THE CARAFAS.*
THE widening of historical bounds and the removal of historical landmarks, the merging of individual in national action, have so altered the conditions of the world that it is hardly possible history should ever be written in the future as it was written in the past ; and this has weakened the influence of names upon the minds of men. It is not so much that the wearers of some of the greatest have been found out, and pulled down from the high places they never had any right to occupy ; the change has a • The Court of Anna Caraja: an 114toricat Narralive. By Mrs. Horace Roscoe Si. John. London: Tinsley Brothers.
wider and a deeper origin ; principles have succeeded to indi- viduals, as objects of study, and men have become the accidents of history. The great names, the great old houses, the men
" Of a famous Order whose lists were old
When Venice blazoned the Book of Gold,"
are passing deeper and deeper into the land of myth and legend and the realm of forgetfulness. Only students care to bring them back for a little, to confront them with wide and overwhelming change, and a social state whose postulates are immeasurably in advance of the problems of theirs. When some student does this for us, his labours are welcome for the air of old romance that stirs around us for a while ; but it soon dies away, and the small- ness of the once vaunted scheming, the narrow selfishness of the far-famed subtlety, the littleness of the so-called great aims come out, and, combined with the unscrupulous ferocity of those bad old times, produce a feeling which is half-horror and half-contempt.
The splendour of them revives also, and when we forget the multi- tude, so easily forgotten then by the great who ruled them, but whom, thank God! the great can no longer rule and forget, it has a wonderful charm, sweet and enticing, solemn and sad, like that vision which unfolded itself before the poet who listened to Galuppi, and saw Venice in the days of the Doges.
The story of the Spanish Viceroyalty at Naples is rich in names around which cluster countless recollections of subtlety, scheming, ambition, and ferocity. Its annals abound with splendour, romance, littleness, lying, and crime. In its foremost rank stands the family of Caraf a, which rose into fame in the twelfth century, and was merged in that of Medina-Sidonia, which remains, though among the inactive dignities, to this day, in the second half of the seven- teenth. Mrs. Horace St. John has made a fortunate selection of her subject, and though she does not add much that is novel to the general history of the long period during which the history of the Carafas is intertwined with that of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas, she groups the incidents which were characterized by that combination skilfully, and conveys a distinct notion of the chief individuals of the great, crafty, and unscrupulous family who illustrated and were illustrated by the troublous history of two countries, and involved in the confused and interminable drama whose theatre was Rome. Her arrangement of her materials is effective. A preliminary chapter, devoted to the history of the "Palace of the Syrens "—there is old classical legend and the gloomy poetry of medimval days in the name—records the inscription it still bears, and which is a protest against the oblivion from which this book, more accessible and attractive to the general reader than the heavy history of the Carafas of Madda- loni, in Bohn's series, is intended to rescue it :-
U 'This structure,' says the inscription, 'erected with rare and wonder- ful ingenuity under the direction of the powerful Princes of Stigliano, has, through the lapse of years, fallen into decay. In order to preserve it from entire ruin, and to prevent its lending honour to other names, in reverent memory of his most dearly-loved wife, Madalena Carafe, this building is restored by Carlo Mirelli, Prince of Teora, Marquis of Calitre, and Prince of Coax& Whosoever thou art, enter. He wishes the palace to be open, not only to himself and his kindred, but also to all who are not of his race."
This palace, which was never completed, but whose history is written and finished, was a part of the inheritance of Anna Carafe, Princess of Stigliano, the famous Vice-Queen of Naples, the last direct descendant of her branch of the distinguished and adventurous race. She was grand-niece of Pope Clement VU.; granddaughter of the great and unhappy Prince Luigi, who shrank away from the Palace of the Syrens to die in a monastery ; daughter of the "magnanimous and heroic Antonio, beloved of the gods, so that he died young, and of Elena Aldo- brandini, who brought a splendid dower with her from Rome ; wife of the great Duke of Medina, a proud, imperious, false woman, who had as many suitors as Penelope, as many lovers as Mary Stuart, but who was as friendless as Mary Tudor, and like her, ill mated. A centre of intrigue in her girlhood, a restless, covetous, rapacious schemer in her maturity ; a fascinating, false woman always, she seems to have staked her soul against her little notions of the "whole world" all through her life; and to have been loved once passionately by Diomed Carafa, her cousin, the finest young fellow in that long line, but never to have had another chance. She was a great patron of art and luxury, merciless in the exercise of her feudal rights, at once fierce and frivolous, perpe- trator of many deceits and victim of many deceptions, and the great- ness of her branch of the great house died with her. There was plenty of mortification, strife, and heartburning, even during the gorgeous years of the vice-royalty of the Duke and Duchess,—of the power which Anna Carafe coveted so eagerly, and mournedso bitterly when they lost it, power so grossly abused, that the names of Medina and his predecessor, Monterey, are the representatives par excellence of the tyranny and fraud which marked the government of Naples by the Spanish Viceroys. There were loneliness and desolation in Anna's death, severe and lingering suffering, friendless and untended. She was buried, without pomp, in an age in which pageantry out- vied its lavishness towards the living in honouring the dead ; and her history, which records her almost boundless wealth, and the homage she exacted from the arts and industries of her country, tells of no regret, public or private, for the high and mighty prin- cess who had outlived her beauty and her wealth, and had laid up
no other treasure. us
The author has chosen for her historical narrative a busy time, - full of intrigue and stirring action, and a crowded stage, across which many figures pass which we would like to call back from the invisible world to this, and look upon as they really were in their mortal days. Great names crowd her pages, and amid the intrigue and the violence, the lying and the heartlessness which attach to most of them, she refreshes her readers with glimpses of the art and literature of the time. Two chapters, one on "Italian Drama," which flourished exceedingly with lavish splendour at the Court of Anna Carafa, and the other on "Feudalism in Italy," are the cleverest portions of the book, which ought to have come to an end with the life of Anna Carafa. The last chapter, "Free Italy," is out of place.
Previous page
