September 30 Friday – Florence, Italy: the date of an engagement Sam accepted on Sept. 25 to Mr. Loring’s. At the Villa Viviani, Sam wrote a long letter to Sue Crane. Livy was unable to write, Sam disclosed.
We have been in the house several days, & certainly it is a beautiful place, — particularly at this moment, when the skies are a deep leaden color, the domes of Florence dim in the drizzling rain, & occasional perpendicular coils of lightening quivering intensely in the black sky about Galileo’s Tower. It is a charming panorama, & the most conspicuous country houses in it, & the most conspicuous towers & domes down in the city look to-day just as they looked when Boccacio & Dante used to contemplate them from his hillock five & six hundred years ago.
The Mademoiselle is a great help to Livy in the housekeeping, & is a cheery & cheerful presence in the house. The butler is equipped with a little French, & it is this fact that enables the house to go — but it won’t go well until the family get some sort of facility with the Italian tongue, for the book, the woman-of-all-work & the coachman understand only that. It is a stubborn & devilish language to learn, & I doubt if Livy & I ever get to where we can do more than cuss in it. But Jean & the others will master it. Livy’s German-Nauheim girl is the worst off of anybody, as there is not market for her tongue at all among the help.
Sam related an event of Susy setting some curtains on fire with her candle, but wrote there wasn’t “any conceivable way to burn this house down.” He praised Mrs. Ross, who “laid in our wood, wine & servants…scoured from cellar to roof,” and “beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain stove in the vast central hall,” which he estimated to be 40 feet square and 40 feet high.
It belittles everything that is put into it. Clara’s piano is scarcely a noticeable object. The five divans scattered about the walls measure a length of 47 feet altogether, but they hardly attract attention….The children have been playing opera & general theatricals in it this evening.
Sam wrote that five languages were “in use in the house (including sign-language — hardest working of them all),” — still, it was a lot of work being understood. Cholera scares in Germany still held Clara back from traveling to Berlin for piano study. Sam acknowledged “Poor Susie” who was going to be lonesome when Clara left.
Clara is very impatient to get to Berlin, & I think she may soon be gratified. No cholera news is good news, I reckon, & we don’t get any — partly because we seldom see any papers. Mademoiselle Lançon is going to take her there; & she is worth six of me as courier — or in any other capacity, for that matter. Still, I beat Moses — I don’t propose to overlook that [MTP]. Note: “Far Away Moses,” the famous Turkish guide during the QC cruise — see May 12, 1886 entry.
Sam added,
What we lack is a cat. If we only had Germannia! That was the most satisfactory all-around cat I have seen yet. Totally ungermanic in the raciness of his character & in the sparkle of his mind & the spontaneity of his movements. We shall not look upon his like again [MTP].
Sam’s notebook in Florence: “[Sept.] “ 30 — 310” [NB 32 TS 27]. Note: ditto marks for month.