The Medici!

Our book today is that hugely durable old 1910 war-horse, The Medici by G. F. Young, a quintessential example of the particular breed of monumental Victorian history that holds up effortlessly under the onslaught of time. It’s amazing, really, how widespread across the breadth of art and literature are these great histories – and it’s a shame we’re a century too early for that fact to be widely acknowledged, caught still as we are in the mania of whether or not the archival details are all jot-and-tittle correct – as if that were the most important aspect of a history. But even so, we can take comfort in Young’s book, since it had a hell of a run. It was a gigantic bestseller in its own day, and it got an enormous second life when Bennett Cerf added it to the Modern Library list in the 1930s, just in time to catch both the explosion of popular reading and a recent explosion of interest in Italian history specifically.

The Medici went through a satisfying number of Modern Library editions, but my favorite is the Modern Library “Giant” edition from 1933, which has a very nice block of crisp black-and-white illustrations that the other editions don’t have; it’s always nice to have some Titians and Raphaels and Bronzinos to season the mix.

But the main attraction is and always will be Young’s lovely, sharply intelligent Victorian prose, which sweeps from indelible character sketches to broader panoramic portraits. And the history of the various branches of the Medici family – even more so than that of the Borgias, or the Sforzas, or the House of Este – provide Young with a near-endless variety of such material. He has insights into virtually all of his colorful characters, as when he makes an crucial insight into the character of Pietro the Unfortunate:

Pietro was not a fool, as often stated. He was simply an ordinary young noble of his day, without more brains than other people possessed. But the Medici had always had more brains than other people possessed; it was expected of them; and they were not wanted by the Florentines as rulers if they ceased to be thus gifted.

And he’s just as insightful when speculating about the tangled dynamic that always existed between the Medici clan and the people of Florence:

When a despotic monarchy is succeeded by a republic there is only one family embittered by the loss of former greatness. But when a republic is succeeded by a despotic monarchy there are created an hundred such families; and these are also the most influential in the State … It may be imagined what fierce wrath such a state of things created; wrath which, though it dared not show itself, was all the more carefully nourished by those concerned. The taking away of a “liberty” which had never resulted i anything but internecine strife might in time have been forgiven; but the deprivation of all the power and importance to which the leading Florentine families had for generations been accustomed could not be forgiven; it was a ranking sore which could never be healed.

An excellent new book about Cosimo de Medici prompted me to re-read Young, and as luck would have it, I recently found a battered copy of the Modern Library “Giant” edition at my beloved Brattle Bookshop. I gentled it back to my Santa’s workshop and labored to re-inforce it to withstand a good rough reading: carefully-placed reinforcements, a tastefully-positioned book plate, and of course plenty of that marvel of the modern age, clear plastic packing tape. And once I’d done all that, I did indeed give it a good rough reading: gripped in hand for a day over hill and dale (well, street and subway), energetically annotated in pencil, and occasionally rescued from underneath the gelatinous girth of a Certain Someone who has crushed more books in her old age than ever she ate in her youth.

And the Young held up – in every conceivable way.  I heartily recommend it – and of course I’d be happy to send you a copy.