A Woman of Irish Ancestry in the Cultural History of Italian Diplomacy

Abstract

Starting from the Irish Gothic Manor and the Italian villa a fil rouge will connect with the Italian and the Irish political situation in the eighteenth-century with the fragmentation of the Italic peninsula and its consequent economic decline, and the fact of the post-British plantation system in a “country”, Ireland, with its own monarch and a Parliament yet controlled by Westminster. A literary-historical “infringement” into the life of Mr. and Mrs. Vesey will follow, to discover how a cultural link between Ireland and Italy would grow in Elizabeth Vesey’s life thanks to several factors: mainly, Elizabeth Vesey’s interest in the new Lucan House originally imagined and planned by her husband Agmondisham; her supposed relationship with the painter whom the couple patronized to procure four extraordinary pictures of the demesne; her role in the creation of literary Salons with female and male distinguished literate members at home and abroad; and her lifespan in the new Lucan House. Elizabeth Vesey’s engagement in her social ascent went at the same pace as her appropriation of the Italian culture as an instrument with which to harmonize her life in such a way that most of what involved her or pertained to her activities would be seasoned with a dose of Italian salt. A true Italophile, Mrs. Vesey has the privilege, as the first resident of Lucan House and her ability to create relationships between politicians and literati, of having played a role in the history of Italian diplomacy when the word had not yet appeared in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary.