It must sound strange, that we want to fight. Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s like this. We’ve been tasked with something huge, and we’re nervous because we want to do our jobs and do them right. It feels important. Monumental. A large load we have to carry alone. The few, the proud, and all that. On the one hand is glory, on the other … I can’t even think about it.
Plus there’s a little something called revenge. Revenge for all of the destruction. No one will say it, but … well … there it is. Man, we all desperately hope to do some good out there. We want to do right by our nation, and our parents, and all our wonderful Annies back home.
Not that there’s anyone like you—sweet, pretty, brilliant. I swear, Annie, sometimes it’s like you popped right out of a novel and into my life. It’s the famous “too good to be true” except that you’re real. And believe me, I’ve tried to find the chink. So far, no dice. I know you’d point to your living and employment situation, but all that’s temporary. A person’s job is not who they are.
Well, I’d better go. As anxious as I am to get to the gettin’ on, I’ll have a lot fewer opportunities to write once we’re there. Our distance will be compounded the second I step off this boat. I can’t imagine missing you more than I do now.
Stay happy. Stay safe.
All my love,
Eric
Thirty
WS: Tell me about Bernard Berenson.
GD: What does one say about the greatest art historian who ever lived?
WS: The “greatest”? Come now.
GD: Bernard was solely responsible for creating a market for Renaissance paintings. If not for him, there’d be no quote-unquote Old Masters.
WS: There is also the converse. Some say he manipulated the market and drove prices to unreasonable levels.
GD: A person has to earn a living.
WS: Customarily, yes. From what I’ve read, you and Berenson traveled together extensively.
GD: We did. I often joined him on trips to secure various pieces of art. He trusted my keen insight and objectivity. Assessing art may sound like a quite fanciful occupation but B.B. was under a lot of pressure. His clients were top-of-the-line.
WS: Such as?
GD: Henry Clay Frick. William Randolph Hearst. J. P. Morgan. Andrew Mellon. John D. Rockefeller. To name a few.
WS: That’s quite a pedigree.
GD: Well, he was quite a man. B.B. taught me a tremendous amount. About art, of course, but also dedication. He’d travel to monasteries in the farthest outreaches of civilization to examine a single brushstroke.
WS: Astounding.
GD: Not big enough a word.
WS: But the two of you were rather disparate in age.
GD: One year or a hundred between us, does it matter?
WS: And what about Berenson’s wife?
GD: Ah, old Mary. A serious woman, and a respected art critic in her own right. She liked to pretend I was a silly, simple girl. Couldn’t tolerate the intellectual competition because she couldn’t compete on looks. With me, there was nothing she could feel superior about.
WS: I thought you and Mary were friends. You once asked B.B. to pass along the following message to her. [Sound of papers rustling] “My love in honeyed streams to that sweetest of white mice cooked in gooseberry jam.”
GD: We were friends, for a time. But that’s what friendships do. They end.
WS: Ah, so cooked in gooseberry jam by and by. Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer appears wistful.
GD: Mr. Seton, I have no place in my life for wistful.
WS: But you cared about Berenson deeply, didn’t you?
GD: I loved him in ways you could never understand.
WS: Tell me, Mrs. Spencer, if you were so close, how come you stopped speaking in 1920?
GD: I believe he passed. That’s the problem I often faced, seeing as how I was so much younger than everyone I consorted with.
WS: That’s not true. I meant the first part! Please! Calm down! No need to throw things, Mrs. Spencer. I was referring to the bit about his passing. Berenson died in 1959. Not so long ago but long after you lost touch. Forty years almost.
GD: You sure know how to make a gal feel like roses.
WS: I’m sorry, Mrs. Spencer, I’m only trying to get a story, flesh out your varied cast of characters. So what happened?
GD: What happened? [Deep sigh, then three long beats] Same as always. A series of misunderstandings. My engagement to Lord Brooke, for one, he did not relish. Many rows followed and then a final, damaging crack. We never exchanged another word.
WS: How bleak.
GD: It’s the manner of human nature, though, isn’t it? Our bonds can’t last. Despite our best efforts, the rest of the world always gets in our way.
Thirty-one
WS: But you’ve told us yourself—your father shot your mother’s lover. Another thread linking you and the duchess.
GD: Crimes of passion happen often enough. The French wanted to pass a damned law about it! This story [Sound of newspaper thrashing] is not about them.
WS: Reading from the New York Times article. “Deacon’s Line of Defense. The Killing of Monsieur Abeille” by Alexandre Dumas.