The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

by Thomas Nashe

  The seventh had, like the giants that sought to scale heaven in despite of Jupiter, a mount overwhelming his head and whole body; his bases outlaid with arms and legs which the skirts of that mountain left uncovered. Under this did he characterize a man desirous to climb to the heaven of honour, kept under with the mountain of his prince’s command; and yet had he arms and legs exempted from the suppression of that mountain. The word, Tu mihi criminis author246 (alluding to his prince’s command): ‘Thou art the occasion of my imputed cowardice.’ His horse was trapped in the earthly strings of tree-roots, which, though their increase was stubbed down to the ground, yet were they not utterly deaded, but hoped for an after-resurrection. The word, Spe alor:247 ‘I hope for a spring.’ Upon his shield he bare a ball, stricken down with a man’s hand that it might mount. The word, Ferior ut efferar: ‘I suffer myself to be contemned because I will climb.’

  The eighth had all his armour throughout engrailed like a crabbed briary hawthorn bush, out of which notwithstanding sprung (as a good child of an ill father) fragrant blossoms of delightful may flowers, that made, according to the nature of may, a most odoriferous smell. In the midst of this, his snowy curled top, round wrapped together, on the ascending of his crest, sat a solitary nightingale close encaged, with a thorn at her breast, having this mot in her mouth: Luctus monumenta manebunt.248 At the foot of this bush represented on his bases lay a number of black swollen toads gasping for wind, and summer-lived grasshoppers gaping after dew, both which were choked with excessive drought for want of shade. The word, Non sine vulnere viresco:249 ‘I spring not without impediments’, alluding to the toads and suchlike that erst lay sucking at his roots, but now were turned out and near choked with drought. His horse was suited in black sandy earth, as adjacent to this bush, which was here and there patched with short burnt grass, and as thick ink-dropped with toiling ants and emmets as ever it might crawl, who, in the full of the summer moon (ruddy garnished on his horse’s forehead) hoarded up their provision of grain against winter. The word, Victrix fortunae sapientia:250 ‘Providence prevents misfortune.’ On his shield he set forth the picture of death doing alms-deeds to a number of poor desolate children. The word, Nemo alius explicat:251 ‘No other man takes pity upon us.’ What his meaning was herein I cannot imagine, except death had done him and his brethren some great good turn in ridding them of some untoward parent or kinsman that would have been their confusion; for else I cannot see how death should have been said to do almsdeeds, except he had deprived them suddenly of their lives, to deliver them out of some further misery; which could not in any wise be, because they were yet living.

  The ninth was the Infant Knight, who on his armour had enamelled a poor young infant put into a ship without tackling, masts, furniture, or anything. This weather-beaten or ill-apparelled ship was shadowed on his bases, and the slender compass of his body set forth the right picture of an infant. The waves wherein the ship was tossed were fretted on his steed’s trappings so movingly that ever as he offered to bound or stir they seemed to bounce and toss and sparkle brine out of their hoary silver billows. The mot, Inopem me copia fecit:252 as much as to say as ‘The rich prey makes the thief.’

  On his shield he expressed an old goat that made a young tree to wither only with biting it; the word thereto, Primo extinguor in aevo:253 ‘I am frost-bitten ere I come out of the blade.’

  It were here too tedious to manifest all the discontented or amorous devices that were used in this tournament; the shields only of some few I will touch, to make short work. One bare for his impress the eyes of young swallows coming again after they were plucked out, with this mot, Et addit et addimit: ‘Your beauty both bereaves and restores my sight.’ Another, a siren smiling when the sea rageth and ships are overwhelmed, including a cruel woman that laughs, sings and scorns at her lover’s tears and the tempests of his despair. The word, Cuncta pereunt: ‘All my labour is ill-employed.’ A third, being troubled with a curst,254 a treacherous and wanton wife, used this similitude. On his shield he caused to be limned Pompey’s ordinance for parricides, as namely, a man put into a sack with a cock, a serpent and an ape, interpreting that his wife was a cock for her crowing, a serpent for her stinging, and an ape for her unconstant wantonness, with which ill qualities he was so beset that thereby he was thrown into a sea of grief. The word, Extremum malorum mulier: ‘The utmost of evils is a woman.’ A fourth, who, being a person of suspected religion, was continually haunted with intelligencers and spies that thought to prey upon him for that he had, he could not devise which way to shake them off but by making away that he had. To obscure this, he used no other fancy but a number of blind flies, whose eyes the cold had enclosed. The word, Aurum reddit acutissimum: ‘Gold is the only physic for the eyesight.’ A fifth, whose mistress was fallen into a consumption and yet would condescend to no treaty of love, emblazoned for his complaint grapes that withered for want of pressing. The ditty to the mot, Quid regna sine usu.255 I will rehearse no more, but I have an hundred other. Let this be the upshot of those shows: they were the admirablest that ever Florence yielded.

  To particularise their manner of encounter were to describe the whole art of tilting. Some had like to have fallen over their horse necks and so break their necks in breaking their staves. Others ran at a buckle instead of a button, and peradventure whetted their spear’s points, idly gliding on their enemy’s sides, but did no other harm. Others ran across at their adversary’s left elbow, yea, and by your leave sometimes let not the lists scape scot-free, they were so eager. Others, because they would be sure not to be unsaddled with the shock, when they came to the spear’s utmost proof, they threw it over the right shoulder and so tilted backward, for forward they durst not. Another had a monstrous spite at the pommel of his rival’s saddle, and thought to have thrust his spear twixt his legs without rasing any skin, and carried him clean away on it as a cool-staff.256 Another held his spear to his nose, or his nose to his spear, as though he had been discharging his caliver, and ran at the right foot of his fellow’s steed. Only the Earl of Surrey, my master, observed the true measures of honour and made all his encounters new-scour their armour in the dust; so great was his glory that day as Geraldine was thereby eternally glorified. Never such a bountiful master came amongst the heralds: not that he did enrich them with any plentiful purse-largesse, but that by his stern assaults he tithed them more rich offals257 of bases, of helmets, of armour, than the rent of their offices came to in ten years before.

  What would you have more? The trumpets proclaimed him master of the field; the trumpets proclaimed Geraldine the exceptionless fairest of women. Everyone strived to magnify him more than other. The Duke of Florence, whose name (as my memory serveth me) was Paschal de’ Medicis,258 offered him such large proffers to stay with him as it were incredible to report He would not; his desire was, as he had done in Florence, so to proceed throughout all the chief cities in Italy. If you ask why he began not this at Venice first, it was because he would let Florence, his mistress’ native city, have the maidenhead of his chivalry. As he came back again, he thought to have enacted something there worthy the annals of posterity, but he was debarred both of that and all his other determinations, for, continuing in feasting and banqueting with the Duke of Florence and the princes of Italy there assembled, posthaste letters came to him from the King his master to return as speedily as he could possible into England. Whereby his fame was quite cut off by the shins, and there was no reprieve but Bazelus manus,259 he must into England; and I with my courtesan travelled forward in Italy.

  What adventures happened him after we parted, I am ignorant; but Florence we both forsook, and I, having a wonderful ardent inclination to see Rome, the Queen of the world and metropolitan mistress of all other cities, made thither with my bag and baggage as fast as I could.

  Attained thither, I was lodged at the house of one Johannes de Imola, a Roman cavaliero. Who, being acquainted with my courtesan’s deceased doting husband, for his sake used us with
all the familiarity that might be. He showed us all the monuments that were to be seen, which are as many as there have been emperors, consuls, orators, conquerors, famous painters or players in Rome. Till this day not a Roman, if he be a right Roman indeed, will kill a rat, but he will have some registered remembrance of it

  There was a poor fellow during my remainder there, that, for a new trick that he had invented of killing cimices260 and scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung up on a high pillar, with an inscription about it longer than the King of Spain’s style. I thought these cimices, like the Cimbrians, had been some strange nation he had brought under, and they were no more but things like lice, which alive have the most venomous sting that may be, and being dead do stink out of measure; Saint Austin261 compareth heretics unto them. The chiefest thing that my eyes delighted in, was the Church of the Seven Sibyls,262 which is a most miraculous thing, all their prophecies and oracles being there enrolled, as also the beginning and ending of their whole catalogue of the heathen gods, with their manner of worship. There are a number of other shrines and statues dedicated to the emperors, and withal some statues of idolatry reserved for detestation.

  I was at Pontius Pilate’s house and pissed against it. The name of the place I remember not, but it is as one goes to Saint Paul’s Church not far from the Jews’ Piazza.263 There is the prison yet packed up together (an old rotten thing) where the man that was condemned to death and could have nobody come to him and succour him but was searched, was kept alive a long space by sucking his daughter’s breasts.

  These are but the shop-dust of the sights that I saw, and in truth I did not behold with any care hereafter to report, but contented my eye for the present, and so let them pass. Should I memorize half the miracles which they there told me had been done about martyrs’ tombs, or the operations of the earth of the sepulchre and other relics brought from Jerusalem, I should be counted the most monstrous liar that ever came in print. The ruins of Pompey’s theatre, reputed one of the nine wonders of the world, Gregory the Sixth’s tomb,264 Priscilla’s grate,265 or the thousands of pillars arreared amongst the rased foundations of old Rome, it were frivolous to specify, since he that hath but once drunk with a traveller talks of them. Let me be a historiographer of my own misfortunes, and not meddle with the continued trophies of so old a triumphing city.

  At my first coming to Rome, I, being a youth of the English cut, ware my hair long, went apparelled in light colours, and imitated four or five sundry nations in my attire at once; which no sooner was noted, but I had all the boys of the city in a swarm wondering about me.

  I had not gone a little farther, but certain officers crossed the way of me, and demanded to see my rapier; which when they found (as also my dagger) with his point un-blunted, they would have haled me headlong to the strappado, but that with money I appeased them, and my fault was more pardonable in that I was a stranger, altogether ignorant of their customs.

  Note, by the way, that it is the use in Rome for all men whatsoever to wear their hair short; which they do not so much for conscience sake, or any religion they place in it, but because the extremity of the heat is such there that, if they should not do so, they should not have a hair left on their heads to stand upright when they were scared with sprites. And he is counted no gentleman amongst them that goes not in black; they dress their jesters and fools only in fresh colours and say variable garments do argue unsteadiness and unconstancy of affections.

  The reason of their strait ordinance for carrying weapons without points is this: the bandittos, which are certain outlaws that lie betwixt Rome and Naples, and besiege the passage, that none can travel that way without robbing. Now and then, hired for some few crowns, they will steal to Rome and do a murther, and betake them to their heels again. Disguised as they go, they are not known from strangers; sometimes they will shroud themselves under the habit of grave citizens. In this consideration, neither citizen or stranger, gentleman, knight, marquis, or any, may wear any weapon endamageable, upon pain of the strappado. I bought it out; let others buy experience of me better cheap.

  To tell you of the rare pleasures of their gardens, their baths, their vineyards, their galleries, were to write a second part of The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Devices.266 Why, you should not come into any man’s house of account, but he had fish-ponds and little orchards on the top of his leads. If by rain or any other means those ponds were so full they need to be sluiced or let out, even of their superfluities they made melodious use, for they had great wind instruments instead of leaden spouts, that went duly on consort only with this water’s rumbling descent.

  I saw a summer banqueting house belonging to a merchant, that was the marvel of the world, and could not be matched except God should make another paradise. It was built round of green marble like a theatre without; within there was a heaven and earth comprehended both under one roof. The heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal, wherein the sun and moon and each visible star had his true similitude, shine, situation and motion, and, by what enwrapped art I cannot conceive, these spheres in their proper orbs observed their circular wheelings and turnings, making a certain kind of soft angelical murmuring music in their often windings and going about; which music the philosophers say in the true heaven, by reason of the grossness of our senses, we are not capable of. For the earth, it was counterfeited in that likeness that Adam lorded over it before his fall. A wide, vast, spacious room it was, such as we would conceit Prince Arthur’s hall to be, where he feasted all his Knights of the Round Table together every Pentecost. The floor was painted with the beautifullest flowers that ever man’s eye admired; which so lively267 were delineated that he that viewed them afar off and had not directly stood poringly over them, would have sworn they had lived indeed. The walls round about were hedged with olives and palm trees, and all other odoriferous fruit-bearing plants, which at any solemn entertainment dropped myrrh and frankincense. Other trees, that bare no fruit, were set in just order one against another, and divided the room into a number of shady lanes, leaving but one overspreading pine tree arbour where we sat and banqueted.

  On the well-clothed boughs of this conspiracy of pine trees against the resembled sunbeams were perched as many sorts of shrill-breasted birds as the summer hath allowed for singing men in her sylvan chapels. Who, though they were bodies without souls, and sweet-resembled substances without sense, yet by the mathematical experiments of long silver pipes secretly inrinded in the entrails of the boughs whereon they sat, and undiscernibly conveyed under their bellies into their small throats sloping, they whistled and freely carolled their natural field note. Neither went those silver pipes straight, but, by many-edged, unsundered writhings and crankled wanderings aside, strayed from bough to bough into an hundred throats. But into this silver pipe so writhed and wandering aside, if any demand how the wind was breathed, forsooth the tail of the silver pipe stretched itself into the mouth of a great pair of bellows, where it was close soldered and bailed about with iron, it could not stir or have any vent betwixt. These bellows, with the rising and falling of leaden plummets wound up on a wheel, did beat up and down uncessantly, and so gathered in wind, serving with one blast all the snarled pipes to and fro of one tree at once. But so closely were all those organising implements obscured in the corpulent trunks of the trees that every man there present renounced conjectures of art and said it was done by enchantment.

  One tree for his fruit bare nothing but enchained chirping birds, whose throats being conduit-piped with squared narrow shells, and charged syringe-wise268 with searching sweet water driven in by a little wheel for the nonce, that fed it afar off, made a spirting sound, such as chirping is, in bubbling upwards through the rough crannies of their closed bills.

  Under tuition of the shade of every tree that I have signified to be in this round hedge, on delightful leavy cloisters lay a wild tyrannous beast asleep all prostrate; under some, two together, as the dog nuzzling his nose under the neck of the deer, the wolf glad to
let the lamb lie upon him to keep him warm, the lion suffering the ass to cast his leg over him, preferring one honest unmannerly friend before a number of crouching pickthanks.269 No poisonous beast there reposed (poison was not before our parent Adam transgressed). There were no sweet-breathing panthers that would hide their terrifying heads to betray; no men-imitating hyenas that changed their sex to seek after blood. Wolves, as now when they are hungry eat earth, so then did they feed on earth only and abstained from innocent flesh. The unicorn did not put his horn into the stream to chase away venom before he drank,270 for then there was no such thing extant in the water or on the earth. Serpents were as harmless to mankind as they are still one to another; the rose had no cankers, the leaves no caterpillars, the sea no sirens, the earth no usurers. Goats then bare wool, as it is recorded in Sicily they do yet. The torrid zone was habitable; only jays loved to steal gold and silver to build their nests withal, and none cared for covetous clientry or running to the Indies. As the elephant understands his country speech, so every beast understood what man spoke. The ant did not hoard up against winter, for there was no winter, but a perpetual spring, as Ovid271 saith. No frosts to make the green almond tree counted rash and improvident in budding soonest of all other; or the mulberry tree a strange politician in blooming late and ripening early. The peach tree at the first planting was fruitful and wholesome, whereas now, till it be transplanted, it is poisonous and hateful. Young plants for their sap had balm; for their yellow gum, glistering amber. The evening dewed not water on flowers, but honey. Such a golden age, such a good age, such an honest age, was set forth in this banqueting house.