Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro Page 10
Henry James
NOTES
1. Osborne Curtis (1858–1918), the younger son of Daniel and Ariana Curtis.
2. Almorò Pisani, the husband of Evelin van Millingen, was the last heir of the great Pisani family of Santo Stefano, which had given one doge, Alvise (1735–1741) to the Republic of Venice.
XXV
To Ariana Wormeley Curtis
October 30th, 1898
(Dartmouth Ms.)
Rye, Lamb House
Dear Mrs. Curtis.
Your noble, your magnificent present followed, after a few days, the so interesting letter in which you announced it, and I ought already to have sent on its way this assurance of my really immense, my affectionate, gratitude. The admirable object reached me in perfect safety and packed with a science worthy of its luster and its history: nothing could have been more complete—so that I almost felt at first that I really ought to keep the jewel in its casket. It is a brave and brilliant jewel, and I can’t tell you how handsome and picturesque I think it, nor how it gives “importance”, as the connoisseurs say, to the whole side of the room on which it so discreetly glitters. I have placed it above the chimney-piece (after trying other postures,) and it consorts beautifully with the tone of the wall. It has—the so far-descended metal has, a delightful mildness, a silvering, of yellow. Moltissime grazie! I sit through everything—and there is plenty, isn’t there?—very firm here. My present notion is to stay till Christmas, and then go abroad—but I have so often and so horribly belied these intimations that I don’t dare to make them. Only I do most ardently hope to go. The beauty of this little old place all this October has been extreme—beauty of colour and atmosphere, sky, sea, sunsets, distances—nearnessess too—and I am freshly sorry you happened to see it in a hot prosaic glare which did it no justice. Yet what matter to you, children of the Veronese, our poor little echoes of Constable and Cotman?1 You are re-bathed in glory, and what fun your re-integration of [the] Barbaro domicile must have been! I walked with you in imagination up the steps and fondly pattered beside you—between you—along the Sala and into the incredible drawingroom the first time you reassured yourselves of them. I have had, these last weeks, rather too many inmates—that I hope you haven’t. I’ve had however for the last fortnight a very pleasant and interesting young one in the person of Jonathan Sturges2—originally of New York, a friend of Ralph’s and of thousands of others besides. Half my time is spent in devouring the papers for their interest and the other half in hating them for the horrible way in which they envenomize all dangers and reverberate all lies. As the army is quite clearly the one thing left debout in France it will presumably soon have its new Caesar—by acclamation—in the person of the younger of the Bonaparte Princes—but I thank my stars that the military justice of France is not the régime it’s my fate to live under. They would make short work with it here. But dear old dramatic France—may she never lack scenarios: so long as I am in the boxes. A great gale blows here, my chimney roars and even shakes, and my garden shakes off in each gust some article of clothing. Meanwhile, I imagine you are eating grapes and figs in yours. I bless you for the news of Mrs. Bronson’s “real” betterness. I bless you both for all other things besides and am, dear Mrs. Curtis, yours very constantly
Henry James
NOTES
1. John Constable (1776–1837) and John S. Cotman (1782–1842), the British painters.
2. Jonathan Sturges (1864–1909), American. He lived for a long time in London, although impaired by polio as a child. See Edel, Letters III, p.435.
XXVI
To Ariana and Daniel Curtis
March 16th, 1899
(Dartmouth Ms.)
Rye, Lamb House
Very dear Curtises Both.
I am deeply in debt to both of you—renewedly within a day or two; and, verily, if I’ve never acknowledged till this late hour a beautiful communication of many weeks ago, it is because I was fairly ashamed to write again, from my fireside, that I was “coming”—eternally coming—without giving any proof of being on my way. I wanted to wait till I could give that proof—tiresomely—delayed—though also calculatingly—from week to week; and now at last here it is. I’ve been in Paris a week and I leave for patria nostra about on the 21st or 22nd. I stop, however, three days at Costebelle to redeem a rigid vow to the Bourgets, and three more to redeem at Bogliasco a pledge of a softer order to the Ranee. Then, with a long precaution, I risk myself on Italian soil. Your enumeration of the social features of Rome, I confess, terrifies me, and my real hanging back till now has been from this same dread of the collected People—the terrible Popular Romance of whom, all winter, rumour has represented to me the multitude. It’s exactly to escape them all that I am cultivating the cunning of the Choctaw and if need be the rudeness of the Apache. Five years ago they were the ruination of Italy to me, and the reason why I have suffered these five years of privation to roll by. I have to go to Rome, absolutely, by reason of a gouged-out promise—of old date, too old, now—to the Waldo Storys1; and were it not for this I should hug, exclusively, the minor and unfashionable towns. But forgive this churlish tone—which is the less graceful as I find Paris at present more empty than I have ever known it. My old circle here has faded away into the Ewigkeit—though there are always cousins—little female cousins so ready to be taken about. I dined three last night and took them to the Français2—Most kind thanks for your anxiety about my fire. Yes, it was a horrid little scare—but only two rooms were compromised (above and below,) and reparation, amended and scientific reconstruction, is already under way. I was up, fortunately, though it was four-thirty a.m; I had arranged everything to come to Folkestone and that on the morrow, crossing hither the next day; and I was having a vigil of procrastinated letters and other such jobs: otherwise I don’t know what of sickening might have overwhelmed me. Smouldering fire broke out under the floor, communicated from treacherous antique fireplace—and woodwork—construction, and burnt downwards into the dining room. But the brave pumpers—the little local brigade—were cool as well as prompt, and my injury by water was almost nil. It was a horrid night—one didn’t tumble into bed till five-thirty; but it might have been much horrider. Only it kept me on there, all packed and ready to start, for two or three weeks—till I could see remedies under way. Your mention of Ralph and Mrs. Ralph here are (sic) my first knowledge of their presence and I shall certainly try to find them, and as certainly only miss them, before I leave. I ought long ago to have reported on my visit to Sargent’s (in January) studio and my vision, there, of the two pictures. But—it’s difficult. Frankly, candidly, crudely—I didn’t like the portrait of Mrs. Ralph3 at all and don’t take it as worthy of any one concerned. I don’t understand, among other things, why and how artist and husband conspired to dress her so—for, I think the dress (and I’m not speaking in the least of the décolletage in particular,) [neither] agreeable [n]or distinguished: indeed it seems to me that her certainly very striking beauty is of an order to rejoice in clothes the least fustian possible. The picture makes me want particularly to see her—I am sure I should admire her all the more after it; and I wish my days there were life remembered. The Barbaro-saloon thing4, on the other hand, I absolutely and unreservedly adored. I can’t help thinking you have a slightly fallacious impression of the effect of your (your, dear Mrs. Curtis,) indicated head and face. It is an indication so sommaire that I think it speaks entirely for itself, as a simple sketchy hint and it didn’t displease me; set as it is the general beauty—the splendour—of the thing as a total rendering: I’ve seen few things of S[argent]’s that I’ve ever craved more to possess! I hope you haven’t altogether let it go. If on reaching your parages (I mean Ventimiglia!) I get the sense of a still great plenitude in Rome, I shall rush off to see Mrs. B[ronson] at Asolo and come to Rome as soon as April or even May shall have done (if April does do,) some thriving out. Therefore it is a little uncertain yet when I shall see you. I don’t quite gather when you return
to the Barbaro. I greet you affectionately and am ever so faithfully yours
Henry James
P.S. March 19th. I have shamefully kept my letter over, because I felt I after all should see the Ralphs—and wanted to report of them. Well, I have seen them, and they have been charming to me, making me breakfast and go to wonderful old (and new) shops and collections with them—and likewise dine tonight. She is singularly handsome, to my vision, and harmonious and sympathetic—every way gentle and gracious and charming: miles beyond the infelicitous picture. It does her poor justice. I ask myself what, if she has such beauty in her now rather marked “situation” (though looking essentially well,) what she must normally and usually have. She is a presence in your lives on which I greatly congratulate you. Ralph is clearly happy—and their apartment admirable, lovely. But this Paris! I mean with its more and more Bazaar-Caravansery side! However, the Avenue du Bois as an opera-box (excuse the swift indications) “A. I.” Forgive my delays and my delay. Also my violence about the portrait. Perhaps I should see it again. But I told her how much better I liked her. A’ bientôt. Yours again
H.J.
NOTES
1. James went to Rome because Waldo Story, the son of sculptor William Wetmore Story, who had died in 1895, had asked him to write his father’s biography. James accepted, although with no enthusiasm. The result was William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903), where James widened the “biography” to the whole American scene of Story’s Rome and Europe.
2. The Français: short for Le Théatre-Français, better known as the Comédie Française, in the Place du Théatre-Français, near the Palais-Royal. See K. Baedeker, Paris et ses environs, Leipzig-Paris, 1889, p.22.
3. Sargent painted the portrait of Lisa as a wedding present, in 1898, see Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent, London, Phaidon, 1970, p.251.
4. The painting is An Interior in Venice (1899). See P. Hills, John Singer Sargent cit., p.69 (n.44). Sargent stayed in Venice on several occasions, and had a studio in Palazzo Rezzonico in 1880–1881. In 1882 he was a guest of the Curtises at Palazzo Barbaro and painted a portrait of Mrs. Daniel Curtis (see H. Honour and J. Fleming, The Venetian Hours of Henry James, Whistler and Sargent, London, Walker, 1991, p.56). Sargent and Ralph Curtis had met in Paris, studying with Carolus Duran, but they were in fact related on the maternal line. In Venice Sargent and Curtis used the same model, the Venetian young woman called “Gigia” (Viani). James wrote several times on Sargent’s paintings, including the famous and controversial portrait of Madame X (Madame Gautreau). On James’s and Sargent’s Venetian friends, see Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Browning a Venezia, Venice, 1989.
XXVII
To Alvin Langdon Coburn1
December 6th 1906
(Edel IV)
Rye, Lamb House
Dear Alvin Langdon!
I have just written to Miss Constance Fletcher,2 in Venice where she lives, at periods (with her infirm old mother and her mother’s second husband, Eugene Benson, also I fear invalidical and a little played-out, but a painter of refined and interesting little landscapes of the Venetian country), in the Palazzo Cappello, Rio Marin; which is the old house I had more or less in mind for that of the Aspern Papers. I have told her exactly what I want you to do, outside and in, and as she is a very kind and very artistic person, you can trust yourself to her completely for guidance. She will expect you, and will, I am sure, respond to my request on your behalf in a cordial and sympathetic spirit. Your best way to get to the Rio Marin will be to obtain guidance, for a few coppers, from some alert Venetian street-boy (or of course you can go, romantically, in a gondola). But the extremely tortuous and complicated walk—taking Piazza San Marco as a starting point—will show you so much, so many bits and odds and ends, such a revel of Venetian picturesqueness, that I advise your doing it on foot as much as possible. You go almost as if you were going to the Station to come out at the end of the bridge opposite to the same. Now that I think of it indeed your very best way, for shortness, will be to go by the Vaporetto, or little steamboat, which plies every few minutes on the Grand Canal, straight to the Stazione, and there, crossing the big contiguous iron bridge, walk to Rio Marin in three or four minutes. It is the old faded pink-faced, battered-looking and quite homely and plain (as things go in Venice) old Palazzino on the right of the small Canal, a little way along, as you enter it by the end of the Canal towards the Station. It has a garden behind it, and I think, though I am not sure, some bit of a garden-wall beside it; it doesn’t moreover bathe its steps, if I remember right, directly in the Canal, but has a small paved Riva or footway in front of it, and then water-steps down from this little quay. As to that, however, the time since I have seen it may muddle me; but I am almost sure. At any rate anyone about will identify for you Ca’ Cappello, which is familiar for Casa C; casa, for your ingenuous young mind, meaning House and being used, save for the greatest palaces, as much as palazzo. You must judge for yourself, face to face with the object, how much, on the spot, it seems to lend itself to a picture. I think it must, more or less, or sufficiently; with or without such adjuncts of the rest of the scene (from the bank opposite, from the bank near, or from wherever you can damnably manage it) as may seem to contribute or complete—to be needed, in short, for the interesting effect. I advise you to present your note first—unless you are so much in the humor the moment you arrive in front of the place as to want then and there to strike off something at a heat. My friends will help you by any suggestion or indication whatever, and will be very intelligent about it; and will let you see if something be not feasible from the Garden behind; which also figures a bit in the story. What figures most is the big old Sala, the large central hall of the principal floor of the house, to which they will introduce you, and from which from the large, rather bare Venetian perspective of which, and preferably looking toward the garden-end, I very much hope some result. In one way or another, in fine, it seems to me it ought to give something. If it doesn’t, even with the help of more of the little canal-view etc., yield satisfaction, wander about until you find something that looks sufficiently like it, some old second-rate palace on a by-canal, with a Riva in front, and if any such takes you at all, do it at a venture, as a possible alternative. But get the Sala at Ca’ Cappello, without fail, if it proves at all manageable or effective.
For the other picture, that of The Wings, I had vaguely in mind the Palazzo Barbaro, which you can see very well from the first, the upper, of the iron bridges, the one nearest the mouth of the Grand Canal, and which crosses from Campo San Stefano to the great Museum of the Academy. The palace is the very old Gothic one, on your right, just before you come to the iron bridge, after leaving (on the vaporetto) the steamboat-station of the Piazza. Only one palace, the Franchetti, a great big sort of yellow-faced restored one, with vast Gothic windows and balcony, intervenes between it and the said iron bridge. The Barbaro has its water-steps beside it, as it were; that is a little gallery running beside a small stretch of side-canal. But in addition it also has fine water-steps (I remember!) to the front door of its lower apartment. (The side-steps I speak of belong to the apartment with the beautiful range of old upper Gothic windows, those attached to the part of the palace concerned in my story.) But I don’t propose you should attempt here anything but the outside; and you must judge best if you can rake the object most effectively from the bridge itself, from the little campo in front of the Academy, from some other spot further—that is further toward the Salute, or from a gondola (if your gondolier can keep it steady enough) out on the bosom of the Canal. If none of these positions yield you something you feel to be effective, try some other palace, or simply try some other right range of palaces, in some other reach or stretch of the Canal; ask Miss Fletcher to please show you, to this end, what I have written to her about that. And do any other odd and interesting bit you can, that may serve for a sort of symbolised and generalised Venice in case everything else fails; preferring the noble and fine aspect, however, to the mere
ly shabby and familiar (as in the case of those views you already have)—yet especially not choosing the pompous and obvious things that one everywhere sees photos of. I hope this will be, with my very full letter to Miss Fletcher, enough to provide for all your questions. I will write the note to Miss F. to-night and send it on to you tomorrow. Let me know when, having seen Pinker again, you start. Indeed if you will give me two or three days notice I will send you the note to Miss F. then, in preference; as my letter, posted to her today, may bring a reply before you start—in which case I might have to write a fourth communication!
Yours,
Henry James
P.S. It will much help if you will take two or three subjects to show to Miss Fletcher and Benson: the Porte-Cochère (“American”)—the St. John’s Wood Villa—the antique-shop, Portland Place etc.—or my Hall (for an interior). H.J.
NOTES
1. Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), American photographer. He was entrusted with the twenty-four frontispieces of James’s New York Edition (1906–1907). He had photographed Henry James for the Century Magazine in 1905. In his Autobiography Coburn tells how simple and wonderful it was to work with James, looking for the places to photograph. James knew exactly what he wanted. A propos The Aspern Papers, in his letter of December 9, 1908 James insisted: “I want Casa Cappello …” The photographs mentioned in the P.S. concern The American, as indicated, The Tragic Muse (St. John’s Wood house), The Golden Bowl (Portland Place), see Edel, Letters IV, p.431, The Master, pp.333–339. A. L. Coburn, An Autobiography, edited by H. and A. Gersheim, New York, Dover, 1978, p.52.