Lo! quite unbespected, it is perfectly clear. “I had thought that it would have rained.” Medicine, & result. Paid & off by 5.35 & vast churn about Lucchese life ― so industrious & respectable are these peasants ― so neat & quiet: oxen carts ― large whity gray beasts with red bell-rope-tassels anti-fly about their eyes: ― barrows of pine cones: brook & no end of washing; endless hemp, wh. tho’ lovely to the eye, is disgusting to the nose: ― women with plain [triangle] white or coloured shawls. All the Bagni di L. hills are in heavy cloud. Cross Serchio. Ponte S. Pietro & village: pyramids of wooden billets? Poplars & vines & I. corn, hemp, green & soft as a [parrot’s] plumage, ― tiled  sides of hay lofts or fienili; what convolvuli & [red] mallows. Vines across ditch . Hill of chesnut groves, & walk a bit 6th mile, great hill of Chiesa, & walk down it. Far off view of plain & V. Reggio, & corner of Lake Massaciuccoli. (G.’s father being ill once in the Citadel, they gave him porter, which he believed to be Catrame ― tar.) Carriage at foot of hill, & lo! the same road as on Monday! Parties threshing into flails. 7.5. Mondr’amito, 8.15 ― 13th mile. Most lovely drive! What vines! From high abeles & willows, & cross=wise, triple & quadruple festoons: reeds-canes. Mulberries: tall stray groves of olives,1 chesnut, acacia, abele, cypress, willow, ― more enchanting fertility it is impossible to see, with the great slopes of Olive hills, above, higher & higher. At 9 ― 18th mile ― Pietra Santa ― a long straight street ― Tuscan paved: & the Bertolani Inn just beyond the walls. Got a middling room, & went out with G. ― round the town walls outside. (Fat man would show me the railway ― & asked me to buy a pamphlet against tyranny.) Went thro’ the town again, & up to a Rocca or Castle ― & saw Palmaria, but could get no real views. Down again, & bought some apples, & then walked up olive hills ― talking of the “Ζία,” ― but finding a hope of a view ― back to Inn at 11. Dined at 12. 2 intelligent men; Cameriere married an English woman, ― had been at Hastings & Malvern &c.: & talked very sensibly. 2.30 took the Vetturino to Saravezza: close valley ― mean houses ―: but the high chesnut trees ― what marble rox ― & high gray peaks made it pretty ― tho’ I drew it very badly. At 7 came away. Supped at 8. The waiter’s talk of the coming schism wh. he predicts: & his odium of the priests.

The Comet. ― Resolved to go to Massa tomorrow.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

  1. A line appears to be intended to change the order of these words to “groves of tall stray olves.” [↩]