Had I a Hundred Mouths Read Online Free PDF

and they accepted. See what she did? Palazzo da Filippo jived, that was the word then; it was in the nineteen fifties. That joint jumped, as they said.
    I said back there that I was going to tell you why I was in London. Or did I? Can’t remember. Just try to remember something with all this noise around here. Italians are noisy, sweet as they are—singing and calling on the Canals. Now where was I? Oh. London. Well, forget London for the time being— if I haven’t already told it to you. Just keep London in the back of your mind. Now where was I? Oh. Well, you have asked me to tell you what you are hearing—the story of the Texas Principessa, my old schoolmate and life-long pal, that you asked about. After the Prince’s death, Horty pulled herself together and got the Palazzo together—a reproduction of Palazzo da Filippo was engraved on Renzi’s tombstone with Horty’s changes incorporated (which, of course, I thought was rather nifty, wouldn’t you?)—and Horty pleaded with me in April by phone and cable to come stay. “Come and stay as long as you want to, stay forever if you’re happy in the Palazzo; just come on,” Horty said, long distance, to me in London. Horty loved to have people in the house. This doesn’t mean that she always loved being with them. Sometimes I’ve seen it happen that a motorboat would arrive and disburse a dozen guests and a week later depart with the same guests and not one of them had ever seen the Principessa. Horty would’ve confined herself off in her own apartment in the far right top wing and there remain in privacy. Simply did not want to have anything to do with them, with her guests. “That’s Horty,” everyone said. They’d had a grand time, gone in the Principessa’s private motorboats to Torcello, to lunch at the Cipriano, to cocktails at other palazzos, been served divine dinners with famous Italians at the da Filippo. But no Horty. She usually—she was so generous—gave expensive presents to her guests to get them to forgive her. Once she gave everybody an egg—a sixth-century— B.C . ! —egg of Chinese jade. Amounted to about a dozen eggs. Somebody said the retail value on those eggs was about $150 apiece. Where was I? Oh.
    Well this was in April and in May I came. Horty at once announced to me that there was no room for me at the Palazzo! She was getting crazy over painters. She’d become more and more interested in painting, Horty did, but that’s no surprise because she always seemed to possess a natural eye and feeling for painting, not so curious for an heiress to generations of garment salesmen, even though you might so comment. For Hortense Solomon inherited good taste and a tendency for her eye to catch fine things when she saw them. Though there were Brahma bulls leering through the windows of the Solomon ranch in West Texas, what those bulls saw inside was fine china and Chippendale, silver and crystal and satin and silk. Those bulls saw the handiwork of a chic decorator and an elegant collector; not every bull sees that . So a seventeenth-century palazzo in Venice was not so far a cry for Horty to fix up.
    Well here was I living over at the Cipriano where Horty, who couldn’t do without me till I got there and then banished me—to a terrific suite, I must say, and footed by her—and here was I coming across the Canal every day to observe the goings on at the Palazzo. Frankly I was glad to have me a little distance from the commotion. Well-known artists came to live in the Palazzo da Filippo and to set up studios there and in the environs. Horty patronized them. Gave them scholarships as she called them. A few were very attractive, I must say, and some very young—Horty’s eye again. The Venetians adored La Principessa di Texas. They appreciated her for unscrewing the horse’s outfit from the horse sculpture in her garden on the Grand