Nancy Mitford Read Online Free PDF Page B

knees in 1. When I was going to pay the woman she dragged me behind a screen and in a dramatic tone said that she saw a policeman and anyhow there are spies everywhere! I scented a bolshy plot at least, but on further explanation discovered that if I was seen to buy the corals I should have to pay 185 luxury tax! She told me to hide them till I got home, so away I crept feeling like a criminal! Nice of her. They are lovely, I must wear them all day under my clothes or they will be stolen, so I am told…’
    She thought the Uffizi ‘thousands of times nicer’ than the Pitti, where the pictures were ‘lovely but so badly arranged. About one beauty in each room, the rest—rubbish… I had no idea I was so fond of pictures before, especially Raphael, Botticelli and Lippo Lippi… If only I had a room of my own I would make it a regular picture gallery. I find to my horror that there are lovely pictures in London, Italian ones and lots of good ones. I have only ever been to the Tate Gallery. This must be remedied! I never knew that there were really lovely pictures in London. Marjorie knows the National Gallery by heart. I don’t think it is too late to develop a taste in pictures at 17, do you? I really love them. As for the statues, I used to hate them, but when you have seen some of them here you can’t help liking them… Only 3 more days here, how shall I tear myself away? Thank you so much for sending me, I am having a perfectly
heavenly
time, I have never been so happy in my life before, in spite of such minor incidents as fleas! If you knew what it is like here you would leave England for good and settle here at once.’
    On Easter Sunday Nancy wrote an elaborate account with sketch of the
Scoppio del Carro
(the explosion of the chariot) outside the Cathedral, of the afternoon races in the Cascine (one steeplechase and the rest flat races) ‘most exciting and amusing’, and of an old man in the hotel—‘the others said he wasn’t old but he is really, quite 45’—who was ‘also an adorer of Ruskin. He seemed very surprised that I had read most of Ruskin’s books and we talked for ages. Unfortunately (
disgraziatamente
) he went away this morning. I called him “my old man” ever since we came…’ A film called
Dante
was ‘most bloodthirsty and exciting. Eleven murders close to with details, a man’s hands chopped off
very
close to and full of detail, and a man dying of starvation and eating another man
very very
close to and the death of Dante with great detail helped to add a mild excitement to a film full of battles (on land and sea) molten lead, a burning city and other little everyday matters. It lasted with two intervals from 9 to 12.15! I never saw anything like it before, it was enough to make you dream for nights. There was a seedy contingent with permanently waved hair wandering about in the desert, called the prophets of Peace, they stumbled on dead bodies at every step; a most realistic scene from hell, the devils reminded me of those drawn by Bobo [Unity]. Every time a person was murdered you saw him being taken down there with dire results. People died off so fast that only one character was left alive by 12.15 and it is a huge cast. That shows you! The one who did survive had just killed his wife, so one imagines he then goes mad.’
    ‘I am quite miserable at leaving here tomorrow. We get up at 6!… Do you think I shall ever come back here? I positively must!’
    From Venice (Hotel Regina, 19 April) Nancy continued: ‘I like this in quite a different way to Florence. Here it is more the place that one likes, there it is the things, statues, pictures and buildings. Of course there are pictures here, but mostly Titian and Tintoretto. Secretly I hate Titian and loathe Tintoretto, but that, I fear, is my bad taste. I simply love the Florentine pictures ,Raphael and Andrea del Sarto especially. Oh, and Botticelli I love! We saw the largest oil painting in the world in the Doge’s palace