He was twenty-three years old. He had come to Rome as part of his “Grand Tour,” in the traditional style, funded by his father’s money and his own youth and energy. He stayed in an apartment in the Piazza di Spagna, which had become known as the English Ghetto. The apartment, a decent first floor and two bedchambers on the second, was small but well furnished, and cost no more than a scudo per day.

Edmund fell into the company of one James Macpherson, a forty-year-old Jacobite refugee and hardened rake, who proved a willing guide to the various delights of Rome—as long, of course, as Edmund continued to be a source of cash. Edmund understood this relationship very well, and was careful not to let James take advantage. But Edmund was catholic in his tastes, and soon learned to relish the vitella mongana, which he thought the most delicate veal he had ever tasted, and drank great quantities of Orvieto, a decent white wine.

Rome proved to be great fun. Night and day the piazzas were crowded with acrobats and astrologers, jugglers and tooth drawers. In the cramped, garlic-stinking alleys where grand mansions loomed over tiny houses, shop signs hung everywhere, of barbers, tailors, surgeons, and tobacconists. But the alleys were always clogged with noise and filth, since the Romans had the rude habit of relieving themselves against any convenient doorway or wall, and left their garbage heaped in every corner, waiting for the irregular call of the waste collectors.

But amid the noise, filth, and debauchery, there were true wonders.

Edmund found Saint Peter’s and its piazza quite stunning—he had James bring him back to it day after day, for there always seemed something new to see in it—and he was enchanted by the area around the great cathedral, where elegant domes and cupolas rose from the morning mist. And then there were the older monuments, sticking out of the past. Edmund often had James escort him to the top of the Palatine, where mature cypress trees waved gently among the ruined palaces.

Edmund found the Romans themselves pleasant and civil—as well they might be, he thought, for they were surely the most indolent people in Europe. There was no industry here, no commerce, no manufacturing. The people relied for their income on the steady flow of money from all over Christian Europe, which continued as it had for centuries.

And religion dominated everything about the city. At any one time there were as many pilgrims and other visitors, it was said, as residents. There were three thousand priests and five thousand monks and nuns serving three hundred monasteries and convents and four hundred churches. It was fashionable to dress like a cleric even if you had not taken holy orders. A greater contrast to the dynamic industrial bustle of England could scarcely be imagined; sometimes the cleric-choked city struck Edmund as being in the grip of a great madness.