by Jamie James
“arrested the Baron d’A.”: “Un scandale parisien,” Le Figaro, July 10, 1903, 4.
“Baronne Axel d’Adelswärd”: “Regina,” “La vie de Paris, L’Île de Puteaux,” in ibid., 1.
“Contemporary anxiety over”: Nancy Erber, “Queer Follies: Effeminacy and Aestheticism in Fin-de-Siècle France in the Case of Baron d’Adelswärd Fersen and Count de Warren,” in Disorder in the Court, ed. George Robb and Nancy Erber (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan, 1999), 188.
a pornographic novel: A.-S. Lagail, Les mémoires du baron Jacques: Lubricités infernales de la noblesse décadente (“Priapeville”: Librairie Galante, 1904).
“I don’t shake hands with pederasts”: Paul Morand, Venices, trans. Euan Cameron (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), 42.
“Graeco-Preraphaelitico-Modernistic bric-à-brac”: Peyrefitte, Exile of Capri, 8.
“rich poetaster”: Shirley Hazzard, Greene on Capri (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 93.
“a virtually unique manifestation”: Ogrinc, Frère Jacques, 19.
“He found himself beautiful”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, Black Masses: Lord Lyllian (Norwich, Vt.: Asphodel, 2005), 23. This excellent translation (unattributed, apparently a group effort led by the publisher), beautifully printed and designed, is the only major full-length work by Fersen published in English.
“I teach these youngsters”: Ibid., 139.
“You elevated my heart”: Ibid., 170–76.
“overran the island”: Hamilton, Recollections of an Alienist, 176–77.
“If you have come to Capri”: I am grateful to Cornelia Biegler-König for this translation of Platen’s poem.
“The Persian ghazal”: Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Knopf, 1947), 264–65.
“Brønnum’s akten”: Personal communication from Adam Lüders, with the author’s thanks.
“One’s body glows”: August Bournonville, My Theatre Life, trans. Patricia N. McAndrew (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), 94.
“The entrance to the cave”: Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, chap. 30.
“in so cosmopolitan a city”: John Clay MacKowen, Capri: The Island Revisited, ed. Anna Maria Palombi Cataldi (Beaconsfield, U.K.: Beaconsfield, 2012), 124. The principal interest of this new edition of MacKowen’s guidebook to Capri is Dr. Cataldi’s biographical sketch of the author, the best source of information about his life.
“negresses and cannibals”: Fersen, unpublished letter dated Aug. 4, 1904, “aboard the English steamship Doric,” recipient unverified. I am grateful to Raimondo Biffi, in Rome, for supplying me with copies of Fersen’s unpublished correspondence.
“a house in the sun”: Viveka Adelswärd, Alltför adlig, alltför rik, alltför lättjefull (Copenhagen: Carlsson, 2014). Here, I quote an English synopsis kindly given to me by the author.
“a favorite spot of mine”: Norman Douglas, Looking Back (London: Chatto & Windus, 1933), 359–60.
“With his childlike freshness”: Ibid., 361.
“Their villa above the Grande Marina”: Quoted in Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times: Octave Four, 1907–1915 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), 183.
“Carlyle once said”: Mackenzie, Vestal Fire, 47.
“My only memory”: Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times: Octave Five, 1915–1923 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), 138.
“in the dusty rear”: Henry James, Notes on Novelists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 318. James’s appraisal of Compton Mackenzie’s work is warm but measured, and expressed in convolutions so complex that it resists sensible quotation except in full.
One popular book about Capri: Money, Capri. James Money’s book is an encyclopedic catalogue of the island’s scandals, entertaining but fatally flawed as a source of information. He frequently quotes Mackenzie’s novels as though they were historical chronicles, and even attributes dialogue from the novels as quoted speech by the real people he supposes to be the models of Mackenzie’s characters; yet he never concedes that he is doing so. Money follows the same dubious practice with Roger Peyrefitte’s Exile of Capri. The reader must refer to Money’s footnotes to find out if a quoted passage comes from a nonfiction book or a novel.
“make extravagant gestures”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, Et le feu s’éteignit sur la mer … (Paris: A. Messein, 1909), chap. 13.
“The people in Capri annoyed”: Ibid., chap. 16.
“the little painter”: Ibid., chap. 21.
“The two maidservants”: Peyrefitte, Exile of Capri, 200.
“Intelligence beamed from his eyes”: Mackenzie, Octave Four, 244.
“No doubt one of his family”: Ibid., 245.
“If it is true”: Quoted in Ogrinc, Frère Jacques, 36.
“was torn between feelings”: Ibid., 39.
“He dined, and as he was lighting”: Douglas, Looking Back, 365.
“Yet perhaps one evening”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, Ainsi chantait Marsyas (Paris: Vanier, 1907), 16.
“a smoking room”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, “L’extase,” Akademos 1, no. 9 (1909): 321–26.
“Tonight I sing of opium”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, Hei Hsiang: Le parfum noir (Paris: Albert Messein, 1921), 5.
“I would wish to live”: Ibid., 22.
“To be granted dreams”: Peyrefitte, Exile of Capri, 7.
“Miles asked for a mirror”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, Le baiser de Narcisse (Reims: L. Michaud, 1912), 18.
“slowly at first”: Ibid., 20.
“with a charming, childlike gesture”: Ibid., 21.
“It is in a bungalow”: Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, “Lontainement,” in Paradinya (Paris: Pan, 1911), 9.
“opium-tainted cigarette”: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, chap. 1.
“Crime belongs exclusively”: Ibid., chap. 19.
123 “We want no part of it”: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Le Futurisme,” Le Figaro, Feb. 20, 1909, 1.
“the refuge for indispensable disorders”: Quoted in Money, Capri, 167.
“little gentleman, hunchbacked”: Fortunato Depero, Fortunato Depero nelle opera e nella vita (Trent: TEMI, 1940), 203.
“Our too intense participation”: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Bruno Corra, L’isola dei baci (Capri: La Conchiglia, 2003). Many quotations from the short novel, in my translation, follow in sequence, except as noted.
“The warm, soft lilac twilight”: Ibid., 45.
“a youthful way”: Bruno Giancarlo, “Tacito e il Futurism,” Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale 50, no. 2 (2008): 394.
“epiphany of the irrepressible germination”: Ugo Piscopo, Capri Futurista (Naples: Alfredo Guida, 2001), 10–13.
My principal source for information on the life of Romaine Brooks is the unpublished typescript of her memoirs, circa 1950, archived by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The Beinecke typescript is untitled; other versions of the memoir are titled “No Pleasant Memories.” The best biography of the artist is Cassandra Langer’s Romaine Brooks: A Life, published in 2015, which is concise yet thoughtful and thought-provoking, well researched, and elegantly written. Meryle Secrest’s biography of Brooks, Between Me and Life, published in 1974, is dated in its approach but remains an invaluable resource.
“At the end of the last century”: Romaine Brooks, unpublished memoir (Beinecke Library, Yale University, ca. 1950), 159. Throughout this section, many quotations from the typescript follow in sequence, with exceptions noted.
“arrogance, unusual culture”: Ibid., 3.
“rhythmic calls and responses”: Ibid., 159–61.
“Mr. Burr’s face”: Ibid., 162–63.
“always planning diversions”: Ibid., 166–67.
“frigid and labored”: Benson, Final Edition, 115.
“devoid of any rendered magic”: Ibid., 177.
“Came for lunch”: Benjamin Taylor, Naples Declared (New York: Penguin, 2012),
151.
“coming along one day”: Mackenzie, Octave Four, 233.
“inexcusably indolent”: Benson, Final Edition, 243.
“He became very angry”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 162.
“I gazed at her spellbound”: Ibid., 177.
“When for the last time”: Ibid., 198.
“Festival of San Costanzo—an Island Carnival”: Quoted in Harold E. Trower, The Book of Capri (Naples: Emil Prass, 1906), 303.
“From where he lay”: W. Somerset Maugham, The Mixture as Before (New York: Doubleday Doran, 1940), 110.
“I decided to forgo”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 200.
“Mrs. Brooks has returned”: Knight, L’avvocato di Tiberio, 96.
“Enough for meat”: Money, Capri, 130.
“Of all the painters”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 205.
John Singer Sargent: For information about the artist’s life and sojourn in Capri, I consulted Stanley Olson, Sargent: His Portrait (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986).
“the slightly ‘uncanny’ spectacle”: Henry James, “John S. Sargent,” Harper’s Magazine, Oct. 1887, 683–91.
“One generally feels used up”: Olson, Sargent, 68.
“an Anacapri girl”: Evan Edward Charteris, John Sargent (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 48.
disgrace of Friedrich Alfred Krupp: My principal source for the Fall Krupp is Dieter Richter, “Friedrich Alfred Krupp auf Capri: Ein Skandal und seine Geschichte,” in Friedrich Alfred Krupp: Ein Unternehmer im Kaiserreich, ed. Michael Epkenhans and Ralf Stremmel (Munich: Beck, 2010). I also consulted the sensational and censorious account in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (New York: Little, Brown, 1968), 221–32.
“It was one thing”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 207.
“gens du monde ever seeking”: Ibid., 212.
“Blond and boyish”: Ibid., 205.
“fairy tale of life”: Ibid., 214.
“These pensive portraits”: Meryle Secrest, Between Me and Life (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1974), 197.
“What I called grown-up games”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 224.
“to give a portrait”: Ibid., 212.
“the masculine soul”: Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, trans. Franklin S. Klaf (New York: Arcade, 1965), 264.
“Venetia Ford! So that was”: Radclyffe Hall, The Forge (Bristol, U.K.: Arrowsmith, 1929), chap. 6.
Gabriele D’Annunzio: My principal sources for information about the writer’s life were Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Gabriele d’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War (New York: Knopf, 2013), and Jonathan Galassi, “The Writer, Seducer, Aviator, Proto-Fascist, Megalomaniac Prince Who Shaped Modern Italy,” New Republic, Feb. 9, 2014.
“a frightful gnome”: Cassandra Langer, Romaine Brooks: A Life (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 55.
“the great lapidé of our times”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 242–55.
“I have seen many things”: Whitney Chadwick, Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks (Chesterfield, Mass.: Chameleon Books, 2000), 23.
“ivory face with gemlike eyes”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 71.
“the figure of Sebastian”: Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1955).
“The violent transformation”: Chadwick, Amazons in the Drawing Room, 23.
“I come, I ascend”: Ibid.
Rubinstein visited D’Annunzio in Arcachon: Michael de Cossart, Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960): A Theatrical Life (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987), 60–61.
“seemed to me more beautiful”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 258.
“The Venus lay”: Hall, Forge, chap. 8.
“For the first time”: Chadwick, Amazons in the Drawing Room, 26.
“The Weeping Venus”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 281.
“believed that sensuality flourished”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 47.
“Friendship came to me”: Brooks, Beinecke typescript, 277.
“There comes before me”: Ibid., 238.
“I am a cynic”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 94.
“one is indispensable to the other”: Francesco Rapazzini, Élisabeth de Gramont: Avant-gardiste (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 339.
“Lily, Natalie, and Romaine”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 99.
“The offender was usually of a masculine type”: Allan McLane Hamilton, “The Civil Responsibility of Sexual Perverts,” American Journal of Insanity 52 (1896): 505.
“A plumbago ramped”: Benson, Final Edition, 115.
“Long mornings of swimming”: E. F. Benson, As We Were (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), 291.
“I shut myself up”: Secrest, Between Me and Life, 284.
“A heat wave”: Ibid., 285.
“every one of the characters”: Mackenzie, Octave Five, 138.
“a Swedish mathematician”: Compton Mackenzie, Extraordinary Women (London: Hogarth Press, 1986), 231.
“These dinner-parties of Rosalba’s”: Ibid., 263.
“When the dusty road”: Ibid., 275.
“a young Neapolitan”: Ibid., 101.
“I know that you have not bathed”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 97.
“The masculine side”: Mackenzie, Octave Five, 152.
“I want to cry”: Ibid.
“the destroyer of mediocrity”: Daniela Ferretti, “A Coré, distruttice della mediocrità,” in La divina marchesa: Arte e vita di Luisa Casati, catalogue of an exhibition at the Palazzo Fortuny, Oct. 4, 2014–March 8, 2015 (Milan: 24 Ore Cultura, 2014), 17. The beautifully produced catalogue of this extraordinary exhibition is the best source on the life and work of Luisa Casati.
“She wore an astrologer’s hat”: Mackenzie, Octave Five, 175–76.
“a prey to his black whims”: Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt, trans. Cesare Foligno (Pickle Partners, 2015), chap. 1.
“You are quite right, Mrs. Mackenzie”: Mackenzie, Octave Five, 128.
“an abandoned farmyard”: Secrest, Between Me and Life, 353.
“I shall always serve”: Langer, Romaine Brooks, 106.
“What’s the use?”: Secrest, Between Me and Life, 382.
“a Scot (born in Austria)”: Frederick R. Karl, Conrad: The Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 578. Among the many cradle-to-grave biographies of Conrad, I prefer Karl’s.
“I’ve done nothing”: Ibid., 577.
“a good European”: Joseph Conrad, “Il Conde: A Pathetic Tale,” in A Set of Six (London: Methuen, 1908).
Modern critics have been attracted: See Jeremy Hamilton, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), and Sylvère Monod, “Rereading ‘Il Conde,’” Conradian 30, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 118–26.
Conrad’s Polish biographer: Zdzislaw Najder. Zygmunt Szembek’s grandson is Zygmunt Mycielski, letter to Najder dated March 12, 1981. See Hamilton, Sexuality and the Erotic.
“the best single piece of writing”: Quoted in David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922–1930 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6.
“Douglas tall and portly”: D. H. Lawrence, Memoir of Maurice Magnus (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1987), 30.
“a gossipy, villa-stricken”: Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912–1922 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 556.
“in the black dark”: Lawrence, Maurice Magnus, 40.
“A Plea for Better Manners”: Ibid., 105–32.
“Certainly Magnus was generous”: Ibid., 136.
“would sometimes say a good word”: Mackenzie, Octave Five, 166.
“Warmed by Capri wine”: D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away, and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Iansohn (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xxxvi.
“There was a woman”: Ibid., 5.
“There was a man who loved islands”: Ibid., 151.
“a granite islan
d in the Channel”: Ibid., xxxix.
“What idiotic self-importance!”: Ibid., xxxviii.
“Always I grow really melancholy”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Macmillan, 1947), 106–7.
“Where the few stony paths”: Ibid., 118.
“This is Greece”: Ibid., 122.
“rises and subsides”: Louise Bogan, “Rilke in His Age,” Poetry 50, no. 1 (April 1937): 39.
“The fact that Russia is my homeland”: Rainer Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salomé, Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters, trans. Edward Snow and Michael Winkler (New York: Norton, 2008), 85.
“Alexei Maximovich laughed to tears”: Emanuel Salgaller, “Strange Encounter: Rilke and Gorky on Capri,” Monatshefte 54, no. 1 (Jan. 1962): 20.
“I have seen Gorky”: Rilke, Selected Letters, 129–30.
“a comically puzzled expression”: Salgaller, “Strange Encounter,” 17–18.
“was full of Russians”: Mackenzie, Octave Four, 185.
“there was a loud bang”: Douglas, Looking Back, 488–89.
“which drew the hearts”: Maxim Gorky, Days with Lenin (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2004), 27–28.
“With equal enthusiasm”: Ibid., 38.
“when he lost grew angry”: Ibid., 26.
“The primary work of the revolution”: Ibid., 32.
“repulsively memorable”: Ibid., 35.
“Our men work more quickly”: Ibid., 51.
The Spy: Maxim Gorky, The Life of a Useless Man, trans. Moura Budberg (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000).
It appears that the two writers never met: Karl, Conrad, 612.
“So I thought in 1917”: Gorky, Days with Lenin, 33–34.
“I challenge anyone to say”: Ibid.
“Outside, the ocean heaved”: I. A. Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco, and Other Stories, trans. D. H. Lawrence, S. S. Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923), 11–12.
“I took no part in politics”: I. A. Bunin, The Village, trans. Isabel Hapgood (London: Martin Secker, 1923), 8–9.
she came to Capri with a new lover: For Marguerite Yourcenar’s visit to Capri with Grace Frick in 1937, see Ciro Sandomenico, Il “viaggio di nozze” di Marguerite Yourcenar a Capri (Naples: Liguori, 2001), excerpted in L’Isola, Aug. 2004.