
Salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore,
Volentier torna a ciò che la trastulla."
I
BOCCA BACIATA
"Not unprosperous is your Erasmus in England," wrote that man of wiles to one Faustus, a poet; and then—"To touch upon one among many delights, there are girls in this land divinely fair—soft, easy, and more wooing than any of your Muses. Moreover, they have a custom which cannot be too much honoured. Wheresoever you go a-visiting, the girls all kiss you. With kisses you come in, with kisses depart; returning, they kiss you again. Cometh one to you, the kisses fly between; doth she go away, with kisses you are torn asunder; meeting in any place, kisses abound. Go where you will, it is all kisses. Indeed, my Faustus, had you but once tasted of lips so fragrant and so soft, not for a time only, but to your end of days, you would choose to be a pilgrim in this England." By no means the only stranger to be charmed by our welcoming girls was Erasmus. Amilcare Passavente, of a darker blood, found such kisses sweet: those of one at least he vowed to call his own. What he made of them, what they of him, what other diverting matter appertains to the kisser and the kissed, you shall understand who care to read.
Mary was her name in our Lord, Lovel that of her father in the flesh, a respectable wharfinger of Bankside. Molly, Mawkin, Moll Lovel, "Long Moll Lovel," and other things similar she was to her kinsfolk and acquaintance, who had seen her handsome body outstrip her simple mind. Good girl that she was, she carried her looks as easily as a packet of groceries about the muddy ways of Wapping, went to church, went to market, gossiped out the dusk at the garden gate, or on the old wharf, after the 'prentices had gone, linked herself waist to waist with maiden friends. Up river or down, she trafficked in a wherry, and took the waterman's tender glances as part receipt for his hire. In a word, this winsome, rosy creature, grown hardy in a kind soil, adventured herself at ease among them that might have been her poets, adorers, or raveners, nor thought to be cheapened by the liberty she employed. She was rather shy with strangers, conscious of her height, awkward under observation, blushing to know she blushed; but simple as the day, pleased with flattery, pleased with other trifles,—trinkets, snatched kisses, notes slipped into the prayer-book, etc. She told her mother everything before she went to bed, sat on her father's knee when she was too old and much too tall for it, dreamed of lovers, hid trembling when they came, had palpitations, never told a fib or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact, just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside they knew as Long-legged Moll.
To Amilcare Passavente, the young merchant-adventurer from Leghorn, ravished as he was by the spell of her cool lips, she became at once "La divina Maria," or shorter, "La Diva"; and in a very light space of time, when his acquaintance with her and hers with his tongue had ripened, she had quite a nosegay of names: Madonna Collebianca (my Lady Whitethroat), Donna Fiordispina, La Bella Rosseggiante, were three among three dozen flowers of speech, picked from a highly scented garden of such for her adorning. Amilcare translated them in his hoarse, eager voice, helped on by his hands (which were rapid) and his beseeching eyes (which had the flattery of deference), not only to Molly apart, but to all or any of her acquaintance who could listen without giggling. Molly pressed her bosom; her friends, as they loitered home, said in each other's ears, "Blessed Lord, what will become of Gregory Drax?" Gregory Drax was the broad-girthed young master of a trading-smack which coasted between London and Berwick, and was even at that hour in Kirkley Roads, standing off Yarmouth.
All a summer this endured, but went no further while Amilcare, new to the blunt ways of the English, was unable to stomach their cropped speech any better than their sour beer. Those who heard his florid paraphrase took it gravely, yet held by their "Moll Lovel." They wished that Gregory Drax might have a fair wind home; they wondered what Master Lovel was about; trusted that the black-eyed rascal (whose speech was too glib, surely, to be honest) would not make a fool of the girl. He very soon showed them that, whatever else he did, he intended to make a woman of her. Let them hold, said he (for once expressing his contempt), to their "Molly Lovel"—the name was the Shadow. He would hold, as at that moment he was very devoutly holding, Molly herself—aha! the blessed Substance. And when the young Molly let herself go whither her soft desires had long since fled; when she felt the heart of Amilcare jumping against hers, his cheek, his lips, his soft syllabling, her own breathless replies—then at last Amilcare, quite enraptured, finding everything about her wonder and delight, made shift to catch up some waft of her very tongue, closer savour of her very home, and called her on high his adorable, his unending, his altogether soul-devastating, destroying mistress, "Madonna Mollavella." Good Master Lovel the wharfinger neither knew his daughter nor his father's name in this long-drawn compound of liquids; he was troubled, very doubtful, anxious for Gregory Drax; but all Lombardy and the Emilian March came to know it in time. Amilcare rode down opposition. Eloquence! Were ever such cries to great Heaven, such invitations to Olympus, slappings of the forehead, punchings of ribs, in Wapping before? Molly in tears on her mother's breast, Amilcare on his knees, the neighbours at the door: Master Lovel, good man, abominated such scenes. Father Pounce married them at St. Saviour's in Southwark; money abounded, the dowry passed from hand to hand. On a gusty November morning there sailed out of the London river the barque Santa Fina of Leghorn, having on board Amilcare Passavente and Donna Maria his wife, bound (as all believed) for that port, and thence by long roads to their country of adoption—not Pisa, nor Lucca, nor any place Tuscan; but Nona in the March of Emilia. No; Erasmus was not the only traveller whirled about by English kisses, nor Molly Lovel the only simple witch in turn bewitched.