CHAPTER 1

Florence - The Innkeeper's Daughter

. by the limpid current of the Arno I received life!

Maria Cosway to Thomas Jefferson, July 1787

On 27 September 1778, the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence recorded the admission of 'Signora Maria Hadfield Pittrice Inglese', an honour only ever bestowed on the most distinguished artists from Italy and abroad. Founded in 1563 by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, the Academy rarely elected women - the first was Artemisia Gentileschi in 1615 - and it was, therefore, a great tribute to Maria that, at just eighteen years old, she was invited to join this prestigious institution. As was customary for new members, she submitted her self-portrait.1 But unlike many of those whose self-portraits adorned the academy walls, Maria chose to portray herself without the instruments of her trade; instead we see an attractive, self-assured young woman in three-quarter pose, looking out of the canvas towards the spectator. Poised and graceful, her long, carefully coiffed, fair hair hangs over the shoulder of her simple russet brown dress. On her head is a white turban, a fashion accessory that was to be the defining feature of many portraits of her. The artist James Northcote, who first encountered Maria in Rome in December 1778, described her as 'not unhandsome, endowed with considerable talents, and with a form extremely delicate and a pleasing manner of the utmost simplicity. But she was withal, active, ambitious, proud, and restless.' These character traits, which Northcote so perspicaciously noted in the young Maria, alongside 'her considerable talents', were to prove invaluable in sustaining her throughout her long and fascinating life.2

2. Maria Cosway, Self-Portrait, 1778.
A confident self-portrait by the 18-year-old Maria, showing the strong influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Accademia self-portrait in pose, colouring and light source.

Every story needs a beginning and Maria Hadfield's was nothing short of dramatic:

I may relate a circumstance at my birth as extraordinary as unheard of - four or five children were born before me; put to Nurse out of town. My Mother used to go frequently found the Child well, and to her great surprise the next day the Nurse came and the Child had died in the night. Changed Nurse, changed place, the same happened thro' four children. At my birth my father resolved to take a Nurse in the house and had a governess to keep always a watch on the Nurse and the child. On day one, a Maid servant went to the Nursery, took me in her Arms and said pretty little Creature, I have sent four to heaven I hope to send you also: the governess struck at this extraordinary speech ran to my father, proper enquiries were made, the Woman said she thought it doing a good Act and was confined for Life. From that instant, My father said I should be brought up as a Catholic and all his children were also.3

The four murdered babies, three boys and a girl, were born from 1755 to 1758. They were the children of Charles Hadfield and Isabella Pocock Hadfield, an English Protestant couple living in Florence. How Charles and Isabella met is unknown, but according to the records of the Chapel register of the Protestant Society of Leghorn (Livorno), they were not officially married until 1759, 'at Sienna the 5th day of August 1759 by Mr Lepeal'.4 Maria Louisa Catherine Cecilia was born just ten months after her parents' marriage on 17 June 1760. She was the eldest of the Hadfield's five surviving children, and was baptised as a Protestant in Florence on 22 November 1760 by Everard Hutcheson, chaplain to the British Factory at Leghorn. Her godparents were both members of the British aristocracy, perhaps reflecting the social aspirations that the Hadfields harboured for their daughter: Sir Brook Bridges, then aged twenty-six (whose daughter later married Jane Austen's brother Edward), and Lady Lucy Boyle, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the 5th Earl of Cork, later Viscountess Torrington.5 Maria's brother William was born the following year in 1761, followed by George in 1764, and then two sisters, Charlotte in 1766 and Elizabeth, usually known as Bettina, in 1769.

Much of what is known about Maria's early life comes from an autobiographical letter she wrote to a cousin of her husband's, Sir William Cosway, in 1830 (see Appendix 2). From this we learn that the children's first language was Italian and that they were brought up as Catholics, despite being baptised as Protestants and having Protestant parents. Having undergone the terrible trauma of the murder of their four older children as tiny babies, it was understandable that the Hadfields made this decision. They must have felt that it was the best way to protect their children in a country deeply suspicious of Protestantism and may have assumed that some of their children would choose to remain living in Italy. Ironically, when Maria and her siblings did move to England, they experienced a degree of anti-Catholic bigotry.

In her letter of 1830, Maria tells us almost nothing about her mother and little is known about her, beyond the fact that her name Isabella (Elisabetta on her passport) may indicate an Italian family connection.6 Maria is, however, much more forthcoming about her father: 'My father, Charles Hadfield, was from Manchester of very rich merchants and manufacturers.'7 When in Italy in the 1740s, Hadfield recognised a lucrative business opportunity: 'My father travelling thro Italy found very bad accommodations for travelers particularly the English, this enduced him to take a large house and fitted it up quite in the English manner, this brought all the English, and was induced to take two more houses for the same purpose, in the one on the Arno I was born.'8

Charles Hadfield's first inn, sometimes referred to as 'Carlo's', was situated on the Lungarno Capponi (now the Lungarno Guicciadini) along the left bank of the Arno, an area known as the Oltrarno (literally 'beyond the Arno'). It was here that Maria was born and it also served as the family's home. A pair of landscapes by the artist Thomas Patch, dated 1763, show the River Arno by day and by night as seen from the Lungarno. The daytime painting, looking across the river to the Palazzo Corsini and down river to the Ponte alla Carraia, is the view that Maria would have woken up to every morning during her childhood.9

The second inn, also on the Oltrarno, was close to the Pitti Palace, the Boboli Gardens and the Palazzo Manetti, home to Sir Horace Mann, the longtime British Consul in Florence. A guidebook published in 1775 describes the inn, 'It is, and has always been a house in very great esteem - in a genteel part of the town (near the Santo Spirito) a few doors from the English envoy [Mann] and near the [Pitti] palace and the gardens of the Grand Duke.'10 The third inn, the Palazzo Bruciato, was situated in the countryside north of Florence, a mile from the Porto San Gallo near the Capuchin convent at Montughi.

3. Thomas Patch, A View of the River Arno by Day, 1763.
Thomas Patch was a resident of Florence and his caricatures and views of the city were highly prized by British aristocrats on the Grand Tour.

Charles Hadfield, described by Mrs George Craster as 'a saucy imposing man', was sociable and entrepreneurial, traits that made him well suited to running inns.11 Together Charles and Isabella Hadfield created an ambiance that was extremely convivial to British travellers. The Welsh artist Thomas Jones, who stayed with the Hadfields in November 1776, wrote, 'Wednesday 20th. Being at present among our Country Folks & in a house where we lived in the English fashion. My ideas were all at once seemingly changed I could hardly help fancying myself in England and that increasing phantom - distance from home which continualy haunted my Mind at every stage, vanished an instant.'12 The guest registers of the three inns reads like a Who's Who of English society during the second half of the eighteenth century. The historian Edward Gibbon stayed in March 1764. '[W]e descended on a certain Charles Hadfield, an Innkeeper who is very well known among the English Travellers and who speak highly of him, judging by our supper, it would appear that he merits this praise.'13 James Boswell was there in July 1765 and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester in April 1777. As well as Thomas Jones, artists included George Romney, Joseph Wright of Derby, Henry Tresham, Ozias Humphry, and the sculptor Thomas Banks and his family. Some guests stayed for several months at a time and many returned on more than one occasion.