The Venice Sketchbook(37)

Amazingly, Aunt Hortensia was on my side. “You let her sister, Winnie, go all the way to India,” she said. “Surely the girl deserves her chance at a life of her own. She has taken care of you all these years.”

And grudgingly Mummy had to agree to that. I packed my meagre wardrobe, and at the beginning of July I headed for the station, laden with more than a little guilt.



And here I am. I arrived yesterday and took a room in a small hotel near the railway station, until I can find digs for the year. The room is about as spartan as that convent we stayed in last year. And not so clean, with lingering smells of smoke and sweat—also it’s terribly noisy on the main thoroughfare from the train station to St Mark’s. Not an encouraging arrival! The weather is hot and muggy. I lay on top of the bed last night, too uncomfortable to sleep. When I dared to open the shutters to let in any night breeze, I was immediately besieged by mosquitoes.

I was awoken at first light by a great cacophony of church bells, reminding me forcefully that today is Sunday. So I’ll not be able to accomplish anything today, even if I wanted to, except for reacquainting myself with the city. Tomorrow I’ll visit the academy to find out more about where I shall be living and to plan a class schedule. Since I’m classified as a visiting student, not on the same academic schedule as Italian students, I may attend classes right away, which will be wonderful. I have brought few painting supplies with me, as I am sure the professors will have strong opinions on the only brushes/paints/canvases that are fit for painting. I seem to remember my professors at the Slade were most particular about which brushes and paints we used. The Slade. How long ago that seems now. Almost another lifetime away. This morning, I stared at myself in the speckled mirror that hung over the painted chest of drawers. Was I once that girl who gazed at the world with hopeful eyes, who had great plans for a beautiful future? I saw now the creases developing on my forehead. And Leo had commented last year that I had sad eyes.

I turned away. Leo. I must not think of him. Then I told myself there were other handsome Italians, and Leo had mentioned that men did not like to marry until after thirty. Maybe I’d meet someone here. An Italian artist. Marry. Live for the rest of my life in Venice.

So I did have a modicum of hope and fantasy left in my soul after all!

July 3, 1939

I am about to find a place to live! This morning, after a rather disappointing breakfast of bread, margarine and apricot jam, plus very watery coffee (making me appreciate the Pensione Regina and even the convent), I put on my grey dress with the broad white collar, my white hat trimmed with navy blue ribbon and white gloves and set out for the academy. The woman at the front office rattled off a string of Italian phrases so quickly at me that I couldn’t understand a word.

“Could you please speak more slowly? I am just arrived from England,” I said.

She sighed, as if speaking more slowly was a big inconvenience for her. “What do you want?” she asked. “The art gallery is next door. This is the school.”

I explained, in carefully thought-out sentences, who I was and that I was a visiting student, wishing to enrol. Again she looked at me as if she couldn’t believe that a woman of my age would be a student, but then sent me upstairs to the registrar’s office. I went up the flight of broad marble steps, savouring the touch of my hand on the cool marble banister. The woman in the registrar’s office was more friendly. She was assigned to help foreign students, she said. She spoke slowly and clearly and had a little English for when I didn’t understand. She handed me a list of classes and told me that I could choose up to three. It was like looking at a delicious menu in a top restaurant. History of Painting. Drawing and Painting the Nude. Workshop on Colour. Painters of the Sixteenth Century. Working with Clay. Metal Sculpture.

I would like to have taken every one but decided that realistically I should not take sculpture classes since I had no experience in that medium. I therefore selected Drawing and Painting the Nude, which was something I would have done in my second year at the Slade, Beginning Oil Painting and Painting with Freedom of Expression. Maybe I’d learn to be a Picasso after all!

Then we moved on to finding a place for me to live. I was lucky, she told me. Usually Venice is packed at this time of year with visiting tourists. But this year so many people are afraid to travel, especially visitors from England, now that Italy has signed the non-aggression pact with Germany. “Let us hope there is no war,” she added. “We lived through the last one, did we not? How many men died needlessly, and for what? Nothing changed except we all became poorer and lost hope.”

I nodded. I wanted to say that my father was gassed, but the words were not in my vocabulary and I didn’t want to admit defeat and switch to English.

She checked a ledger on her desk and wrote down several addresses. “Here are landladies who rent to students,” she said. “Many do not want to risk having students in their house because they drink and destroy the furniture, but I do not think you look like the type to behave in that way.”

I laughed. “I can assure you I have never been that way, even when I was a student in London years ago.”

I stared down at the list she had written for me. It was hard to read handwriting that was so different from my own. I looked up again. “Can you advise me which of these might be most suitable? I’m afraid I don’t know the addresses.”

She checked them with me. “That is in Cannaregio. Too far to walk and not near a vaporetto stop. And besides, it’s the Jewish Quarter. Not that I have anything against Jews personally, but you’d feel out of place.” She waited to see agreement in my face. “And the next—oh, you do not want the ground floor.”