English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard
page 46 of 231 (19%)
page 46 of 231 (19%)
|
After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He dined at "James Lumelies--the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke, born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales,"--and coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he "fell to with the rest." But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie--and with insufferably haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again, passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall." Hall mutters to his servants, "Jesus can you not knocke the boyes head and the wall together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus?" His three servants go out of the church by the west door: when Mallerie stalks forth they set upon him and cut him down the cheek. We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate" or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament. This is enough to show the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were, and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge with an Italian minde learned at Rome." Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom Ascham might well have noticed were George Acworth and William Barker. Acworth had lived abroad |
|