Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Anne Boyd Rioux

  Villa Brichieri, on the hill of Bellosguardo overlooking Florence, where Woolson finally found a home.

  (Photograph by the author)

  The hill of Bellosguardo was a retreat from the world, far enough from Florence that she could avoid its social whirl, high enough that she could breathe the fresh air and find peace in the vast open space before her. After nearly seven years in Europe, she had finally found a home, but she insisted it would be temporary. Further into the future, she looked forward to returning to Florida and settling into the cottage of her dreams.11

  On Bellosguardo, the circle of artists she formed with the composer Francis Boott and his daughter and son-in-law, the newlywed painters, was not complete without the person who had brought them all together. James, who had been promising a visit throughout the fall, finally said he would come in December. Woolson’s lease on her new villa would begin then, but she had the apartment in the Villa Castellani until the end of the year. She wrote to him with a splendid idea—he could take over the lease on her new villa for the first month and have an excellent, quiet place to work. That the Villa Brichieri was so close—a short walk down the hill—made the situation even better. James was adamant that he wanted rest and time to write during his visit. He asked Boott and the Duvenecks not to “breathe a word of my advent” because he had no intention of seeing anyone but them and “Fenimore,” as he began referring to her when writing to Francis and Lizzie. He wanted Woolson to remain similarly discreet, which she was more than happy to do. She liked being of use, smoothing the way for him to work, while she herself was still recuperating from her novel and writing at a more leisurely pace. He was struck by Woolson’s “immense power of devotion (to H.J.!),” he told Lizzie. To Francis he wrote, “It is very good of you to offer to put in wood, but I have an idea that Fenimore, whose devotion—like my appreciation of it—is sans bornes, has stacked me up a pile with her own hands.”12

  Woolson had not seen James since her departure from London in early April and was eager to see him, but he now had a serious rival for her attention. As he wrote to Boott in November, she was “very difficult to interest,” but it was “plain from her letters that you have achieved that secret!” James had at first joked that in asking Boott to meet her he wasn’t intending a romantic interest. Three months later, however, he seemed to encourage the prospect, imagining Woolson at Geneva (where she had gone for a few weeks before taking up residence at the Villa Castellani) “in a balcony of the Hôtel National, hanging over the lake and thinking of—you!” He teased Boott in November, after she had moved in, that he had heard from Lizzie and Woolson he was once “again the ornament of Bellosguardo.” As James’s arrival neared, he expected to hear even more about Woolson’s fondness for Boott. Having bored Boott talking about James, she would soon proceed to “bore me with you!”13

  Boott was by all accounts a charming man. Photographs show him to be tall and strikingly handsome, with thick white hair and beard. Years later Woolson wrote to him, “Have you ever stopped to count over your blessings (as the Methodists say) of always having been a handsome man, & being one still? Supposing you had had a snub nose? Or thin hair, dull eyes, and a yellow complexion? Wouldn’t each day have been much harder?” He was also a sharp dresser. None of her other male friends “approached you in coats & ties,” she told him.14

  Francis Boott became Woolson’s closest friend, next to James.

  (Correspondence and Journals of Henry James Jr. and Other Family Papers, MS Am 1094 [2245, f.5.2], by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

  Francis Boott, at seventy-three, was twenty-seven years her senior. Being with him must have reminded Woolson of the peace and security she had felt with her father. After seeing Boott again, Henry thought him an “old, old man” whose teeth had gone, along with his occupation in life, which had been looking after his daughter. But Woolson saw him as a handsome, considerate man who respected her not only as a genteel spinster but, more important, as an intelligent woman and writer. Having nurtured his daughter’s art career for many years, Francis understood a woman’s commitment to art in a way few men of his era did. Her later letters to him indicate that he read her stories and novels carefully, showing an interest in how she created them.15

  It is easy to see from those letters that during the three years Woolson lived at Bellosguardo she grew very attached to him. Although a romance was not out of the question, it was unlikely, considering their age difference, making him a safer object of her affection than James would have been. He was also more available. A third wheel now that his daughter had married, Boott needed a companion, and Woolson liked feeling needed. He kept a respectful distance, however, understanding that her work came first. He wrote her a poem about her name, playing on the confusion many people had between her and her great-uncle James Fenimore Cooper, but stressing the “world-wide fame” she had already achieved.16 She had come into his life as a respected writer and he wouldn’t forget that, however much she fulfilled his need for feminine attention.

  THE BOOTTS

  Francis Boott was a cultured gentleman in the old-fashioned sense, a Boston Brahmin who had inherited money from his family’s cotton mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, but chose to dedicate himself to a life filled with beauty and the arts rather than business. His insatiable yearning for music, theater, and opera went unfulfilled in New England, so after his wife’s death in 1847, when Lizzie was eighteen months old, he brought her to Europe (with her nurse) and devoted himself to his musical studies and his daughter’s education. Soon father and daughter moved into the Villa Castellani. His friends in Italy included the artist William Wetmore Story and the writers Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Francis set their poems to music, and Lizzie sketched their portraits.17

  Lizzie’s upbringing as a model jeune fille made her one of the most accomplished young women of her day. She could sing, play the piano, speak Italian and French fluently, read German, and, most important to her, draw and paint. Art was her passion, and her father fostered it in every way he could. When her father brought her home to New England after the Civil War (she was nineteen), she awed her Brahmin cousins and the James family with the extent of her knowledge and refinement. William James wrote to a friend, “I never realized before how much a good education . . . added to the charms of a woman.” He concluded that his friend should come quickly and meet her “for you know those first class young spinsters do not always keep forever.”18 Lizzie, however, did not marry then. Instead, she pursued her study of art, for which, William noticed, she had a great talent.

  But the shy, serious, and almost impossibly refined woman did fall in love. Like many other female art students of the period, she fell for one of her teachers. Frank Duveneck was a rough bohemian from Kentucky who had many admirers among his pupils. Her father strenuously objected to her marrying a penniless artist who, he assumed, was primarily interested in her money, of which there was a considerable amount. Lizzie also feared what marriage would mean to her career. So she broke off her engagement and moved with her father to the United States, where, from 1881 to 1885, she established a successful career.19

  Finally, however, Lizzie’s desires for a family of her own overrode her fears about losing her career, and she was able to negotiate a compromise whereby father, daughter, and husband would live together at the Villa Castellani. She had come to feel that art was no longer fulfilling enough on its own. “I crave human interests in life,” she wrote to a friend, seeking approval for what everyone thought was a disastrous decision. “The abstract ones of art are not enough for me.” When they married in Paris on March 25, 1886 (a little more than two months before Woolson met them), Lizzie and Frank both signaled their intent to continue their careers, listing their occupations on their marriage certificate as “artiste, peintre.”20

  Lizzie Boott, who had devoted her life to her art, had recently married when Woolson met her.

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p; (Correspondence and Journals of Henry James Jr. and Other Family Papers, MS Am 1094 [2245, f.4.1], by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

  Their union interested Woolson immensely. Lizzie was nearly forty, only six years younger than she was. By waiting to fulfill her desire for a home and family and putting her art (and her father) first for so many years, Lizzie had found a new solution to the age-old problem of combining love and art—a very modern one, in fact. In none of Woolson’s stories about women writers and artists had she been able to imagine a woman who chooses art over love or who puts love on hold while she develops her talent. For her the identities of wife and artist were incompatible. Yet Lizzie was trying to be both. More than that, she was soon expecting a child. She was conducting a grand experiment that few women before her had attempted, and Woolson had a front-row seat to the drama.

  Woolson was also fascinated by the other half of this couple. Her niece later wrote that she was “very attracted to Duveneck—both as an artist and as a man.” Woolson herself later told Boott, “I am an old lady now, & so I can say that I admire F.D. very much.” She was drawn to his “beautiful & powerful” pictures and enjoyed watching him at work. (James had been enamored of Duveneck’s art ever since he first saw it in Boston in 1875 and called him an “unsuspected genius” in his review for The Nation.) Duveneck invited Woolson into his studio several times. She feasted her eyes on his murky, realistic paintings, which had recently given way to brighter canvases and subjects, perhaps under Lizzie’s French-trained influence.21

  The wedding photograph of Frank and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Boott Duveneck, in 1886. Their union of art and love was of great interest to Woolson.

  (Courtesy of the Kenton County Public Library)

  Duveneck reminded Woolson of the men she had known growing up in Ohio. He hailed from Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, where he spent much of his youth. He looked something like her Civil War beau, Zeph Spalding, with thick golden hair and a full moustache. His rugged western manliness had not been entirely smoothed over by his years of rubbing elbows with the cultured aristocracy of Germany and Italy. She could see what drew the refined Lizzie to him, although no else could. He was bold, “a bluff and hearty, no-nonsense man, a bit of a bully boy . . . and every bit a man’s man.” Unsurprisingly, James—his opposite—was dubious about the match: “[H]e is illiterate, ignorant and not a gentleman (though an excellent fellow, kindly, simple etc.).” He was mystified by Lizzie’s willingness to give “away her independence and her freedom” for someone so uncouth. However, he admitted, “she is forty years old, and she has the right.”22

  Constance, on the other hand, fully understood not only why Lizzie had married but the choice she had made for a spouse. In fact, the irresistible love between the two members of this odd couple would inspire a new theme in her fiction in the coming years as she portrayed refined women falling for rough men in spite of their better judgment and often in opposition to uncomprehending family members. In a way, Constance lived vicariously through Lizzie, who seemed to incite equal parts jealousy and admiration in her. Although little is known about their friendship, it seems they became fast friends, no doubt because Constance sympathized with Lizzie’s choice when, it seems, everyone else was against her.

  By the time Constance came to live at the Villa Castellani, Lizzie’s pregnancy was already in its third trimester. It was clear to Constance that Lizzie was among the happiest women she had ever met. Lizzie came to her apartment for tea and conversation, and Constance often visited their studio. She was even inspired to pick up a brush and try her hand at painting as well. She had long wished to take some art lessons—“Since music and so many other enjoyments have been taken from me, it would perhaps be wise to extend the horizon a little on a side still open,” she wrote once—and it appears Frank and Lizzie fulfilled her wish.23

  When James arrived at the Villa Brichieri just up the road on December 8, the Boott-Duvenecks had already decamped to Florence, where Lizzie soon would give birth. The Duvenecks asked Constance to be the baby’s godmother, making her a de facto member of the family. (A painter friend of Duveneck’s was chosen as the godfather.) So not only did Constance have a new home, but she also had a new family of sorts. After the baby’s birth on December 18 and the mother’s recovery, their close-knit community would resume at Bellosguardo. In the meantime, James and Woolson had the hill to themselves for three weeks.

  Drawing of Woolson from Lizzie Duveneck’s sketchbook.

  (Courtesy of the Duveneck family)

  Henry James, drawn by John Singer Sargent in 1886, the year of his first visit to Woolson’s villa.

  (From The Letters of Henry James, by Percy Lubbock)

  Up-close portrait of Woolson from Lizzie Duveneck’s sketchbook.

  (Courtesy of the Duveneck family)

  AN INTERLUDE WITH JAMES

  In December, while Henry James took up residence at the Villa Brichieri only a few steps from Woolson at the Villa Castellani, the two writers enjoyed their mutual solitude and got down to work. James insisted that he had come there to hide out and return to some writing commitments from which he had long been distracted by moving into a new apartment in London, helping his sister, Alice, relocate into new lodgings not far from his, and completing two novels (The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima). James presented Woolson with a three-volume set of the latter, which he inscribed, “To his Padrona / Constance Fenimore Woolson, / her faithful tenant & friend / Henry James / Bellosguardo, December 1886.”24

  One of his writing tasks was an essay on his friend “Fenimore” for Harper’s Weekly, so he set to reading her works on hand, which included all of her books except Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches. He seems to have enjoyed the task. Writing to his brother William and his wife two days before Christmas, he referred to Woolson as “my old and excellent friend . . . the gifted authoress.” It seems he didn’t mind telling them she was nearby while the Bootts were in town. To their mutual friend John Hay he wrote that she was not five minutes away, “and I see her every day or two—indeed often dine with her,” and in one of her letters, she indicated that she “saw him daily.” James also told Hay that he looked forward to the many “quiet, sunny, spacious hours for work” Woolson would have in her new home after the first of January, “a prospect, on her part, in which I take an interest, in view of the great merit & progress of her last book,” East Angels.25

  During their many talks that month, they surely discussed her novel, which had been published the previous summer, while she was in Geneva. East Angels sold twice as many copies as For the Major but only a fifth as many as Anne (about 10,500 copies).26 Its reviews had been mixed. One particular review wounded her deeply.

  William Dean Howells had disparaged East Angels in the “Editor’s Study” column in Harper’s, the first time that magazine published a negative review of her work. After his return from Europe, Howells had moved to New York and taken up with Harper’s, publishing his novels there and writing the new editorial column on literary matters. From that position of authority, which he would use famously in the coming years to make his case for American realism, he condemned Woolson’s portrait of the self-sacrificing Margaret Harold. Although Howells found the rest of East Angels full of “excellence” and “mastery,” Margaret was, in his view, “too much.” She “ought to console such of her sex as have heart-hungered for grand and perfect women in fiction perhaps ever since George Eliot drew Romola,” he quipped. But to the male reader craving realistic fiction, Margaret strained credulity.27

  Woolson didn’t mind so much that Howells didn’t believe in Margaret, which she had expected. In fact, she had ceased to care for his literary judgments, she told Hay, ever since he had maligned Balzac’s Père Goriot, which she considered a work of genius. But “his writing as he has done, ex cathedra as it were,—from the literary chair of the magazine in which the story appeared,—strikes me as unfriendly,” she wrote to H
ay. “[F]or the ordinary reader will not discriminate,—will not notice that it is Howells in his own person who is speaking; the ordinary reader will suppose that the magazine is coming out with a condemnation of its own contributor.”28

  Woolson’s strong bond with the Harpers seemed threatened by Howells’s animosity. He had been an early mentor to her but was never entirely supportive. Whenever and wherever he saw strains of idealism in her work (as in Margaret), he let her know that he didn’t approve. She had tried hard to please him for many years but decided she was done. She didn’t need his approval anymore. However, now that he was writing a column for Harper’s, his views would continue to matter. (In the long run, they would matter a lot. As his biographers indicate, his column would almost single-handedly “creat[e] a canon of late-nineteenth-century literature.”) The publisher, Joseph Harper, wrote her two letters, reassuring her of her high value to them and removing any feeling of betrayal.29 In fact, it is quite possible that the assignment for James to write a profile of her for Harper’s Weekly was in direct response to the Howells blunder. She would never forgive Howells and no longer counted him as a friend. But James could help heal the wound Howells had caused and repair the breach with the Harpers.

  Howells had not been alone in attacking Woolson about her character Margaret. In fact, a debate over Margaret’s decision not to leave her philandering husband raged for months in the American press, from which Woolson was largely insulated. Some reviewers agreed with Howells in finding Margaret too good to be true—not even human, said one critic—while others insisted on her veracity. The Christian Union instead attacked Howells as one who “cannot believe in any one who occupies a higher spiritual plane than that, say, of Bartley Hubbard or Silas Lapham [two of his most famous protagonists]. . . . [A] character like that of Margaret Harold is quite beyond his grasp.” But the religious press was generally uncomfortable with what they saw as the novel’s godlessness. Some reviewers complained that East Angels actually created an atmosphere in which readers found themselves rooting for “wrong,” namely that Margaret and Winthrop would find a way to be together. “Young girls read her novels,” one wrote, and are led into “dangerous sympathy with temptation.” Woolson had come up against the problem faced by Howells and James as well—how to write serious fiction that did not corrupt the innocence of young girls. As Howells would ask three years later in his “Editor’s Study” column, “In what fatal hour did the Young Girl arise and seal the lips of fiction?”30