Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro Page 8
Henry James
NOTES
1. Like Tita, the servants of the Curtises.
2. The four Montalba sisters, with their parents and a brother, lived at Palazzo Trevisan, on the Zattere, in Venice. They all received some award for their artistic merits. Henrietta (1856–1893) as a sculptor, Clara (1842–1929) as a painter: the latter is the author of the pretty drawings that illustrated Mrs. Bronson’s essay, Browning in Asolo. Ellen made a lovely portrait of Mrs. Bronson (1892), which is kept at “La Mura”, in Mrs. Bronson’s heirs’ house, and which is published by Edel and Meredith.
3. Frederic (1828–1916) and Caroline (1837–1928) Eden lived in Palazzo Barbarigo. Mr. Eden was an invalid. They also had a famous garden on the Giudecca, called “The Garden of Eden”.
4. Alethea Wiel, the author of several books on Venice and the Veneto region, the sister of the Barons Wenlock and the wife of Taddeo Wiel (1849–1920), a writer and musicologist, who catalogued the musical funds of the Marciana Library.
5. James’s first choice is the right word: the boat is called “sandolo”.
6. Mrs. Jack, as Mrs. Isabella Stewart Gardner was called.
7. Mrs. Huntington, the mother of Laura Huntington Wagnière, died in Florence in 1893.
8. “An employee in the Railways”.
XV
To Ariana Curtis
July10th [1892]
(Edel III)
Venice, Palazzo Barbaro
Dear Mrs. Curtis.
J’y suis—would that I could add j’y reste!—till you return. Many thanks for your kind London note. I rejoice in everything that may be comfortable in your situation or interesting in your adventures. I came hither two days ago and Mrs. J.L.G.1 has kindly put a bed for me in this divine old library2—where I am fain to pass the livelong day. Have you ever lived here?—if you haven’t, if you haven’t gazed upward from your couch, in the rosy dawn, or during the postprandial (that is after-luncheon) siesta, at the medallions and arabesques of the ceiling, permit me to tell you that you don’t know the Barbaro. Let me add that I am not here in wantonness or disorder—but simply because the little lady’s other boarders are located elsewhere. I am so far from complaining that I wish I could stay here forever. I don’t—I go out with the little lady, and even with the boarders. It is scorching scirocco, but I don’t much care; it is the essence of midsummer, but I buy five-franc alpaca jackets and feel so Venetian that you might almost own me. I believe I am to go to Asolo for a day or two next week—and I confess that I have a dread of exchanging this marble hall for the top of a stable. But there is a big lady as well as a little one in the case—and I must execute myself. They went (Mrs. Jack and her three friends and Mr. Jack) last night to a première at the Malibran—an opera3 with libretto by Viel, who had sent boxes and other blandishments. They roasted, I believe, all the more that they frantically applauded*—while I met the wandering airs on the lagoon. Mrs. Bronson is at Asolo and I’ve not seen her; Edith is with the Edens and I have, thank heaven, no cousins at the pensions. So it is a rather simplified Venice—save always for the boarders. I believe we are going—or they are going—to Fusina4 (by steamboat) this evening: the little lady is of an energy! She showed me yesterday, at Carrer’s5 her seven glorious chairs (the loveliest I ever saw); but they are not a symbol of her attitude—she never sits down. I hope you have seen Dorchester House6—it is, however, but a public imitation of this. Yet the pictures are wondrous and Mrs. Holford herself almost the best.—No, I haven’t—thank heaven—a single political opinion, unless it be one to be glad I’m out of it—out of the sweetness and light of the elections, I mean. I stay here, alas, but from day to day; when I haven’t a cousin in Venice I have a brother in Switzerland. But oh, how I dream of coming back! Please tell the Paron7 how I pity him for not being here, and remind him that pity is akin to love. Ever yours, dear Mrs. Curtis, with the same pity
Henry James
* Que faire in a sent box à moins que l’on n’applaud?
NOTES
1. Isabella Stewart Gardner had rented Palazzo Barbaro and Henry James was her guest there.
2. The library of the Palazzo Barbaro, on the top floor, decorated with XVIII century chinoiseries and beautiful medallions and paintings on the ceiling. The bed was canopied, with a mosquito net, as documented by the photograph in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum collections.
3. The opera Maometto II by the Venetian Maestro Lorenzi-Fabris, which had a great success at the Malibran theatre, according to the Gazzetta di Venezia of July 11,1892. The libretto was the work of Taddeo Wiel (see letter XIV, Footnote 4).
4. Fusina was the boat terminal on the main land, from which one travelled on by coach.
5. One of the many antique dealers of XIX century Venice. The chairs had been bought at an auction in Rome, and were coming from the Borghese collection.
6. Dorchester House, in London, built by Lewis Vulliany in 1851, after the Rome Farnesina. It was later destroyed.
7. “The Master” in Venetian dialect.
XVI
To Isabella Stewart Gardner
Friday July 29th [1892]
(Edel III)
Hôtel Richemont
Lausanne
Dear Donna Isabella.
I have waited to draw breath here before writing to you and I arrived here only yesterday. Italy is already a dream and Venice a superstition. The Barbaro is a phantom and Donna Isabella herself but an exquisite legend. You all melt away in this hard Swiss light. But I have just bought a tinted (I believe they call it a “smoked” pince-nez), and I am attempting to focus you again. I carried my bleeding heart, last Sunday, all the way to Turin, where I literally spent two days (the Hôtel de l’Europe there is excellent,) and finished the abominable article.1 With that atrocity on my conscience I deserved nothing better, doubtless, than the melancholy Mont Cenis, which dragged me last Wednesday, through torrid heats, straight out of Paradise, fighting every inch of the way. Switzerland is much hotter than Italy, and, for beauty, not to be mentioned in the same cycle of time. It’s a pleasantry to say it has charm. I have been here (in this particular desolation,) since yesterday noon, intently occupied in realizing that I am an uncle.2 It is very serious—but I am fully taking it in. I don’t see as yet, how long I shall remain one—but sufficient unto the day are the nephews thereof. Mine, here, are domiciled with pastori in the neighboring valleys, but were let loose in honour of my arrival. They are charming and the little girl a bellezza. My brother and his wife send you the friendliest greetings and thank you for all you have done—and are doing—for me. My windows, from this high hillside, hang over the big lake and sweep it from one end to the other, but the view isn’t comparable to that of the little canal end from the divine library of the Barbaro. I am utterly homesick for Venice. Il n’y a que ça.—Our smash on the way to the station is almost an agreeable recollection to me—simply for being so Venetian. Gardner will have told you all about it, but I hope there have been no tiresome sequels. I don’t know, but I think it arose from a want of competence on the part of the fallible Domenico, who had the prow-oar. I shall be eager to hear from you some day ce qui en suivit. I am hungry for Venetian and Asolan gossip. I want to know everything you have bought these last days—even for yourself. Or has everything been for me? I pray this may catch you before you start for this cruel country. I enclose the introducing word for Lady Brooke,3 to whom I am also writing. My station here is precarious, as my brother, I believe, thinks of going somewhere else—so I don’t venture to ask you to write anywhere but to De Vere Gardens (34)—if you are so charitable as to write—or if you ever can write again after the handkissing extraordinary that I ween the Barbaro will witness on Monday. Please give my friendliest remembrance to Gardner, whom I thank, afresh, for his company and protection last Sunday a.m.—how long ago and far-away it seems! If he hadn’t been there to steady the boat Domenico would probably have sent me to the bottom. I am more and more determined, however, in spite o
f such perils, to secure a Venetian home. I largely depend upon you for it, and I am, dear, generous lady,
Your devotissimo
Henry James
NOTES
1. The essay “The Grand Canal”, published in Scribner’s Magazine (XII, November 1892), and then collected in Italian Hours (see Edel, Letters III, p.392).
2. James had left Venice to go to Switzerland to see his brother William, with his wife Alice and their four children. He stayed in Switzerland for about ten days, a little disappointed because William left for a hiking tour of the Engadine only two days after Henry’s arrival, and without telling him. (Edel, The Middle Years, pp.327–328, Letters III, p.392).
3. Margaret Alice Lili (née de Windt) Brooke (1849–1936), Ranee of Sarawak. She married Charles Anthony Johnson-Brooke in 1869, when he had been a rajah for a year, succeeding his uncle Sir James Brooke.
XVII
To Ariana Curtis
August 16th [1892]
(Dartmouth Ms.)
34 De Vere Gardens. W.
Dear Mrs. Curtis
I am delighted to learn by your charming letter that there is an early prospect of seeing you. I was on the point of writing to you to express the hope that there might be. I came home two days ago—and though I left Venice, and Italy, only the first days of this month, I am again fiercely pining for them, or, à défaut of that, pining for the chance and the whomwithal to talk about them! As I gather that your experience of the Norfolk moeurs will have left you with a similar appetite I promise myself much joy when we meet. I had only a trifle of 17 days at the Barbaro, but never had Venice intertwined itself so with my affections. I have marked it for my own, and this last visit completely settled for me the question of the real necessity of a little permanent perch or asylum there. I came within an ace of taking a very modest one the day before I left—just out the Grand Canal but looking straight into it—a house that faces the side of Palazzo Foscari.1 But I hadn’t time to complete the transaction, and it will be for my next visit, which I shall make as soon as I can possibly manage it. Mrs. Jack the wonderful has meanwhile a commission to look out for me. She remained, to the end of my visit, the kindest and easiest of hostesses and the Barbaro the loveablest place in all the weary world. Your library (I mean the upstair one,) is a paradise of a bedroom—if you keep your stockings together. Such dear Summer-mornings as I had there! Angelo and Tita ministered with unfailing grace to one’s faintest stirrings of wants. I don’t wonder English country-society manners strike you as stiff. Heavens how I agree with you about the dull density of it all! But you have been spoiled—you have lived too much in Arcadia. I will tell you all the gossip of the Canal side; especially the wondrous Mrs. Bronson-Pen Browning tension and rift and make-up (over the Asolo houses). I went to Asolo, with Mrs. Jack, and adored it. I adored and adore everything in those parts. I missed Ralph at Ouchy, to my regret—and dodged the Blumenthals—to my relief. I too, however, did grandfather to my nephews and niece. Won’t you kindly let me know the first moment you are “due”? I am impatient for you both, of both your devotissimo
Henry James
NOTE
1. Most likely this was the building where there is now the Masieri Foundation (on the site where Frank Lloyd Wright’s house should have been built), at the beginning of the Rio Novo, where it opens into the Grand Canal, between Palazzo Balbi and Ca’ Foscari.
XVIII
To Ariana Curtis
May 4th [1893]
(Dartmouth Ms.)
Lucerne, Hôtel National
Dear Mrs. Curtis.
very delightful, very kind, very sad, and very all but irresistible is your generous letter. To such a letter there is but one decorous answer, an immediate dash off to Venice and splash at the Barbaro steps. This is all the more present to me as the ideal, as I am, for my torment, so far on the road to Italy. But I am obliged, this time, to recognize, with whatever gnashing of teeth, that my individual milestone sticks hatefully up at this spot. I got here but yesterday, and here I must stay—pour des raisons de famille and very pleasant ones indeed, I should add, for some three weeks to come. Other reasons of the same order will then, I fear, compel my return to England1. This place is admirable just now—I mean more admirable than ever—in the first splendour of Summer. The weather, however, I fear, is going at last to break—and then more questions will come up. Please believe how much I am touched by the patience of your—both of your—hospitality. Oh, I see, I plan, innumerable ingenious ways of enjoying it in the future. I think with a sort of personal pang, although I didn’t know him, of poor forever-silent Symonds,2 who will enjoy it no more. This vanished apparition will indeed be a resource the less for you and you will sometimes see his ghost (with Browning’s audible spectre) in the bright Venetian air. Poor, grotesque little Pen—and poor sacrificed little Mrs. Pen. There seems but one way to be sane in this queer world, but there are many ways of being mad! and a palazzo-madness is almost as alarming—or as convulsive—as an earthquake—which indeed it essentially resembles. I shall send you in a fortnight or so a better little book of tales3 than that of the other day. I grieve greatly to hear that Mrs. Bronson is to return ill. I shall write to her within this week. I hear from Miss Woolson with great pleasure of her chance of the Pardelli apartment, such a chance for her as it strikes me—that I only fear that she may lose it by the intensity of her deliberation. Please don’t let her if you can help it. I would make but one gulp of it. Happy Ralph—tell him, please, from me, that his life is my ideal,—by which I mean the mixture of the inner elements (though the outer are not to be despised,) that makes his life. But I envy every element of which the Barbaro is the home, and I am, dear Mrs.
Curtis, of its padroni
the very affectionate friend