EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
vide sufficient during the winter, a certain quantity is received from Lombardy.[1] The price is then thirty bajocchi[2] per pound, but in the summer it is only fourteen."[3]
Another notable fact is cited by Baretti in 1766: "We have not yet the use of potatoes. An English consul in Venice cultivates them with good success in his fine garden not far from Mestre, a place about five miles from Venice: but few of his Italian guests will touch them."[4]
As a striking hint of what might be lacking in really remote parts of the country we may note that at the very end of the eighteenth century the suggestion is made that: "Families who remove from Naples to the neighborhood of Sorrento during the summer season would do well to take with them wine, vinegar, candles, soap, sugar, tea, coffee, and medicines."[5] Yet Sorrento is only across the bay from Naples. At Naples itself tea and sugar were very dear.[6]
Even at Tivoli, four or five hours' drive from Rome, and very much frequented, one fared badly. "Persons who care much about eating should take meat, bread, and wine, with them, as fish and eggs are the only provision likely to be found at Tivoli."[7] In our own day the entertainment set before the transient guest at Tivoli is far from ideal.
Beyond all question, the English tourist who wished to be even moderately satisfied with his daily food was well advised to keep close to the main centers of supply. And in cities like Turin and Milan and Venice and Padua and Florence and Rome he had small ground for complaint. The bread of Padua, the wine of Vicenza, the tripe of Treviso were proverbially good.[8] Moreover, we may well believe, that under favorable conditions an eighteenth-century tourist who gave himself the necessary trouble could, in most of the larger Italian cities, secure quarters that were reasonably satisfactory, except perhaps in winter. But what average comfort in winter meant in Italy we may judge from the fact that Goethe's room in Naples had no fireplace and no chimney, though he was there in February.[9] Walpole suffered greatly from the cold in Flor-
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- ↑ To this day the butter for Sicilian hotels is mainly imported from northern Italy.
- ↑ Two bajocchi were equal to an English penny.
- ↑ Coghlan, Hand-Book for Italy (1847), p. 309.
- ↑ Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 202.
- ↑ Starke, Letters from Italy, ii, 344.
- ↑ Ibid., ii, 336.
- ↑ Ibid., ii, 53.
- ↑ Ray, Travels, in Harris's Collection of Voyages and Travels, ii, 661.
- ↑ Autobiography, ii, 411.
