A Florence Diary

by Diana Athill

  THURSDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER 1947

  In the morning we were supposed to be showing Jack Bartley (photo-fiend) the Medici Chapel at San Lorenzo, but of course he went and waited at San Marco instead, so we ended by just looking at it ourselves, and afterwards stumbled, almost by chance, into the Palazzo which has the chapel decorated by Gozzoli with the journey of the three kings. It’s small, and each wall is one solid mass of gorgeous, splendiferous colour and detail, and the kings come winding down the hillsides with their retinues, and people hunting in the background – everything so exact and rich and alive, the horses prancing and the hunting cheetahs perched on their cruppers, and the people’s faces are portraits of the Medicis, full of life and character. It’s luscious.

  In the afternoon we took a tram (and a good supply of meringues and sugar cakes) out to Certosa, and went up to the monastery. It was not a very sympathetic monastery – one was shown round by a very firm monk, and only allowed to look at the things he found interesting, and anyway there was nothing much in the way of pictures and the interior architecture was late and disconcertingly like a Regency drawing-room. He was very proud of the refectory tablecloth only being changed once a year – it had been on six months, and I must say it was spotless. We bought tweeny-weeny bottles of liqueur. While we were waiting for the tram home we had orangeades in a very small trattoria, where the locals were so polite that when we finished our drinks and moved to put the glasses on the counter they leapt forward and snatched them from us with a flourish and formal bows, and we all got tied in knots with our grazies and pregos and bows and smiles.

  After dinner Jack rang up and there were explanations about the morning and we met for another drink and – believe it or not, more photos. Luckily he leaves for Rome at seven a.m. tomorrow. He lives with his mother and sister in South Ken. Gosh! What a frightful week they’ll have when he gets home. But I’m sure he’s a model son and brother and they’ll probably love it and have friends to dinner especially to see his efforts.

  FRIDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 1947

  I paid my bill this evening so as to know how I stand for last-minute buys and changing lire to francs etc. tomorrow, and find I have ten of my thirty pounds left. That means that including the first three days in the expensive hotel, a fortnight has cost me twenty pounds all in (not counting fare) and of that the pensione has cost just about fifteen shillings a day, including all meals. I’ve had three baths and three bottles of Chianti (at one shilling each and three shillings each respectively) extra, and they add fifteen per cent for service, and a tax of nearly thirty per cent, for séjour, which they all have to pay for each guest. I shall buy something nice tomorrow – nylons, or a handbag or something.

  We went to Fiesole again this afternoon and saw the monastery there, which is much nicer than Certosa, with the cloisters gay with flowers and canaries in aviaries. They are Franciscans. It was a grey day, and looking down on Florence we decided that from above it looks like Letchworth! The view of the other side is much lovelier. Florence definitely sprawls, and the cream houses with red roofs might easily be modern blocks of flats. It’s only when you are in it that it has such glamour and loveliness, and you see the houses in all their delicious irregularity and overhanging eaves and decoratedness and tallness. Of course, we’ve never seen that view at its best, but only in the afternoon when the sun is in your eyes in that direction, and today there was no sun at all. Afterwards we walked out of Fiesole and climbed a hill among cypresses, trying to find wild anemones (which they are selling in the streets) but failed. There were exquisite little autumn crocuses, though, and the hill was conical so we could see far out all round, and our favourite side, although unadorned by sunshine, was as fascinating as ever with its soft reddish-brown earth and silvery-grey olive orchards, and dark cypresses to keep it from melting away, and occasional rich green rivulets of acacias.

  On reading through this diary I find that I’ve hardly put in anything that we’ve done. We’ve really looked at every single church of note in Florence, and climbed the Palazzo Vecchio tower, and spent hours with pictures, and filled our eyes so full of loveliness that they are perfectly dazzled, and all I seem to have written about is pastries. And besides leaving out most of the sight-seeing, which doesn’t matter so much, as people’s descriptions of beautiful things are always useless, I’ve left out seeing an Italian (real Italian) film about Venice (v. bad, but rather lush and fun, as Pen and I and Jack each ended up with a different version of the story), and the nice Swedish girls staying here who are very wholesome and remind me of a friend of mine saying on returning from Sweden, ‘If the Swedes had ever had anything like Chartres they’d have pulled it down years ago because gargoyles collect dust’. They make me feel very pro-Latin. And I’ve left out a Maltese who would have ravished Ma who sat up at table with his mistress (a Maltese dog) and whose eyebrows were done into neat little plaits tied with blue ribbon. And I’ve left out Pen’s pet carabiniere who told us how to find a Perugino fresco tucked away in a barracks – such a serene and superb Perugino – and I’ve left out the extraordinary effect of my extremely becoming sun hat on the days I’ve worn it, which I can only ascribe to the fact that the Florentines think that this lovely weather we have had is wintry. A little boy followed me all round a church (when he wasn’t sliding down the banister of the pulpit) reaching up and touching the brim behind my back and all the men burst into broad smiles in the street and call after me something of which I can only understand ‘Signorina’ and ‘cappello’. As every stall in the straw market is covered with the hats, it couldn’t have been because they hadn’t seen one before. I really ended up feeling quite shy!

  And I really don’t feel that I’ve got in any of the general loveliness and charm of everything and everyone. Oh dear!

  SATURDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 1947,

  SUNDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 1947 AND

  MONDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 1947

  The last day was the only bad day. I woke with a sore throat which by lunchtime had become a raging feverish cold, and during the morning, I had to lug my suitcase down to the station to register it, only to find that I couldn’t, as the dogana was shut, and wouldn’t open again until after the train had left next day, and then when I tried to do my last-minute food shopping and delicious buying – lo and behold everything else was shut too, and I gradually discovered that there was a general strike on for the day. The Palazzo Vecchio square and the Uffizi were packed with people listening to fiery speeches, but I felt too ill to find out what it was all about. In the afternoon I dragged myself out again and did manage to buy a little food, and a reasonably decent jersey from less public-spirited shops, and to get some Swiss and French francs in exchange for my few surplus lire. Then I went to bed.

  I was called at six the next morning, and luckily by that time it was clear that it was only a cold and not the beginning of some frightful disease, so off I plodded to the station, feeling lousy but not desperate, and once there, realised with overwhelming clarity that the sweet dream of getting a seat on the train was something to make one die laughing. So I stood in the corridor as far as Milan – eight hours. Only actually it wasn’t anything like as bad as that sounds. I fought my way through to the part of the corridor belonging to the sleepers, where standing is forbidden, and when driven back by a kind but firm conductor, was able to prove that it was physically impossible for me to go back into my proper sphere, so he allowed me to plant myself just at the very beginning of his territory, where I sat most comfortably on my hatbox, and chatted with a pleasant Swiss girl.

  At Milan most of the Italians got out, so I bought a first-class ticket and found an excellent seat in a carriage with a charming Swiss couple and two young Swiss men. We talked French, and I was gratified to find that I could get on admir­ably. The two young men and I drank a bottle of Chianti, sang and exchanged addresses. They got out halfway through Switzerland, and the remaining three of us spread, and slept comfortably as far as Lausanne, where the Sw
iss husband got out, leaving his wife and me with a whole side each. (She was going to Paris to see the dress collections.) We were joined later by a rich woman and a bricklayer with a dirty little son, covered with impetigo, who ate all my food and drank all my aqua minerale. I had enough money to eat in the restaurant, and there I picked up an English doctor called Paul Strickland, who arranged to meet me at the Gare de Lyons and see me across Paris. (I am really a very talented traveller!) He did that, and we travelled the rest of the way together. I was a bit tired, as the customs and ticket collecting were so arranged as to happen at all the most awkward moments during the night, so that even if one had had a sleeper one wouldn’t have had a chance of sleeping much.

  We did a clever thing in Paris, and didn’t have to change stations – just walked across the platform and there was a train to Calais. There was a lunch car on it too.

  The doctor had had a whole month in Italy, and we passed the time in immoderate raptures about it, and its people and everything about it. He’d seen much more of the people than I had, because he talks Italian, and is a great one for mixing. We became sadder and sadder, the nearer we got to home. The crossing was rather heaven, all the same. There was a monstrous wind, but for some reason no roll; the boat ploughed along steadily, but every wave that hit it sent a great sheet of sparkling sugar-icing spray over the deck. We stood up in the bow, nearly blown to pieces and ducking under the sort of wall (bulkhead? bulwarks?) every time a wave came, but it was impossible not to get caught out, so that in the end we were soaked. I looked just like Medusa, with stiff writhing snake-locks standing out all round my head, solid with layers of Italian, Swiss and French dirt, overlaid with salt.

  We could have got anything through the customs. The taxi queue at Victoria was so huge that I rang up for a car, and I reached the flat at about nine o’clock. The journey took three hours less than the journey out. I suppose we made it up at Paris.

  So that’s the end of that. Oh how I wish it weren’t! But still, it’s silly to repine, when I’ve had a holiday which I’ll never forget, and which didn’t have one unenjoyable minute until the last day (incidentally, the cold is going almost as rapidly as it came, and was already much better by the time I reached Paris), and about which everyone says, ‘It must have been marvellous, because you look as though you’ve been enjoying yourself so much.’

  I am not brown, nor fatter, and actually today I should think I look rather a wreck, what with the effects of the journey, the cold, and the remaining mosquito bites, but I feel quite terrific after it. I really don’t think I have ever had such a lovely fortnight in my life.

  * * *

  † In steam trains smuts blew in through the windows.

  ‡ Reference to home.

  About the Publisher

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”