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Henry James in a "Venetian" Diary by Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Università degli Studi di Venezia The diary of which I write is actually only half Venetian. Bound in dark leather, decorated in gold, it was begun in Boston in 1853. Originally it was used as a "commonplace book," one of those elegant volumes in which young women—or rather young ladies—copied poems, literary passages, and anecdotes they wished to preserve. The American "commonplace book" later became a diary that began from the back of the volume and that was continued in Venice from 1885 to 1892.1 The two different handwritings that covered the blank pages with their dark traceries at one point met and overlapped. The tidy and regular hand that copied the poems was covered over by an edgy, irregular, stronger hand of a person who was recording with some intensity the daily events of friendship with Robert Browning. Tennyson's lines "Come into the garden, Maud" were covered over by the quick scribble of a list of topics—a great many—about which Robert Browning had talked one morning. Over the slightly faded handwriting, an energetic hand marked the seating arrangement for a dinner of fourteen: at the head of the table was Sir Henry Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh. These different handwritings belong to Ariana and Daniel Sargent Curtis, American owners of the Palazzo Bárbaro on the Grand Canal, at Santo Stefano, in Venice.2 They acquired the palace on December 3, 1885.3 The elegant Omises were painted by John Singer Sargent in a famous picture of 1899. He portrayed Daniel and Ariana in the splendid setting of the Barbara's stuccoed salon—quite recognizable in the painting—together with their son, Ralph Curtis, a painter, and his young wife, Lisa.4 It was a painting that Henry James said he "absolutely . . . adored," to the point of writing: "I've seen few things of Sargent's that I've craved more to possess."5 The Venetian part of the diary mainly concerns Robert Browning. Daniel Curtis was interested in recording everything that had to to do with the poet: his readings, for a dozen or so, at Palazzino Alvisi, at Mrs. Branson's, or at Palazzo Barbara; the substance of Browning's long conversations; the almost daily chronicle of long gondola trips to the Lido and long walks to Malamocco and S. Nicolö in the autumn of 1888 and 1889; then, Browning's illness and death at Palazzo Rezzonico and his funeral at San Michèle (and later at Westminster). Curtis had himself gondolaed to the Giudecca to gather laurel leaves and boughs, and Ariana Curtis wove them into garlands for the poet's funeral with the help of Edith Bronson. The Henry James Review 11 (1990): 101-114 01990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 102 The Henry James Review For Daniel Curtis, Browning was the great man of the time.6 Browning's contemporary, Henry James, was a guest for whom the Curtises felt friendship and even affection, but the American slips into the diary almost as from a side door. The diarist even feels he has to define him as "Henry James, the author" when he mentions James. Of the many letters James wrote to the Curtises only one is copied into the diary, and it is the letter in which James speaks of Browning: "I am glad [writes James] he has given you some glimpses of his divine past. I have never seized the link between the two. (Browning the poet and Browning the man). But I have lately been reading him a good deal, and it seems to me that on the whole he is the writer of our times of whom, in the face of the rest of the world, the English tongue may be most proud, for he has touched everything and with such breadth! I put him very high—higher than anyone."7 This appreciation certainly brought great joy to Browning's Venetian admirers, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis and Mrs. Branson. There are, however, various references to James, such as: "Henry James said the four Misses Montalba in mourning at Venice looked like felzes on...

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