She Stands Accused | Page 4

Lucretia in this fashion: Adultery
and promiscuous intercourse were the fashion in Rome at the time of
Alexander VI. Nobody thought anything of them. And to have accused
the Borgia girl, or her relatives, of such inconsiderable lapses would
have been to evoke mere shrugging. But incest, of course, was horrible.
The writers paid by the party antagonistic to the Borgia growth in
power therefore slung the more scurrile accusation. But there is, in truth,
just about as much foundation for the charge as there is for the other,
that Lucretia was a poisoner. The answer to the latter accusation, says
my same authority, may take the form of a question: WHOM DID
LUCRETIA POISON? As far as history goes, even that written by the
Borgia enemies, the reply is, NOBODY!
Were one content, like Gibbon, to take one's history like snuff there
would be to hand a mass of caliginous detail with which to cause
shuddering in the unsuspecting reader. But in mere honesty, if in
nothing else, it behoves the conscientious writer to examine the sources
of his information. The sources may be--they too frequently
are--contaminated by political rancour and bias, and calumnious
accusation against historical figures too often is founded on mere envy.
And then the rechauffeurs, especially where rechauffage is made from
one language to another, have been apt (with a mercenary desire to give
their readers as strong a brew as possible) to attach the darkest
meanings to the words they translate. In this regard, and still apropos
the Borgias, I draw once again on Rafael Sabatini for an example of
what I mean. Touching the festivities celebrating Lucretia's wedding in
the Vatican, the one eyewitness whose writing remains, Gianandrea
Boccaccio, Ferrarese ambassador, in a letter to his master says that
amid singing and dancing, as an interlude, a ``worthy'' comedy was
performed. The diarist Infessura, who was not there, takes it upon
himself to describe the comedy as ``lascivious.'' Lascivious the
comedies of the time commonly were, but later writers, instead of
drawing their ideas from the eyewitness, prefer the dark hints of
Infessura, and are persuaded that the comedy, the whole festivity, was

``obscene.'' Hence arises the notion, so popular, that the second Borgia
Pope delighted in shows which anticipated those of the Folies Bergere,
or which surpassed the danse du ventre in lust-excitation.
A statue was made by Guglielmo della Porta of Julia Farnese,
Alexander's beautiful second mistress. It was placed on the tomb of her
brother Alessandro (Pope Paul III). A Pope at a later date provided the
lady, portrayed in `a state of nature,' with a silver robe--because, say
the gossips, the statue was indecent. Not at all: it was to prevent
recurrence of an incident in which the sculptured Julia took a static part
with a German student afflicted with sex-mania.
I become, however, a trifle excursive, I think. If I do the blame lies on
those partisan writers to whom I have alluded. They have a way of
leading their incautious latter-day brethren up the garden. They hint at
flesh-eating lilies by the pond at the path's end, and you find nothing
more prone to sarcophagy than harmless primulas. In other words, the
beetle-browed Lucretia, with the handy poison-ring, whom they
promise you turns out to be a blue-eyed, fair-haired, rather yielding
little darling, ultimately an excellent wife and mother, given to piety
and good works, used in her earlier years as a political instrument by
father and brother, and these two no worse than masterful and
ambitious men employing the political technique common to their day
and age.

% II
Messalina, Locusta, Lucretia, Theodora, they step aside in this
particular review of peccant women. Cleopatra, supposed to have
poisoned slaves in the spirit of scientific research, or perhaps as
punishment for having handed her the wrong lipstick, also is set aside.
It were supererogatory to attempt dealing with the ladies mentioned in
the Bible and the Apocrypha, such as Jael, who drove the nail into the
head of Sisera, or Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes. Their
stories are plainly and excellently told in the Scriptural manner, and the
adding of detail would be mere fictional exercise. Something, perhaps,
might be done for them by way of deducing their characters and
physical shortcomings through examination of their deeds and
motives--but this may be left to psychiatrists. There is room here
merely for a soupcon of psychology--just as much, in fact, as may

afford the writer an easy turn from one plain narrative to another. You
will have no more of it than amounts, say, to the pinch of fennel that
should go into the sauce for mackerel.
Toffana, who in Italy supplied poison to wives aweary of their
husbands and to ladies beginning to find their