The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters by Michelle Lovric

Author:Michelle Lovric
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

There was little time for sightseeing – or Alexander’s possibilities – as Signor Bon desired to put us to work immediately the next day.

‘Wants to recoup all his old expenses at the Danieli,’ Darcy observed acidly, counting the gold Napoleons in her purse.

‘More likely,’ said Mr Rainfleury, ‘Bon doesn’t want the public glimpsing for free what he hopes soon to sell them printed in albumen on board.’

Nevertheless, we squeezed in a few hours of Venice early in the morning and late at night. Our hair tightly coiled in snoods, and our heads covered with hats, we were whisked by our laquais de place around Piazza San Marco and led over the Rialto Bridge to the squabbling market. Ida squealed at the fish still flailing on the stalls and crabs curling their red fists at her. The Doges’ Palace was fit for just half an hour of our time, and we covered the Accademia Gallery at a trot. As for more gondola trips, we were told ‘later’, in a mysterious voice by Signor Bon, who had succeeded in a negotiation with Mr Rainfleury, that Alexander might not be permitted to sketch while the photographer did his work.

Mr Rainfleury told us, ‘It seems the photography fellow has taken a dislike to Sardou’s portrait. He says he does not sell girls like Mr Sardou does, whatever that means.’

‘I’m sure—’ I commenced indignantly, and then stopped myself before Darcy could see my blush.

In the end, I was relieved that sketching was forbidden, for the work – the part dictated by Tristan and Mr Rainfleury, that is – would have made Alexander pity me, or despise me. Signor Bon’s own compositions were, however, a welcome revelation.

The first photograph was at the Ca’ d’Oro, the palace we had seen on the night of our arrival. By day it seemed to consist mostly of air laced together with slender ribbons of pink and grey stone. We sisters were posed in profile on its monumental first-floor balconies. Then we let our hair down, side-saddle, as it were, so it streamed off the parapets like medieval pennants.

The city might have been designed as a showcase for long hair, which, we now discovered, never looked so soft as when juxtaposed against marble, nor so liquid as when lolling above jade-green waves.

The next day we were made to climb the dusty bell tower of San Vidal, an idea that little pleased my sisters. I volunteered to go to the topmost floor, for the joy of the view over the backbone of Dorsoduro – as Signor Bon explained – to the lagoon and its islands. I was to push my hair out of the belfry, and below me was Darcy, feeding her hair from an arched window, and below her Oona and so on until there were seven Venetian-Irish Rapunzels with their hair hanging down one tower in one multicoloured rope.

Signor Bon ferried us in his own green boat to and from our lodgings at the Danieli, his apparatus nestling among us like an eighth dark sister.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.