Autograph Letter from William Dean Howells
Of Boston and Cambridge he was always happily reminiscent: of entertaining Mr. and Mrs. John Hay while on their wedding journey, and later Bret Harte, in the small reception room in the Berkeley Street house, where the tiny “library” on the north side was without heat or sunlight when Howells wrote his Venetian Days there in 1870; of early visits with Mark Twain before the great fireplace in “the Cabin” at his Belmont home, over the door of which was inscribed the quotation from The Merchant of Venice, “From Venice as far as Belmont.”—“In these words,” Howells said, “lies the history of my married life”;—of the move from Belmont to Boston as his material resources increased.
“There was a time when people used to think I didn’t like Boston,” he would chuckle, evidently enjoying the recollections that came to him; “but I always loved it. The town did take itself seriously,” he added a moment later; “but it had a right to. That was what made it Boston. Sometimes, when we know a place or a person through and through, the fine characteristics may be assumed, and we may chaff a little over the harmless foibles. That is what I did to Boston.”
He chided me good-naturedly because I preferred Florence to Venice. “Italy,” he quoted, “is the face of Europe, and Venice is the eye of Italy. But, after all, what difference does it make?” he asked. “We are both talking of the same wonderful country, and perhaps the intellectual atmosphere of antiquity makes up for the glory of the Adriatic.”
Then he told me a story which I afterwards heard Hamilton Mabie repeat at the seventy-fifth birthday anniversary banquet given Howells at Sherry’s by Colonel George Harvey in 1912.
Two American women met in Florence on the Ponte Vecchio. One of them said to the other, “Please tell me whether this is Florence or Venice.”
“What day of the week is it?” the other inquired.
“Wednesday.”
“Then,” said the second, looking at her itinerary, “this is Venice.”
“I was born a printer, you know,” Howells remarked during one of my visits. “I can remember the time when I couldn’t write, but not the time when I couldn’t set type.”