Florentine scenes

Saturday, April 23rd., Pension White, Florence.

Marguerite went to "Chanticler" at the Pergola on Thursday night. Crammed, fashionable. Students making a great noise the whole time - it's what they do in the absence of a formed identity. Second performance last night and, according to the papers, scarcely anybody there. And of those who were present, many left after the second act. Curious! However there is no doubt that the first performance stirred the hotels to their depths. Eight or ten people went from this hotel alone. None of them stayed after the third acty I think. On that night I just strolled about, in search of anything I could see, and saw nothing. Often the case I find.

Yesterday, Marguerite and I went to the Bargello in the morning. On the previous morning I went into the Pitti and the Boboli Gardens. I was unaware that a ticket was required for the one, and that the other was not open 'til the afternoon. In each case I was corrected after I had got a long way, with the utmost politeness. My opinion of the Pitti is going up. The courtyard is magnificent. I have been into S. Spirito again. It is the exterior of this ('purest baroque', as an expert told me whom I met there) that I ought to paint, in sunshine, from the South East corner. It would be a wonderful composition.

Yesterday I tried a mixture of ink on aquarelle, and a mixture of a symbolical figure with Florentine architecture.

I wrote 1,800 good words of "Clayhanger" today.

The most curious new visitors we have are a brother and sister, very fair, she about 27, he about 30. Very much alike, timid, graceful, twisting themselves etc. when addressed. Always together. They go out together, getting up fairly early, with two stools, and sit close together side by side and paint the same view; he in oils, she in watercolour. Ponte Vecchio and hackneyed things like that. She wears linen dresses with white collars. Both virgins I should think. And likely to remain so.

I read G. Biagi's "Private Life of the Renaissance Florentines". Not a bad magazine article.

Damn England

Tuesday, April 12th., Pension White, Florence.

Recital of Monteverdi's "Orfeo" in the Salone della Pergola this afternoon. I shall write an article on it for the Nation. Astonishing that such a beautiful and obviously attractive thing is not given oftener. 

Then I took Mrs. Mock and a young woman from Chicago to have aperitifs at a cafe in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Much movement and great joy of the women in the sensation of sitting outside a cafe after all these days of rain. This is much better, and more amusing, and incidentally cheaper than having tea in one of those damned English tea houses.

Walking home you could appreciate the calm and easy life of the people: eg. saddlers in their shops, and all the tradesmen, work girls coming out of ateliers etc. No hurry. Very little ambition. Very few conveniences. Many conditions that would be hardships if they were perceived as such. And certainly a great deal more apparent happiness than in England, even if happiness in misery. You are apt to think that Italians don't care about the disadvantages of their condition, and then you see a sign 'Camera di Lavoro' and a number of working men hanging about. I suppose it is the equivalent of the Bourse de Travail.

Flaubert's correspondence is certainly very fine indeed; it is even sensationally fine. I got the first volume from the library, and much prefer it to Ruskin's "Mornings in Florence". Ruskin is just too serious! I don't think the great man would recognise a joke if one fell at his feet and cried to be noticed. No wonder Effie went elsewhere for some joy in life!

I was wondering today whether Florence is in fact a beautiful place, or if we have just come to regard it as such? Is it the association with all things Renaissance that pre-prepares one to 'see' beauty. Of course there are marvellous things to see, statues and such, but is there more intrinsic beauty here than in say London, or even the Five Towns? I am inclined to think that we see beauty where we expect to see it. Some artists of course have the gift of 'seeing' things as they are but most of us do not. I certainly don't most of the time.

Rain in Florence

Saturday, April 9th., Pension White, Florence.

It has been raining for days. Yesterday, to get out of the rain I walked about in the church of S. Croce to collect my ideas for the third part of "Clayhanger". For this purpose I found it to be a very good, spacious church. Funny to be immersed mentally in the doings of the Five Towns in a place like this which couldn't be much more different. I bought a copy of Ruskin's "Mornings in Florence" today. Weather too wet and me too buried in writing for any excursions.

There is a professor from Toronto University staying here. Came into the smoking room last evening. Lounge suit, dirty brown boots, small piercing eyes. Took no notice of me though the room was not twelve foot square until he found he hadn't a match, when he said abruptly, and in a tone which expected only one answer: "Can I trouble you for a match?" This casualness was geberal with him. You could trace it in the way he sat on a chair. Seemed an impatient sort. Then began to talk of Egyptian tombs in a very sensible, interesting and friendly way. When he is not interested it does not occur to him to pretend to be. If a remark does not strike him as fruitful he quite naturally says nothing at all. It is brusqueness, but has a good foundation. I admire it in a way; a sort of intellectual honesty. I am probably similar myself by nature but have had 'good manners' drummed into me over the years. Similar age to me I should think. Somebody told me he is a professor of English literature; but I don't know.

I put on my largest overcoat and walked to the Cascine this morning and this afternoon I went to inspect the Palazzo Strozzi for my article "Night and Morning in Florence", of which I wrote 2,200 words today. I also went into the church of S. Annunziata. We should have been going to the opera this evening but Grierson and Mock are both indisposed.

 

In Florence

Sunday, April 3rd., Pension White, Piazza Cavalleggieri, Florence.

Wet morning. Uffizi. Great struggling crowd at the vestiaire. I only went in to get a first impression of the gallery, not of the pictures. Immense staircase to climb: it corrects your inadequate notion of the size of the building. A general impression of carelessness and povery in the housing of the collection. Irregularity of rooms etc. One feels that such a collection ought to be housed if not with grandeur and splendour, at any rate with a conventional distinction. But those are my conventions, not the Italian.

Irregularity of the rooms is confusing. And the climax is reached in the section of painters' portraits of themselves. The portrait of some supreme artist with an elaborately worked shirt made me understand the desire that every artist has to be a dandy in something. How rotten and vulgar the portraits of Tadema, Herkomer etc. Holman Hunt and Watts pretty good. Also Sargent. Some of the rooms in this section are really ridiculously proportioned and small. The two pictures that most diverted and interested me this morning were a Virgin immensely enceinte and a big, badly lighted 'Prima Notte', with a waiting husband, that was charming. Some of the pictures are simply not lighted at all. Great crowds in the principal rooms. In this house of pictures, all turns and corners, some of the pictures are absolutely in the dark.

I took the covered gallery to the Pitti. Too tired, when I reached there, to look at anything. I went out into the rain. Called at S. Trinita during a Mass, made a sketch, and walked home in the rain. There is only one word for the courtyards of the palazzi - noble.

This pension shows that it is run exclusively by women. Little tickets in each bedroom stating day of the week when the room is 'cleaned'. Little bookshelves about, in any case hung in the worst place in the room - just over the wash-stand so the books can be well splashed. Embroidered or chintz covers for things. Everything little and neat in the arrangements. No provision of writing material. No spectacular quality at all anywhere. The Italian manageress has almost become English in her very soul. The great quality of the place is the meals. A really A1 dinner last night when we came home at 11pm. The whole place was shut up. A female servant opened. The bonnes are dressed in English fashion, but better. All white in the morning; black and white in the evening. All sorts of details I shall put direct into my article for English Review.

Positively revolting

Thursday, May 19th., Pension White, Florence

San Miniato

Church at San Miniato yesterday morning, in intense heat. I find that after 7 weeks of sightseeing I begin to discover beauties for myself, and to be quite sure that they are beauties. For example, the pavements and some neglected bits of frescoes at S. Miniato. 

Before that I went to Cooks and got money and tickets for Paris. The place was crowded with tedious and long-winded persons. Before that I bought bindings and a Galsworthy book. In the afternoon we went to see Pauline in her nursing home. Up a dusty hill that autos thundered down and horses were thrashed up. Most satisfactory home. 
For more on Pauline Smith in Florence see 'Friends in Florence'

Restaurant Lapi

I had a fearful headache, owing to dinner eaten at the Restaurant Lappi with the Vedres & Por on Tuesday night. We saw Gordon Craig there and his withered wife. But I preferred her to him. He had the looks of an intellectual hysteric, and egotist. By bits, I wrote a Chronicle article yesterday and today. This morning I saw the awful sight of groups of tourists 'doing' the Loggia Lanzi under Italian guides who spoke English. It was positively a revolting sight. I solaced myself by getting more money from Cooks and buying an ebony stick.

Continuing Clayhanger

Saturday, May 7th., Pension White, Florence.

This morning news of the death of the King. The moved silence in which it was received in the coffee-room was most remarkable. One middle-aged man had apparently some difficulty in not crying. This afternoon I wrote a pretty fair article on the 'human nature' of the reception of the news here. I used mostly real incidents, but they had to be arranged.

Last evening I received the proof of my English Review article, "Night and Morning in Florence". I found it even more brutal than I had expected. But it is good.

Yesterday I wrote 2,700 words of "Clayhanger". Then I walked all over the town to find a subject to sketch, and found none until in despair I sat down in the Loggia Lanzi.

This morning I had written about 1,500 or 1,600 words of "Clayhanger" at 8.30, though I only went to bed last night at 11.30. Then Mr. Mock and Marguerite and I went up to San Miniato & he and I sketched. An ideal morning. This afternoon, after my article, I sketched again; and on the way home bought for 14 sous the first edition of R. H. Dana's "To Cuba and Back".

No museums for a long time now.


Additionally for May 7th., see 'Leaving Greece'

The Teodora would be quite a small steamer - on the Atlantic. here she is large; indeed 8,000 tons. The traditional phrase "dirty little Italian steamer" has ceased to be apposite. Italian shipping is about as good as any. That which has happened to Italian railways has also happened to Italian shipping. After the hurly-burly of departing is over, and the sellers of collections of foreign stamps, and the cheating money-changers, and the cigarette sellers who ask for a tip, have left the ship, you soon perceive that the Teodora is well run, and exceedingly orderly; and decorated in a touching, demode, simple style which appeals successfully to your sympathetic imagination. You perceive further, at the first meal, that she has the incomparable advantage of carrying no orchestra: she does, nevertheless, carry a barber and a cinema. No food could be more charmingly presented, and no service could be better or more urbane or delightful, no bathrooms hotter, and no pillows harder, than the Teodora's.

Florentine palaces

Wednesday, May 4th., Pension White, Florence.

I sat an hour in the sun sketching on Monday morning. Yesterday morning: the Gothic Palazzo (? Davanzato) which Professor Volpi the owner has fitted up as a museum. The most complete 'show' house I ever saw. The professor even has the generosity to leave incunables lying about. What amused us - I met Mr. Mock therein by accident - was the holes in the floor of the drawing-room through which enormous stone balls could be dropped on the heads of hostile visitors in the hall below. There is something exquisitely cheerful about this device.

Palazzo Davanzati was erected in the second half of the 14th century by the Davizzi family, who were wealthy members of the wool guild. In 1516 it was sold to the Bartolini and, later that century, to the Davanzati family, also rich merchants (1578), who held it until 1838. After the suicide of Carlo Davanzati, it was split into different quarters and modified. After escaping the numerous demolitions of 19th century Florence, it was bought by Elia Volpi, an antiquarian, who restored It in (his impression of) the original style. 

In 1910, Volpi opened the building as a private museum (Museo Privato della Casa Fiorentina Antica). The contents of this museum kept changing as Volpi sold the furniture at auctions, including a major one in 1916 in New York. In the 1920s, Egyptian antique dealers Vitale and Leopoldo Bengujat acquired the building and its contents. In 1951 it was purchased by the Italian state and kept open as a museum. By 1995 the museum needed to be closed for major restoration to keep the building from falling down. The museum was partially reopened in 2005 with the ground and first floors; by 2012 all the floors were open to visitors.

Por called in the afternoon, and stayed an hour though I was ill. He said that all progressive periodicals in the U.S.A. had suffered a set-back, & were either paying their authors half-rates, or had been bought up by reactionaries, or something else had happened to them.

This morning, fired by a letter from Martin: Palazzo Riccardi. Yes, the Gozzoli frescoes quite came up to my expectations; but it would be quite impossible to enjoy them under the actual conditions: a man flicking a portable electric light around all the time, and the Wild West accent in the back of my neck. The other show-parts of the Palazzo are not worth more than the half lire charged. But of course I was unwell.

The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy. The palace was designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo de' Medici, head of the Medici banking family, and was built between 1444 and 1484.

Additionally for May 4th., see 'The General Strike'

Today was the first day of the general strike.
Many more motors about. I walked round to Victoria, which was shut up (both stations) one small entrance guarded by policemen. I heard someone say that a train had gone somewhere during the morning.
Yet in the vast empty stations Smith's book stalls were open. So were (outside) the cafes.
The populace excited and cheery, on this first day of the strike.
No evening paper. News from the Wireless at very short intervals, half hour intervals at night up to midnight.
I should think that all theatres would soon be closed.
Already today there has been a noticeable increase in gravity in the general demeanour.

Examples of fatuity

Sunday, May 1st., Pension White, Florence.

Yesterday morning Rickards and I went to La Badia, where he showed me in some detail the tomb sculptures of Mina da Fiesole. He was not much struck with the cloisters of San Marco. In the afternoon we went to the royal villas of Castello & Petraia. Sensations of heat, quiet and cypress-effects that really were worth having. From the terraces you have a fine view of the perfectly flat plain. Curious furnitures at Petraia; a mixture but some rooms very original & beautiful. You can't forget the reflection of pale chairs in a dark marble floor. The fatuity of the life there must have been excessive. The Games Room, etc. The horrible little private chapel. Two of the 'finest fountains in Italy' it seems, by John of Bologna and Trbola. But after all it was the cypresses and the roofs and the distant hills, and the cloud and sky effects against the cypresses that were the chief things. For fatuity, the glass case with singing fluttering birds, and the play of floor-jets of water in a silly ugly grotto must be remembered. We had guides of some individuality, decent, quiet, and open to suggestion: otherwise the guide business would have been very trying. We came and went in a dusty tram, and while waiting for it to go back sucked oranges in the narrow & tedious, but watered, main street of Castello. In this street I saw a notice of an Italian opera called 'Sullivan', of which the scene & characters were London, to be done today at the Castello theatre. (Box Office open first on such a day at such an hour) It must therefore be a stock piece.

In the evening the Mocks and Marguerite and I went to 'Monna Vanna', at the Verdi. Georgette le Blanc, Jean Froment, Severin Mars. This was the worst dramatic performance, without any exception, that I have ever seen anywhere. The whole conception of the interpretation of the play was fatuous and vulgar. Poorish, fashionable audience. Reception cold.

Additionally for May 1st., see 'A Paris Night'

On Saturday I dined with Martin at the Restaurant Italien and then we went to Buffalo Bill. Most lugubrious, for besides bad weather there was bad lighting and little to see. We left almost at once and went to the Bal Tabarin in "the ball of the models of the two salons."

Famous in Florence

Tuesday, April 19th., Pension White, Florence.

By dint of taking one room in the Uffizzi and resolving to look at every picture in it without exception, I saw things I should never have seen otherwise. Including an Adam & Eve of Cranach not specially remarked in Baedeker, and skied. In another room I discovered for myself the exceeding beauty of the small Dutch pictures.

Adam and Eve is a double painting by German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder, dating from 1528, housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy. The two biblical ancestors are portrayed, in two different panels, on a dark background, standing on a barely visible ground. Both hold two small branches which cover their sexual organs. Eve holds the traditional apple, with the snake coming to her from above from the tree of life. Adam is shown in a relaxed posture, his right elbow lying on the left border of his panel.

A complete change in the weather. Sunshine quite blinding, and yet a wind-chill in the shadows. I did three full hours on "Clayhanger" before breakfast, and was then exhausted for the day. Disgusted with my sketching.

I saw the town between 5 and 6 and had a drink in the Piazza Signoria. It is agreeable to be able to contemplate the Perseus of Cellini while drinking a quina-vermouth. 


At Vieusseux's library, on changing my book this afternoon, the attendant said it was known in Florence, Florence being a cosmopolitan place, that A.B. the author was staying in the town. He then became enthusiastic about the demand for my books, & lyrical about the number of Tauchnitz copies of them that Vieusseux possessed. He said he knew them all from the first, "The Grand Babylon Hotel", and to prove his bona fides he began reeling off the Tauchnitz series numbers of them. So I rewarded him by shaking hands with him, whereat he was well content.

The Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, founded in 1819 by Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, a merchant fromGeneva, is a library in Florence, Italy. It played a vital role in linking the culture of Italy with that of other European countries in the 19th century, and also became one of the chief reference points for the Risorgimento movement. It began as a reading room that provided leading European periodicals for Florentines and visitors from abroad in a setting that encouraged conversation and the exchange of ideas. A circulating library with the latest publications in Italian, French and English was installed next to the reading room.

http://sufblog.syr.edu/2014/01/circulating-ideas-scrittori-ditalia-at-gabinetto-vieusseux/

Additionally for April 19th., see 'Kaiser in the offing'

Dr. Slimon reports to me that at the meeting of Chairmen of Emergency Committees and Military Representatives at Chelmsford on Friday, which I could not attend, under the chairmanship of General Paget, Paget insisted on the strong probability of an invasion between Harwich and Maldon in July or August.
The naval opinion at Harwich, I hear, is that Harwich Flotilla could not deal with the covering ships of an invading force, and that, so far as the Navy was concerned, the force would land, and the convoy be taken in the rear. It is also said that the German submarines are trying to  mine the course of the proposed expedition, and that we are sweeping their mines and mining contra.

Happiness in Florence

Tuesday, April 12th., Pension White, Florence.

Recital of Monteverdi's "Orfeo" in the Salone della Pergola this afternoon. I shall write an article on it for the Nation. Astonishing that such a beautiful and obviously attractive thing is not given oftener. Then I took Mrs. Mock and a Chicago young woman to have aperitifs in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Much movement; & great joy of the women in the sensation of sitting outside a cafe. This is better and more amusing and cheaper than having tea in one of these damned English tea-houses. Walking home you could appreciate the calm and easy life of the people: eg. saddlers in their shops, & all the tradesmen, work girls coming out of ateliers, etc. No hurry; very little ambition; very few conveniences; many conditions that would be hardships if they were perceived as such; & certainly a great deal more happiness than in England, even if happiness in misery. You are apt to think that Italians don't care about the disadvantages of their condition, and then you see a sign 'Camera di Lavoro' & a number of working men hanging about. I suppose it is the equivalent of the Bourse du Travail.

Flaubert's correspondence is certainly very fine indeed; it is even sensationally fine. I got the first volume from the library, and much prefer it to Ruskin's "Mornings in Florence".

I have been writing to Pinker about McClures. They seem not to want to pay £10 for "The Death of Simon Fuge", though it is certainly worth that. I want McClures only to issue stuff at which editors of leading papers, like the Boston Transcript, etc. who have written me sending me copies of their signed articles on "The O. W. Tale" cannot turn up their noses. Both "The Death of Simon Fuge" and "The Matador" will give them something to think about.

McClure's or McClure's Magazine (1893–1929) was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism (investigative, watchdog or reform journalism), and helped shape the moral compass of the day. It featured both political and literary content, publishing serialized novels-in-progress, a chapter at a time. In this way, McClure's published such writers as Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Arnold Bennett, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain.

Additionally for April 12th., see 'A reflective mood'

I still think there is something in this, though the overblown language weakens rather than strengthens the argument and my example was not well chosen. I would write it differently today. Nevertheless, to imaginatively inhabit another being, and to convey that imagined experience by force of words, or image, or sound, is the genius of the artist.

Mysterious person

Sunday,  April 3rd., Pension White, Florence.

Wet morning. Uffizzi. Great struggling crowd at the vestiaire. I only went in to get a first impression of the gallery: not of the pictures. Immense staircase to climb: it corrects your inadequate notion of the size of the building. A general impression of carelessness & poverty in the housing of the collection. Irregularity of rooms, etc. One feels that such a collection ought to be housed if not with grandeur and splendour, at any rate with a certain conventional distinction. Great crowds in the principal rooms. In this house of pictures, all turns & corners, some of the pictures are absolutely in the dark. I took the covered gallery to the Pitti. Too tired when I reached there, to look at anything. I went out into the rain. Called at S. Trinita during a mass, made a sketch, and walked home in the rain.

Lunch yesterday with Francis Grierson at Pension Paoli. He still looks astoundingly young. His wig was curiously long, his moustache of course dyed. But he had not the skin, wrinkles, nor above all the gestures of a very old man. He can't be far off seventy. he may be more than seventy. He said he seldom went out now, and would not dress for dinner under any circumstances. Therefore ate in his room in the hotel. Ate little. He had very good ideas about food and general management of the physical machine. Mysterious person. When I asked him if the New Age paid him for his articles he said no, "somebody else pays me". He said he could not work for nothing now, and vaguely that he had lost his money.

Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard (1848 – 1927) was a composer and pianist, who also wrote under the pen name of Francis Grierson. He was born in Birkenhead, England, but his family migrated to Illinois, United States while Jesse was still a baby. Shepard traveled in Europe, finding audiences even among royalty, and impressed the French novelist Alexandre Dumas, fils. Shepard was involved withSpiritualism and stated that many of his musical performances were the result of the spirits of famous composers channeling through him. He was invited to live in San Diego by a pair of real-estate developers, the High brothers, who enticed him by promising to build a mansion to his specifications. The result was the Villa Montezuma (named after the ocean liner which brought Shepard to America). Shepard died while giving a piano performance.

Additionally for April 3rd., see 'Living for today'

Every morning just now I say to myself: Today, not tomorrow, is the day you have to live, to be happy in. Just as complete materials for being happy today as you will ever have. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Live as though this day is your last of joy. "How obvious, if thought about" - yet it is just what we forget. Sheer M. Aurelius, of course.

Florentine scenes

Sunday, May 15th., Pension White, Florence.






Yesterday I was on the Ponte Vecchio when children were going to school (8.45), & I noticed more than ever how Italian little girls have the look & the form of women. Marguerite & I have been noticing them in their short skirts for weeks. They look just like women unsuitably dressed. They are quite formees.

This pension is really too 'English' for Marguerite. She has no natural outlet for her energies. At Fontainebleau she could make her beautiful dresses, or go hunting for mushrooms and concoct wonderful dishes; here she is free from the difficulties of domesticity, but has not its reliefs and rewards. I have encouraged her to seek occupation in the writing of short stories and she has thrown herself vehemently, and typically, into this new form of creation, fighting fiercely against any criticism. Her stories, written in French, are as good, she holds, as her dresses and mushrooms had been. In particular there is a story about a cat. I found three quarters of this pleasing but the last fourth is not good and should be re-written. For days the discussion about the damned cat has continued. I refuse to call good what I know to be bad, and Marguerite refuses to believe bad what she knows to be parfait! Life in this so-extraordinarily English pension is full of difficulties for a Frenchwoman.

Speaking of women, this is a curious instance of how women, when they are afraid, will argue in general, instead of in particulars, as usual. Pauline may have to have an incision behind her ear. It is called an operation. If the doctor and the specialist say it ought to be done, of course it must be done, and at once. Supposing I telegraphed to Pauline's mother, she could only reply that she left it to us on the spot, and if she replied against an operation, the operation would still have to be done. Any other course would be absurd. yet when all this is arranged and understood and agreed, Marguerite comes to me and puts this abstract question: "Have you the right to let a girl be operated on without obtaining her mother's permission?"
See also, 'A bad night' - November 14th. <http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/a-bad-night.html> ;
and, 'Friends in Florence' - April 13th. <http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/friends-in-florence.html>

We dined with Mr. Mock at Lapi's, in the cellar in the Via Tornabuoni. Here the cooking is done in full view of the audience. each dish prepared specially for each client. All by one man. About 35, dark, personable, extraordinarily quick and graceful. if he left his recess for a moment to go upstairs he would slide down the rail to come back again. Charcoal stove. He blew it up constantly with a fan. Sparks fly. He put on charcoal with his hand. Everything goes through that hand. He would fan with one hand and stir with another. He made an omelette in a moment: very quick his gesture in turning it over like a pancake, in the pan. Very careful & slow in making our coffee. Orders called out in a loud voice by the landlord or the boy waiter - who was not dressed as a waiter. All professional conversation very loud, and constantly going on. Things not in stock, such as ham, sent for & brought down in a paper. When a dish is ready the chef would plank it down on a ledge and whistle, or call out its name. When we arrived the landlord was finishing his dressing in the further saloon, which was darkened. Later, the boy-waiter - perhaps his son - took a pair of loose cuffs from a hat-hook and slipped them on, at once giving him an air of  grande toilette. Still later, the landlord, evidently bethinking himself, did the same, from another hook. About 10 or 12 or 15 customers, and all cooked for by one man. Arched roof all papered with coloured posters of all sorts. Graceful leave-takings from all the personnel as we left. Bill and tip eight and a half lire for three people.

The "Buca Lapi" is the oldest restaurant in Florence. It was founded in 1880 in the Palazzo Antinori cellars and still shows evidence of more than a century of history, thanks to a very careful restoration. 

The first room is frescoed and the kitchen is visible.

"Lohengrin". We saw two acts. Italian audience still the worst I have encountered.

The night effects on the lower reach of the Arno are unlike anything else I ever saw.

1,000 words of "Clayhanger" today.

Under the weather in Florence

Tuesday, May 10th., Pension White, Florence.

We ought all to have gone to Vallombrosa today but were prevented by the weather. Moreover Pauline is ill again, and under the doctor.

Sunday afternoon Marguerite and I went to Boboli Gardens. It was too chilly for elaborate sketching. We met Jowett in the Gardens, and with him savoured the sculptures and the vistas. Then we all three went to the Piazza V. Emanuele, and drank, and listened to 'Zampa' and such things. Heavy sky, but swifts flying high. The Square was a great party of families.

The Boboli Gardens, behind the Pitti Palace, the main seat of the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany at Florence, are some of the first and most familiar formal 16th century Italian gardens. The mid-16th century garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable "built" element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that were informed by classical accents. The openness of the gardens, with an expansive view of the city, was unconventional for its time. The gardens were very lavish, considering no access was allowed outside the immediate Medici family, and no entertainment or parties ever took place in the gardens.

Yesterday & this morning I wrote 3,600 words of "Clayhanger".

Most of the women are wearing half mourning in this hotel. This is because we received the news on Saturday of the death of the King. The moved silence in which it was received in the coffee-room was most remarkable. One middle-aged man had apparently some difficulty in not crying. Gaiety however is now unchecked, though many people are ill. I think that one of the things that have struck me in Florence & Brighton is the unpleasant expressions, & the ungainliness of the Anglo-Saxon women; their extraordinary unattractiveness. I saw three middle-aged American women meet & greet each other this morning, and the sight & sound were rather trying. (It is true I am slightly unwell.) What looks, what gestures, and what voices! But then I often feel that I myself, when alone, go about with a fixed unpleasing expression of disgust. I don't know why.

King Edward VII usually smoked twenty cigarettes and twelve cigars a day. Towards the end of his life he increasingly suffered from bronchitis. In March 1910, the King was staying at Biarritz when he collapsed. He remained there to convalesce, while in London Asquith tried to get the Finance Bill passed. The King's continued ill health was unreported and he attracted criticism for staying in France whilst political tensions were so high. On 27 April he returned to Buckingham Palace, still suffering from severe bronchitis. Alexandra returned from visiting her brother, King George I of Greece, in Corfu a week later on 5 May. The following day, the King suffered several heart attacks, but refused to go to bed saying, "No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end." Between moments of faintness, the Prince of Wales (shortly to be King George V) told him that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park that afternoon. The King replied, "I am very glad": his final words. At 11:30 pm he lost consciousness for the last time and was put to bed. He died 15 minutes later.

Yesterday morning Mr. Mock, Marguerite & I went up to S. Miniato again, and I finished my pastel.

In the evening we went to the Teatro Verdi, and saw two acts of Suppe's "Boccaccio". The house was not a sixth full. We have never seen this theatre even half full. It must be a sort of Chat Moss for burying money. The first act of "Boccaccio" was amusing (3 encores for a comic trio, & the audience would have the third one, stopping the performance & defeating the conductor in order to get it). But we got tired of not understanding in the second act. The music was really much better than I expected. It always had a certain vague distinction. Rain all the evening.

This morning, being desoriente, I went to the Pitti. In the main it left me cold. It is an unpleasant & difficult place in which to see pictures, & quite half the pictures are n.g. Crowds of people in the place.

Friends in Florence

Saturday, April 30th., Pension White, Florence.

Sketch made today

After being laid aside I resumed work on Thursday, and wrote 5,000 words of "Clayhanger" in two days. The writing of this book is not the 'lark' which both "The Card" and "The Honeymoon" were, and my persistent, solitary search for ideas and inspiration have exhausted me physically more than I realised. During all this time - that is, for a week - no sight-seeing and almost no sketching. I have largely been confined to my small room looking out across the Arno to San Miniato. But on Thursday I began a watercolour. All I could really do was just to walk about and buy the 'Corriere della Sera' and gaze at fine women.





Pauline Smith is with us, but is not well as the cold winds have affected her weak throat, and against the depression of oncoming illness her work has made little progress. Yet my belief in her as an 'artist' persists. She asked me recently if she had not better give up writing altogether. I said: "Do you think I'd be ... such a damn fool ... as to waste all this time upon you if I didn't know ... the stuff's in you?" I ask her why if I believe in her she cannot believe in herself? I have also been attempting to encourage her development as a conversationalist, but with little success. My own behaviour does me little credit in this regard. I come down from writing and, reasonably, expect her to take part in conversation at table. She is silent. In the obstinate, expectant, and more and more gloomy silences which I maintain whilst awaiting a remark from her she becomes paralysed with nervousness. Slowly, I allow my head to sink onto my upraised hand and emit a deep protesting groan. Or sometimes I will pause in my own talk to break into her silences with a rebuking and embarrassing: "Yes, well ... but we will now await ... a remark from P."
See also, 'A bad night' - November 14th. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/a-bad-night.html

Marguerite and I studied somewhat the activities of the men who take gravel out of the bed of the river. Some of them work in their boats in nothing but a shirt with a scolloped edge that comes down a few inches below the middle. I should say that one dredging machine could do as much in an hour as all this sweating does in about a week.

I got Gebhart's book on Florence out of the Library. They said it was good but it isn't. Rotten photographic illustrations and a lot of prettiness in the feeble writing. I haven't yet come across a good book on Florence.

Rickards walked casually in on Thursday evening, twelve hours in advance of his warning postcard, & he took up residence here yesterday morning for three days. he arrived from Carrara where he had been to see the quarrying of some of the marble to be used in one of his buildings. He said the Duomo was chiefly a great feat of engineering, and not really beautiful.

We went up to Fiesole in the afternoon. Crowded, wheel-shrieking, jerking tram to go, and the same to come back. Mrs. Mock introduced me into an old convent or something, a home for women convalescents kept by English & Irish nuns. Extraordinarily beautiful old garden. Cheap little statues of the virgin & of J.C., with a cup of fresh flowers suspended before him. But the whole effect with the views of Florence & all the Arno plain, and the Arno far off flashing like gold, and the hills towards Siena - perfectly enchanting.

Rickards instructed me in the excellence of drawing roofs seen from above, & then set me to trees. He would not let me draw in this Journal, insisted on something larger and 'freer'. We had tea up at Fiesole. Then he & I, after the grinding slide down, had aperitifs in the town.

In the Smoking Room Rickards gave such a violent & feverish description of Venice to us that both Mock & I wanted to start out at once for Venice. "It nearly broke my heart to leave it on Thursday morning", said Rickards in a tragic tone. He said this several times.
See also, 'Eating companions' - December 23rd. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/eating-companions.html   and 'An architectural experience' - December 28th. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/an-architectural-experience.html

Not seeing Florence

Wednesday, April 27th., Pension White,  Piazza Cavalleggieri, Florence.

Munich Orchestra, conducted by F Loewe at the Teatro della Pergola on Saturday evening. "Till Eulenspiegel". I began to understand it. The intense vivacity of the thing proclaimed itself. The performance was magnificent. On Sunday I was ill, but I had determined to go to "Aida" at the Politeamo Fiorentino, and I went with Mr. Mock in a shower of rain. We saw three acts, & I enjoyed it very much, though ill. Vast interior. All the cheaper parts crammed; heads stretching away into distances further than at Covent Garden. Then I spent Monday & yesterday in bed. I could not read on Monday, but yesterday I read I don't know how many newspapers, all "Ce Cochon de Morin" and a lot of a new French novel by Jean Canora, sent to me for review. This morning I wrote my Chronicle article in bed, before 8.30. So that seeing Florence has stood still for a time.

"Clayhanger". The more I think of that accursed book the more complicated and un-doable it seems to be. And yet I have written to Pinker from here as follows: "Going strong. Two thirds done"! He seems to want to place it as a serial but I doubt that will be possible. I have told him that it will be 160,000 words. I hesitate to trust the 100,000 words in manuscript to the post and so have sent him the 60,000 that are typewritten. They will probably be enough to discourage any editor. There is nothing in it to shock prudes, as there was in the O.W.T. Not even a confinement. It ends happily!

I have also written to Pinker about the publication of some of my stories. Mrs. Bisland of McClures told me vaguely that they meant to publish "The 19th Hat". She also said they were thinking of publishing the two stories I wrote last for Tillotson. This I absolutely forbade her to arrange, on pain of eternal enmity. I do not want these two stories published in America. Pinker will doubtless be able to convey to them that if they want to keep on intimate terms with their latest darling discovery they will pay £10. A story like "The Death of Simon Fugue" is worth £10. I would like to suppress one or two stories and give them "The Matador" out of The English Review instead. Both "The Death of Simon Fugue" & "The Matador" will give editors something to think about.