Byron's Ravenna journal - January 29th, 1821

Yesterday the woman of ninety-five years of age was with me. She said her eldest son (if now alive) would have been seventy. She is thin—short, but active—hears, and sees. and talks incessantly. Several teeth left—all in the lower jaw, and single front teeth. She is very deeply wrinkled, and has a sort of scattered gray beard over her chin, at least as long as my mustachios. Her head, in fact, resembles the drawing in crayons of Pope the poet’s mother, which is in some editions of his works.

I forgot to ask her if she remembered Alberoni (legate here), but will ask her next time. Gave her a Louis —ordered her a new suit of clothes, and put her upon a weekly pension. Till now, she had worked at gathering wood and pine-nuts in the forest,—pretty work at ninety-five years old! She had a dozen children, of whom some are alive. Her name is Maria Montanari.

 

February 27th, 1821

The old woman whom I relieved in the forest (she is ninety-four years of age) brought me two bunches of violets. “Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus.” I was much pleased with the present. An Englishwoman would have presented a pair of worsted stockings, at least, in the month of February. Both excellent things; but the former are more elegant. The present, at this season, reminds one of Gray’s stanza, omitted from his elegy: “Here scatter’d oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.” As fine a stanza as any in his elegy. I wonder that he could have the heart to omit it.