EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
no very inviting picture. Some criticism doubtless means little more than that the ways of the inns were Italian rather than English. But at best the average hostelry left much to be desired. Eustace had an extended experience throughout the peninsula, and he remarks: "In Italy … the little country inns are dirty, but the greater inns, particularly in Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice, are good, and in general the linen is clean, and the beds are excellent. As for diet, in country towns, the traveller will find plenty of provisions, though seldom prepared according to his taste."[1] Even the fastidious De Brosses is moved to protest against indiscriminate condemnation of the accommodations provided for travelers in Italy. "Everybody says that the inns of Italy are detestable. That is not true. One is very well entertained in the better towns. In the villages, to be sure, one is badly off; but that is no marvel, it is the same in France."[2]
But the comments of Dr. Moore probably express the actual effect of Italian hotels upon the average, inexperienced English tourist. "Strangers … whose senses are far more powerful than their fancy, when they are so ill-advised as to come so far from home, generally make this journey in very ill humour, fretting at Italian beds, fuming against Italian cooks, and execrating every poor little Italian flea that they meet with on the road."[3] Dr. Moore possibly had in mind the English tourist Sharp, who certainly expresses no great delight over his experiences: "We arrived at this place [Rome], after a journey of seven days, with accommodations uncomfortable enough. Give what scope you please to your fancy, you will never imagine half the disagreeableness that Italian beds, Italian cooks, Italian post-horses, Italian postilions, and Italian nastiness offer to an Englishman in an Italian journey; much more to an English woman. At Turin, Milan, Venice, Rome, and, perhaps, two or three other towns, you meet with good accommodation; but no words can express the wretchedness of the other inns. No other bed but one of straw, and next to that a dirty sheet, sprinkled with water,
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