The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

by Robert J. Begiebing

  I have been reading my Vasari, as Mr. S. admonished. He is of course right, for now I see with living eyes these Italian masters.

  It would be impossible for me to write all my impressions and lessons, but I hope that one day I can speak to you of what I am seeing and feeling and learning. There is something preternatural in the sheer range of genius in these old masters. One might be excused for believing that the time has long past when such gifts are vouchsafed to mortals.

  It is all wonderful; it is all incomprehensible. These new images begin to swim in the mind like shipwrecked sailors and flotsam in a tempest. So I will say no more about it, Mrs. Spooner, at this time.

  We did, by the by, call upon the Greenoughs, as we had promised when we met them last autumn during their return to America. (You recall our visit at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, and with the Lorings present?) The Greenoughs both send their best regards to you. Not wishing to disturb them at home, we went to Mr. G.’s studio in Via San Gallo on several occasions, but finding him absent in each instance we finally crossed the river to the Plazzo Pucci where they have taken up residence, in the Baciocchi quarters. At tea I was finally able to deliver Mr. Dana’s letter asking, as I understood Mr. Greenough to say, for further reminiscences on their mutual friend Allston, their all being, he says, friends from Mr. G.’s and Mr. D.’s college days. But Mr. G. appears to hesitate to recall such memories—either out of the pain these recollections cause him or out of some larger hesitancy over the very principle of writing biographies of the recently dead, especially one’s friends. Mercifully, all that is between Mr. Dana and Mr. Greenough, and my simple duty is performed.

  Mr. G. has an agreeable air, both reserved and commanding. He has been most considerate of us. I am much taken, upon meeting him again, with his noble brow and stern, large, gray (one might almost say spiritual) eyes above his mustaches, lending his face a natural gravity and energy. His stature along with his vigor and excitement, contained in his daily intercourse by his gentlemanly nature, impresses me deeply. And I appreciate again that his wife is indeed charming—completely in command of her position here with a most impressive air of self-assurance and cultivation. Merely to see them together attracts one’s notice immediately, even before you come to know them and discover the generous qualities of their minds and hearts.

  Your dear husband and I were afraid we had missed them, that they had not yet settled on the proper placement of Mr. G.’s Washington and returned from America, or had left consequent to yet another stillbirth—which Mr. Spooner believes would make her fifth. But they were very much here—having arrived in October by way of Liverpool and visits throughout England—and in good humor. After asking us how we had found Paris, Mr. G. recalled for us his own days in that city before joining his wife on her return journey to America: he spoke of that time as his “lonely Parisian days among a crowd of pretenders, shop window exhibitions, and raree shows.”

  We have plans, also, to call upon Mr. Powers. We shall soon be sending you reports of our progress in this Florentine Art-Life, and hope that we can report, as well, our deeper progress still.

  Please write to us soon and assure us that you are well. I enclose a note from Mr. S. He is thankful for my taking on these initial descriptions of our situation.

  For now, I bid you good health and Adieu.

  Your devoted friend,

  Allegra Fullerton

  We met the sculptor Mr. Powers, finally, calling upon him in his studio. At first I quite liked him for his genial, energetic, far-ranging conversation in a Yankee twang, his face and eyes all alive, but even as he spoke I could not forget my mentor’s private reservations about his sculptures: that there was something irrevocably of the Yankee mechanic about them, that he had never cast aside certain restricting elements of the clockmaker, waxworker, and inventor of automata, and that as artist and conversationalist he was so certain of his own answers (as self-educated men often appear to be) that he presumed his own authority over that of Canova, to say nothing of Phidias.

  While in Italy with Mr. Spooner, I soon began to understand more about Powers and certain of these American men who hired Italian stone cutters to translate their clay modelings into strange, lifeless precisions of stone. Mr. Spooner suggested that it was as if they strove to follow Thorwaldsen’s three-fold, enlivening process (clay model as life, plaster cast as death, sculptured marble as resurrection), but failed to achieve the final phase. I saw for myself, moreover, that despite their protests, the Americans were actually in thrall to the latest school of classicism exemplified by their famous if sometimes unacknowledged masters—Thorwaldsen, Gibson, or whomever. The Americans aspired doggedly to the success of that school, to a certain elegance and finish, to a facile and mannered rhetoric, that it was the great good fortune of us American painters to escape. For there was no remunerative “school” of painting here, no vaunted classic or Italian style. There were before us only the multifarious masterpieces of centuries, from which we might draw inspiration and spirit, solutions to our own technical difficulties, and a rich language of painting spoken by the greatest practitioners of the ageless art.

  But at that time, I felt unequipped to judge such matters with self-confidence or certainty. And what did it matter after all if Mr. Powers and other famous Americans were little more than the faithful, ingenious, and uninspired recorders of the most prominent figures of our age?

  All during this time, through our first winter and bright amethyst days of spring, Mr. Spooner and I were often thrown together by necessity and common interest. Our viewing of many paintings together seemed to deepen our insight and understanding—through a sort of delicious, mutual sympathy—of these Italian masterworks. Our walks together became more frequent as spring approached. On the lofty hills about Florence spring crept in everywhere—in the fecundity of sprouting fig leaves, under the vines in shoots of tender-green grain, and in the sods between furrows with the scarlet flame of wild tulips. And the golden flecks of daffodils, the blues of pimpernels and hyacinths, shimmered beneath the silver olive trees, even as olive and plum flashed forth their snowy blossoms. These early flowers the contadini tucked behind their ears and in their waistbands. Everywhere, fragrances intoxicated the traveler, who dreams of Cimabue discovering on high the sketching shepherd boy, Giotto!

  These terraced hills we began to climb, winding upward among villas and gardens. Halfway up to Fiesole we passed “Villa Landor,” where the poet lived in privacy amidst the haunts of old poets, philosophers, and Lorenzo il Magnifico. Some have deemed Landor the aloof leader of the “Anglo-Florentine colony,” self-exiled to his high retreat built by Michaelangelo. This became a favored walk: our path would be besieged by wild myrtle and cyclamen in their seasons, and we always passed among pines and mysterious gardens dark with cypress trees. Later, overlooking all Florence after a day of study and work, we watched below us the Duomo and the aerial spires and battlements of Santa Croce swimming in the purples and silvers of evening haze. We seemed to envision the palpable history of triumph and folly, of revenge and ambition, of devotion and tenderness, of every aspiration, every desire and passion bestowed upon the human race and worthy of a poet such as Dante. The midnight assassinations, the tortures and persecutions, the lofty schemes and transcendent works of art—the good and evil genius of all Europe had been here screwed to a pitch as high as anywhere in the bloody Old World.

  Still, in all the early and congenial time between us, I never let on what I had overheard in Paris, but watched Mr. Spooner rather for signs of abatement or increased fervor in his hidden feelings toward me. There were a number of awkward moments for me, knowing privately what I did. And I thought at times, looking back on an event or instance, a word or conversation, that I might have led this wonderful man on more than not. Mrs. Spooner had written several letters during these months to say that she had indeed improved, but that despite Gibbon’s growing impatience, she could not say that she was quite restored enough to endure a jour
ney of several thousands of miles by sea. Yet she promised to make every effort before the year was out. None of our own feelings, Mr. Spooner’s or mine, came to a crisis until we moved out of the city to avoid the summer heat, the circumstances of which removal are, again, perhaps best, most directly expressed in another of my letters to Mrs. Spooner from those sweet summer days.

  Bellosguardo, June 5, 1844

  To Mrs. George Spooner

  My Dear Mrs. Spooner.

  We decided to remove from the city proper and up to Bellosguardo—taking the second story of a villa among four of us, the better to disperse the expenditure. So we have created our very own school of artists high above the Flower of the Arno!

  At one end of the second story, Mr. S. and I share a grand atelier and have a private bedroom each; at the opposite end two English artists, whom we met among the British colony, occupy a similar area—a gifted young painter named Louise Bellington and her sculptor friend John Goodhue, who once worked in Mr. Powers’s studio. We share a common central parlor, not at all large, in this ancient house. I suppose in Boston we should all raise a great scandal, but up here, no one inquires into our private lives, the landlord assuming we are simply enjoying a hillside holiday abroad and painting at our leisure—one couple a father and daughter, the other a man and wife. Goodhue’s work causes no difficulty because his workmen and marble dust are all kept below, while he models in clay on his mountain retreat in these long stretches of summer light.

  The heat had only begun. But we required more ample space for work, we could save even more on the inexpensive Tuscan rents, and we should remain free of all anxiousness over the cholera—murmurings of which disease preceded even the full onset of summer. And besides, as you know, everybody leaves in summer anyway; even the barber has his villa. Apartments in the city gape like tombs. In fact, our move was quite sudden; Goodhue had heard of a villa with a floor to let, made inquires, and enthusiastically returned to us with a proposal and a request, should we agree, for an immediate deposit. It sounded like too convenient an arrangement to neglect.

  And what a gorgeous prospect! Mr. S. says you must recall the view from the top. Our windows and flying balcony, as it seems, are not too far below the summit. We have many trees and bushes, more than I have seen since arriving in Florence, and a garden and brick terrace.

  An English family is in residence for the summer on the floor below, the two daughters (Jenny, age nine, and Mary, age fourteen) taking a large interest in their artist neighbors, but we see little enough of the parents. I believe the father is some sort of wine merchant, on business holiday. The girls’ tutor is a dry young stick who eyes us suspiciously and does what she can to discourage the young ladies’ playful visits, in the belief, no doubt, that it is her duty to keep her dear charges from corrupting influences. But these, Mrs. Spooner, are spritely little birds who fly out of her hands at every chance.

  For a time we tried alternating the chores associated with cooking, but we soon realized it would be easier at little enough expense to hire a woman to cook a meal at the start and end of day. This new arrangement suits us all well, the woman included. As you know, our contadine neighbors lead simple lives, living as they do in their ancient little stone dwellings—people in one room, cattle in another. On a beautiful day we walked down to one of those houses with its dark tile roof and long eaves overgrown with yellow moss, its tiny windows in the thick walls, its fanciful chimney—you remember the type—and spoke to an old woman spinning on her rustic, sunny little terrace (two young girls beside her braiding straw) about procuring a cook among the womenfolk. She indicated her daughter within, who appeared to be a woman of about thirty wearing a chemise of coarse, homespun linen with the close-fitting bodice laced behind, and the usual blue, homespun petticoat with an apron over all. She is a very fine worker, and an imaginative cook. She is very neat and rather pretty; we feel fortunate to have found her. Yet I have since seen any number of such graceful women among the handsome montaine. When we see them on feast days, I find they dress more like us, but they wear large hats they have braided themselves, instead of bonnets. They also wear two or more necklaces at once, and only later in their lives do these women show bent or injured figures from a life of long and difficult labor, as witness this spinning grandmother in comparison to her still-trim daughter.

  I have done studies of these strange, thick little houses in their Arcadian settings, and at times I wish I were more accomplished and knowledgeable musically. Has anyone captured the feeling in music, I wonder, of these peasant songs? I’m sure someone—probably of note—has. I’ve heard contadini singing in their fields and orchards, as one brother and sister, only last week, who were working in different parts of the same farm. They keep up a most beautiful conversation by each one singing a verse in turn in answer to the other. The dashing Miss Bellington, who has been in Tuscany much longer than I and speaks Italian quite well (and any number of other languages), told me when I mentioned this musical conversation that she has heard lovers on adjoining farms singing alternating verses to one another as well. “It was no doubt shepherds’ panpipes in olden times,” she says, “but now the mellifluence of the human voice in the Italian language reigns over Arcadia!” Thus if we have no grand concert hall on our mountainside, we do nonetheless hear a living music among the silver-gray olive trees, dark cypresses, and green footpaths of Tuscan farms.

  But I go on too long. Forgive me. May I say, in a phrase, Madame, that we are happy—no one working harder in all Florence than your husband—and live in a kind of hillside paradise, perhaps the true Arcadia after all. And Mr. S. continues to be honest in praise and blame of my work as I prepare for the great exhibition to be held in the city this September.

  Please do come to us as soon as you can, and certainly before this year is out. I see that your poor husband pines for your presence beside him.

  Your most affectionate friend,

  Allegra Fullerton

  TWENTY

  Our Pelasgian Arcady

  Until our residence at Bellosguardo, neither Mr. Spooner nor I betrayed our complicated and delicate feelings toward one another. We proceeded though our days and nights as master and aspirant, as fellow artists. If anything, I was perhaps more carefully respectful and a little wary of the fragility of feelings on both sides; I certainly had no wish to upset the equilibrium of our relations by confronting him, either subtly or overtly, with what I had overheard in Paris. But it must have been inevitable that in numerous small ways our hearts would grow toward one another, even in our silences, or perhaps in spite of them.

  I can not begin to trace out the many influences that released my tender sentiments in such a way as to change my whole relation to this man. Of course our continual companionship contributed to small awakenings within me to a fuller range of his presence. To say nothing of the propinquities of our recent residential arrangements, or of our studies, wanderings, and efforts to do good work in Tuscany. I do recall a particular evening in June. In the afternoon the still air had driven me from my painting room to the shaded terrace. Returning later, I found placed at the foot of my easel, upon which sat a nearly completed oil of our view from Bellosguardo, a glass of water filled with beautiful roses, as if in tribute to what I had accomplished. I had labored long on this atmospheric landscape, and failed severally, and perhaps it was this bright token of Mr. Spooner’s sympathy with my trials as much as his tribute to the result, but I began to weep—in happiness rather than sorrow—for his sweet gesture of understanding and affection.

  I had tried to capture on my canvas the steep terraces of olive grove, vineyard, and rooftops below us and the houses and churches sweeping continually from Florence to the mountains in the Arno Valley. Little farms and white villages spread over the plain beset on all sides by mountains. Prato sits way off on another mountainside and Pistoia even at the farthermost edge of the valley, like a thin mirage hovering in the broad sunlight. And the city itself lies between the hills to
the right and below, its dome and campanile visible. And high Fiesole, with its gray cathedral tower silhouetted against the gleaming sky, just beyond. (Mr. S. told me that the ancient cathedral dates to the time of Nero and its bishop was a disciple of St. Peter. And Fiesole is far more ancient still). My mountains in the distance rise like waves over the lake-like plain, some hills are bespotted with woods, but most hills I depicted bare-looking because vineyards and orchards can not be seen from our distance. I also tried to suggest the blue shadows that move continually among these mountains and in the plains, alternating with flashes of sunlight that illuminate distant villages and towers. Often we had watched, like gods and goddesses, the genesis of great summer thundershowers sweeping hither and yon.

  DURING THIS TIME, Mr. Spooner and I also found ourselves together in our rare attendance within that vast social round, which in part Mrs. Greenough orchestrated, of fashionable Florence: the balls at the Pitti, the parties at the Palazzo Ximenes, the Opera (the Greenoughs had a box in the second row at the Pergola), and our single attendance at the British Minister’s affairs or “Medici receptions,” as they were sometimes called. This charming Italian society melts all reserve, and once one has been presented, all barriers are removed. And it was through the Greenoughs that we made the acquaintance of a number of the British company of authors, artists, and diplomatic officials who had installed themselves in and about Florence.

  There is in Italy, moreover, a kind of liberality of attitude toward the human body, indeed toward the whole carnal life. Where else is a woman considered virtuous so long as she cleaves to her lover, if not her husband, and observes the conventionalisms of society otherwise? Difference of latitude effects a revolution in morals, even among the Anglo-Saxon ladies here who slip from their lawful lords, often in public view. Where else do our vices become their customs, as in the customary cicisbeism (a “husband within a husband”) which calms the potential disharmonies when marriage-by-estate-and-family has superseded natural inclination? And where else, I wonder, would I have been able to attend lectures on anatomy, even with my letters from Messrs. Powers and Greenough? Where else would men such as these have allowed me to share in their own studies, along with Mr. Spooner, of the human form? On one convivial occasion, after we had been examining Mr. Greenough’s studies for Bunker Hill, Achilles and Agamemnon, and other sketches, Mr. Spooner was himself pressed into service for a lark as a model of the male torso. The remaining scales of habit and labor, so to speak, fell from my eyes on the following sultry afternoon when Mr. Greenough had come up to the cooler reaches of Bellosguardo. We were sketching Mr. Spooner (whose manly form looked nothing like his forty-nine years) as he lay half-reclining before us, his arms casually bracing his head, a head apparently engaged in momentary dozing, his loins wrapped by a languid towel. I seemed to see before me an antique, voluptuous figure. Here was no soft cherubic faun of the late sentimental schools, nor even the ancient drunken or resting fauns one sees in casts or in their original state, for all their mild species of sensuality. No, this was the very original of the Barberini Faun (if some years advanced beyond the original) luxuriating in the soulless gorgeous sensuality of his muscular, unthinking flesh—yet on the verge of some terrible arousal.