The Surprise of Cremona: One Woman's Adventures in Cremona, Parma, Mantua, Ravenna, Urbino and Arezzo

by Edith Templeton, Anita Brookner (Introduction)

Edith Templeton—bohemian aristocrat, accomplished novelist, and widow of the physician to the King of Nepal—wrote this highly individual account of her visit to six northern Italian towns in the early 50s. Enchantingly evocative of the time and places, her vintage narrative is a gem of travel literature. In her new introduction, Anita Brookner offers an insightful, gracefully written analysis of the astringent wit and classic poise of Templeton’s writing.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Italy, Biography Memoir, Memoir, Food, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Edith Templeton was born in Prague, in 1916, in what used to be the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now the Czech Republic. She died in 2006. She wrote both short stories and novels. She also used the pen name Louise Walbrook.

Reviews

[Fionnuala]

How many times does it happen that we read a friend's review here on goodreads and are momentarily so intrigued by a book we didn't know existed the moment before that we vow to read it immediately though we know we already have a hundred other books lined up to be read.

The upshot in most cases is that we don't get to read very many of those hundred books but we also don't get to read the one that flashed in our pan for that brief moment—because in the meantime we've read other reviews of other exciting-sounding books and we are off chasing some entirely other fish to never fry.

That's my experience in any case and I've even given up marking books as 'want-to-read'. In fact I emptied the GR 'want-to-read' shelf completely because I'd long since forgotten why I marked most of those books as 'want-to-read' in the first place just as I've long since forgotten why I bought many of the unread books in my house plus the unread titles in my ebook library.

I actually get a lot of pleasure seeing a big fat 0 beside the 'want-to-read' link on my home page. I wish I could delete some of the unread books in my house as easily but that's a much more complicated affair because I've spent money on them, and though their day isn't today it may be tomorrow. Or all the other books in the world might disappear. Or I might wake up one morning like the woman in Marlen Haushofer's The Wall, and find that my home and garden has been cut off from the outside world and that I have to survive with what I've been left with. In that case, I'd be very glad of the hundreds of books I own and I'd have more than enough to read and reread for a very long time.

The Surprise of Cremona: One Woman's Adventures in Cremona, Parma, Mantua, Ravenna, Urbino and Arezzo is a book I'd enjoy rereading if my house were to be cut off from the outside world. Edith Templeton's chatty adventures in Italy make for perfect armchair traveling. And to think that her book was one of those 'flash in the pan' books that I heard about via a friend's review and momentarily vowed to read just as I do hundreds of others. But in this case, I bought the ticket as it were. Yes, although this 1950s book was hard to track down, I did manage to place an order for it.
Then I promptly forgot all about Edith Templeton and her travel writing.

Two months later, a package arrived from a second-hand bookseller. I opened it not knowing what I was going to find. The Surprise of Cremona lived up to its name!

I'd just finished a long sojourn in Australia with a rather serious writer so traveling to Italy in the company of the light-hearted Edith was just the thing, especially as I'd visited four of the six towns she writes about five years ago and so the buildings, paintings, frescos, and mosaics she examines with her unorthodox eye were familiar to me.

What was less familiar were the aspects of Italian culture she picked up on. If anyone had told me that Italy had changed so much in the last sixty years, I'd have said no, Italy is one of those places where change is hardly visible. When I sat in a restaurant across from the Gonzaga Palazzo in Mantua, for example, eating Agnolini sprinkled with Grano Padano, I felt I was back in the sixteen hundreds. The waiter and the other customers knew we were tourists of course but it didn't make any difference to their behavior. They just got on with what they were doing before we entered. Edith Templeton on the other hand keeps mentioning that Italians find her tourist status exotic—I'm guessing a foreign woman traveling alone in Italy in the 1950s got a lot more attention that they would get today. Her adventures with the various waiters and customers and hotel personnel she meets add a lot of interest to her travel writing and I was glad to get that peek into 1950s Italy.

Another feature of the time that we'd find difficult to replicate today is the letters of introduction to museum directors she carried with her. Her account is sprinkled with the conversations she had with all those directors whom she invariably describes as owls because of their academic background—and their physical appearance too. There is such an 'owl' in each town she visits, though she doesn't always agree with him about the value of the paintings and other artifacts he shows her. Being a very outspoken person, she argues her point every time regardless of his supposed 'superior' knowledge. For instance, when she visits the Montefeltro Palazzo in Urbino, she dismisses the Piero de Francesca paintings the director raves about and much prefers a Raphael painting which the director passes over quickly.
I remember seeing that Raphael painting myself and thinking how interesting that Raphael's portrait of one of the Montefeltro women was called 'La Muta' or 'the silent one' since it was hanging in the room adjacent to where the famous conversations recorded by Baldassare Castiglione in his 16th century Book of the Courtier took place (Edith mentions Castiglione in her section on Mantua as he was born there). The woman in Raphael's painting would have been present at the conversations on what makes a Good Courtier and an Ideal Lady, but it is true that women's voices are not heard very often Castiglione's book so her pseudonym is apt. No one would dare call Edith Templeton 'La Muta' however. She's very much not Castiglione's model of the Ideal Lady. According to his book, the Ideal Lady is allowed to be witty but must primarily be coy and on no account draw attention to herself or her opinions. That would never have done for Edith. In fact, she could be the model for the Ideal Courtier instead, one of whose attributes was to appear to do everything very casually and easily—with sprezzatura, to use a word Castiglione coined to describe a courtier's air of complete nonchalance*. Edith writes so casually about her travels that it is easy to forget that there is a lot of craft behind it all!
I missed her confident and entertaining voice when I reached the end of her adventures.
……………………………………………………………
The preface to this book is by the writer Anita Brookner who met with Edith Templeton in the 1980s when she was about seventy-five. Edith was no longer a tourist at that stage but living permanently in Italy. This is the way Anita describes the occasion: My only meeting with Edith Templeton took place in her flat in Bordighera. I found an isolated and eccentric woman: I saw from the expression on her face as we were introduced that the same judgement had been passed on myself...
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Many thanks to goodreads friend Antigone's review for putting me on Edith's track back in December.
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*I was reminded of the word sprezzatura by a friend's casual use of it in the comment thread and I realised it was the perfect way to describe Edith.

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's another book with a bit of back-channel buzz, fittingly introduced to us by Anita Brookner.

Edith Templeton was born in Prague in 1916. She later moved to England, where she married and began a career as a writer. Her style is very much that of a European Dorothy Parker - not quite as polished but thoroughly educated, acerbic, and amusing as hell. It makes sense, then, to find her contributing to Vogue, Harper's, and the like. With The Surprise of Cremona, she takes her droll sensibility to Italy and tromps through six towns that are woefully unprepared for her.

As a sampling, we join the tour of the Gonzaga Palace in Mantua, given by a quick-eyed old woman with a "vivid sense of the past." So impressed with the palace was Edith that she asked to move in. Her guide was not at all pleased with the thought and insisted she would feel suffocated by this level of grandeur.

I would not feel suffocated at all. I would wallow in it. My sharp old woman is a deplorable victim of our modern taste in interior decoration. Nowadays it is thought that, to start with, opulence is sinful. The interior decorator has no 'sin' in his dictionary, but he has the expression 'bad taste.' Opulence is in bad taste. He believes in contrasts. He believes that if one puts one fine work of art in a room the rest of the room must be bare in order to give breathing space to the one work of art. This, of course, is aesthetic nonsense and artistic cowardice. It is also immoral. By doing what he does the interior decorator denies the parable of the loaves and fishes. This parable tells us about the nature of love. It means that our love is not rationed, and that it can grow larger and larger according to our needs. If we love one person it does not mean that in order to love another we have to chop our existing love in half and deprive the first person of the love which we want to give to the other person.

In the same way, we can love ten paintings in one room. We do not have to limit ourselves to one single painting.

Anita Brookner is correct to point out that Edith's travels come most to life in her many exchanges with waiters, hotel clerks, tour guides, and the select Italian men who choose to pursue her. She has peopled her canvas with characters worthy of the journey, and they provide a wonderful texture for what could have been rather arid sections of art history. I would also draw attention to an outstanding passage on the mosaics of Ravenna. I hadn't understood the reasoning behind mosaics. I do now.

Edith's work is tough to find in print these days. However, should you be at a book fair, or a library sale, or a dusty old shop and happen across her? Pick her up, for heaven's sake. She's a treasure.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edith Templeton knew her way 'round the world. She was weary, world-wise and liked having the last word. She decided to take readers along with her when she went on her tour of Cremona - Parma - Mantua - Ravenna - Urbino - Arezzo. Basically, this is a book report of all the aspects of her trip, which is mostly a chance for her to meet her beloved, seemingly equally whimsical Aunt Alice.

Written in 1954, and about a time that feels a few decades earlier (?between WWs I and II?) the places mentioned are certainly changed by now, but maybe not? Still, it is interesting how an older woman in that time would travel on her own - so very confidently. Here is a snippet of what ET shares with her readers:

Pg 49
“It is the highest tower in Italy,” remarks the padrone. “Would you like me to come up it with you?”

I know that it isn’t colloquial English he is after. I say: “No, thank you, I’ll do it alone one day when I feel energetic. Just now I’m too lazy.”

“But you cannot go up alone, signora.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is forbidden. Last year four people threw themselves from the top of the torazzo, that is to say, each time one person went up there alone, and since then there is a law that one must go in company.”

Then, after a pause: “Foreign ladies often travel alone, I know. And then, they find company; they can’t help it, it is only natural. What are they to do, when, for instance, they want to see the torazzo? I understand. But I would rather kill a woman of mine than see her walking with another man. Do you understand me?”

“Of course.”

“When a woman is dead I know at least where she is and what she is doing. Would you not agree?”

“Of course.”

“And a woman who is not worth killing is not worth having at all. Would you not agree?”

God, yes, he is right. And what he says is not mere operatic breast-beating out of Cavalleria Rusticana. He means it. I know his type. They really do kill.”

This fell into my TBR list from my copy of 1000 books to read before you die. . . .and gotta admit this isn't my usual, and having read it doesn't make it any more likely that I would. She's wry, and funny - dry as a desert - but she's above us all, and that's hard on me. I want to like my narrator, not think I'm the next thing she will lay out on the page to mock. There are many words, poems and writings in other languages. . .and I'm just lazy enough to want an interpretation within reach in the text. . . but no. She blithely leaves you to your own devices if you are ignorant enough to not have had those lessons. So, there's that bug.

On the other hand, her knowledge and commentary of the art, architecture, history and culture she comes across in her travels is not to be dismissed because of a few irritations. She knows her way around classical everything! Just know, you are going to do it at her pace. Stay or go. She cares not.

2.5 stars. Scrambling to stay interested and focused.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliantly bonkers travel book, but one star comes off for gobsmacking inaccuracies (I took it on holiday with me to Italy, and very soon found its limitations as a guide book). Her insights and knowledge are often, though not always, spot on, but it is apparent that she didn't always keep a careful note of where she actually was. For all that, I wouldn't have dispensed with her as a travelling companion - she's terrific company.

Here's my initial review on Vulpes Libris:

http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/201...

And here's my blog about travelling with her on my Italian holiday:

http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/201...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an absolute hoot. And I use that term for several reasons, not the least of which is that the author often refers to a certain type of “scholar” as “owls.” Tempted to award five stars. TBD. Full review to come.

Feb. 10, 2020: OK, I lied — there will be no full review forthcoming, as 12 months (and many books) have gone by and I don’t remember enough about this to write a worthwhile review beyond the three lines above. But I DO remember really enjoying it, having been only a few months removed from two weeks in Italy at the time of reading. And I would read it again ... but it’s darn difficult to find!

[Side Real Press · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having now read a number of Templeton’s novels and short stories and enjoyed them it seemed only natural to read her only non-fiction book which is her observations made on a trip to northern Italy.

It's not a genre I normally read so cannot compare it to other similar books so perhaps every such writer reveals themselves as much as she does. Not only her knowledge of history and art which benefits from her obvious classical education, and useful travel tips such as how to find a good Italian restaurant (“turn from a side street into a smaller side street, branch off into an alley and walk, if possible through a passage connecting two courtyards”) but also her dry observation on various topics, such as how each nation has a way of arranging its domestic architecture to make themselves uncomfortable, why she thinks the artichoke is the king of the vegetables, the place of the bread roll within the context of a meal, and why she loathes modern rooms with only one picture on the walls using the parable of the loaves and the fishes to explain it.

She also explains how to deal with unwanted attention from men (look upwards, sigh and say you are going to meet your lover) but how one is perfectly safe from the attentions of those who she terms ‘the tired ones’ (affluent bachelors of twenty to thirty years old who gather together to idle life away in bars- they are ‘tired of life’) who will show her the sights but will move on to the next foreigner soon enough.

In the days when ‘everything’ is online, it is interesting to read how she navigates each place via personal introductions from the people she meets either in person or by letter, the quality of transport and of hotels (it's pretty obvious she is used to ‘first class’ in all these things.

I cannot say whether one could use this volume as a guidebook today, of course, those buildings will (hopefully!) not have gone anywhere, ditto the art, although it might be interesting to try. I’m also not sure I would have enjoyed it so much had I not read and liked her fiction so much. So I will give it a cautious thumbs-up and be a bit more vigorous in doing so if you have read some other books beforehand.

P.S. I won't tell you what 'the surprise of Cremona' is- you can look it up yourself. It's quite amusing.

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd book. First of all it's out of print and costs about $200 on Amazon, so I had to request it from interlibrary loan (Shout out to Texas Western College of El Paso!). My copy arrived without a dust jacket or an introduction, so I had absolutely no context for the contents. It starts abruptly on a train and ends equally abruptly also on a train. Eventually, it becomes clear that this is an account of the author's tour of the main sights in various Italian towns. Is she a journalist? an art student? Why is she traveling alone? Why these offbeat destinations? Usually, a tour of Italian art would start with Rome, Venice, and Florence. They're mentioned, but not included. Maybe this is volume 2? It's never explained, but for some reason she has arranged appointments with various professors and guides at each destination. Maybe travel agents did that back in the 50s. Mostly it's a humorous account of her interactions with hotel staff and other local characters, her impressions of various artists and sights, interspersed with amusing historical and personal family anecdotes related to her travels. Quirky. Would recommend for art/travel lovers.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of parts. Templeton's humour is immediately attractive and pulls you in. However, the fun never lets up and eventually becomes a bore. You never feel you are meeting people, just bit players in the Edith show. She does, however, have a wonderful turn of phrase and can bring you up short with an opinion. Great explications of Italian art.

[Mary Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an unknown travel treasure!

[Kelly Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional writing... a treasure worth seeking out.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp, smart a woman traveling on her own in 50s Italy. Art history and artichokes. Parmesan cheese.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvelous style & interesting viewpoint.

[Cleti · Rating 5 out of 5]

travel writing at its best