“a fresh and bright edifice… a house all light and grace” - Julian Hawthorne
Two of Francis Crozier’s letters to James Ross from Florence are addressed from Casa Del Bello, Via della Fornace. Alexander K notes that this address is now Via dei Serragli 132 (various shorter streets having been absorbed into it, including Via della Fornace). There, on the south bank of the Arno, a short stroll away from the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens and Ponte Vecchio, stands a handsome house. Here it is today:
A plaque on the building commemorates Nathaniel Hawthorne, who stayed in the house for two months in 1858, entertaining such illustrious friends as Robert and Elizabeth Browning and penning “The Marble Faun”. Hawthorne and his family stayed on the house’s piano floor and paid $50 a month for their apartments.
I’ve not been able to find much yet about what the inside of the house might have looked like. This biography of Walter Savage Landor describes a residence that “allured the Hawthornes with its spacious suite of rooms extending around the four sides of a small court, with lofty, frescoed ceilings and sumptuous hangings, and the usual Italian profusion of marble tables, mirrors, and upholstered furniture. The terrace was a constant delight to Hawthorne where he sat daily.”
Francis himself doesn’t tell us anything about Casa Del Bello. But it’s lovely to imagine him under those frescoes, with a view of the courtyard, with a terrace pleasant perhaps even in the depths of Tuscan winter.
Do you hate your job? Feel like you’re better at doing something else, but wound up stuck in a dead-end job you hate? Do you come home every day drained and miserable?
Well, you’d have an understanding ear in polar explorer William Edward Parry. After several expeditions to the Arctic seeking the Northwest Passage, Parry was “promoted” to a job in the Hydrographical Department at the Admiralty. It was a dull, soul-sucking job he hated so much that, as reported by his wife Isabella, “He…generally comes home quite tired and worried, only fit to lie on the sofa and be made much of.”
Isabella’s skillful roasting of her husband’s complaints aside, hating your job seems to have been a universal even if you were a famous polar explorer, so if you don’t like your job, you’re in good company!
On June 30th of 1845, when the ships were just off the coast of Greenland, Erebus’s assistant surgeon Harry Goodsir wrote to his brother John saying: “There are several Danes on board of us as seaman so having no difficulty with language.”
On July 6th, after the ships had arrived at the Whalefish Islands in Greenland, Erebus’s purser Charles Osmer wrote to his wife Elizabeth: “We were accompanied by one of our sailors (a Dane) who speaks their language…”
A day later, on July 7th, Sir John Franklin wrote to his friend John Richardson: “I had written to the Governor… His answer being in Danish I had to get it translated by one of my men.”
We know from the muster books that there were no Danish men on the expedition. In fact, according to the muster books, out of 129 men there were only two born outside of the British Isles: Charles Johnson from Nova Scotia, and Henry Lloyd from Norway. However, three different letters by three different men referenced one or more Danes aboard Erebus. Why?
Sir John Barrow told me the earth’s poles keep eating men on his polar expeditions so I asked how many polar expeditions he has and he said he just funds a new one afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding men to the earth’s poles and then the british admiralty started crying
