Books
Discriminator of distinctions
Harold Acton
Bernard Sorenson: The Making of a Connoisseur Ernest Samuels (Harvard £9.50) When Bernard Berenson died in 1959 at the age of 94 laser beams converging from transatlantic Boston and the vicinity of Vilna were extinguished at Settignano near Florence. By then the fierce feuds of Berenson's rise to fame were forgotten: the serene sage had become, like Voltaire at Ferney, a sophisticated tourist attraction. And like the less aged Voltaire he seemed very frail, but his devoted companion Nicky Mariano guarded him against unwelcome intruders: he never had to answer the telephone. He was still eager to meet the young and listen to their views, not only about the fine arts, for his range of interest was immense and his curiosity was insatiable.
Berenson was so much more than an art historian. Never pedantic, his talk was often witty and pregnant with stimulating suggestions. One left him with an extended illusion of one's possibilities. True, the atmosphere of I Tatti, the house he had enlarged on the Tuscan hillside, was distinctly rarefied. Surrounded by exquisite paintings, with a precious art library along the corridor, one had a sense of living on a higher plane.
In his youth Berenson.observed that `to a great extent culture consists in a precise discrimination of distinctions'. I can think of nobody who has exercised this discrimination over three score years to a more consistent degree. His command of English was remarkable considering his remote origin in Russian Lithuania, of which Mr Ernest Samuels has provided a fascinating account. This chronological narrative of Berenson's development is minutely researched, if occasionally overloaded with detail, such as the future Mrs Berenson's having 'her womb scraped out with a sort of spoon.' But that is a negative virtue of most modern biographers.
Step by step we follow the precocious son of a Russian Jewish immigrant towards the Harvard of high intellectual endeavour, where a group of friends subscribed to the scholarship that led him to Europe — above all to Florence, his spiritual home. The most prominent of these supporters was the eccentric Mrs Jack Gardner, nicknamed 'the Isabella d' Este of Boston', who was to exert so remunerative an influence on his career. But they expected the young genius to show some academic token that he was 'living up to his promise'. Mrs Gardner in particular was vexed when he replied airily that `the thousand nothings of the hour have driven every capacity for writing out of me'. Meanwhile he collected abundant notes on his intensive sight-seeing and wrote voluminous letters to justify his 'seriousness of purpose'. In fact he was hoarding the basic material of his lifelong study. Photographs were scarcer then and his exceptional memory had to fill in the gaps. The quest for his unique identity in spite of the nagging Bostonians, 'worrying over him as if he had become a bad investment in stocks and bonds', is amusingly described by Mr Samuels. If Berenson was 'to ascend to the very highest beauty', he realised that his work required 'the dignity of idleness, the opportunity for learning and meditation'.
'It's a dreadful thing,' wrote a former friend of his, 'to grow up in a circle of admiring women.' But Berenson was singularly fortunate in his relations with the sex, platonic or otherwise. Their admiration was a necessary tonic. A lighter volume entitled 'Bernard Berenson and the Ladies' may yet be written about this important aspect of his career, beginning with Mrs Jack Gardner, who was amply repaid for her patronage by his critical contribution to her famous art collection. The Junoesque Mary Costelloe, whom he married after a decade of emotional companionship and close collaboration, 'recognising and baptizing all sorts of early Sienese and Florentine panels', played the sovereign role as mistress, pupil, recording angel and strenuous secretary; and her mantle was inherited by the incomparable Nicky Mariano. A long list of his amities amoureuses might be added, with the radiant Gladys Deacon, later Duchess of Marlborough, in the ephemeral foreground.
The chapter on Mary Berenson's family of proselytizing Philadelphia Quakers, 'The Smiths of Friday's Hill', is quaintly exotic by contrast with Berenson's family. Mary's mother Hannah, a militant feminist of advanced social views, had published an evangelistic vade-mecum, The Christian Secret of a Happy Life, and Mary herself had been a popular exponent of women's rights before lecturing on Berenson's aesthetics. Her sister Alys married Bertrand Russell; her brother Logan Pearsall Smith was the fastidious stylist whose Trivia are far from trivial. Mary said, she fell in love with Berenson's 'golden words'. 'ft is quite extraordinary', she wrote, 'what a faculty he has of making people love him . . . He feels, and I think with reason, that a few years more of the cultivation and enjoyment and appreciation of beauty in Italy would give him that exquisite and rare culture which only one person in a thousand could attain. Because it is so beautiful he dimly feels that it must be of use to the world . . . whether he does anything useful or not.'
About Mary, Berenson wrote candidly to his family: 'She understands me, my needs, as no other person and I am sure she will try to make me happy.' Physically massive, she seemed to tower above him. According to her, 'the mere suggestion of money-making practical work filled him with disgust' at this period, yet his plunge into the art market was inevitable, and marriage helped to push him in deeper. He has been disparaFd for receiving commissions on his expertise, though his attributions made a vast difference to the commercial value of paintings submitted to his scrutiny. When a great many attributions of masterpieces were wildly inaccurate his detective skill infuriated their owners. In retrospect his disputes with dealers-cum-collectors and rival critics claiming a proprietary right over certain painters are diverting, yet they afflicted his delicate digestion. Gertrude Stein, who had studied medicine, helpfully prescribed raw eggs in milk between meals and before going to bed, while Mrs Bereftson perambulated the house barefoot to improve her circulation.
Most entertaining is Mr Samuels's evocation of the 'intellectual hothouse of Fiesole' at the turn of the century, when for AngloSaxon residents Tuscany was 'a land more of the imagination than of actuality . . . a theatre where one acted out one's romantic aspirations.' It is unlikely that anybody will improve on this record, which is exhaustive without ever exhausting. Lord Duveen had not yet entered Berenson's life: we are left on the verge of that fruitful collaboration in the last chapter, a hilarious account of Berenson's triumphal tour of outstanding American collections — the return of Boston's prodigal son as a social lion. He had dreaded the prospect in anticipation, yet he enjoyed himself like a child, 'as jolly as a cricket, cracking jokes with everybody'. That he regarded himself as a failure (in his Sketch for a Self-portrait) must be taken with a pinch of salt.
Mr Samuels justly observes that perhaps his mystical love of nature was 'the only truly religious feeling that remained unchanged throughout his long life'. Apart from his prolific publications the Harvard University Centre of Italian Renaissance Studies at I Tatti is Berenson's enduring monument.
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