Word: countesses
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...that nothing but good intentions and sincerity have been in his heart, which on my soul I think is trew, because in other things I finde him a reall man." Page to Painter. Rubens' success story had an early beginning. As a page in the house of the Countess of Lalaing, he learned the elaborate etiquette of baroque court life while still in his teens, then studied painting under the best Antwerp craftsmen of his day. At 23, a fluent Latin scholar and already an accomplished painter, he set off on the grand tour, in Italy joined the household...
...sink of sweated female labor," the ladies of easy virtue rode through Hyde Park in such splendid carriages or on such fine horses that the popular euphemism for rich prostitutes of the time was "pretty horse-breakers." One, Lizzie Howard, became the mistress of Napoleon III, and a French countess, and died a rich woman. Cora Pearl (born Crouch and no kin to Author Pearl), one of the few prostitutes to win mention in the Dictionary of National Biography, also made good in Paris. The book's title is provided by Catherine...
...timid new hotel chambermaid is warned to expect trouble from the countess, for Lucrezia Sanziani is dotty, penniless and old-a kind of walking Roman ruin. Fresh from Rome's Trastevere slums, Carmela, the young chambermaid, is prepared to quake at the countess' least whim. Instead, she finds herself cast as a confidante of yesteryear in the old lady's wandering mind. Each day, in the afterglow of the Roman twilight, the countess stares deeply into her Florentine silver-gilt hand mirror and conjures up a hallucinated remembrance of loves past...
...theatrical has-beens and wouldbes of Rome's fleabag Hotel Imperatore, the Countess Sanziani exudes the imposing aura of a famed once-was. For La Sanziani. as Carmela soon learns, was once a legendary courtesan, mistress of a d'Annunzio-like poet, playmate of a Dutch multimillionaire, brief bedfellow of the Kaiser and of many another great or near great. Carmela is too young to sense it, but the poignancy of the countess is that in her rage to relive these past love affairs, she is dueling with her last and most pressing suitor-death...
...most duels, the serious blends insensibly with the comic. The countess makes bequests of gems she has pawned, mistakes total strangers for lifetime friends. But in her infrequent lucid moments, the countess teaches young Carmela that the full life requires the taste of a connoisseur and the instincts of a gambler. "Never economize with life," she warns. "It never gives anything back." Carmela suddenly acquires the confidence of her own sexual power and beauty. It shines through to a film director (clearly modeled on Vittorio De Sica) who screen-tests the young beauty at just about the time that...