Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Anne Boyd Rioux

  Baldwin was rather progressive in taking his patients’ moods seriously, but he could not see her compounding sense of hopelessness. Instead, he believed that low spirits were often caused by physical illness. After he had returned to Florence, Woolson explained away her depression by claiming that “part of it is the result of the influenza; another, is the constant work.” At the time, the flu virus was widely believed to attack the brain and cause, in the words of one medical dictionary, “nervous exhaustion,” “psychical derangement,” and “psychoses” that could occur long after fever had subsided. Influenza was also listed in many cases as the cause of suicide. Henry James complained after a severe bout of the flu in 1894 that “[i]t’s grotesque how weak & demoralized & depressed the merest brush of the pestilence can make one.”9

  Through the summer, Woolson labored over the book proofs of Horace Chase. She rose at four thirty in the morning and worked until nine thirty, when she had her breakfast and dressed, and then worked again until four o’clock. Her late afternoons were spent bathing at the Lido or on excursions in the lagoon. After dinner at seven thirty, she spent the rest of the evening floating through the canals with Angelo at the helm. She was working almost eleven hours a day. “I am impelled by something stronger than myself to do the very best, absolutely the very best, I can,” she explained. However, as James had once said, the effort added fresh nails to her coffin. Her friends began to notice how haggard she appeared and urged her to go somewhere warm for the winter. Instead, she concealed herself from their worried looks and made plans to remain in town.10

  CASA SEMITECOLO

  As her time at the Casa Biondetti wound down, Constance found a new apartment. For forty dollars a month, she rented the top two floors of the Casa Semitecolo, a modest and to her unromantic palazzo near where the Grand Canal opens into the lagoon. She could look across the canal to the golden mosaic façade of the Gritti-Swift. Although the fourteenth-century palace was plainer than some Venetian palazzos, John Ruskin had singled it out on his 1849 tour of the Grand Canal and made detailed drawings of it, noting the windows as “the nearest approximation of a perfect Gothic form which occurs characteristically at Venice.”11

  Constance was looking forward to “going to housekeeping again,” she wrote to Boott in her last surviving letter to him, dated September 9, 1893, just before she moved into the apartment.12 She had Angelo stock up on costly wood, which had to be shipped into the city, so that she could heat her rooms comfortably. She also sent for her things stored away in Florence, in spite of the great expense. When they arrived, she had around her once again the reminders of her old life. As she sat at Boott’s desk or in the Browning chair from Duveneck, looking at his etchings of Venice and her favorite Ricciardo Meacci painting, “The Garden of the Hesperides,” her sorrow at her great loss—and theirs—crept back in.13 She had a semblance of a home again, but it reminded her too much of the home she had lost.

  Meanwhile, Woolson continued to expect a visit from James, but he kept pushing it further into the future. He had told her that he dreamed of having his own apartment in Venice one day, exciting Ariana Curtis’s hopes that he was thinking of moving there, but he corrected her. He could only “live in London,” he explained. Woolson may also have misinterpreted his intentions, but she could not have expected that he would move away from England. We don’t know what he was writing to Woolson, but his noncommittal attitude about when he would come must have disappointed her. At the same time, she was sounding rather noncommittal about staying in Europe. She received two letters that fall from one of her Cooper cousins that made her seriously consider “packing all [her] things next spring & sailing by the Italian line for N.Y.,” although she feared the severe winters and higher cost of living. When James heard of the plan, he expressed his displeasure, writing to Ariana Curtis, “I shall do my best to prove to Miss Woolson that Venice is better than Cooperstown. I am very glad to hear that she has at last a roof of her own. The having it, I am sure, will do much to anchor her.” 14 Promising to visit was another way to anchor her in Europe, for if she left it altogether, he might never see her again. Nonetheless, a visit from him was nowhere on the horizon.

  The Casa Semitecolo, Woolson’s final home, located near the mouth of the Grand Canal.

  (From Constance Fenimore Woolson, vol. 2 of Five Generations (1785–1923))

  Woolson was also feeling let down by the Casa Semitecolo. She discovered that the front rooms with a view of the Grand Canal would have no sun in the winter, leaving them frigid. But there was one new bright spot in her life. She bought a five-week-old Pomeranian Spitz from Dalmatian sailors, who called him the Moor because of his black fur. So she named him Othello, or Tello for short. Her delight in him was immense. It was nice finally to have “some one who is glad to see me when I come in,” she told Sam. However, he was a rambunctious puppy and “full of tricks. He steals my shoes & stockings, & scampers & dances about like a mad creature.” Tello slept in a basket next to her bed, and while she sat and wrote at Boott’s desk, he bit the buttons on her boots. He was an incorrigible chewer. Once she looked up from reading a letter to see Tello walking off with a silk cushion, larger than himself, that had been a present from James.15

  Although her rent was very low, Constance continued to worry about money. The opulence of her friends’ grand palaces intensified her dissatisfaction with her own humble surroundings. The Layards’ Ca’ Capello had a suite of rooms mentioned in the Venice guidebooks that was adorned with works by Vittore Carpaccio and Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, as well as a painting by Cima di Conigliano that Ruskin had declared the best he had ever seen. (Their collection now resides in the National Gallery in London.) The Curtises’ Palazzo Barbaro was really two joined palaces and was widely regarded as the most beautiful on the Grand Canal. James described it as “all marbles and frescoes and portraits of the Doges.” Woolson admitted to Sam that “the constant atmosphere of wealth sometimes becomes oppressive.”16

  Despite the cheap cost of living, Constance felt poorer in Venice than she had anywhere else. She was terrified about falling into debt as she had at Bellosguardo. She wrote to Sam in November, “I am beginning to be haunted by the fear that my reserve fund at the Bank here is not large enough to leave me free from immediate care.” She asked him to sell one of her bonds, worth $1,000, which she could put in the bank as a safety net. She relied on the interest from her bonds, but having the money near at hand, she told him, “will have much the same effect that a low-hung carriage has upon my nerves: with it, I feel that I can jump out if I become frightened, and the knowing that I can, acts as a tranquilizer; I never do jump, & never want to. Whereas in a high vehicle, I never have one moment’s freedom from terror.”17

  One’s capital should be stored up for the inevitable frailties of old age, she admitted, but at fifty-three, she felt as if that time was already upon her. “I hope you will not be shocked,” she told Sam, “that for a long time my daily prayer has been that I may not live to be old; I mean really old.” Putting on a brave face for him, she assured him that she was not “especially sombre just now. On the contrary. I am much more cheerful and serene than I was in England. Venice suits me in many ways, and I think I am going to be happy here.”18 Nonetheless, drawing on her capital was taking a step backward, not forward toward a peaceful old age in a Cooperstown cottage or a house at East Angels.

  One of Woolson’s final stories, the beautiful yet heartbreaking “A Transplanted Boy,” which would appear posthumously, channeled her fears of being alone and penniless in Europe. It portrays an American mother and her adoring son, the thirteen-year-old Maso (short for the Italian Tommaso), who live in a boardinghouse in Pisa, the cheapest place they have found to live. She yearns to return to the United States, but the boy has lost all connection to his home. He doesn’t even notice when it is the Fourth of July (as Woolson had not). When the mother falls ill and needs to move north for the summer, the boy insists on staying behind in the care of his t
utor. There is only enough money for one of them to travel. He cares only for her health, so he hides from her the fact that the tutor has left him alone and that the bank with their money has failed. He has but one object: to hide his suffering from his mother. He just barely manages to survive, accompanied only by his little dog, Mr. Tiber. Upon coming back to his sparse room one evening, Maso finds that the dog has simply lain down and died. After burying Mr. Tiber, Maso also falls ill. When his mother is contacted by a friend, she rushes to him from Paris, exclaiming, “If I could only have known!” In the final lines of the story, we learn that she is returning with him to the United States for his health but that it is probably “too late for that.”19 They had reached a point of no return—to home or to health—which Woolson increasingly felt she was approaching as well.

  According to her niece Clare Benedict, this is the last photograph of Woolson, taken shortly before her death.

  (From Constance Fenimore Woolson, vol. 2 of Five Generations (1785–1923))

  Unlike Maso in “The Transplanted Boy,” Woolson was not on her own. Since June she had visited the Curtises two to three times a week, even as she worked tirelessly on Horace Chase. Daniel Curtis’s diary also references regular excursions, dinners, and calls they made together. On October 30, however, the Curtises sailed to India for the winter. James worried that “their withdrawal . . . will make the Venice winter rather bare” for her.20

  Those who stayed in Venice during the winter sought her out, however. She was surprised by their evident pleasure in visiting her in her modest apartment. Their warmth and kindness touched her deeply, yet she also felt self-conscious about the disparity in their circumstances. She occasionally accepted invitations, but only to tea. As she explained to Zina Hulton, wife of the British painter William Stokes Hulton, “I no longer give myself the pleasure of lunching, or dining, with my friends, because conversation with me at the table is necessarily so awkward.”21

  Knowing that she would need a new home when her lease expired on the first of May, Woolson spent much of the winter apartment hunting with Edith Bronson. They toured a series of grand apartments that were inexpensive, but the cost to furnish and heat them would be prohibitive. One small apartment for a pittance—$200 a year—seemed just right: sunny with balconies and the Gothic windows she loved overlooking the Grand Canal. Yet she made no move to take it, remaining undecided about her plans. She could not continue her peripatetic lifestyle, she decided. As she explained to Sam, “I seem to have come to the end of being able to live in other peoples’s [sic] rooms.”22

  Meanwhile, James further delayed his visit to Venice until the end of the winter, at least.23 In the spring, Clara and Clare would also be back in Europe, so Constance seems to have simply put off planning for the future.

  The news from the United States didn’t help. Clara had written to her of the worst economic depression the U.S. had yet experienced. Throughout 1893, banks had been closing all over the country, and the panic soon spread to Europe. Banks failed at an alarming rate, making Constance wary of putting her thousand dollars from the bond sale in a local depository, although Daniel Curtis assured her it would be safe. In December, she heard of bank failures in Florence and worried about the fate of Baldwin’s money there.24

  All of the bad financial news clouded the pleasant news arriving from her publishers. In England, new editions of her early novels were being planned, as was an edition of Horace Chase for the Continental market. The Harpers were also planning a collection of Italian stories as well as a new collection of some of her earlier stories. She was pleased to report to Sam that “there seems to be a good market for my wares.” Her publishers also owed her more than one thousand dollars, so she hoped to be able to reinvest the bond money soon.25

  FATE, THE CONQUEROR

  In preparation for the winter, Constance had moved her bedroom, sitting room, and dressing room to the south side of the palazzo, filling up the sunny rooms on the back that faced away from the Grand Canal. She wasn’t happy with the arrangement but understood the necessity of it. So far a large, open fireplace and an unsightly plaster Venetian stove were heating the three rooms nicely. Kate had sent her a hundred dollars, which she used to buy feather pillows, a bed, a wardrobe, a bureau, and a little table, which helped brighten up the small, unpleasant bedroom.26

  She was feeling better, she assured Kate, and was hopeful that she would make it through the winter just fine. She had been warned of Venice’s wintry weather, when the city was often shrouded in a freezing, depressing fog. But she bravely insisted that Oxford and Cheltenham had surely been worse. She claimed to feel rested and ready to start writing again soon. She planned to begin a new novel at the New Year, so she warned Kate not to expect many letters then.27

  It was now getting dark by five o’clock. With so many of her friends gone, she took her excursions in the lagoon alone, rowed by two gondoliers—Angelo and Tito, whom the Curtises had left in her service while they were away. She took long walks with Tello, combing the beaches and fields of the islands for shells and intriguing ruins. With the Curtises’ permission, she raided their library and filled her gondola with forty books at a time. Edith Bronson roused Woolson to join her for an evening at the Goldoni Theater. It took some convincing, but she went. On the twelfth, Edith also took her to look at apartments. The next day, Constance walked around St. Mark’s Square with Tello as a military band played for the customers sitting outside Florian’s and the Quadri Café, drinking coffee and enjoying one of the last pleasant days.28

  On December 16, she had tea with Katherine and Edith Bronson at Casa Alvisi. The next day, she received a letter from James and wrote one to Dr. Baldwin, declaring that Katherine Bronson had a “genius for kindness.” In the afternoon, Angelo and Tito rowed her over to the mainland, “to Terra Firma at Campalto.” It was “a strange water-land,—with many channels, & wet meadows covered with brown grass.” She felt melancholy at the sight of an old white horse standing alone in a field. On the way home at twilight, she hoped Tito and Angelo would get lost in the thick fog, but they found the pilings and stuck close to them all the way back to Venice and up the Grand Canal. She enjoyed the ghostly atmosphere of the evening as passing boats and stately palazzos suddenly materialized in the mist.29

  Her last notebook entry, about her trip to the lagoon on Christmas Eve, describes an excursion to the very end of the Lido. It was warm enough that she could leave her fur cloak in the gondola while she walked along the grassy embankment and marveled at the snow-capped Alps in the distance. She even thought she could see the jagged outlines of the Dolomites. She thought about how mountains form the outer edge of the world, slicing through the air as Earth spins through space. “I should like to turn into a peak when I die,” she wrote, “to be a beautiful purple mountain, which would please the tired sad eyes of thousands of human beings for ages.”30 It is an arresting image that recalls her lifelong attraction to heights yet anchors her solidly to the earth. As one of the last things she wrote, it also shows how much her mind was occupied with thoughts of not only mortality but also immortality. She hoped to live on, to be remembered, and to inspire future generations.

  On Christmas Day the sun shone as Constance, with Tello at her side, walked among the reveling crowds in St. Mark’s Square. The cathedral was full to the doors. She bought a Christmas card for Mrs. Phillips in Oxford and made her way back to her rooms, where she finished a letter to Kate and wrote to her old friend Arabella Carter Washburn, with whom she had not corresponded in years. That evening, having declined an invitation to a Christmas party at the Layards, she sat alone by the fire, reading Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity,” once again welcoming the ghosts of Christmases past. She confided to Arabella, “I often think that though I stay abroad, I seem to remember better than any one else.” While others had forgotten those who had long since died, she had not. With her mind on meeting them in the future, she explained, “I feel perfectly sure th
at the next existence will make clear all the mysteries and riddles of this. . . . [I]f at any time you should hear that I have gone, I want you to know beforehand that my end was peace, and even joy at the release.”31

  This somber tone may have crept into the final letter she wrote to James about this time, for he seemed to grow more concerned about her. He wrote to Katherine Bronson, “Do you see anything of my old friend Miss Woolson? I am very fond of her and should be glad if there was any way in which you could be kind to her.” He also wrote to Daniel Curtis in India, “I dream of a Venetian spring. I hear from Miss Woolson. . . . If she only didn’t think it her bounden duty to ‘make plans’ she might be happy yet. Speriamo [Let us hope] that she will be—& will at last find the right house.” He planned to “interrogate” Edith Bronson about her when she came to London soon.32

  The reality was that a gloom had settled upon Woolson that she found hard to shake. On New Year’s Day, when she was supposed to start writing a new novel, she instead wrote to Alden what can only be described as a farewell note. While letters from Boott, Baldwin, and James lay unanswered, she penned to her old friend and editor probably the last letter by her own hand. She described walking through Venice after a snowstorm with Tello and administering to the poor of Venice, whose suffering touched her deeply. Most significantly, she shared with Alden her great fear that she might never be able to write again. Both body and spirit had failed her:

  I have given up my broken sword to Fate, the Conqueror. . . . I am finishing up the fringes and edges of my literary work, for I feel that I shall do very little more. Of course, this feeling may change. But at present it has full possession of me; I am profoundly discouraged. . . . If I could go into a convent (where I didn’t have to confess, nor rise before daylight for icy matins), I think I could write three or four novels better than any I have yet done. But there are no worldly convents. So I’ll write my new effusions on another star, and send them back to you by telepathy.33