2962_tahcheechee-florentine-humoresque

2962 < Leon Tahcheechee, available writings > index

Leon Tahcheechee. “Florentine Humoresque”
The Commonweal 7:7 (December 21, 1927) : 839-840
Northwestern U copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link

paragraphs numbered for ease of reference

what I can find of, on and by Leon Tahcheechee (Tahch) Corwin : 2962

When the Baroness went to inquire about the house in which she had spent a good part of her life, the sir, gentleman, cavalier, commissary of confiscated properties in Florence, spoke to her in this way:
“My dear lady, we didn’t start the war. The Germans started it. We have, therefore, by the rigor of custom, confiscated all properties of our declared enemies. But, my dear lady, we are always thankful to see old enmities forsaken in the hallowed name of peace and concord. We suggest, therefore, that you buy back your estate at the sacrificial price and on the generous terms that his majesty’s officers shall fix upon.”
She bought her villa on the eminence above the Piazza Cavour, at the end of Viccolo San Marco Vecchio, with the observatory tower on which to sit on transparent evenings and look up to Fiesole or down on Florence. But her resources were brought to such a strain by that transaction that she was forced to let living quarters to distinguished visitors from victorious countries. Colonel Babbington was one of her first guests. In deference to the universal tradition, he immediately fell in love with the mistress and became a fixture of the household. But the Baroness would not marry him.
Could you have seen him preen his fifty odd years, pull down his mustaches, drop a lock over his forehead, cross his legs, light a cigarette and fling the match away with a devil-may-care gesture, you would have thought the Baroness out of her senses.
The Colonel was distinction itself, an ornament, he and his fifty odd years. But it was not the distinction of your comme-il-faut gentlemen on the golf links at Cannes — it was the dashing, old-time gallantry. His good blood burned in him like a heady liquor; a fine madness — even rashness, perhaps, if he were taken in the wrong way. One imagined that a sword was concealed in his slender Malacca stick. What was she thinking of, that Baroness, that round-eyed and round-mouthed morsel of perfection? Did she not possess two children and a very scanty fortune?
True, the Colonel had a passion for declaiming, and his speeches were rather long, but she had two children, a very scanty fortune — no fortune at all, in fact — and was thirty-three years of age.
His foibles were of a nature calculated to endear the Baroness’s children to him. He was quite sure he had been a Florentine in his former incarnation. I do not remember if he had been a “Gu-wuelph” or a “Ghi-belline,” but it was one of them. Anything Florentine was dear to him and the children had both been born in Florence. There was really no reason why the Baroness should not have married him.
Colonel Babbington held that the state of wedlock was not alone the most honorable and the most hallowed by tradition, but the most blissful as well. The sweet restraints of matrimony was one of his favorite topics of conversation. “But it is necessary that the couple be well suited to one another.” That was a very important point. And love — that was the infallible touchstone. He had some disparaging remarks for those who were married simply for convenience. Without love there was not that sympathetic, almost psychic, understanding, and the conscientious desire to make allowances for the beloved. He himself was a bit strange at times, but that only helped him to understand like-spirited temperaments. But the Baroness would not marry him .
The Colonel had retained his youthful vigor. He could walk faster and farther than most men. He could dance, sing in a quavering falsetto, hold a handkerchief between his hands and jump through it; knew [840] something of fencing and was accounted a good swimmer.
True, he would read the life of Buffalo Bill, but that was not strange. He was a South African, a “colonial,” as he said. He loved the life of the great out-of-doors: lusty strife with malcontents, midnight rides through dangerous forests. In the biography of his American hero, there was no scene that affected him so much as that in which Colonel Cody’s horse was buried at sea. Colonel Babbington could not do otherwise than shed a few tears in honor of that horse. He could understand so well Buffalo’s emotion on seeing the remains of his old friend sink into the Atlantic.
The Colonel never forgot his gallant exterior. Even though one suffers one should not give way to depression, should not forget to pin a flower in one’s lapel. He was possessed by a fine madness, yes, but that should not be enough to make one forego all thought of himself; to forget to comb his mustache, or to apply a monocle at the right moment.
The Baroness writes letters in her garden. It is a witching place, that garden. There are lemon trees in tubs that exhale an acidulous perfume. There is the voluptuous jasmine, the magnolia and the acacia, and from beyond the orangerie come the monotonous songs of the peasants, singing as they work in the vines among the olive trees, now high, now low, in greater or lesser volume, according to the caprices of the wind.
The Colonel arrives.
“Don’t mind me, Baroness.”
“Will you forgive me if I finish just this one letter?”
“Please, please.”
The Colonel can imagine nothing more intense than sitting there in the cool afternoon shade of the garden, with no sound save the scratching of the pen or, perhaps, the whistle of a bird or the squeaky voice of an insect and the lull of the peasants’ songs. As the dimpled hands of the Baroness scribble lines over discreetly tinted paper, he smokes and considers curiously her firm shoulders, her engaging profile, her white throat, and abandons himself to optimistic imaginings. After a while he asks:
“Have you decided, Baroness ?”
She smiles.
“Forgive me, my friend, I can’t.”
The Colonel wants reasons. She tells him that she loves another, one whom she will never see again, but whom she cannot forget. She learns, to her sorrow, that such a fine display of romanticism exalts, rather than cools, the Colonel’s ardor.
It is some months since that evening they took their coffee alone on the tower. What an evening! so full of odors, sights, sounds; so luminous, transparent, a tender bluish mist softening the details of the vast panorama. On one side, Fiesole; on the other, Florence. The cicadas chirped lustily in the poplars and elms. The cuckoo awakened and the little downy owl called sorrowfully from the neighboring wood. What a voluptuous odor fumed up from the warm earth, acrid and sweet, along with the soft vehemence of jasmine and magnolia that floated into the brain like a sleepy drug! The moon appeared, blushing on the horizon.
The Baroness was surprised at the vibration of her voice:
“See the moon, Colonel, how beautiful it is.” The Colonel grasped his monocle, lifted it with a dainty gesture, and looked through the little crystal disk at the rose-colored satellite.
Then, one morning, the Baroness, picking flowers in the olive field, heard excited voices in the road that led up to the villa. She climbed stealthily up a slight elevation at the edge of the wall and looked over to discover the Colonel charging an invisible adversary to the death with his malacca stick. The invisible combatant must have been outdone by the Colonel’s entry — at any rate the Colonel jabbed the earth several times, making a fury of dust, and cried:
“Die, coward, die!”
Well and what? Better manufacture his enemies than run amuck with the Florentines — and it is hard to see what objection could be made to looking through a monocle at the moon. He could tennis with the best, drink a full half-liter of brandy, recount the exploits of Benvenuto Cellini, walk ten leagues, swim across the Arno. But the Baroness would not marry him.

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