LI VES
123
ing and affectionate, and in the extraordinary "death-bed" letter she
writes to Nicky, she rises to something like greatness. Miss Mariano's
reply to her letter is equally remarkable. There cannot be many times in
history when two women, both devoted-in however qualified a sense-–
to the same man, have written one another with such honesty and
tenderness.
No one is ever likely to explain the secret of Berenson, or of any
personality so complex and elusive, but though Nicky Mariano does not
attempt to explain all, she gives unforgettable glimpses into many of his
selves. A number of sides are summed up in a comment made by Mary
when she was going through his early letters :
B. B. at 25 was already exactly what he now is, mystical, ecstatic and
scientific as regards pictures, interested in origins and development
and influences, anti-democratic, anti-philanthropic, believing in cul–
ture above all else.
"Mystical" and "scientific" recall contradictory impulses in Frost, and
probing intellectual curiosity is equally characteristic of both men. But
"believing in culture above all else," the center if not the secret of B.B.'s
life, marks the difference. "Culture" as religion, reminding us in this con–
text of Pater rather than Arnold, is decisively nineteenth-century Euro–
pean. The passion to know objects and ideas of the past, and ideas almost
as objects, runs through Berenson's life of study and conversation. Al–
though his collecting days were already over when Nicky Mariano came
to I Tatti, he continued to be a tireless traveler. With his entourage he
goes from Italy to Northern Europe, Greece, Turkey and North Africa,
wearing out his younger companions by his will to
see,
to press the last
ounce of sensation from a picture, a building, a landscape. We watch the
diminutive figure climbing a ladder to get closer to a fresco, the head
bowed over the magnifying glass to catch another detail in order to fix an
"attribution" for the famous lists of paintings on which he worked
throughout most of his career.
If
Berenson was heroic, it was in this im–
passioned going after whatever he wanted to know. The pursuit of less
well-known works by the masters had its less delightful side, which Miss
Mariano does not a ttempt to conceal- the business of advising dealers, in
particular Sir J oseph Duveen, a man of "unpredictable caprices and
tantrums." But there was no escaping this burden, as Miss Mariano rue–
fully confesses, since the Villa I Tatti, its society of friends, visitors and
relations, depended largely on Berenson's income from giving professional
advice.
The most charming scenes at I Tatti are of the morning hours when
B.B.,
Nicky, Mary and others are at work on the lists or a learned
ar-
