*
The first pleasure was waking up in the sleeper to see an exotic landscape of palms, cypresses, umbrella pines, calm sea and sunshine, with the occasional belltower or bombed building and pink stucco houses with green shuttered windows flitting by like candy.
At the Hotel Eliseo, Cyril lies prostrate on his bed fully dressed with firm shut eyes, what I call his ‘dying duck’ expression, occasionally emitting a loud groan to imply he is in a state of depression. After the first day’s bill, which is enormous, we move to the Inghilterra, where Cyril once more stretches out on the single bed, closes his eyes and proceeds to groan. Irritated by this, I go out to a bank on the Piazza di Spagna and buy a Lake Como shawl, for we have arrived in Rome in the middle of January: icy cold wind, frozen, more so than when we were in Merry England.
C refuses to give me any money, but luckily before leaving I pawned the ugly Chuff watch for £25, £7 of which I gave the pawnbroker to get Cyril’s mother’s watch out of pawn. The big check shawl is soft and bulky. I am dressed like an Arab in a Tangiers gale, so that people stare. C rings no one and complains that his money is running out. He is supposed to be on his way to Herculaneum to investigate the up-to-date diggings. I begin to think I would be happier in Rome alone but, feeling persecuted, fail to ring Farouk. Nonstop blame-shifting goes on – how it is my fault that so much money has been spent, as owing to my not paying for my own meals on the train he had to change an unnecessary cheque. Arriving at a bank, after visiting the Sistine Chapel (a disappointment to both of us), C yells, ‘If it wasn’t for you looking at those tombs [the Egyptian sculpture in the Vatican] we would have reached the bank in time.’ I go alone in the rain to the Piazza del Popolo to see the Santa Maria del Popolo church and then fail to find the Sansovino tomb that is mentioned by Wölfflin, even after asking one of the priests attached to the church.
We eventually get to Naples where it is milder, gayer, less cosmopolitan and constricted. Neopolitans stare and stare as though we were walking about nude. A balmy southern atmosphere, too; there is nothing southern about Rome in the winter. The rain had washed Naples clean and it did not have the dirt and dustiness of the summer. Cyril said he liked it as well. The louche bars, sailors, seafood, guitar players in restaurants and sentimental singers. The Hotel Metropole was warm (it was recommended by the Inghilterra), modern, with flowered wallpaper on a powdery blue ground; everything modern in the bathroom, comfortable with boiling water and the most instant service; the furniture was gimcrack, though, and things kept falling to pieces; handles came off drawers, a leg propping the bed up broke (without any provocation), and a glass pane that slid into the slots of the shelves slipped out and smashed (for which we had to pay). I walked about the first day drugged (after sleeping tablet) but without an overcoat and how the men stare! Am struck by the amount of noise everywhere; it is the same in Capri in the summer, too. It is mainly those horrid little Italian Vespa bikes, the backfiring of traffic, the dogs that bark and the voices that shout, and then always in the distance a pick being plied (nonstop building everywhere). At the Hotel Inghilterra it was a torture all night, the revving of cars, when the people disgorged late from the cinemas; the rain pattering on the rooftops, ‘like people trying to burn steel hoops on a bonfire’, Cyril said. His only flash of humour on the trip, up to now.
*
After taxiing round to the Metropole and dumping the luggage, we go out again to one of the bathing-beach restaurants, indoors behind wide glass windows, speckled with lights, the sea lapping the sides of the concrete waterway. Music throughout the meal and, as almost everywhere in Italy, a tenor sang sentimental Neopolitan songs, but C got cross and left his jumble of moules, mullet, octopus and squares of fried toast floating about in green-herbed fish soup on the plate. The wine was brought in small quarter-pint bottles intended for ginger beer. We had not been in the hotel long before the hall porter told us that one of the guests had just been robbed; the handle of his car ripped off and all the petrol coupons taken. I make Cyril take an inventory to see if his watch had been pinched, or his Boucheron cufflinks out of pawn. I get an idea for a short story – about a man who thinks he is being robbed by the Neapolitans, when really it is his wife who picks his pockets. Went to a hairdresser. They tried to sell me things all the time. ‘You liker de tonic for de grease?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘You liker de shampoo for de grease?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘You liker de shampoo for de dry?’ ‘I would like an ordinary shampoo, thank you.’ ‘You liker de tonic for de face?’ ‘No, thank you.’ Then another tormentor approaches. ‘You taker de massage for de face?’ And when I say, ‘No’, ‘You taker de manicure for de sure.’
Went to the museum. Ravishing things to see. Roman wall paintings impressionist and Guardi-ish. Steep mounting alleys that rise in steps as far as the eye can see, with clean washing strung across, barrows rooted to the corners laden with oranges, tangerines, bananas and lemons hanging in festoons shaped like Chinese lanterns. The épiceries crammed with fresh cheeses – Bel Paese, Provolone and mozzarella; truncheons of garlic sausage decorating the portals, barrel organ drawn by sturdy grey donkeys, the neonlit cafeterias where they squeeze one fresh juices and music plays from a radio box.
We visit Paestum. Board a breakfast train in brilliant sunshine, wear my thick white hand-knit pullover and lean towards the window to get the heat from the sun; pain grillé, a miniature pot of ersatz-tasting plum jam and coffee molto caldo, special care being taken to heat the cup ‘and saucer as well. Pass orange groves, artichoke fields and rows of cauliflowers (the small kind, broccoli); strings of pomodori attached to the outside walls of the houses hanging like glazed udders; wander round Salerno. Well cared for, sunny with a long promenade, men lounging about on wooden seats and sea-washed sands the colour of slate; bathed there once during the war and the water was full of medusa. Catch another train after being pestered by rows of midget men to take a horsedrawn cab. The cathedral was closed for repairs; it looked as though they might be turning it into another Vézelay, where the restored capitals now look as though sculpted by Epstein. We seem to be the only travellers on the train ever to pay for a ticket and the other occupants of the carriage hold up vouchers, some passing themselves off as officials. Cyril says, ‘A sign of decadence. A country run by bureaucracy.’ On the way back a perfectly fit man posing as a beggar entered each carriage in turn demanding alms. Most people paid. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ I ask. ‘No,’ they say. A man holds forth in Italian: ‘In Boston, which is one of the richest cities of the world, there is a street devoted entirely to beggars who lie out on the pavement all night.’ Cyril corroborates this fact, letting the carriage know that he too has been there. Paestum was very disappointing to both of us, but the museum was exciting with some quite recent archaic metopes of dancing maidens playing flutes. There was some desultory digging going on and one of the men held up a coin he had just found in the soil. We had a horrible lunch, the worst so far in Italy. Tasteless veal in a sickly Marsala gravy, spaghetti too hard and tinned tomato sauce, with some wet puff-ball cheese. As we were leaving Cyril shouted over his shoulder at the waiter, ‘caro e malo’ (dear and bad) so that he came running after us to claim the matches he had given me to light my cigarette.
For the second night running we went to bed early and had a meal brought up on a tray; scrambled eggs and tea. I bought some yoghurt (have a passion for it here) and Farouk telephoned, having received the letter I had written in Rome. He said he was in the far north at a skiing resort, was friendly and gay and we arranged to meet in Rome. A libeccio wind blew all through the night.
*
Rain! Rain! Rain! On the quay were men supporting trayloads of coral and cameo brooches. ‘You like a good contraband watch, mister, fifteen dollars to you, mister.’ ‘I have one already.’ ‘Like to see the spring, mister?’ Bringing out his grandmother’s Victorian watch, Cyril says, ‘I have a good contraband watch already, thank you.’
Pick-up men pester one all th
e time; there are those who draw silently up to the kerb in tiny Fiat cars like black silver fish and musty men slip out, peer into a shop window, gaze over their shoulders at you without speaking and then climb back in, drive a few paces and repeat the theme. There are the ones on foot, who stop, pause, turn, halt: ‘Where you go, Miss? I show you sommink?’
Go to Capri to meet the pastry cook. A terrible journey. Rough sea. The boat dipped and rose. I was sick. A handsome fatherly sailor in high Wellington boots held my head. Standing on the Marina Grande in readiness for my arrival was a funny little chap in a black overcoat, carrying a gamp, who with small mincing purposeful steps led me away. Is this the little bourgeois fellow I have come to see? Where is the slouching fat pastry cook of the summer season?! Having contemplated remaining the night on the island I am resolved to get away on the last boat. ‘I thought you would come back,’ Cyril said, ‘as this hotel has base-appeal.’
The next day was spent at Pompeii, the peak of our visit. A car is hired; alas, it is Sunday, and shoals of sailors are being led through the turnstile and counted like sheep. ‘You like to stop five minutes at the cameo factory?’ our driver asks. ‘Decidedly no.’ We glare out of our respective windows at the many fields of broccoli. On arriving at Pompeii, Cyril tries to find his way about by studying his guide. I hear someone explain, ‘This is where the judges sat.’ ‘Why couldn’t you tell me that?’ I say crossly to C, who is still studying his guide map. Then, we make for the House of Vettii, where women are forbidden to enter. While I am inspecting the erotic murals with the aid of a torch, a large troupe of businessmen are shepherded in and I am caught. There is a fearful to-do, much to my bewilderment, as they struck me as being quite unaphrodisiac. So, we had to go before a head man like naughty children but, when Cyril brandished the slip of paper given to him by the curator of the Museo Nazionale in Naples, we were allotted our own guide. I adored the brightly coloured murals of the fourth style Pompeiian art; the garden wall paintings of birds, mimosa, cherry, pomegranate, fig and lemon trees, red arbutus berries with birds perched on the branches and a serpent shown circling a tree after a bird’s nest. When all the other sightseers had gone off to lunch, we wandered about the deserted streets. Noting the phallic symbols at the corners of the streets and the tubular shaped urns into which the Pompeiian men urinated, the guide related that the urine was afterwards used for washing clothes. A priapus symbol was nearly always put at the entrance to a rich man’s house, to ward off ill luck. When I asked Cyril if Botticelli could have been influenced by Pompeiian art, he said he could not have seen any. We visited the House of Mysteries and then took a bus on to Sorrento, then rushed back to the opera at San Carlo. A man sharing our box asked how it is we speak such good English. ‘But we are English.’ To which he giggled as at an obscene joke and said, ‘I thought you were Germans. I often mistake the two.’ The following day we take the train to Florence, to stay with Bernard Berenson at I Tatti.
*
‘It’s strange to be the sole survivor of an epoch,’ said Berenson, after dinner the first night, ‘I have begun to take myself seriously, which I never did before.’ We had been invited by telegram to stay for two nights. They talked about mutual friends. When, reprovingly, C mentioned someone who had been made very unhappy by his wife’s infidelity during the war, Berenson thought it quite justified. He said to me, ‘Could you be faithful to someone who talked like a Bishop? Can anyone be faithful to anyone, anyway? Fidelity belongs to an era of slavery.’
It is snowing today; through the grey sleet we can see the mountains covered with snow and the cypresses; in the wind they sound like the rustling of the sea. Berenson, at ninety, is wonderful looking. Tiny and very spruce, he moves in a kind of upright sprint in the manner of someone who is accustomed to being the centre of attention; is very clothes-conscious; wears narrow, black suede shoes. I noticed him looking at my old leather walking shoes with displeasure. He appears almost hairless, except for a white beard and for someone with such a slight figure has a very thick neck. He used his sensitive hands to stroke his face in mock anguish when subjects like psychoanalysis cropped up; when talking to a woman he likes to hold her hand or stroke her hair. He told us that his visual sense was such that, in his youth after his first visit to the Prado, he could remember in detail every picture he had seen. Talking of Ezra Pound a guest maintained that he had been mad from the age of ten. ‘It has always been the excuse made for him by his friends,’ said C. But the lady went on, ‘You can see it in his handwriting.’ ‘I see vulgarity,’ piped BB, ‘a great deal of ignorance and some appallingly bad grammar, but no madness.’
At dinner, we had fresh peas from the garden. Italy, Berenson said, was a very productive country with practically all the natural resources that she needed; like the beggar who, when he dies, turns out to be a millionaire. We talked about the Roman paintings. Everyone admired the Villa Livia fresco now in the Terme Museum, Rome. Like a vision in a dream, someone said. ‘Some of them are like old Chinese wallpapers,’ C said. Berenson agreed but, laughing, stated they were not quite as good as that. He insisted that the Romans were completely uncreative, that all the painting had been done by Greeks, that some of them were copies from Greece executed by Greeks, as Pompeii was originally a Greek city and anyway the Romans considered painting to be an unworthy occupation. The Villa of the Mysteries was a copy; the execution was inferior to the conception, copies of about the time of Augustus. C was surprised. ‘Always remember,’ Berenson stressed, ‘when the execution is inferior to the conception you may be sure a copy has been made.’ He then stated that it was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that painting became a respected profession. C disagreed, referring to the great painters of the Renaissance. Berenson said that they were esteemed as geniuses all right, but artisans all the same. You would find that Michelangelo, for example, would never have been seated at the Pope’s table. Many of the great painters would never have come face to face with their noble patrons. C countered with Velasquez. ‘What a snob he was!’ said Berenson. He thought Anatole France was a very great writer and that he would have a revival. But he did not think much of any of the present French writers, except Montherlant. Gide had capitalised himself fully during his lifetime, there was nothing more to be squeezed out of him. Valéry, of course, everyone praised – a man indifferent to success or notoriety. He was very against Virginia Woolf’s Diaries and did not think any writer should be so obsessed about their work; he criticised her for harping on her sales all the time. He thought it was wrong to have published them leaving out so many personal passages. ‘She ought to have remained a critic,’ he concluded, ‘she was very good at that.’ Maugham was dismissed as not worth a serious discussion, never having written a memorable phrase. His essay on Zurbaran was utterly trite.
The first night they kept trying to make C open a full bottle of whisky that had been put beside him. When he declined, Nicky Mariano said, ‘But we had been told you had become a very heavy drinker and so we arranged to have something strong in the house specially.’ She had also heard that he had become exceedingly fat but admitted, ‘You don’t seem so fat to me.’ ‘It’s just the jowl,’ said Berenson. ‘If you were a few inches taller no one would think of you as being fat at all. It’s your head which looks out of proportion.’
*
The routine of the day is that we all foregather for lunch at one o’clock, having been left to our own devices till then. But it is not easy to remain in bed as the servants disturb us, bringing clothes that have been pressed, preparing baths, stoking the fire. C gets up early and goes to work in the library. After lunch we retire; congregate for tea or, as C puts it, ‘go on parade again’ at a quarter to six; disappear again at seven; dinner is at a quarter to nine; we are summoned to it by a gong.
Robert de Montesquiou was mentioned. ‘What a dear fellow,’ mused Berenson. ‘Such a brilliant talker, but a failure as a writer. A true aristocrat, confident of the superior quality of his mind and th
e distinction of his appearance. What a stimulating companion he has been! But garrulous and exhibitionist in a social gathering, demanding all the attention. What a wonderful profile he had! …’ It was through Montesquiou that he had met Proust. ‘What has been your impression of your morning?’ Berenson addressed me, as I sat next to him at lunch. ‘Too many books in the library.’ Everyone looked across in dismay. ‘So many one wants to read and so little time,’ I explained. ‘I really have achieved something with the library. I shall be leaving something behind that is really worthwhile.’ Then he laughed. ‘It provides anyone with standard intelligence with what an American would call, “a good liberal education”.’ C talked about Petronius and got so excited that he did not eat his food in time and the fruit had to be passed round while he was a course behind. When he had finished an Italian guest exclaimed, ‘Very interesting!’ ‘Aren’t you proud,’ said Berenson, ‘of having a husband who is as well-informed as he is frivolous?’
Again I was admonished for reading art books. ‘I have never read a thing about painting all my life,’ said Berenson. But he recommended Burckhardt. ‘You’ll be learning Chinese soon,’ he suddenly said to me with disgust. ‘Do you like to be a doormat to your husband?’ Anticipating my answer, he concluded, ‘Then you don’t love him.’
On our last evening C told Berenson he should write his memoirs, reminiscences of personalities, as he possessed such a gift for bringing people to life. ‘I have very little concentration left,’ he replied, ‘and the little that I have is going into compiling a catalogue of Italian painting.’ He paused. ‘I have so little time left and it is to be in four volumes. So I must think of nothing but that. And it exhausts me so to write.’ When it was suggested that he dictate, he said, ‘I can’t understand how anyone can work through dictation, it is a most uninspiring medium. I need someone to draw out the memories. It is as though they were at the bottom of a well and needed extracting.’ That he could not do himself. Someone asked whose works would be read in a hundred years. Portions of Proust would survive, but there was a great deal of him that needed weeding out. What he has to say about the time factor was quite unique, said C. Berenson said that he had met Proust in Paris with Montesquiou, whose voice Proust even imitated. ‘A peacock’s screech,’ he said. ‘Shrill and high-pitched.’ C said that many of those who had met Proust had not taken to him very much. Was there something repellent about his appearance? ‘He was very dirty,’ Berenson agreed. ‘Wore no tie; and dirty open-necked soft collars; and dans le monde sat in a corner not speaking but watching everybody, and then later he took up with such boring women!’ What Proust had done could have been a great deal better.
'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More' Page 24