The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

by Robert J. Begiebing

  Mr. Greenough agreed, but added that he found it “difficult to pursue one’s work there.” Gibbon said that he had feared as much himself.

  “On the Corso, where we live, the Springs and I,” she went on, “after the weather became fine, there was conversation or singing before my window all night long. I don’t know whether I ever truly slept while in Rome.” She laughed. “Now in Florence, which is quieter, I feel as though I need to sleep all the time!”

  She then spoke of meeting Mazzini in England and a most intriguing Italian nobleman while in Rome. The result of such meetings was that she had become the most “unashamed Republican.” She had even visited Mazzini’s mother in Genoa and sent news of her to her brave son, along with two leaves of the scented verbena growing on his library windowsill. She believed completely in a coming war for liberation from Metternich’s Austrians. “It is only a matter of time, and of an initial uprising somewhere, anywhere, on the part of the tyrant’s subjects.”

  After a lengthy discussion of European politics, during which Mr. Greenough made his own Republican sympathies known, I changed the subject by asking her if she had met thus far any other of those “interesting persons” to whom she had planned to present her letters of introduction.

  She immediately began to speak with enthusiasm of meeting George Sand while in Paris.

  Mrs. Powers, who was also present, said: “I hope she is not so vulgar as they make her out to be, Miss Fuller.”

  “Not at all …” Mrs. Greenough began to answer, but Miss Fuller took up the challenge immediately.

  “Even Madame Sand’s portraits,” Miss Fuller said, “are inaccurate, her face being much finer, her eyes and forehead more beautiful, the lower portion of her face strong and perhaps masculine, but expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions … and not in the least coarse.”

  She paused and glanced about. No one disagreeing with her, she went on. “I was nearly rebuffed upon presenting myself to her servant, a goddaughter. ‘Madame says she does not know you.’ So I asked if she had not received my letter and immediately Madame Sand herself opened the door, our eyes met, and she said, ‘C’est vous,’ and held out her hand!”

  Then Miss Fuller turned directly to Mrs. Powers. “Her beautiful, simple appearance and attitude gave her a ladylike dignity that struck a contrast to the ludicrous and vulgar caricature of George Sand.”

  Mrs. Powers appeared glad to hear it.

  “Yes,” Mr. Greenough spoke up, “wouldn’t you say that there is a perfect goodness emanating from the effect of the whole?”

  “Indeed, sir,” Miss Fuller went on. “Goodness. Nobleness. And power.”

  He encouraged her to continue: “And she invited you in?”

  “Oh yes! Il me fait de bien de vous voir, I said, and we went right in to her study. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘vous m’avez ècrit une lettre charmante.’ I believe I loved her from that moment, even before we had talked much.

  Mrs. Powers wondered about her reputation.

  “She needs no defense,” Miss Fuller said, “but only to be understood, for she has acted bravely out of her nature. She might have loved one man, if she had found one who could interest and command her throughout her range, but there was hardly the possibility of that among her contemporaries. Thus she has naturally changed the objects of her affection, several times. There is of course something of the Bacchante in her and that love of night and storms, like followers of Cybele roaming in free raptures on the mountaintops, but she is not at all coarse, never gross. She has, I’m sure, not failed to draw some rich drops from every kind of winepress. When she has done with an intimacy, she likes to break it off suddenly, as has often happened both with men and women. And of course many calumnies laid upon her are traceable to this cause. But I heartily enjoyed so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her too, very much; I never liked a woman better. For the rest, she holds her place in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seems full of energy and courage in it.”

  “Fidelity is never easy for persons of talent and intellect,” Mr. Spooner offered. He glanced at me.

  Mrs. Greenough asked whether Miss Fuller would be passing through Bologna on her way to Milan.

  “Yes, I believe I must.” Miss Fuller looked a little perplexed by the sudden shift in subject.

  “Then you shall love Bologna, Miss Fuller, for there the intellect of woman is cherished. There is a monument to Matilda Tambreni, late professor of Greek. And a bust of a woman professor of anatomy in their anatomical hall. A thing unimaginable in America.”

  “To say nothing of the conspicuous place they have given to their women artists,” Mr. Greenough added. “Properzia di Rossi, Elisabetta Sirani, Lavinia Fontana. Here too even the women have their Casino dei Nobili and are the very soul of society.”

  “And let us not forget then while we are about it,” Miss Fuller said, “the painter of miniatures, Laya, mother of them all, whose fame exceeded the most renowned painters of Rome—Sopolis and Dionysius—and whose devotion caused her, as Pliny reports, ‘never to marry’!”

  “Or Onorata Rodiana!” Mr. Spooner said cheerily, as if topping her still. “The ‘Warrior Maiden’ who stabbed through the heart the libertine who accosted her in the very act of her painting the Marquis Fondalo’s palace ceilings, and then escaped dressed as a man to a band of Condottieri.”

  Hear! Hear!” said Mr. Greenough, laughing again. We all joined him.

  “Well,” Mrs. Powers asked, “for that matter is it not Milan that pays tribute, in the Ambrosian Library I believe, to that female mathematician?”

  Mr. Greenough confirmed this fact. Miss Fuller said that she more than ever anticipated her Italian travels.

  I invited her up to Bellosguardo “only about a mile beyond the Porta Roma,” I explained. And in fact she did look in on the Spooners and me. After lunching and scrutinizing my atelier, she and I left the Spooners and returned to our terrace and a pitcher of cold lemon-water.

  She said that she liked Mr. Greenough quite well, as a rare American whose sculpture was certainly satisfactory but moreover whose Republican spirit was exceptional. “There are very few others, even among these English,” she said, “who take the pains to penetrate beyond the cheats of tradesmen and the cunning of a mob corrupted by centuries of slavery, to discover and know the real mind, the vital blood of Italy. And of course they know nothing of Mazzini, let alone Alfieri or even, Lord help us, Dante.” She descanted for some minutes upon the history of Italy’s fragmentation, going back hundreds of years, and the assorted despots (from Popes to Austrians to Spanish Bourbons) whose medieval powers still burdened the Italian people.

  We spoke briefly about a current work of Mr. Greenough—a model for a relief of a bacchante and a young faun, the bacchante all relaxed, the faun all strain in the presence of fruitful vines. She admired the work “in its incomplete state,” but, she added, “the poor artist seems most uncertain about it, most unsatisfied with the present state of it, nothing like the sensual abandon, and the utter absence of shame, in that muscular being you have painted, Allegra. And I see why you had to keep him hidden away!”

  She then brought us to a consideration of my new home, by which I mean Florence itself.

  “Florence certainly is unlike Rome,” she said. “At first I could hardly bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts, it is still a richer place, I think, and you are quite right to have settled yourself here.”

  “I have been planning to visit Rome for some time,” I explained, “but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I have, of course, a world of masters here, and a number of new friends.”

  “Indeed. You study; you work diligently. And where else can one see the del Sarto frescoes? But I think the time has come for you to venture forth to see Rome. Florence seems more in spirit—its provincialisms, its limits—like Boston than a great Italian city.”

  “Oh, I shall. I’m awaiting a letter from a friend in England,
at the moment.” I said nothing of Tom or his circumstances. “You have seen the del Sartos then? He is a wonder, isn’t he.”

  “Yes, but there is something about that woman he paints over and again. His wife, I believe, or so someone told me. He must have been infatuated, but in his portrayals he shows certain of her … bad qualities as well, does he not? A certain diablerie.”

  I laughed at her characterization. “Perhaps,” I suggested, “that’s why it is difficult to point to any painting of his that has either simplicity or quite that devotional feeling we discover in so many other masters. Imagine such early fame and success bringing him neither happiness nor prosperity; he was miserable and contemned instead. She caused him much anguish and impoverishment, you see; he’d married her despite the warnings of his friends concerning her infamous character. For her he forsook his aging parents, his scholars, even his patron, Francis I, from whom he embezzled, for her sake. Her avarice and infidelity became proverbial, even unto her abandoning him on his deathbed—this woman for whom he had forsaken all—and letting him die miserably, alone. He was buried hastily and without ceremony.”

  She contemplated these facts quietly; then she said: “It is a sorrowful tale. But to learn by blundering is the destiny of men and women here below.” She looked up at the sky. “Preserve us all from infatuations!” she added.

  “And from the infatuated!” I said, and we both laughed. I could not stop thinking of brother Tom’s predicament as we spoke.

  I seized the moment to confess my confusion, my passions, my shame over past relations with Mr. Spooner. It was as if I had been searching for months for some person of understanding worthy to unleash the crosscurrents of my heart.

  Instinctively, she knew of what I spoke. She looked right into me before speaking.

  “You have embarked, Allegra, upon your own vita nuova, as I have,” she said without further explanation.

  I insisted by my look on something more.

  “Listen, you poor woman, listen to me,” she finally offered. “To the pagans we must turn, finally, for the secret of a happy and virtuous life, as we turn fascinated before a Florentine fountain celebrating fecundity. To the Saxon, remember, the body is a convenience. To the Puritan, a curse. But to the Italian the body is a thing alive with beauty. And you, you and your master are as Italians now.”

  “It is as if,” I suggested, “being here—this Tuscany—has taken strange possession of me, Margaret.”

  “Perhaps, then, that’s all as it’s meant to be, Allegra.” But she pursued this theme no further at present, and turned rather to European politics again.

  I had to confess that I had not given sufficient attention to political matters, having focused all my attention on the fine arts. But the expressions of her great heart convinced me I had been remiss in avoiding while we lived in Italy—much as I had feared purely out of my own self-interest—the coming rebellion. I could not have known then how much the fluidity of political conditions would determine the course of my own life. She explained calmly her growing sympathies for the Italian cause since meeting Mazzini and her new friend the Marchese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.

  I could not then tell whether it was the man or the cause that had so opened her passions, whether her heart or her politics spoke to me, or some rare conjoining of the two. It was clear only that her travels in Europe, and especially in Italy, had awakened her to a deeper life—a life for which she had been searching perhaps, a life that would gather meaning for the long studies and labors of all her previous years. It was here in Italy that she had recognized something, something as yet inchoate even to her powerful mind, yet something worthy of her at last. I felt a great empathy toward her; we were now like sisters in adventure. She had, I understood, embarked upon her own vita nuova, but a new life, I was about to discover, ample enough to contain Eros as well as Psyche.

  I asked how she had met Ossoli, and she described her meeting him by chance. Yet there was no doubt, it seemed to me as she spoke, that she considered Ossoli an offering from the hand of destiny.

  “I had gone with my traveling companions to St. Peter’s to hear vespers,” she explained. “Holy Thursday it was. I wished to wander among the various chapels, and so arranged with my friends to meet after the services. When I finally noticed the crowd dispersing, I returned to the appointed spot to meet Mr. and Mrs. Spring, but after considerable waiting and looking about, even with the help of my glass, I came to believe they had missed or misunderstood me and had left with the crowd of worshippers. Just as I realized these circumstances, a young gentleman approached me and asked if I were seeking someone. I immediately perceived some resemblance to my brother Eugene, some essential kindness about this young man dressed in such fashionable, close-fitting jacket-and-trousers, with his flowing cravat and bamboo cane. Might he offer me any assistance? Together we continued looking for a time but soon gave up and went out into the piazza for a carriage. Yet we had delayed just too long, for there were no carriages to be had, and the gentle stranger offered to walk with me, poor and wandering inglesa, all the way from the Vatican to the Corso. I did not speak much Italian yet, but I am learning quickly now. Then, however, conversation was difficult, but sufficiently managed to create an interest in one another. And we have met once or twice since.”

  “A delightful adventure, Miss Fuller!” I said. “Shall you meet again?”

  “Perhaps. I leave that up to him, after I return to Rome.”

  “But you hope you do, I take it?”

  She looked at me as if hesitating before trading a confidence, but only for a moment.

  “I do. Yes. And you see that I am very interested in these matters of Italian liberty and unification. I have met no other here who can enlighten me as to the struggles of Italy better than he.”

  “I see.”

  “He is of a noble Roman house. But now nearly impoverished. His mother died when he was an infant. His father, the Marchese Filippo Ossoli, grew ill recently, and if he dies, which seems likely, he will leave many debts and encumbrances behind him. His brothers shall be provided for in Papal service, but he is to be denied such a career for his liberal principles.”

  She did not just then reveal any stronger feelings for this man who was, she admitted, somewhat younger than she. But there was, I felt, something more beneath the surface of her conversation. She knew my intimations, I am sure, but I said nothing about them at the time.

  IT WAS NOT LONG BEFORE Miss Fuller was off on her travels to Bologna, Milan, Venice, Lake Como, et cetera, during that Wanderjahre in the middle of her life, and I could not detain her longer in Florence. When she took her leave, however, she elicited a promise from me to visit her in Rome, to release myself from the burdens of guilt and passion, to see something of the city when she returned, as she secretly hoped, in the autumn. She might even be stopping by Florence on her way, at the invitation of her bold new friend, Marchioness Costanza Arconati Visconti. She had also met old friends in Rome, she added, a number of them artists, and mentioned two particularly from old Brook Farm days—George Curtis and Christopher Cranch. Surely, she said in parting, you must soon decide to come away to Rome.

  I dared not mention any of this to Mr. Spooner, for she had said nothing of the Spooners visiting her along with me, and, moreover, I was once again growing on my own account ever more desirous of an independent sojourn. I had come to feel too much like some disenchanted bacchante, who had once been overfilled with the mind and flesh of another.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  My leave-taking

  When Miss Fuller returned to Florence that September, as she had promised en route to Rome, she was fatigued to the point of illness from her hectic travels. She stayed several days in bed, looked after by Mrs. Mozier, wife of the American sculptor. After Milan and Venice and Verona, after Switzerland and Mantua and Vicenza, and after meeting her friends Madame Arconati and Princess Radzivill, and our young American Hicks, the painter, and the young patriot Guerrieri, and after t
he Correggios and Parmegianos of Parma, and Lord knows how many viewings of art and how many conversations with other youthful patriots, she had returned more firm than ever in her Republicanism, more convinced than ever that Italy’s great past adumbrated her great future.

  I met Miss Fuller, as planned, at the Pitti galleries one late-September forenoon, a week or two before the Spooners and I were to return from the rooms in our hillside villa to quarters in the city. I remember our discussions of Giorgione’s Concert, Titian’s La Bella, Durer’s Adam and Eve, Da Vinci’s Ginevra, and Ruben’s self-portrait as if it were last week, rather than a succession of busy years ago and several thousands of miles.

  Again I was invited to Rome, and again I thought of all the times I had considered leaving the Spooners, for all our sakes, and I began to tell her of my deepest worries and thoughts in that regard. We had stepped aside from the paintings for a moment, to stand by a window and discuss the matter in some privacy. She understood my troubled heart, and she lent me every encouragement to strike out on my own—and to begin by visiting her in Rome. As we were speaking, Mr. and Mrs. Powers entered the gallery and, seeing Miss Fuller for the first time since her return to Florence, engaged her in enthusiastic conversation about her experiences and thoughts abroad.

  I excused myself. I began to wander distractedly about, looking at some of the paintings, but the masterworks no longer seemed to register upon my mind. Somehow, I made my way back to the very window where Miss Fuller and I had been conversing before Mr. and Mrs. Powers came in, and now I began a solemn consideration of Miss Fuller’s invitation. Could I finally, even heartlessly, leave Mr. Spooner to his wife and son in the city we together had come to love?