Hotel Cocumella,
Sorrento

Sept. 25 - 1920

Dear Family:

The Wagers have gone on up to Rome and will stop at the French Lemaçon and ask them to forward your letters to me here; for all I know you might have perished in the Wall Street explosion. Every night I consult my intuition as to whether all is well with you; I urge my consciousness almost physically into your Mount Carmel dining-room, bumping into the furniture and brushing your elbows. As now. And I can fairly hear you saying "I hope his money's lasting out" or "I should have given him a flannel band to wind about his stomach." You shall know all; letter-writing, when one can draw apart from this prodigious existence long enough, becomes a pleasure. Like an actor I enjoy the experience of doing the first time, but later performances, such as describing the same events to Amos and Charlotte, becomes drudgery. You shall have the first time, facts and reflections, they shall give incidental remarks.

At the Cocumella I am pursuing two opposed courses: part of the time I am playing Cosmopolitan and the rest of the time I am doing all I can to qualify as a cittadino of Sorrento (as the dialect has it.) For the first four languages are all too few. English I must use with some nice American boys who are staying here, John DePko, a stenographer at the American Em-bassy on sick leave, citizen of Torrington, Conn., and John King Univeristy of St. Louis, prospective law student, Roman Catholic, who has been vaguely doing Italy and France since Jan. English too I reserve for Dr. Mathews, a distingusihed New York woman-Physician, who dressed at all points like a man, save the skirt, and her companion, Miss Olmstead, a beautiful young-old lady, head of a fashionable girls day-school in New York, both of the "Providence". But French, wretched mangled affair that mine is, I must reserve for the Italians in the hotel, delightful people some of them, in spite of their table manners. There is a Sig-norina Ledia De Benedetto, whom I should have avoided earlier, a wild woman of a certain age who looks like Eva Tanguay, is per-suaded that I am incredibly wealthy, and with her mother, is making the most alarming advances toward me. In French! And a nice French boy, travelling about a bit before settling down to busi-ness, who knows Paul Geraldy personally. For German, there is Herr Strauss and his son Robert Strauss, rich Jewish bankers from Frankfort. Robert communes to Naples every day in order to study sculpture and papyri at the Museo Nasionale; he has three years to go at the Frankfort Univeristy, and is a deadly, conceited, opin-ionated mutt of nineteen. He knows everything, speaks every language, memorizes railroad time-tables, and misses everything I find in-

Sept.25,1920 - 2.

teresting and beautiful. He is rather popular in his stiff con-
descending way, among the bevies of pretty, idle Italian girls.
German too, for Herr Schott, a homely, young, more humble fellow,
an artist. He showed me a portfolio of his etchings, illustrations
for a rococo, novelette of Voltaire, quite fine and graceful in their
way, but imitative of Aubrey Beardsely and lightly, but consistently
touched with indecency. German too, with Paul Nortz, a young German
on his way to extend his father's coffee business in America. His
mother was English and the greater part of his life was spent in
La Havre. I liked him immensely at first for his lively acquaint-
tance with modern German music and plays and sympathy for his game
keg, and injury induced by malnutrition during the war, but lately
stupid national characteristics have come out so strongly I can
scarcely endure him. He is not at the Cocumella, but at the Trans-
montane where taking tea alone I introduced myself to him. I have
taken several short trips with him; this exhibits him in his best
light: a German never misses a train

But it is my exploits in Italian I am most eager to tell
you about. I love Italy now, indisulubly; and the Italians; and
the language. After breakfast, which about eight-thirty I go back
to my room and study my Italian grammar for about an hour. I have
and excellent book. Then I go down town, and either sit over a
gelatti at the Ercolano Cafe, talking with Antonio, or else I hunt
up Dario and go for a boat-ride to the baths of the mad queen, or
the grotto of the Madonna, talking pure Italian as we go ! The only
words in English Dario knows is all rights) These local characters
with a few others were introduced to me by a fellow-passangeron
the Providence, Mr. Zinetti. Harvard graduate, New York lawyer,
seigneur in Sorrento, traveller and dilletante, The brothers
Ercolano are the most delightful type of Neapolitan, - lovable sharks.
They know they are charming; its a sort of profession among them
to be beautiful and courteous and sincere (!) but you must pay for
it as you'd pay for any work of art.

Dario's another matter. Eight years ago Mr. Zinetti reme
members Dario living in the oldest and most beautiful palazzo in
Sorrento. Dario was a boy of ten, " as sensitive as a lute".
Now, Dario's father has drunken them out of a home, his mother is
a local school-teacher, his sisters have gone to the bad ( one of
them sells you your boat tickets on the piccola marina; not it-
self a sign of moral collapse ), and Dario is a Barchatiere, and
ferries tourists about for an overseer. Mr. Zinetti thought of
buying Dario a boat of his own, but finding them too expensive, fit-
ted him out with a pair of shoes which I am afraid Dario has pro-
mptly sold now Mr. Zinetti has gone. Dario doesn't look at all
eighteen; his aristocratic little head, and earnest eyes, added to
his sad story have, I assure you, a most poignant effect. Our rides
in the shadow of these grey red-streaked cliffs, or swinging on the
rushing tides in the booming glimmering caverns are truly Italian,
in the sense that Shakespeare and Goethe yearned over the word.

Sept.25,1920 - 3.

Unfortunately our conversation conducted on my part very much by the book, sentences framed like children's mechanical toys, and his replies, eager, helpful yet couched in a base Neapolitan dialect, does not consort with our surroundings.

My Italian, with help at the Hotel from Defeo who is now my table-mate, and with perpetual experience at the hands of lann-dresses, waiters, coachmen and some Italian plays I am reading im-proves daily by leaps and bounds. I even talk with a handsome' broad good-natured Roman matron downstairs, whom we all love, and who takes a kindly delight in my sudden ambitions flight into literary Ital-ian.

I do a little writing too. I have rewriteen several poetic scenes of Vécy-Segal almost to perfection, and am shaping a sweet sad full-length play about rich beautiful American girl who goes to Capri to die.

The excellent health I am enjoying is a surprise to me. Everybody's stomach about me is out of order, it seems, and mine that used to dislocate at a mere change of village in America, sails triumphantly over a change of continent. The two cups of hot cof-fee with hot milk in the morning I find are fairly medicinal; they send me upstairs in about twenty-minutes and all is well.

Swimming is great, though the long arguments in Italian with the bath-attendants and their wives and children is no small part of the fun. And the first day all I could say was Quanta costa? Its very late now, rather early Sunday morning. Love to all. I saw you less than a month-ago, and it seems so many years.

Much love

Thornton

Cocumella Sorrento

In festo S.Franc.d'As.

(Pro protesantes: Oct. 4, 1920)

Dear Family:

Still no mail. But the Wagers write me from Rome that there
is a bunch being forwarded. Aspetto impazientemente. A card from
Charlotte, with promise of a letter. Otherwise uneventful blessed
days, a great deal of sunlight and color and veiled distances. But
today has been the most beautiful day of all. I had hoped to be in
Assisi, but finding that my clever modernity somehow irritated Dr.
Wager, I consideratel excused myself from accompanying them, though in
that first enthusiasm of remeeting them the invitation has his. Now
in Rome his illness has prevented his going to the vigil too, and
I could have had the last foothold of the Middle Ages to myself this
great day. But I am glad I have staid here; it is less expensive,
and I am accumulating anough Italian to deal with ticket-men and l
luggage-men all alone, when my time comes to go on. I have written
the Secretary of the American Academy, with a moiety of truth, that
the change of contiinent has had a temporarily upsetting effect on
my constitution and a slight prolongation of my stay here is ad-
visable, and requested him to accept an accompanying catalogue of my
predispositions as my registration in the school that opened yester-
day. I go up on the tenth. Tomorrow I go to Naples and begin my
systematic study of the beautiful antiquities at the Museo Nazionale.
I will go in every day ( with a lunch prepared for me by the hotel)
at 7:00 A.M. and return at 4: from the dogano at Naples. Later giving
similar attention to Pompei daily and returning by the Costella Ma-
re Train, and the Sorrento tramway ( the most beautiful trip in the
world).

Today has been the most perfect day yet. I took a long
walk along divinely lit headlands and through squalid colorful vil-
lages. From the road to Massa Lubrense, one is able to look in from
one horn of the jagged half-moon that is Sorrento. At half past
four the light has a yellowish, almost reddening quality, in its
intensity, and does not sharply strike the water that lies a deep,
rather purplish, blue, as always so perfectly wrinkled that one can
count the individual waves for miles. The air has been lately washed
for us by a series of nightly thundershowers, and every part of the
bay stands out with a distinctness unique. When you have looked at
Vesuvious a moment, its villages and its houses, window fo4 window,
seem to comes fairly under your hand; and Ischia the island opposite
that in your first days you are always mistaking for Capri, and
Procida, and Virgilian Capo Miseno, have their cliffs and ridges mar-
ked for them in colors, tan and blue, and each cloud as it passes at
above them can be assigned its proper shadow. On the goatish stra-
tified heights behind Sorrento, too, the shadows of clouds are always
passing, but nothing dims the brilliance of those thousand white and
pink villas, and the refreshed green of the olive trees, nor the
line of surf under the ancient undermined cliffs. Except for my
half day at Palermo, Naples and Sorrento are the first cities of this
old world I have seen, and I cannot imagine myself loving any place
more, no, not Rome, nor Siena, or Paris, nor Stoke Poges. I went
and spent the night at the Riviera in Naples again the other evening
inorder to see my second comedy of Goldoni La Cocadiera. I had studied

Oct. 4, 1920 - 2

the text carefully, and understood quite well what was being said. I planned to stay a second night and see D'Ammenzio's *La Gioconda*, but they suddenly changed the bill, and I was glad to come back here to my little room.

The thing you should really know about me now is that I am writing my beautiful pitiful play about the American widow at Capri and Dario Stiavelli, the adventurer- Never did a play come to me more easily. Day and day I sit down and this beautiful touching dialogue flows from my pen. It is called "Villa Rhaban" but has no relation with the other play I projected with the same name. There are only four characters and a servant; the four acts are laid in the same room, and it would cost fifteen cents to produce. But no one short of Elsie Ferguson, Gareth Hughes, Haida Wright, and Arthur Byron need attempt to play it. Defeo says there are accessible typewriters at the Embassy anytime, and as soon as I have time I will make and send you a copy. I have transcribed the whole bay of Naples into a small perfectly-molded intimate play. There is no one here to read it to, and my inability drives me crazy, and I have to expatiate to you thus to keep myself calm. Every day I talk in beastly French, German and Italian for hours. There are lots of pretty Italian girls, I have to talk French to; oh, how they suffer. We can talk for a whole morning but ultimately they have to take a rest from the American who is capable of using *liser* as the infinitive to read. However my Italian is almost ready for them, and then what progress I shall make. As it is, I talk to the old duennas, who cannot speak French, in Italian; the whole hotel resounds with shrieks of mixed horror, laughter and encouragement. The German boy leaves tomorrow so I will be able to drop that language from the competition, though there is still a waiter I have to use it with when Vovrei and istesso and piu and auché are not sufficient.- I shall write you, beloved, again the minute I get your letters which I expect tomorrow- I trust, trust, that you are all well and conscious of how I hover over you with love, as now

Thornton

Write me a few American Embassy. De Feo, my stenographer, friend there, says it is really best, and very well managed general postal delivery. Have my letters been reaching you ?!

Oct. 14 Roma

Dear Family:

I have this minute arrived in Rome, and am waiting up in my room at half-past ten for some supper. The train was two-and a-half hours late, and I know no more of home than can be gained on a rainy evening crossing the street that separates the station from the Hotel Continentale (The last room left, for 22 lire). I had resolved not to write you until I had received your letters forwarded, but they failed day by day to come so I have hurried up to Rome to get them. French Lemon may have decided not to forward them to Cocomella on the Wagers casual advice, or they may be found at the Boston. Tomorrow will straighten out.

In the meantime (while my hunger resounds in my stomach like a great bell) I must tell you some of the news of the last week and a half in Sorrento. One day for instance when I had been walking enraptured for hours among the bronzes and marbles of the Museo Nazionale I returned at 3:30 to the Immaculate to take the Sorrento boat. I bought my ticket, went aboard; it was expected by three guards. We started, and I settled down to read my Paris Temps and Berliner Tageblatt. I fell into conversation with an Italian sailor who had had a fruit store on upper Broadway. Suddenly I found that I was on the wrong boat: I was bound for Procida and Ischia, and there was no return that night. Seamen Esposito embarrassedly offered to take me into his home at Procida but I laughed it off, saying that I would go on to the Ischia that had been good enough for Vittoria Collonna, and Lamertine. Then I fell into conversation with a handsome middle-aged Anglo-Italian who is employed between London and Rome in the wheat business- There are half a dozen exceedingly beautiful villas on Ischia because the bathing is so perfect for children, there being no cliffs as at Sorrento. This gentleman tried to be as helpful to me as possible, but with a touch of caution. I was hatless, in an eccentric-looking baggy grey-suit, and with a strange air of being at my ease which suggested arriere-pensee. We drove up towards his villa, whereupon he exhibited himself, telling the coachman to carry me on to the Floridiana Hotel (The best one on the island, but not very good.) In the glass of my Italian, darkly, I found the Floridiana closed for the season, and was waved on to the second best which was full. Then I was sent to the Albergo del' belli guardine which turned out to be a rather ambitious kitchen-in-the-wall, peopled by several suspicious old women in black dresses who discussed things in whispers among themselves. I feared I was going to sleep in Vittoria Collonna's castle, now a house of correction, but one of the women emerged and beckoned to me ungraciously to follow her. We passed to an outdoor court (the beautiful gardens perhaps of the title) and on the second story through four spacious dark funereal bedrooms, there being no hall and no light and no privacy. The last was offered to me, to my simulated delight, and I gazed at the great shapeless shabby bed where so soon (I foresaw) my throat would be cut. I wanted to keep my relations with my hosts as sweet as possible and so refrained from bargaining until the morning. I slept very well; I was awakened only once by a dog under my bed eating the Paris Temps, the Berliner Tageblatt having been used in a more humble and not inappropriate way elsewhere. The return boast for Naples left at six the next morning and I had told them to call me at five, so I lazily repled to a

7

Oct.14,Rome - 2

knocking in the dark. It seemed to me, as always on waking, that I was happily back at 82 Conn. or on Whitney Avenue. Soon the truth came to me that I was in a dubious situation on the island of Ischia. I threw some cold water at my face from a washstand in the corner, dressed and descended. There was a yellow streak in the dark sky visible above the narrow blanching street. By lamplight my padrona made me a cup of coffee and presented her conto. Twenty-five lire for that wretched room, a supper and a breakfast! It was too late to argue. I paid it and threw myself on circumstance. Except for my Express checks which were uncashable until late in the morning I had only three lire left, and the fare to Naples was five lire. I asked the woman if she'd give me two more and I'd mail her five, but she concealed her obduracy under a flow of rapid Neapolitan dialetta-I left quickly without mancia and reaching the ticket-kiosk explained myself to the official. Suddenly it occurred to me that 3 lire would at least buy me a third class passage, and so it did with a lire to spare. So at ten o'clock I reached Naples and going to beloved piazza dei Martiri cashed another Express at 25 lire to the dollar: Suddenly I passed an American soldier ( as I thought ) in the street. I ran back and spoke to him, inviting him to have an ice-cream with me. He turned out to be a Princeton boy of imposing New York family who ran away from bank servitude to join the Near East Relief. He was actually in the Wall Street Explosion. The J.P. Morgan skylight fell on him, and he's got the scars! He came over and spent the days with me at the Cocumella, and we went to Pompeii and climbed Vesuvius together. ( I keep going to the window. Outside in wonderful Rome it is drizzling. Carriages and trams pass. Not far away the Pope and forty cardinals are sleeping, the coinseum and the forum are lying dampish, and silent and locked up, but with burning light at least, the Sistine chapel is glimmering, and somewhere further off, in the struggling starlight, your graves, John Keats and Percy Shelley, lie succeeding to establish, if anyone can, that it is better to lie in a moist hill with glory, than live in an elegant hotel with stupidity.) When we got quarter-way up Vesuvius, at a hotel where our horses were supposed to be waiting for us, there were suddenly no horses. So we cut the price of our agents in half and agreed to walk. It's a wicked mountain, half of every step you take is lost in the sliding blue-black dust, yet so steep that every step for two hours and a half is palpably lift. I suddenly got anxious about Charley White; he has been shut up in a bank for a year and a half and was unprepared for this. He insisted on going on, though he was on the verge of palpitations and heaves and blood-coughing the whole way. Yet Father and I had wisely let pass the call of the Near Eastern Relief because of my constitution: I who talked Italian all the way up with our guide Nicola!

( Now it is morning and stupidity is impatiently waiting for Caff au-lait. A Busy modern city with only a hint of romance is riding the tide under my window. In a few moments I am going to dash over to French Lemons; then to the Londres-Cargill, an almost unheard of hotel with a room at about eight lire! Then this afternoon to the Academia.)

Love to you all. I'm dying to know about you.

Will write again tonight

Thornton

Oct.14, Rome -3

(The following seems to be a postscript added to the previous letter)

Looking in the cheval-glass I see a young man of about twenty-one who implicitly, or by reason of his large shell glasses, presents an expectant eager face to the view. His shoes and clothes are in travel-state, but he is carefully shaved and brushed. On his pink cheeks and almost infantile mouth lies a young innocence that is not native to Italy and has to be imported in low ships, and about the eyes there is the same strong naivete, mercifully mitigated by a sort of frightened humor. He is very likeable, more intelligent than he looks, and less charming. Alone in Italy? To study archaeology! Why each single tooth in that engaging upper row is an appeal in the name of Froebel and in the name of Wordsworth to let childhood enjoy its rainbow skies and imagined gardens while it may. A delicious little breakfast has come, with a marmelade of orange and pineapple, and though I want you all here all the time, for this particular meal I choose Isabel.

Read the other letter
first

Roma: Hotel Continentale

The same day before noon*

(* probably Oct.15,1920, J.W.D.)

Dear Family:

There were two letters waiting for me at the French Lemmons, the last yours of about Sept. 16, but you had not yet begun to get mine. The birth of kittens noted and the christening at which I was so happily remembered. Mother's political debut hailed with delight, and the offer to father. I'm so relieved that nothing has happened to you yet! There are too many of you for even prayer to embrace, so avoid dangerous corners and wrap yourselves well. I'm sorry Isabel has been reproached for obeying my desire that she and grandmother leave the dock immediately. That speck-in-the-distance stuff seems to me one of the least imaginative expressions of domestic affection and I kiss her now for having insisted. Janet's enumeration of the cats' names left one with the idea that there were fifteen kittens; perhaps I am wrong. I sat right down in French-Lemmons and laughed and cried, and when I'd mastered myself I went out into the Piazza di Spagna and my eyes fell on the house opposite and my eyes cried again over Keats' death, and I recited

"When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain-"

that I learnt by heart under the olive trees of Sorrento. Then I drifted about, exquisitely touched and happy over every odd grass tufted church, and powdering house, hunting for Hotel Londres-Cargill. When found it had nothing for me within two days and I roamed on. Suddenly I burst upon the American Embassy, went in to call on De Feo. He insisted on leading me to Mr. Riggs, 3rd. secretary, to whom John Carter has given me a letter. This is a nice young man (beautifully dressed) with quite John's manners, half-bold and half-blushing-shy. He is a master of all languages and all departments of interest, said John Carter and De Feo, and his first plan was that I accompany him through the underground chambers of the Palatine to which he alone has access. No one ever goes there etc. etc. Then I came back to the Hotel, and told them I would stay on several days. They replied that they would have to give me another room costing only 12 lire a night and which I may live in the rest of my life. Especially if I find I can get a noon meal at the Academy. Then I sat down and wrote this letter, which I will finish tonight after my afternoon call on the School.

I have just come up from lunch, a beautifully served little thing for 14 lire. I'm living at a Biltmore for a dollar and a quarter a day! The only continentals who can do it look bloatedly rich and deliberately immoral. There was such a tablefull of pescicani sitting in the middle of the room about a whooping center-piece of carnations. Near me was a French lady with a clambering son of six; her hat a cascade of aigrettes. I must move after all. One feels criminal after that, though I must say, in spite of reports, even the poorer streets of Naples and Rome seem busy and contentedly occupied about little idling jobs. But I'm told that I am standing on the despairing neck of an exhausted people, and

Oct.15,1920-2

the riots in the North corroborate it- Everywhere one finds chalk-written Viva Lening!

Now I am going to walk to the Forum, and reach the Academy from there.

****

I have been to school. I have seen the Tiber and the Forum and the Colisseum. I've even seen the Victor Emmanuel Memorial, which every modern Roman must find infinitely superior. I've seen miles of Rome, and my pocket map shows 3/4ths of it that I haven't touched yet. How incredibly stirring the place is; how wje and philosophical, without didacticism, it makes you feel to see the little vegetable shops built into the arches of the theatre of Marcellus, and the great big quivering rats that dart among the mossy capitals on the lawn that is called Temple of Hermes. My school is too serene and beautiful to be described. I went the whole way on foot and knew it by the floating scales that hung like a scent about the whole manicular hill, scales very fleetly played by the one music student there, a Yale man. There is a spacious court with a fountain, fashioned doubtless to give that particular sonmolent ring. There is a large library, with agreeable roaming zephyrs, and there are enchanting distant footsteps and girls' voices in the distance, and absent-minded Latin professors. I was asked to tea upstairs with the director's wife, I and twenty others, all knowing about me and my letter, and much concerned over the illness at Sorrento. There are teachers here from Smith and Wellesley and St. Marks and Cornell, taking a sabbatical among tomb inscriptions and fallen capitals; there are "bright" homely girls writing theses on stucco bar-relief, and the developement of lettering. Everybody was having rum in their tea and feeling like the devil, but there were no young men, save those that were married- I was the new broom and I was sweeping very clean; but I had seen the Tiber only twenty minutes before and wanted nothing better than to edge toward the window, but all they wanted to talk about was the distance from New Haven to Meriden! I hadn't the slightest idea that I would find women at the American Academy. I must go to supper now, as I'm going to the opera - La Traviata, that I always affected to despise so. Fancy, Mother dear, I may get a room at the Academy after all, and live on nothing a year forever! Only someone vaguely thought that it was a matter of principle with them not to allow anyone but fellowship holders to live at the Academy. I must see a certain Mr. Stevens about it tomorrow. I found a good deal of mail waiting for me up there too, including one from Major Malge the Bissells and a series from Amos on his Alpine tour. So you'd better address me c/o the American Academy of Classical Studies, Roma ( this seems to have been sufficient for the other letters.)

--------

The opera (at fifty cents was delightful; I stopped my head and opened wide my ears on and inclined my heart to tunes. It's the Dame aux Camellias you know Italianized with Violetta substituted for Camille, Alfredo for Armand etc. I must say I could hear the Second Act fifty times, especially with our baritone playing Armand's father. He was a middle-aged man, excellently made up for aristocratic old-age, and he began singing very gradually, to the audience's displeasure. But he was the only artist on the stage, postured quite well and phrased his long and melodious scenes beautifully. His manner however suggested that he was ill, or drunk, or drugged or something! How the Italian audience knows and loves opera. Although the main opera house, the Costanza

Oct.15,1920-3

was competing with a new novelty, our Morgana was full of hearty
airable souls, who made a delightful gesture whenever the wings of
song bear too wonderfully high to be really endurable. They describe
a circle in the air below their chin, expressing admirably the fact
that the soul is fairly seeping out of the pores of their throat.
At the least noise they turn around and hiss like saveages with a
græt red angry faces and great black angry eyes. The prelude
for instance begins PPP on the high violins and I thought some of
my neighbors would die of apoplexy in their effort to quiet late
comers and subterfugous gossippers during what might well have
been their favorite bars in the opera.

Breakfasted, shaved, toothbrushed, and setting off to the
Academy. Will hold letter open until I find out whether they will
take me in.

They must talk it over they say. Will write soon. Just
back from another day's wild wandering. Picture me backing up
against a wall in a side street and unfolding my three-ft sq. map
to find out where I am! Too happy for correspondence, that can
become merely a characterless rattling bushel-basket of super-
latives.

Much love to all
Thornton.

Address: American Acad. of Classical Stud. Rome, Oct. 21, 1920

Dear Family:

Two little letters from Isabel { in one envelope} just received. I am relieved that you have begun to get mine. I think you will find that I have been writing you pretty regularly. De lighted at Isabel's plan; I do hope she gets adept. I'm glad she is, even casually, in mixed company. A woman's heart, as you know, has no secrets from me, and my only prescription from its restless ness and sense of frustration is M-A-N. Woman is silly and man is stupid, but in one another's company they seem temporarily to sur pass themselves, and this false and superficial elation, is the only thing we can write plays about. Helas!

The time has almost come to write a letter about some of the things I don't like about Italy. But first I must stamp deep into your minds how I love every stone, every hour and every thing. ( Do you discover the omission?) I thought I was the happiest person in Rome, but today I had a misgiving. I was straying about as usual, my heart in a perfect jelly of delight; my body tired but singing in an undertone. I went to Santa Maria Maggiore and sat here and there looking at the glittering pied ceiling, gilded with the first gold brought from America, my eyes passing idly from green and violet marbles to bronze and golden doors and lamps and railing; and then I walked the half mile further to Saint John Lateran, the crown and mother of all the churches in the world, the church that makes St. Peter's nervous. I thought of the great councils that had agitated themselves there over the definitions of dogma, over all the popes that had rushed about, urging on the artisans at work upon their tombs, of all the pilgrims that had entered, besides themselves with terrible joy at beholding it, and I thought of other things less edifying about other travellers, and then I became ashamed of the way ideas and comments washed about idly in my mind. I looked up and saw some boys my own age, dressed in the charming garb of theo logical students, Seminarists, a black cassock with piping of scar let or blue. They were happier than I. They were craning their necks and fluttering Baedekers, just as I did last week; but then a clock struck and they retired into corners and read their offices, quite happily, as young men for whom things have been settled. Then first one finished and then another, and gathering together in whispering loquacious groups they passed out the great portal into the sunlight, and the last one heard was a friendly contradiction and a shuffle of eager feet and a laugh. On my Protestant aesthetic bench I felt wasted, stardonic, displaced. I envied the only people in Rome that were happier than I was! I must defend my remoteness (?) somehow, and say that these great basilicas are shells, great worn gold-spotted caverns from which the roaring seas of passionate faith and impas sioned ambition have alike ebbed, leaving only the murmur of a gra cious piety, abpiety for which these spaces are too large and which instinctively betakes itself to the chapels at the side, charming in their bad taste, their childish lavish use of rare marbles, and their crossed sunlights in the domes.

How perfect it is, my being here! How much happier a chance has fallen than a year in Paris or London or New York. Rome's an tiquity, her variety, her significance swallow these others up, and I feel myself being irresistibly impelled toward saying of her that

Oct. 21, 1920-2

she is the Eternal City. I went with an archaeological party the other day to a newly discovered tomb of about the first century; it was under a street near the center of the city, and while by candlelight we peered at fading paintings of a family called Aurelius, symbolic representations of their dear children and parents borne graciously away by winged spirits, playing in gardens, and adjusting their Roman robes, the street-cars of today rushed by over us. We were clutching at the past to recover the loves and pieties and habits of The Aurelius family, while the same elements were passing above us in Orelia familys that will be as great an effort to recover two thousand years from now, as pleasing an effort, and as humanizing.

But I have meditated long enough in my unoriginal melodious way and it is time you should know some facts. I must save my reservations on Italy until another letter, if ever.

The Academy has finished shilly-shallying and has taken me in. But I am to live in the Villa Ballacci, a tiny darling house with a garden and a great grill gate, and a little side door for the middle sized bear, and a tiny back gate by a box hedge for the tiny bear! It was owned by a nobleman and has associations of galanteries more becoming to Janiculo than Mt. Carmel. He filed a complaint against the Academy when they built next door, so to avoid litigation they bought it. I am to live there all alone until some travelling fellows return. Fancy, Hedda, a villa overlooking Rome, all mine! I have a bedroom, dressing-room and the bath, all in a row. Here's a picture of location.

( picture here )

I move in tomorrow. Going on trip to Orvieto Sat. Dine with Riggs at the Grand Hotel Sat. evening. Meet the Ibsen-Bjørnsons at the Opera-chatted in German! More soon-much love to every one Thornton

American Academy in Rome

November 11, 1920

Dear Family:

This is the first time this voyage that I have been a
little late in writing; I only hope the irregularity of steamer's
won't make it appear a longer interval than it is. One grand
thing has happened that I should have told you about before. The
Italians were preparing a great parade for November 4, the anni-
versary of the victory on the field, and the committee on arrange-
ments went around among the Allied embassies asking for a delegation
of ex-soldiers to march with their flags in the procession. The
Military Attaché at our Embassy was in a fix; I think there are
no ex-soldiers in Embassy or Consulate, and he was on the point of
telegraphing to Paris to send down some real soldiers, when a boy
at the Academy heard of it and pledged himself to assemble the squad.
When he put it up to me I struggled and squirmed. What could be
more terrible than marching with half a dozen down these great streets
packed with Romans, bearing the flag that every true Italian feels
is partly responsible for his country's wrongs. But the gentle pres-
sure of a man who has made a promise elsewhere was on me, and I
consented " out of courtesy to the Italian Government". I suffered
in anticipation; and to make matters worse, Mr. Ruggs whose pro-
fession it is to keep his ear very close to the humming ground of
Italian popular movements, assured me that everyone was expecting
a revolutionary demonstration somewhere along the line of march;
he envied me, he said, the chance of a good street fight! We went
down quite early, six of us, one of us being Mr. Gorham Stevens,
Dr. of the Academy, another Prof, McGoffin (Penns (?)) Director
of the Classical School. We waited as instructed outside the Pa-
lazzo San Marco where we were provided with our flag. Suddenly an aide
appeared from the headquarters inside and told us that the General
would like to see us. We followed him wonderingly through a laby-
rinth of corridors, when suddenly we were being presented individ-
ually to Generalissimo Diaz, head of all the Italian troops, a
gracious low-voiced bedecorated middle-aged gentleman who was pre-
sented us each with a medal and murmuring " a token from Italy to
America". I have it for you, Isabel, on its maroon and yellow striped
ribbon, colors of the municipality of Rome, a beautiful little bronze
thing with Romulus and Remus breakfasting under a particularly sa-
vage wolf. Then we climbed up the Capitol, to Ara Coeli and onto
the great white ugly spectacular Monument of Victor Emmanuel where
we were given good points of look-out. Before us lay the vast empty
Piazza Venezia with its fringe of soldier-police holding back a
narrow ribbon of on-lookers. Opposite stretched the unrivalled Corso,
packed as far as the eye could see. Presently the procession of
soldiers started to arrive, preceded by The Royal party, The King,
retiring Queen Elena, the lovely (lonely?) Queen-Mother, The
crown-prince Prince of Naples; Isabel's friend, Princess Yolanda,
The Duca and Duchessa d'Aoste, etc etc. They climbed up and sat
beneath us on crimson chairs on a crimson carpet behind the Altar
of Patria and the symbolical state of Roma. Gradually the whole
square filled with soldiers, of every kind, in perfect rows, salu-
ting their sovereign. There followed short inaudible speeches, de-
corations, unveilings, the departure of Royalty, the emptying of

Nov. 11, 1920-2

the square. Then from the monument descended the thousand of civilian clothed delegates, ex-soldiers on the Piazza, from every town in Italy, three or four about their city-hall flag, and streamed almost in disorder and with that wonderful Latin crowd-exaltation, down the Corso to the Piazza di Popolo and then up the Pincio. We fitted in this between a little Brescia party and a great Naples group singing as usual. All though our flag was continually being mixed up by the lagging jumbled flags of our precedents we were pretty quickly recognized, usually with a little pleased contagion of handclaps, with "America!" and "Viva Harding!" whose election was in the morning papers. But there were corners where our welcome was disputed and we were hailed with a usually controlled but unmistakable hiss, which set our adherents to a more than usually loud resort to applause. This criticism had only the effect of making us more proud, however; in the light of it we saw America, quite differently, as a country that did not have to argue or defend herself against the misprision of remote peoples, and what could be more remote than the ceremonies just over and the Washington or Fifth Avenue parades; every implication was different, just as every detail of organization and costume was. I love both countries, but I am glad that responsibility of making them understand one another rests on me in the incidental conversational sense only. Like Mother, their interest in a carefully laid srgument flags, and they take their attitude more form the tone of your voice and the sincerity in your eyes than from the ingenuity of your logic.

For the first time I am really cast down about my rejections, and Mother's remark that the letter from the Theatre Guild was more than usually gracious was a bit of amiable blindness considering that the letter was a peculiarly perfunctory specimen of a perfunctory genre. All my other plays when they were returned to me I immediately saw as riddled with errors and undermined with incompetence. The Rocket. Mercifully destroyed and forgotten. The Dreamers having shaken off its ludicrous pseudo-psychoanalytical modern prologue and epilogue, is in process of being rewritten in a vein that candidly deprecates and retains the wild purple-patch rhetoric of Gabriel's curls lie slanting across his cheek and Michael kneels to listen to you between a thunder and a thunder-in part because the late George Achelis and Mrs. Leighton loved the sound of them and used to recite them with roars of delighted laughter and mock-heroic gestures. The Breaking of Exile, a good theme, a few sharp characterizations, three or four vivid moments, eked out with half-hours of #MORE# earnest young naivete, poor little Thornton's lucubrations on war, on disgrace, on morality! The Trumpet Shall Sound is extraditionally vague to me, and I cannot tell whether the three or four pictures I have in my memory, notably a dark ugly girl in a scarlet dress clutching the knees of a handsome young ship's officer, in a candlelit scene; and a chaotic assemblage on a distant flight of stairs of a lot of frightened unpleasant men and women, these may or may not be on paper, may never have left my forehead. If they did, they should certainly have called forth a peep from the reader of the Guild.

I suppose all I can do is to go on writing slightly peculiar plays until I have eight or ten, unpublished unplayed affairs on my shelf, to read aloud from time to time to visiting

Nov., 11, 1920-3

literary relatives, to nourish the growing Janet, and with discretion, Amos' brood. I am sending you over Villa Rhabani very soon: if possible you should call in Bill Douglas or Frank Walls to ascertain whether it would be worthwhile to go through the mental and financial agonies of a Broadway submittal, or just quietly lay it away in Janet's library. In the meantime, since The Trumpet Shall Sound has at least an attractive format, one might do it up for Winthrop Ames with a note about the child in Italy, and a reminder of his kind sentence about The Dreamers and his request for more. I think his office address is no longer the Little Theatre, but can be found in the New York Telephone book in the Yale Station Telephone Kiosk.

I hope fervently that I am getting all your letters and you all of mine. The other boys are full of stories about letters never received in both directions. Your letters are such a delight to me, inexpressibly welcome in that cramped little corner in French-Lemons, but I don't dare call at the office more than every other day for fear of being an annoyance.

I have just been down town and collected a bunch of mail from you, including my first from father. A fine review of Wayland's book, every line of which ( the review ) is as good as signed. I'm proud and impressed about the Freshman Banquet and expect to hear of it soon from other sources. I hope Isabel did go ( being duly asked by Markham or " the other possible boy") to the Marshmallow Bake. She must start making sketches, autumnal trees and a sleeping giant, enclosable to Rome where water color painting is neglected. Mother's political career is passed over in silence this mail. Thanks for the newspapers but I have already found out (characteristically enough) just where to go for a Times ( American Embassy) a Sun-Herald ( Express Co) and a World ( Piale's) and so on. Hugnis for Kakeeberry.* If I telegraph you suddenly, don't be surprised; it costs me only $1.50 for eleven words: Love to all, over and over again,

Thornton

JANET'S SECTION

Kisses for the cats

Sunday xxxx *

Sunday's child xxxxx

Thanksgiving hgnis for Janet = squakins

( Picture of little girl going into a door marked 4th.grade )

*Footnotes by J.W.D.
"Sunday" = kitten named
* a cat given to me by at least one person by W.L.Phelps
¹ for Billy Sunday. Of the fifteen(?) kittens produced by Billy Sunday we gather here that only one survived.
"hgnis" I suspect is"hugnis" that is"hug" plus "kiss"
"Kakeeberry" was a pet name for Janet

Am. Academy, Porta San Pancrazio,
Roma

Roma # 29

Nov. 22, 1920

Dear Family:

There are now three of us in the Villa Ballacci,- Abel, 1916
Yale, Rolfe ( on the same fellowship that Bruce won later ) and I.
Except for the noisy magpie visit of the three maids at eleven no one
comes to look in on us from week to week. Naturally we get up late
and drift about with the greatest independence. I breakfast about
half-past-eight. This is nothing more than the walking a few
steps up the road to the great grilbe door of the Academy, nodding
to the portiere, running up the big steps through the halls, the
billard room, to the long lofty dining-room. " Francesco! Sono qui!"
" Si, si, signorino ". Then the cafe latta, with hard brown Italian
bread, usually without butter, and some jam. Then back to Ballacci
to read or write; to the library to follow some piece of assigned
reading on Saturday's trip to Frascati or Palestrina or Viterbo;
or off to the Vatican; or down to Piazza di Spagna for mail. This
morning we had an hour and a half lecture by Prof McGoffin in the
forum on the typography of early Rome. He started lecturing to us
seated on the knoll, ad tres columnes of the temple of Castor and
Pollux, and the thirty of us walked gravely down the Via Sacra and
huddled under the arch of Septimius Severus. He was talking about
the geological history of the campania, the bronze-age tribes, the
early kings, then described how the forum before us was a lake
drained by the Etruscans. All such information on the spot has a
strangely evocative character, not less in the pouring rain while
all that fragmentary marble lies dripping noisily, and those bro-
ken porticos and surviving columns stand precariously balanced.
After the lecture I had to hurry back and groom myself, for Mrs.
Wilkins ( wife of our secretary, who knew you, mother, at Miss
Master's only I cannot discover her maiden-name) has asked me to
luncheon. This proved to be a most elaborate function, with the
Dutch Ambassador his wife, our Naval Attachee, his wife, an Italian
painter and professor of History of Art at the Real Academia, and
another gentleman and lady; Mrs. and Miss Wilkins. I sat between
Capafield in Field and Miss Wilkins. There were eight knives and eight
forks, a centre table dressing that looked like the hanging gardens
of Seminamis (?). We went up to the library for coffee and looked
at the Wilkins collection of primitives through photographs; the
originals being in Florence. Then I dutifully lingered behind the
rest and asked for the names and addresses of my fellow
guests ( it sounds barbarous, but it is the custom, and drew from
her a " of course, you dear boy! ") and tommorrow before our next
lecture in the forum I will silently drop a bent card or two at
the addresses. Isn't it amazing? Then I came home and had an It-
alian lesson of little Miss Pirra ( seven lire an hour ) on the
frightful subtleties of vi, ci and ne. After dinner I went down
alone to the theatre to see Emma Grammatica in Barrie's What Every
Woman Knows: I had already seen this stringy courageous little
woman in Doll's House. Mrs. Warren's P. and Pygmalion, and knew
her faults and virtues. You'd be surprised at how well the play
went; but I am writing it up for the Boston Transcript and will
let you see that detailed account. I left the play before the last
act in order to catch the last car up Janicola, at twelve. The
boys laugh at my caution, but I'm still wary of these park-like
spaces after midnight. When I've already told you about the Acad-
emy boy who disappeared from Piazza di Spagna in broad daylight
about 10.12!! Letters from Amos, Aunt Charlotte, Bruce Simmonds,
Bill Whitney, Commandant Malye and the Blakes. A letter from

Nov. 22, 1920-2

Nov. 26 -1

father today with more enclosures ( however delightful ), than <u>ex-</u>
<u>criture</u>- And the foretold $80, that I am beginning to count on
<u>non ancora qui;</u> however can draw on a little longer. Real letter
later. love all

Thornton

II

Nov. 26

Dear family! ( Continued )

I received a note from the Blakes a week ago asking me to dinner at the Concordia on a date twelve days previous. They had left the note(unstamped) in French-Lemons for me, and I had called there every other day for weeks. I can't explain it. In the meantime Charlotte writes that they have invited her to spend Christmas with them and are meditating an invitation to me also when I write a mollifying note explaining why they had to sit and wait in vain for me at the Concordia that Fatal Friday. I wrote just such a mollifying note to them weeks ago, and still I get no answer so they must have found themselves unable to forgive me for their mistakes. I couldn't go them for Xmas anyway, and Charlotte wants to go to England for her deserved vacation. C'est ca!

I love Rome. I suffer a thousand/flicities a day/ I spent all morning in Raphael's stanze and the Sistine Chapel, The Wilkins and certain Mrs. Vestrini ( an American who has lived fifteen years in Leghorn in purely Italian borghesia) and I were all going to the Zoo on the Pincio this morning to see the lions and the rare chimpanzee, but Mrs. Vestrini had to stay home and wait for a long distance. C'est ca!

Yesterday afternoon there was a sumptuous Thanksgiving ree
ception in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel, by the Embassy. I
met Johnson's grand-daughter again for the first time since we
danced in Lichfield, and caught her remembering my name. In the
evening we gave a masquerade dinner for eighty at the Academy and
several hundreds came in to dance afterwards. There is a legend
about that I speak beautiful French and so was seated by Miss Pa-
roglou the Greek-Parisian niece of Director Stevens wife. She's
very kind about it, not even reminding me that the infinitive of
"to read" is not " liser". There are eleven girls from Westover
and Farmington ( by chance not one from Dobbs ) here at a certain
Miss Risser's School. All beautiful, smart and expert dancers; I
went right down the list. I wore a gorgeous costume, Dutch settler
of coral velvet, taken from a collection of a certain artist who
paints genre pictures. The French Academy from the Villa Medici,
the real prix-de-Rome men, successors of Berlioz, Debussy, Bizet
etc. came, and I talked for hours with a composer, a sculptor#,
and an etcher. Fancy that, Isabel! There are some very brillant
girls among them. I am invited over to the Villa Medici to see
the studies. I met also a number of American women who have mar-
ried Italians, and this morning I left my cards on them and hope
for an invitation to tea at least, if not a dinner-party, the
Marchesa de Johannis and Signora Malagola. In the middle-age there
were three brothers who were hated by their serfs and named res-
pectively Malatesta, Malagola, for his greed, and Malaspina, the

Am. Acad. at Rome

Dec. 4, 1920

Dear Papa:

I have received the remittance and acknowledge statim. I was told it was coming the latter half of November and had planned things down to a science. It's delay by so much as a week ( to say the least ) compelled me to ask the Secretary here to forward me one hundred and fifty lire, as you will see on the bill enclosed. I was also told that you were sending me eighty dollars, which on the day of your mailing would have been at least 2160 lire and more likely 2300. I presume of course that you got full exchange (other wise you would have left the exchanging to me as the advantage lies here) and that your remittance was $55. about.

If this means that your method of conducting my arrangement has changed, it deserved explanation before it was put in practice. I gratefully accept anything, but like to know the worst. If I am paid with you getting the benefit of the exchange, I shan't be able to go with the Classical School for three weeks to Pompeii; I shan't be able even to buy the pocket microscope we must have for the numismatics study in the course on Roman Private Life. I shan't be able to go to the Opera, which definitely narrows my visit to Europe as being purely Classical Study.

Out of the 1500 I have already paid:

The bill for November Lire 709.45
10 Italian lessons 70.00
A pair of gloves 45.00

I've immediately stopped Italian lessons. I shte idea for me to stay in Italy as long as I can for $900, or is it to stay for one year under as pinched conditions as possible? We parted on the first agreement.

(1) On a generous amount of money I could make quite a little agitation on this Roman scene that recognizes extraordinary sharp young men, as it did when emperors adopted cards received.

(2) On a discreet amount I could still do the name Wilder modest credit and gain entrance to regions incomputably valuable to a younger writer that misses nothing, as far as observation goes.

(3) On an adequate student allowance I can walk about and see things and meet rather complacent Americans at the hotels, and do a little work without worries, and with an extraordinary amount of pleasure.

(4) At present, as a shabby repressed soul, I can breathe and go into museums ( not too often) and get a great deal of pleasure in a denied, envious sort of way with all my capabilities stillmin the cocoon.

love

Thornton

On my margin I couldn't buy any Xmas presents on time-Photos later-

American Academy, Rome

December 7, 1920

Dear Family:

I don't know what to do about Xmas. Now that my money has come I dare buy you something, but it would never reach you, I sent off two miraculous photographs I found up a side street (the whole Academy has borrowed the address of me and brings home dozens of them) to Janet, knowing it would be desperate not to send her something; but it is fundamentally just as desperate to forget you other three, and I am at my wit's end. If I get you an Alinari print each, will you call it square? and if I promise to get something chic off to Amos and Charlotte? I thought (of course) of having my picture taken by a reasonable twilight effect photograph, but I've noticed that me-and-my-face before, and it is an Indian sort of gift. Mrs. Blake wrote me, accepting my explanation, and invited me to spend Xmas with her, but I can't because Bill Whitney and Harry Luce are coming down to spend Xmas with me. Her kindest impulses will certainly be chilled by these two returns, simple and explainable as they are. The sweetest disposition in the world is likely to remember the rebuffs and not the adequate excuses.

Every day here is so full of good things that it cries to be described if I am writing a letter, although two days before might have been more significant or more varied. After breakfast I read the files of The Athenaeum until ten when comes our Tuesday lectures on 'Bibliography' and 'Heavy' and portentous and we are going to require a vast amount of "homework". Lunch. A little more Athenaeum, interrupted by Mr. Wilkins asking for a word with me. Had I an engagement for Friday noon? Then would I come to luncheon? "Put on your best clothes for the Duchessa Lante, the Würtzes, and a number of others (gesture) will be there". The Duchessa Lante (see Anita Allen, U.S.A.) owns one of the five most beautiful villas in Italy near Viterbo, and a number of Academy architects have been measuring the cascade and drawing tapemeasures down the hedges, as part of their obligatory work here. Mrs. Wrtz (sister of Charlemagne Tower of Philadelphia) owns a wonderful old palace quite near us on the Janicola. Evidently I passed my first examination, the luncheon several weeks ago, and am about to be asked more difficult questions.

Then went down into the city stopping at several churches, Santa Maria della Vittoria (with Bernini's extravagant statue of Santa Teresa in an hysterical trance) Santa Maria degli Angeli (formerly the baths of Diocletian, made into a Christian church by Michelangelo and then ruined by someone else; a very unpleasing edifice.) To the Doria gallery (closed at 2:30) to the Museo d'Arte Terme (closed at 4); to the American Embassy to see John Carter, who of all people has been appointed private secretary to the Ambassador. Then to the Old English tearoom (this England and America stuff is now considered very smart by Italians who can afford; and even to know an American is said to be flossy.) A mrs. Knox a rather silly English lady, friend of my friend Don Picton Nolli, feeling herself under obligation I suppose because I showed her about so solicitously when she came up to one of our Mondays, asked me to come to tea at 5:00 and meet some Italian girls. There was a big table-full, an English clergyman and his wife, two American or

Dec. 7, 1920-2

English ladies, Don Picton, two Roman sisters and their brother, and a cousin from Naples. The three girls were exceedingly pretty, most Italian and spoke fair English. The brother spoke less English, and after a great deal of animated not to say feverish conversation with the girls, I fell into conversation in Italian with the brother. Presently this was observed and I became the object of the most emphatic (and noisy) reproaches from the girls because I had forced them to talk English when I could etc etc the truth being that they liked nothing better than to talk English and are in a perfect ecstacy of pride and self-conscious fashionability when they speak it. At a tea like this you change your seat from time to time, as in Alice and Wonderland, at a signal more instinctive than observed, and leave a sentence broken in mid-air. I enjoyed myself unspeakably, grew feverish and red-cheeked and exhausted, I vaguely remember discussing Etruria, Emma Grammatica, remoteness of South America from N. America general conversation, the convenances as to young girls (a) in Italy (b) in the United States and so on. Academy supper. Early to bed, and letterwriting in bed.

I call my hostess silly because last Monday when I had introduced her to Miss Paraglou, murmuring " Miss Paraglou has lived a great deal in Athens" and was preparing to depart, I heard the following conversation over my shoulder:

Mrs. Knox (English accent at its most) Oh, Athens is very beautiful, isn't it?

Miss Paraglou (a lovely girl; taken aback) Why ....I....yes....

Mrs. Knox (impetuously) A great many statues and things?

Miss Paraglou (who speaks little English anyway, and to whom this simplified type of mind is a closed book) ....Yes....yes.

Mrs. Knox (loudly) I'll got there! I must go to Athens!

Last Sunday I took dinner with the new Scotch Presbyterian minister Rev. Fairweather; I think the Baakes must have given them my name. Last Saturday night I was invited to the theatre (tuxedo; in a box) by the Hassall Hendersons, whom I met through their Anglo-Italian nephew Hender Moll, a nice medical student here, the Baakes told me to go to see. I'm dining with the Hendersons Saturday night at the Hotel Beau-Site. Thursday I dine at the Windsor with a strange mannish iron woman Miss Cittings of Baltimore, of the free milk for Italy expedition, very bright and interesting and ugly, who has interested herself in me to my perplexity. I hope all this dining out will lighten my Academy life, since when we "sign out for a meal" we don't have to pay that 3 1/2 lire.

I enclose some of the impediments of all this tea fighting. Remember, that most of it occurs after five o'clock, when the Academy is as depleted of more serious occupations as a balloon in a ditch. More soon; much love

Thornton

Dec 20, 1920

Americ Acad Rom Ital

Dear Family:

Bill Whitney and Harry Luce are in town; studies have commenced in earnest with a load of home-work; invitations lead to invitations; and Xmas brings "its petty round of irritating cares" including preparations for a shadow-picture performance for the homesick boys. The little Academy has grown until there are almost fifty of us at table, mostly architects with vague travelling scholarships who are allowed temporary residence here. But I must say in all this crowd of prize-winning and selected youth there isn't one to compare with Bill or Harry or Bruce or Bill Douglas or Oscar Davisson or Steve. I found a pension for my classmates after being turned down in thirty small hotels and pensions; a large room with two clean-white beds, a fairly nice table they say - and all for 25 lire a day each. Pensione Pagnini 12 Via Gregoriana. I didn't realize until I started around Rome with them how hard up I was for congenial conversation. Of course they are both Barbarians in a gentle way, both reaching vaguely towards an aesthetic eye after years of economics and political theory, but they're so honest and naive that there comments are worth hours of the opinions

contemptuous artistic judgements of my fellow-academics
But there are more than that they are very extraordinary and impres-
sive children, and they are going to be great news as surly as fate.
Dear little Bill still reads voraciously with a sort of panic be-
fore the things he doesn't know. On leaving our Academy library
he was torn with a sort of anguish between taking down to his pen-
sion Gregoroviae (?) Roman Journals, several books on Greek scul-
pture, Thr Buried Cities of Eturia, and the life of Brontë. His
determination embraces everything and the picture of his boyish di-
gestion wrestling with this strange mixture has a sort of pathos
in its humor and promise - He'll come out all right, though be-
tween times he looks a little frightened and unhappy. Harry Luce
on the other hand is all convictions, and opinions and soundness.
New information finds its way into the chambers of his mind with
decorum and dignity. I never knew him when I liked him better, not
even in China, and attribute it to his absence from a certain ad-
mirable though portentous institution.

Charlotte writes that she is coming to town after spending
a Xmas octave with the Blakes. She will probably be obliged to
put up at the Y.W.C.A., though she begs me to find her a pension.
She should know that hotels do not accept young ladies travelling
alone, and I don't know anyone to confide her to, so whether she
likes it or not she must go to the foyer. After her comes my
French friend, and I picture myself trailing through the pilgrimage
churches - for the fifteenth time pointing to left and right.

Ethel Andrews wedding to an elderly gentleman naturally
summed up the series of marriages among the girls that I knew. If
I might generalize remembering Grace and Eliz. Kendall and Ethel.
I would say that in marriage you may expect the unexpected. Ethel
wrote me a letter before I got your announcement and I will say
for her, that she didn't try to conceal the gaping discrepancy.
All these bright girls paying so dearly for the bloodless Jewish
marriage customs we have inherited; I hope they rebel and bid them
marry happily and marry often.

Dec.20,1920-2

Harry tells me that Father's speech, as reported, was above praise and felt justly surprised that I had received no copy. He will send me from Oxford his Alumni Weekly. Isabel's new life pleases me vastly and I don't care who hears me say it. I hope she sees enough parties that she will never again harbor the idea that men are dim noble gracious beings; I hope she gets a very low opinion indeed of the average boy, and will be properly contemptuous when - see preced. No one tells me about Janet. I know the reason why old women ask me out to tea; they are delighted at the way I talk about my family, especially my quick sketches of Isabel and Janet. Janet's cats, her way of listening to father read the Bible, her afternoons spent in my college room, even her movie-going-figure in my torrential narrative. They listen- these stout bright old women - with absorbed faces, making clucking noises of approval or surprise or commiseration. Finally they ask " And how old is Janet?" " Madam, I haven't the slightest idea," I reply.

December 25

A fresh sunny Christmas morning, with the whole valley ceaselessly chiming with all the bells in Rome. I should like to go to my new-found Scotch Presbyterean Church, but I have to go out to luncheon up here and as there are no street-cars running I should be in danger of arriving at quarter past one, hot dischevelled and so tired that I could not describe midnight mass at St. Peter's. I suppose ( allowing for the difference in time) half a dozen hours ago you pushed through the snow to hear Mr. Lathrop's reflections; there was a good deal of bright nodding after church with Isabel's slipping in and out of the warm-hearted groups exchanging magazines; and Janet tugging at Father's hand eager to get home and huddle above her presents. Any number of American ladies are trying to distract our thoughts this week, and we are dancing our shoes through but the absence of snow or of relatives or some other tremendous trifle takes away even the remotest connection with Xmas as we know it. Obviously a feast-day, the occasion for which is found in the sacred pamphlets of the first and second centuries, for the three boards from the original actual cradle of Bethlehem are being exhibited today at Santa Maria Maggiore before the handsome impressioned eyes of thousands of Italians, and the stupid curiosity of hundreds of Americans making the more obvious jokes. The Bones of St, Peter and St. Paul are on view at the Lateran, reliques that even German scholarship admits to contain a breath of probability.

I am furious at Amos and Charlotte; someone seems to have warned them urgently against my borrowing money of them, and their letters to me are one long disclaimer of any superfluity, although I haven't remotely dreamt of such a thing. Tell them from me that their letters are not of sufficient richness or charm that they can afford to fill them with small preventitive shrieks of insolvency, veiled under a halting attempt at wit and insoucience. Their eyes are closed to Europe anyway; Amos sees nothing abroad but theistical students and streetwalkers, and Charlotte nothing but poor protestant Italian girls ( Waldensian, an enormity in psychology). Tell them to throw aside their prides and feeble ideas, to come to Rome and falling on their faces kiss the soil fiercely and ask to be made over again, of the true Travertine. T.W.

Coculla Sorrento
In festa San Francesco d'As. Oct.4,1920.

Dear Family:

Still no mail. But the Wagers write me from Rome that there is a bunch being forwarded. Aspetto impazientemente. A card from Charlotte with promise of a letter. Otherwise uneventful blessed days, agr eat deal of sunlight and color and veiled distances. But today has been the most beautiful of all. I had hoped to be in Assisi, but finding that my ultra-modernity somehow irritated Dr. Wager, I considerably excused myself from accompanying them, tho' in the first enthusiasm of remeeting them, the invitation was his. Now in Rome his illness has prevented his going up to the vigil too, and I could have had the last foothold of the Middle Ages to myself this great day. But I am glad I have stayed here; it is less expensive & I am accumulating enough Italian to deal with ticket-men and luggage-men all alone, when my time comes to go on...I have written the Secretary of the American Academy, with a moiety of the change of continent has had a temporarily upsetting effect on my constitution, that a slight prolongation of my stay here is advisable, and requested him to accept an accompanying catalog of my predispositions as my registrations in the school that opened yesterday. I go up on the tenth. Tomorrow I go to Naples and begin my systematic study of the antiquities at the Museo Nazionale. I will go in every day (with a lunch prepared for me by the Hotel) at 7:00 A.M. and return at 4:00 from the dogano jetty at Naples. Later giving similar attention to Pompei daily and returning by the Castel-a-Mare train, and the Sorrento tramway. (The most beautiful trip in the world)

Today has been the perfect yet. I took a long walk along divinely-lit headlands and thro' squalid colorful villages. From the road to Massa Lubrense, one is able to look in from one corner of the jagged half-moon that is Sorrento. At half-past four the light has a yellowish, almost reddening quality in its intensity, and does not sharply strike the water that lies a deep rather purplish, blue, as always so perfectly wrinkled that one can count the individual waves for miles. The air has been lately washed for us by a series of nightly thunder-showers, and every part of the bay stands out with a distinctness unique. When you have looked at Vesuvius a moment, its villages and its houses, window for window, seem to come fairly under your hand, and Ischia the island opposite that in your first days you are always mistaking for Capri, and Procida, and Virgilian Capo Miso, have their cliffs and ridges marked for them in colors, tan and blue, and each cloud as it passes above them can be assigned its proper shadow. On the goatish stratified heights behind Sorrento too, the shadows of cloud are always passing but nothing dims the brilliance of those thousand pink and white villas, & the refreshed green of the olive-trees, nor the line of surf under the ancient undermined cliffs. Except for my half-day at Palermo, Naples and Sorrento are the first cities of this old world that I have seen, and I cannot imagine myself loving any place more; no, not Rome, nor Siena, nor Paris, nor St.oke Pogis. I went and spent the night at the Riviera in Naples again the other evening in order to see my second comedy of Goldoni: La Locandiera. I had studied the text carefully, and understood quite well what was being said. I planned to stay a second night and see d'Annunzio's La Gioconda, but they suddenly changed the bill and I was glad to come back here to my little room.

The thing you should really know about me now is that I am writing my beautiful pitiful play about the American widow at Capri and Dario Stiavelli the adventurer. Never did a play come to me as easily, Day after day I sit down and this touching dialogue flows from my pen. It is called "Villa Rhabain" but has no relation with the other play I projected with the same name. There are only four characters and a servant; the four acts are laid in the same room and it would cost fifteen cents to produce. But no one short of Elsie Ferguson, Gareth Hughes, Haidee Wright and Arthur Byron need attempt to play it. Defeo says there are accessible type-writers at the Embassy, any time, and as soon as I have time I will make and send you a copy. I have transcribed them whole bay of Naples into a small, perfectly moulded, intimate play. There is no one here to read it to, and my inability drives me crazy, and I have to expatiate to you thus to keep myself calm.

Every day I talk in beastly French, German and Italian for hours. There are lots of pretty Italian girls I have to talk with in French; oh, how they suffest! We can talk for a whole morning but ultimately they have to take a rest from the American who is capable of using liser as the infinitive to read. However my Italian is almost ready for them, and then what progress I shall make! As it is, I talk to the old Duennas, who cannot speak French, in Italian; the whole hotel resounds with shrieks of mixed horror, laughter and encouragement. The german leaves tomorrow so I will be able to drop that language from the competition, though there is still a waiter with whom I must use it when vorral and istesso and piu and anche are not sufficient. I shall write you, beloves, again the minute I get your letters which I expect tomorrow. I trust, trust, that you are all well and conscious of how I hover over you with love as now

Thornton.

Hotel Cocumella, Sorrento.

Sept. 25, 1920

Dear Family:

The Wagers have gone on up to Rome and will stop at French, Lem-on's and ask them to forward your letters to me here. For all I know you might have it in the Wall St. explosion. Every night I consult my intuition as to whether all is well with you; I urge my consciousness almost physically into the Mt. Carmel diningroom, bumping into the furniture and brushing your elbows as now. And I can fairly hear you saying, "I hope his money is lasting out" or "I should have given him a flanneled band to wear around his stomach". You shall know all; letter-writing, when one can draw apart from this prodigious existence long enough, becomes a pleasure. Like an actor I enjoy the experience of doing the first time, butx later performances, such as describing the same events to Amos and Charlotte, become drudgery. You shall have the first-time facts and reflections; they shall be incidental remarks.
At the Cocumella I am purduing two opposed courses: part of the time I am playing Cosmopolitan and the rest of the time I am doing all I can to qualify as a citadino di Sorrento (as the dialect has it). For the first four languages are all too few. English I make use of with some nice American boys who are staying here--John Defee, a stenographer at the American Embassy on sick leave, citizen of Torrington, Conn., and John King, University of St. Louis, prospective law student, who has been vaguely doing Italy and France since January. English too, I reserve for Dr. Matthews, a distinguished New York woman-physician who dresses at all points like a man save the skirt, and her companion Miss Olmstead, a beautiful young-old lady, head of a fashionable girls day-school in New York. But French, wretched mangled affair that mine is, I must reserve for the Italians at the Hotel, delightful people some of them in spite of their table manners. There is a Signorina Ledia de Benedetto, whom I should have avoided earlier, a wild woman of a certain age who looks like Eva Tanguay, is pursuaded that I am incredibly wealthy, and with her mother, is making the most alarmingly advanced toward me, in French! And a nice French boy, traveling about a bit before settling down to business, who knows Paul Geraldy personally. For German, there is Herr Straus and his son Robert, rich Jewish bankers from Frankfort. Robert commutes to Naples every day in order to study sculpture and papyri at the Museo Nazionale; he has three years to go at the Frankfort University and is a deadly concealed, opinionated mutt of nineteen. He knows everything, speaks every language, memorises railroad timetables, and misses everything I find interesting and beautiful. He is rather popular in his stiff condescending manner way among the bevies of pretty idle girls. German too for Herr Schott, a homely young more humble fellow, an artist. He showed me a portfolio of his etchings, illustrations for a rococo novelette of Voltaire, quite fine and graceful in their way but imitative of Aubrey Beardsley and lightly but consistently touched with indecency. German too with Paul Nortz, a young German on his way to extend his father's coffee business in America. His mother was English and the greater part of his life has been spent in La Havre. I liked him immensely at first for his lively acquaintance with modern German music and plays, and sympathy for his game leg, an injury induced by malnutrition during the war, but lately stupid national characteristics have come out so strongly I can scarcely endure him. He is not at the Cocumella but at the Transmontane where taking tea alone I introduced myself to him. I have taken several short trips with him; this exhibits him in his best light: a German, never misses a train!

But it is my exploits in Italian I am most eager to tell you about. I love Italy now indiscrebly, and the Italians, and the language. After breakfast about eight-thirty, I go back to my room and study my Italian grammar for about an hour. I have an excellent book. Then I go down town and either sit over a gelati at the Ercolano Cafe, talking with Antonino, or else I hunt up Dario and go for a boat-ride to the baths of the mad Queen, or the Grotto of the Madonna, talking pure Italian as we go (the only words in English Dario knows are "all right"). These local characters with a few others were introduced to me by a fellow-passenger on the "Providence", Mr. Zinetti,

Harvard graduate, New York lawyer, seigneur in Sorrento, traveller and dillet-
ante. The brothers Ercolane are the most delightful type of Neapolitan,— lo/
able sharks. They know they arex charming; its a sort of profession among
them to be beautiful and courteous and sincere(!) but you must pay for it as
you'd pay for any work of art. Dario's another matter. Eight years ago Mr
Zinetti remember s Dario living in the oldest and most beautiful palazzo in
Sorrento. Dario was a boy his sensitive as a lute". Now Dario's Father has
drunken them out of a home. His mother is the local school teacher, his sis-
ters have gone to the bad(one of them sells you your boat-tickets; not itself
a sign of moral collapse)and Dario is a Barcheterre, and ferries tourists a-
bout for an over-seer. Mr. Zinetti thought of buying Dario a boat of his own
but finding them very expensive, fitted him out with a pair of shoes which
I am afraid Dario has promptly sold now that Mr. Z. has gone. D. does not
lok eighteen; his aristocratic little head, and earnest eyes, added to his sad
story have I assure you a most poignant effect. Our rides in the shadow of
these grey, red-streaked cliffs, or swinging on the rushing tides in the
booming glimmering caverns are truly Italian, in the sense that Shakspere
and Goethe yearned over the word. Unfortunately our conversation conducted
on my part very much by the book, sentences framed like children's mechanical
toys, and his replies eager helpful yet couched in the Neapolitan dialect,
does not consort with our surroundings.

My Italian with help at the Hotel from Defeo who is now my table-mate,
and with perpetual experience at the hands of laundresses, waiters coachmen
and some Italian plays I am reading, improves dayly by leaps and bounds. I
even talk with a handsome broad good-natured Roman matron down-stairs whom
we all love, and who takes a kindly delight in my sudden ambitious flights
into literary Italian.

I do a little writing too. I have rewritten several poetic scenes of
Vecy-Segal almost to perfection, and am shaping a sweet sad full-length
play about a rich beautiful American girl who goes to Capri to die.

The excellent health I am enjoying is a surprise to me. Everybody's
stomach is out of order it seems and mine that used to dislocate at a mere
change of village in America comes triumphantly thro' a change of continent

Swimming is great, tho' the long arguments with the bath attendants and th
their wives and children is no small part of the fun. And the first day all
I could say was "Quanta costa"!

It's very late now or rather early Sunday Morning. Love to all, I saw
you less than a month ago and it seems years. Much love,

Thornton.