Ellen Axson Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

Title

Ellen Axson Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

Creator

Wilson, Ellen Axson

Identifier

WWP15020

Date

1904 May 25

Description

Ellen Axson Wilson writes to her husband, Woodrow Wilson, during a trip with her daughters to Italy.

Source

Library of Congress

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum

Subject

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence

Language

English

Spatial Coverage

Villa Trollope, Florence, Italy

Text

(17) 

My own darling

This is our fourth week day in Florence; we are well settled and having a “beautiful time” in spite of the sad fact that we should have been on our way to Genoa today! Jessie is so very well and happy. She has been driving about the city and seen the outside of everything; we havent begun yet to take her really sight-seeing. Yesterday we had a perfectly glorious drive to San Miniato,— a beautiful old church on a high hill just beyond the city. The church is a noble & interesting old basilica with wonderful sculptures and mosaics in the interior, but the chief thing is the drive itself, between enchanting gardens & villas, and the view, — above all the view! – take it all in all the most glorious the most perfect I have ever seen. It would be impossible to exaggerate the beauty of the city as it lies below one with its Duomo “like a dim red crown”, the grand tower of the Palazzo Vecchio,– “noblest symbol of liberty the world has ever seen”, Giotto's campinile, lovely beyond all words, and all its lesser towers and domes and palaces. Then there is the shining Arno with its lovely valley, the ivy-covered wall of Michel-Angelo, the dark slop of Mount Morello, the cypress-crowned height of Fiesole, and beyond all the mountains – ridge beyond ridge, peak above peak of ever fainter purple. Of course there are other rivers & valleys and mountains as lovely but surely no where else in our modern world is there such another city in such a setting! It fr realizes ones highest dream of what nature and art may do to aid each other.

I have been to three of the great galleries,– four counting San Marco — the Ufizzi, the Pitti and the Bella Arti, — but as for really seeing any of them yet! — they are simply inexhaustible! I am left gasping,– overwhelmed,– almost dismayed at the feast spread before me. Everywhere I turn there is some masterpiece that I have longed to see all my life, and I rush from one to another and am so overcome with rapture and excitement that I end by holding my head with both hands in a sort of despair. This evening it was the “Pitti” – the best I have seen as a whole,— it is a much smaller collection that the Ufizzi and there is less winnowing of chaff to be done as one goes along. (Thought in all of them there is surprisingly little that is not good,– being in that respect a great contrast to the Roman galleries.) The Pitti palace itself is a nobly beautiful building, so that the pictures have there an especially fine setting. The only disappointment one has is that in many pictures at the Ufizzi and a few at the Pitti have been more or less ruined by “restorations”. Of course I knew that but hadn't quite realized it, I suppose;— at any rate I was not prepared to find in the case of some of the “masterpieces” such hot disagreeable colour laid on by those imbeciles. Perhaps I am a little spoiled by my Umbrian experience – by dwelling so long and lovingly on the soft, dusky or tender tones of the old frescoes at Assisi, Spoleto, Spello. But after all the spoiled one are the exception! – How I wish you could see the great Giorgione! It is as lovely in tone & colour as in every other respect. I mean of course the three men with the “monk at the clavichord” that you like so much. It is perfectly beautiful; I could scarcely tear myself from it; How I should like to copy it! It seems rather bold to speak of even copying such a wonder but I could do it,— for I feel the expression of that face down to the bottom of my soul.

But I must stop my ravings, for we are to take the other chief drive this afternoon,—to the Certosa,— & must make a rather early start. We are having glorious weather for such purposes,— a thunderstorm Monday afternoon cooled the air & laid the dust and now it is just right, for Americans at least. The English complain–unreasonably–of the heat. There is a strong & cool breeze all the time, and not a particle of heaviness in the air. Dear Jessie has been reading “The Cardinal's Snuff-box,” a charming little book the scene of which is laid in Italy, and she seems to think she has had as nice a morning as we had. I can't help feeling “bad” at leaving her alone and going off to enjoy myself, but I know she is having a better time than with the sister who is a perfect angel but would talk all the time about her former “cases,”–like all other nurses. Just now Jessie has a visitor,– a nice little English girl who, oddly enough, is also named “Jessie” and is only one month older than our Jessie. She and her Aunt sit opposite us at the table. They are very nice people; her father is a barrister & a “F. R. S.”, and they live at Chester in one of those villas beyond the town overlooking the Dee. Her older sister is named Marjory, & is a graduate of an Oxford college.

But I must stop abruptly. Give my dear, dear love to all. I am perfectly well and very happy, — and I love you, love you, love you;— I am with you in spirit always, dearest, day & night.– I am in every heart-throb

Your own Eileen

Original Format

Letter

To

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/WWP15020.pdf

Citation

Wilson, Ellen Axson, “Ellen Axson Wilson to Woodrow Wilson,” 1904 May 25, WWP15020, Ellen Axson Wilson Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.