DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0225
no
VIGEE-LEBRUN
and perhaps in a more poignant degree, the sorrow that usually results
from an imprudent marriage, with the scattering of her earnings by a
rascally husband.
“ I found her,” writes the French artist to Hubert Robert, “ very
interesting, apart from her talent, on account of her intelligence and her
knowledge. She is a woman of about fifty (Angelica Kauffman was, in
fact, forty-eight at that time), very delicate, her health having suffered
in consequence of her unhappiness in marrying, in the first instance, an
adventurer who had ruined her. She has since been married again, to an
architect who acts as her man of business. She has talked with me a
great deal and very well, during the two evenings I have spent with her.
Her conversation is agreeable : die a prodigieusement d’ instruction, mais
aucun enthousiasme, ce qui, vu mon peu de savoir, ne mya point electrisee.”
At Rome, as in most other places—it is hard to remember an exception
—Madame Lebrun was dreadfully worried by noises, and found much
difficulty in settling comfortably in any house commended to her. Through-
out her travels she was pursued by noises at night: now it was horses in
some neighbouring stable, now market-carts in an adjoining street; now
it was people singing, and now washerwomen pumping water ; now rats
in a wainscot, and now a bird in an opposite window. But it was at
Rome that the strangest of all such disturbing influences spoilt her rest,
and compelled her to leave a lodging in which she had hoped, from its
retired situation, to pass her nights in refreshing sleep. In spite of such
hopes, she had been wise enough to arrange for a trial-night in the place
before signing an agreement with her landlord. That agreement was never
signed, and the reason for the breakdown in the negotiations shall be given
in her own narrative.
“ Scarcely had I got into bed, when I heard over my head an absolutely
intolerable noise ; it was caused by an innumerable quantity of worms
which gnawed the rafters. As soon as I opened the shutters the noise
stopped, but it was none the less necessary to abandon that house, to my
great regret. ... I am convinced that the most difficult thing to do in
Rome is to house oneself.”
At length, however, the harassed artist did get some lodgings where
worms gnawed not the beams, and horses champed not in their stalls,
and where there were no absolutely intolerable noises of any kind to make
her nights hideous. There having set up her easel, she speedily found herself
in the full tide of portrait-painting. The first sitter she mentions was
VIGEE-LEBRUN
and perhaps in a more poignant degree, the sorrow that usually results
from an imprudent marriage, with the scattering of her earnings by a
rascally husband.
“ I found her,” writes the French artist to Hubert Robert, “ very
interesting, apart from her talent, on account of her intelligence and her
knowledge. She is a woman of about fifty (Angelica Kauffman was, in
fact, forty-eight at that time), very delicate, her health having suffered
in consequence of her unhappiness in marrying, in the first instance, an
adventurer who had ruined her. She has since been married again, to an
architect who acts as her man of business. She has talked with me a
great deal and very well, during the two evenings I have spent with her.
Her conversation is agreeable : die a prodigieusement d’ instruction, mais
aucun enthousiasme, ce qui, vu mon peu de savoir, ne mya point electrisee.”
At Rome, as in most other places—it is hard to remember an exception
—Madame Lebrun was dreadfully worried by noises, and found much
difficulty in settling comfortably in any house commended to her. Through-
out her travels she was pursued by noises at night: now it was horses in
some neighbouring stable, now market-carts in an adjoining street; now
it was people singing, and now washerwomen pumping water ; now rats
in a wainscot, and now a bird in an opposite window. But it was at
Rome that the strangest of all such disturbing influences spoilt her rest,
and compelled her to leave a lodging in which she had hoped, from its
retired situation, to pass her nights in refreshing sleep. In spite of such
hopes, she had been wise enough to arrange for a trial-night in the place
before signing an agreement with her landlord. That agreement was never
signed, and the reason for the breakdown in the negotiations shall be given
in her own narrative.
“ Scarcely had I got into bed, when I heard over my head an absolutely
intolerable noise ; it was caused by an innumerable quantity of worms
which gnawed the rafters. As soon as I opened the shutters the noise
stopped, but it was none the less necessary to abandon that house, to my
great regret. ... I am convinced that the most difficult thing to do in
Rome is to house oneself.”
At length, however, the harassed artist did get some lodgings where
worms gnawed not the beams, and horses champed not in their stalls,
and where there were no absolutely intolerable noises of any kind to make
her nights hideous. There having set up her easel, she speedily found herself
in the full tide of portrait-painting. The first sitter she mentions was