Joseph Pennell: Cycling through Italy

Pennell's Drawing of Their Humber Tandem Tricycle

"The rainy season in England had set in - if there is any other sort of season in that rain-swept land - and so we started from London on the journey which was the immediate reason for our marriage. Luck was with us. The journey from the start was as perfect as Pennell had promised. His delight in getting back to Italy and sharing its loveliness with me was something to remember. We were awake early the second morning, from the train watched daybreak in the Apennines, looked out upon Pistoia as we circled round it, saw its picturesqueness come out of the mist, in Florence we dropped off our luggage, and, without pause, walked out to the places Pennell had longed to show me. 

Before leaving London we had purchased a Humber Tandem Tricycle and had brought it with us. Nothing marred the pleasure of the ride, the joy of seeing 'Italy from a Tricycle.' The roads were good and the names of the towns through which we wheeled and where we stayed were guarantees of beauty - Empoli, Siena, Monte Oliveto, Civita Castellana. The weather was beyond reproach, day after day of cool October sunshine. It was the most successful of the many beautiful journeys we were to take together. 

Idling was unknown - text and drawings for the story of our ride had to be finished, articles on the Christmas festivities in the Aracoeli and the Piazza Navona for 'St. Nicholas,' and our impressions of 'The Stones of Rome' for the 'Portfolio' had to be written and newspaper letters on whatever subjects presented themselves. No idling indeed - all that winter we worked hard by day. But when late afternoon came we took long prowls through the streets, into churches and galleries, out to the Compagna if the light lasted. When an article was finished, text and drawings posted to New York or London, or when the post brought us the November 'Century' with the first of Howells' 'Tuscan Cities' in it or of my biography on 'Mary Wollstonecraft,' we would eat the best lunch we could order and see the many sights in Rome we wanted to see. 

'Harper's" had approved an article on 'Venetian Fishing Boats.' The commission had us stay two long months. In the evenings, the artists' gathered around the dinner table at the shabby, noisy Antica Panada, where coffee was a few centessimi cheaper than on the Piazza. The centre of these gatherings was Frank Duveneck, in danger of being ruined as an artist by the charm of Venice, which had him in thrall. He had grown quite content to live in his attic at the Casa Kirsch, doing as little work as possible during the day, spending the evening with his 'boys' or their successors, and adding little save his smile to the talk. 

Torcello was a wilderness of flowers when reluctantly, we left Venice in May. We had been married all but a year, we had carried out many of our schemes, and success had been our portion."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)