Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro by Henry James

Author:Henry James [Henry James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: letters_from_the_palazzo_barbaro
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2012-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

NOTE

1. D for Daniel (Curtis).

XIV

To Ariana Curtis

July 7th [1890]

(Dartmouth Ms.)

Florence, Villino Rubio

1 Via Palestro

Dear Mrs. Curtis

I have delayed too long to write to you—but this has been not from any slackness of impulse, but from a sort of sense that I ought to have remarkable adventures to relate (to justify, in your eyes, my romantic return to Italy), whereas my adventures have been, in fact, though very pleasant, not in the least a challenge to admiration. It is, however, useless, to wait longer for the wonderful. I spent yesterday at Vallombrosa and I go this afternoon to Siena for three days—but everything happened, and doubtless will happen (absit omen!) in the most normal conditions. Quite the most thrilling of my experiences since we parted was to go back to the beautiful empty Barbaro and spend 36 hours there with a grand usurped sense of its being my own. For this is what I had the arrogance to do—I ought long since to have notified you of it. I arrived at 6 o’clock, with the intention of simply picking up my clothes and sleeping that night. But the next a.m. it was not in human nature to tear itself away! The day was delicious, Angelo and Elisa1 were even more so and your marble halls suffused with the “tender” note of your absence were most pleading and irresistible of all. I strutted about in them with a successful effort of self-deception and tasted for once the feelings of earthly greatness. To say that Angelo was hospitable and that the Tita waited upon me both on my arrival and on my departure, is but faintly to sketch the situation. I spent a good bit of the day with Mrs. Bronson, whom I caught just as she was starting for Greifenberg in Styria—of course with a Montalba.2 They have gone for bronchial waters and come back on the 20th. This she had revealed to me in advance by telegraph—so that Asolo had to drop out of my programme. I gave up the drive over the mountains thitherward in consequence, and did the whole thing from Innsbruck to Venice by rail—stopping however a day at Trent and a couple of days at Verona. Trent was somehow disappointing and drenched, absolutely reeking, with the electric light. En revanche there was no water—that is there was none at the hotel and I couldn’t have a bath! Surely Trent ought to become Italian. At Verona I collapsed upon my old hotel—which, however, this time I found excellent and not exceptionally dear. It was very hot, and the Colombo d’Oro is not on a square, but in a back street (near the Arena) and I found it. Edith Bronson was soon to start for Zoldo with the Edens,3 and her mother expects to join them, I believe, on her return from Greifenberg. I spent an hour at the Edens’ garden (whence I took Mme Wiel4 home in a sociable sandolo (or sandrolo?)5 and the question was there broached of my also joining them about August 1st.

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