.jpg)
When She Collapsed, the woman wasn’t staring at The Birth of Venus, as everyone later believed. She had been caught up in the Botticelli bottleneck of the Uffizi Gallery’s Room 14 when her knees suddenly became useless and she crumpled like a sack of potatoes dumped off a truck. I watched her go. Her head hit the wood floor with such a smack that people winced and stepped back to stare at her as if she were a piece of installation art on which they suddenly had to have an opinion. Her companion, whom I took to be an old friend, was immediately at her side, dropping down on the floor and calling out her name, though it was hard to see what was happening in the midst of the crowd. In a few moments a couple of curators cleared a path and I was able to glimpse the tableau of one woman cradled in the arms of another, a pietà vivant.
Collapsing in public is never dignified and the older and more respectable you are, the greater the downfall seems to be. The victim was aged around sixty, on the heavy side, her loose hair streaked to look like the genuine article bleached by the Italian sun. The linen and raw cotton materials now awkwardly arranged around her were not cheaply bought, nor were her shoes or handbag that had spilled its contents across the floor. You would not expect anything less than money and good taste from a woman staying at the five-star Helvetia & Bristol in Florence, the only Bristol in the world to have an entry in Herbert Ypma’s Hip Hotel series. The woman’s name was Dora, her companion was called Connie and they were about my mother’s age. I knew their names and that they were from California, because I had overheard them that morning at breakfast on the hotel terrace, when they were a couple of tables away from mine.
I can’t remember ever seeing smelling salts in action before, but a curator uncorked a small, dark bottle and placed it beneath Dora’s nostrils. In a few minutes she came round. However, the crack that her head had received apparently made the fainting fit potentially rather more serious than it might otherwise have been, and the sound of an ambulance was soon wailing in the heavy June heat outside the Palazzo Vecchio. Among the mutterings of the people in the room, I heard the words “Stendhal’s Syndrome” mentioned several times and I was not surprised. This condition, which is named after the 19th-century French writer who became physically affected by the art of Florence, is supposed to strike the occasional visitor still, but I was sure that the American woman was not a victim of Stendhal’s or anybody else’s Syndrome. She could not have been. She had not been looking at any painting when she collapsed. Her gaze had just fallen on a man of around twenty who had entered the room from the East Gallery. In his early twenties with darting black eyes and olive skin, his unmistakable Italian looks were confirmed by his stylish white shirt and cropped blue cargo shorts. His female companion was equally attractive and relaxed. Though Dora had caught sight of him, he had not noticed her, and even after she had fallen I saw that he did not give her more than a passing glance, raising his eyebrows and shrugging to his companion before moving away into the next room. Yet when Dora had seen him, in that fraction of a second before she hit the floor, her whole face contorted, her jaw dropped, her pale eyes bulged and colour drained from her.
The Uffizi Gallery, where students tick off famous paintings
But all this was nothing to do with me. After reassuring myself that there wasn’t anything useful that I could do, I moved on, heading down the corridor and only briefly visiting the remaining rooms. I was by now starting to become sated with art and was mentally ticking off canvases the way that some students were physically checking them against their course-work lists.
I was in Florence on my own. I had just come from Milan, where the previous week I had been staying at the excellent four-star Bristol next to the railway station. A firm of Japanese trophy-hunters had acquired a large and successful furniture designers with my help, and I was just tying up loose ends. I had hoped to visit Castello Sforzesco to tread the floorboards and stone corridors that for nine months had been paced by the imprisoned Lord Bristol. (He had been arrested as Napoleon’s troops moved into Italy. “We know that his lordship’s freedom of conversation, particularly after dinner, is such as to make him liable to lead to accidents of this nature,” his friend William Hamilton wrote to Britain’s foreign secretary.) Work, however, did not allow me any free time during opening hours, so the visit had to be postponed. Sophie should have been with me. I had booked a weekend in the Helvetia & Bristol on a whim. Neither of us had been to Florence before, and Sophie should have flown out to join me. But at the last minute her work got in the way, and she had to stay behind. She urged me to carry on with my plans, as she would be no fun, stuck in front of a computer. I had to concur. Weekends at home when one of us was working were invariably a sullen mixture of irritation and rejection.
One advantage of being alone is that art galleries can be easier to visit. Sophie is far more assiduous than I am, reading every caption, staring at every mark on a canvas, and I end up hanging around by the exit, wandering back and forth, estimating visitor numbers and museum profits or checking out the café facilities and shopping opportunities. If she had been with me now, I’m not sure she would have completed the tour of the gallery before it closed, let alone the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river, which was included in the price of the ticket.
Boboli Gardens, ideal for a photograph
I wandered out into the hot, dry June afternoon, carrying my linen jacket that was too warm to wear. After buying a straw hat and an ice cream I strolled over the bridge. The gold and silver trinkets on sale in the tiny shops on the Ponte Vecchio were way overpriced, but it didn’t matter. I picked out a silver bracelet for Sophie, just so I could say I had bought it there.After a tour of the Pitti Palace I went and sat in the shade of the Cypresses in Bobilo Gardens and gave her a call.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hello, it’s me.”
“I thought it would be you.”
“How’s work?”
“Getting there. How’s Florence?”
“Hot, crowded, full of art.”
To make her feel less bad at being cooped up on the weekend that she should have been sight-seeing in the sun, I told her how hard it was to see some of the paintings because of the crush. And I went on to describe the drama in the Uffizi’s Room 14, explaining the theory of Stendhal’s Syndrome,. No fewer than seven Florentine artworks, including Michelangelo’s David, were said to be particularly prone to producing this effect.
“How wonderful,” she said, “to see a something that makes you swoon.”
“Well you should see me now,” I said, because at that moment the young Italian couple that the American woman had spotted when she fainted walked by and I had an inspired idea. “Prego,” I called out, pointing the instrument towards them. They turned towards me with polite curiosity. “My girlfriend is on the phone from London. She wants a picture of me in front of the Pitti Palace. Would you mind?”
Of course, they would not mind at all. I handed over my phone and explained what to press to take a picture. Then I put on my hat at a rakish angle, hung my jacket on my shoulders like a native and stepped out into the sunshine in front of the palace, lifting my head so that my face would not be too much in the shadow of the straw brim.
“Say ‘Leonardo’!” the Italian called as he pressed the button.
By the time I had returned to his side, the young man had the phone to his ear and was saying hello to Sophie, introducing himself as Mario Fantoni from Bergamo and telling her that she had a very nice boyfriend and it was a very nice day and asking her where was it that she lived in England. He had been to London once. Madame Tussauds, London Eye. It was very nice. A thousand miles away, Sophie listened patiently to this charade. A picture of me in the Boboli Gardens would not make her blink, let alone swoon, but now was not the time to explain what I was up to; I would do that on my return. The next step was to take a picture of Mario Fantoni and his girlfriend, who was called Francesca, so that Sophie could see who she had been talking to – or that was the excuse I gave. I asked for his email address and promised to send the pictures to him, too.
Feeling pleased with myself, I returned to the hotel an hour or so later. I was more than ready to put my feet up and get the most from my elegant room before venturing on to the streets again. The Helvetia & Bristol was in the grand hotel manner, built in the 19th century to attract English visitors. According to Herb Ypma’s eulogy, it is close to the benchmark of E.M. Forster’s Room with a View. It has around fifty rooms with a couple of fifth-floor suites overlooking Brunaleschi’s dome and each room is handsomely furnished, plumped up in silk, damask and brocaded wallpaper with real antiques, period prints and paintings. It was a fitting place to stay in this city of culture and high art.
Before going to my room, I wanted to discover if the hotel had any printing facilities for my digital pictures, but Dora, the American, was already at the oak-panelled desk in the narrow lobby in conversation with the receptionist. She was going to wait until the following day before deciding whether to stay another night, and she wanted to know if her room could still be available. Her manner was direct and her blue eyes were locked on the receptionist. High cheek bones must have made her quite striking a few decades ago. The California sun had given her a healthy glow and any lines it might naturally have produced had been nipped and tucked out of sight so that her skin seemed as if it had been ironed. She was almost my height, her short hair naturally fair, almost white. Scandinavia may have figured somewhere in her family’s past. While the receptionist checked the room availability, I asked after her companion, explaining that I had been in the Uffizi’s Room 14 when the drama had occurred.
“They’re keeping her in for observation,” she said, turning her full attention on me. “They tried to tell me it was something called Stendhal’s Syndrome, which you’re supposed to get when you OD on art. I never heard so much hooey. I had to insist they checked her out properly. The first my mother knew she had cancer was when she fainted in a mall.”
I asked if their plans had been upset by the incident and she said that a car due to take them to Venice the next morning had to be cancelled and the company didn’t want to reimburse her. When I pointed out that her travel insurance would pay for it, she looked doubtful. I assured her that the policy should cover not only the cancelled car but any other extra expense, too, such as additional nights at the Helvetia & Bristol.
She brightened. “I’ll call them.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only lunchtime back home. Venice we can do another day.”
“Are you often in Italy?”
“First time for both of us.”
The receptionist had by now put a hold on a room for another night, and Dora wanted to know when dinner was served in the restaurant. When she was told any time after seven o’clock, she said that she would be there on the button, and asked for a taxi to be ordered to take her back to the hospital at eight. She didn’t want to stray far from a phone.I don’t usually like to eat early, but an ice cream and a couple of cappuccinos were all I had got around to since breakfast. It was still stifling outside and air conditioning could only improve an appetite. The hotel restaurant looked interesting. Its walls, upholstery, drapes were all deep burgundy, the small round white tables scattered about beneath strange grotto chandeliers, and the menu was Tuscan and tempting.
The Hotel Bristol at around the time of the Stanford's visit
I was already sitting at a corner table, reading Vasari’s Lives, when Dora walked in. An envelope containing a print of my mobile phone’s photograph of Mario Fantoni was on the damask tablecloth by my right hand, ready to be pulled out at the right moment, when I would ask why the sight of this young man could have had such a devastating effect on her friend. By now my money was Mario turning out to be a long-lost relative, perhaps even a son.Though on her own, Dora was dressed as if she were on her way to a social function, in a peach-coloured suit, silk blouse and heels. Nobody else was interested in eating at that hour, and as the only diner in the room, I stood up to greet her, inviting her to join me. She looked relieved and sat down, her chair manoeuvred into the exact spot by a discreet waiter. The handbag she placed at her feet was soft Italian leather and the diamond on the thin silver choker at her throat was real. So was the cluster on her wedding ring. She may have never been to Italy before but she had clearly been around.We introduced ourselves. After thanking me for the advice about her insurance, which had proved fruitful, we had a discussion about the menu. She wanted to try something with truffles but it wasn’t the season, so she settled for a bisteca alla fiorentina and I chose a pigeon risotto. She did not want any wine with her meal, so we had mineral water and it wasn’t long before her story came tumbling out.
Leland Stanford
Dora and Connie had met at Stanford University in California back in the 1960s. They had both studied art, and they had always promised they would make a trip to Europe. Stanford University, she pointed out, had a connection with Florence. I had seen the plaque on the side of our hotel. Leland Stanford, Governor of California (1861–63), was a rail baron with powerful energy and a range if interests. As president of the Central Pacific Railroad Company he had picked up a hammer made of Nevada silver and driven the last spike, fashioned out of California gold, into the final section of the transcontinental railway across the Sierra Nevada, linking the East coast with the West. In California he owned the largest vineyard in the world and a trotting horse stud farm called Palo Alto. His fascination with both science and the arts led him to commission the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to set up a series of photographs triggered by trip wires to prove that all four legs of a horse left the ground when it galloped.
Stanford and his wife Jane, the daughter of a New York merchant, had only one child, who was also called Leland. The boy inherited his father’s curiosity and intelligence, his mother’s too, and enjoyed all the considerable benefits that his family had to offer. But in 1884, on a trip to Europe, he contracted typhoid fever. Perhaps it had been when he was steering a boat on the Bosphorous, or when he had had been in Athens, where he met the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who had just discovered the city of Troy. As the boy’s health deteriorated in the first weeks of the year, the Stanfords were persuaded that the climate in Florence would be beneficial. So they booked into the Bristol Hotel.
Stanford University poster
Here, for three weeks Leland Jr lay in a feverish state, nursed by nuns and attended by physicians who wrapped him in icy blankets to try to bring his temperature down. The hotel manager ordered straw to be spread on the street outside to deaden the sound of the horses. But on March 30 he died. It was two months before his 16th birthday, just before his studies at Harvard were to begin. His father had been at his bedside in the Bristol Hotel suite throughout the brief illness and he is reported to have woken from a dream after the boy died and turned to his wife Jane and said, “The children of California shall be our children.”And so, exactly a year after their son’s death, the cornerstone of the Leland Stanford Jr University was laid in part of the Palo Alto farm.
Doris made the Stanfords sound like personal friends, and when she came to the end of the story, I commiserated with her. Losing a child must be the worst thing in the world. My right hand pressed on the envelope containing the photograph I had taken of Mario Fantoni. Whose son was he?
“What about you and your friend Connie?” I asked. “Do you have children?”
“I’m blessed with two grown children and three of beautiful grandchildren.”
Doris took a picture from her purse of two girls and a boy, pointing to each in turn and giving their names and ages. They looked healthy, sunny, Californian.
“And Connie?” I asked after giving them what I thought was sufficient praise. By now I was itching to show my own photograph.
“She never had any. Her marriage didn’t last long.”
“No children?” I hoped I did not sound too disappointed. I was sure I had been on the right track. Taking my hand from the envelope, I broke some bread and chewed it for a moment, wondering why else just the sight of Mario Fantoni would have made Connie faint. “And you waited all this time to make your European trip together?”
“Not exactly. We came over in 1968, just after we graduated.”
“I thought you said you had never been to Italy before.”
“We didn’t get this far. We were in Paris when Connie had some bad news and we headed straight home.”
At that moment the food arrived and we were diverted into commenting on the plates set before us. I was impatient to know more but I did not press the point until a couple of forkfuls of risotto had gone down and we had passed appraisal on our choices.
“Her beau from University had been killed in Vietnam,” Dora finally said. “She took a long time to get over it.”
“I’m sorry.” I tried to calculate how old a love child might be.
She gave a small sigh. Though she was still looking at me in that intense way, her eyes were a little dreamy now. “She took it very badly. We all did, he was a popular guy, and very handsome in a dark, Mediterranean way. Something special. Such a waste.” She shook her head.
“She married somebody else in the end?”
“A disaster. ‘My big booboo’ is how she refers to her ex-husband now. A major mistake.”
“What was he like?”
“I never met him, and I don’t think I would have wanted to. He beat up on her, she says. But I didn’t know her then. We lost touch when I got married not long after Mario was killed. It was only after my husband died last year that we reconnected. It was Connie’s idea that we picked up where we left off forty years ago. We’ve just come from Paris.”
“Mario? Did you say that was her beau’s name?”
“Yes, he was from an Italian family. The Fantonis. As a matter of fact, they originally came from near here, from a place called Bergamo.”
“Mario Fantoni… from Bergamo...” I slid the envelope from the table and pushed it into my pocket. I didn’t want to show her the photograph now, in case she, too, was overcome with Stendhal’s Syndrome.
“You’ve gone mighty pale,” she said. “I hope you aren’t going to faint.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hotel Helvetia & Bristol today
196pp paperback, price 10 euros, 5 euros for orders of 10 copies or more, including post and packaging: See Bristol Book Publishing
Click here to visit the wonderful Helvetia & Bristol Hotel in Florence
