American Princess by Laurie Dennett

Author:Laurie Dennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2016-03-13T05:00:00+00:00

9.2

The villa at Ninfa, made habitable again by Gelasio Caetani in the 1920s.

Countess Piccolomini had died in 1932, and, in his sorrow, Gelasio buried himself in his projects. Among these were the last two of the six volumes of the Regesta Chartarum, consisting of charters dating from 954 to the eighteenth century. Now that the family archives were arranged and listed, he approached the Biblioteca Apostolica and the Archivo Segreto del Vaticano concerning their transfer to one or the other: the Biblioteca Apostolica accepted the donation gratefully.17 Sculpture continued to occupy him, to the point of exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and the Quadriennale in Rome. He also continued to attract appointments to the boards of industrial companies, though how much participation these demanded of him is unclear.

The drainage project in the marshes was by this time in full operation. Since 1926, some 14,000 labourers had been digging channels to carry to the sea the water pumped out of the salt flats. The result was the transformation of a vast area measuring 70,000 hectares (about 172,000 acres) of uninhabitable malarial swamp into fertile agricultural land. Of that area the Caetani owned just over 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres), but the success of the project spelled the end of private ownership of the area reclaimed.18 The expropriation was a bitter blow to Gelasio, a man for whom ownership was stewardship, and his family’s patrimony almost a sacred trust. The reclaimed land of what became known as the Agro Pontino was allocated to fascist families from northern Italy willing to relocate. Each was given a house, livestock, and implements with which to begin farming, and trained to help in the task of keeping the area free of malaria.19 Within a few years the region had become one of the most productive agricultural areas in Europe.

If Fascism was firmly entrenched in Italy, matters were even more alarming in Germany. Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933, and within weeks the Enabling Act gave him the powers to turn the country into a dictatorship. The Weimar period was over, and the great exodus of intellectuals and artists began. Among them was Count Harry Kessler, who left Weimar in March 1933, never to return. On 1 April the Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses and Jewish professionals came into force. As Kessler wrote in his diary, “This criminal piece of lunacy has destroyed everything that during the past 14 years had been achieved to restore faith in, and respect for, Germany.” Many of the exiles were drawn to Paris, enriching still further that city’s store of creativity.

Through the 1930s, Marguerite and Lelia continued to spend the summer months in the apartment in the rue du Cirque, leaving Rome in May or June and returning in September when the heat had passed. Commerce had absorbed a great deal of Marguerite’s time and energy, and freedom from the task of producing it helped to offset the loss of the many satisfactions it had given her. At

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