Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, Cecilia (1782)
I have been a traveler all my life, both metaphorically and physically. The first journey of magnitude that I remember is driving in our station wagon from West Orange, New Jersey, to Readfield, Maine, just outside of Augusta the summer I turned four. We had rented Alberta Jackson’s house, found for us by family friends, for a week. It was near a pond encircled by birch groves. Mrs. Jackson had white hair and said, “Ayuh.” My younger sister was just learning to walk; my older brother learning to canoe with my father. My mother cooked on a woodstove and I saw my first movie, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Travel had opened up all sorts of vistas, and I was hooked.
Three years later we went to Norway to visit my mother’s family, crossing the ocean on the Norwegian American Line’s Oslofjord in the early fall (always one to march to a different drummer, not unlike the women I have celebrated in all my books, Mom thought we’d learn more on the trip than in school, so we started late that year). It was hurricane season, and although in third class, my brother, sister, and I had the run of the ship from first class on down. All the adults were seasick. We, of course, were just fine—swam in the saltwater pool, had what still seem like Lucullan feasts at the smörgåsbords, and made friends with the crew. The trip took ten days. At the end of this kind of voyage you knew you had truly traveled somewhere.
In 1967 my sister and I worked outside London as au pairs for several months. Sergeant Pepper Summer we call it still. This time we crossed the ocean in a propjet, a charter. It was the first of a number of cheap flights I took in the days when air travel was a novelty, and no one would have dreamed of wearing jeans on a flight. For this one, I wore my little navy blue Jackie Kennedy suit with the Mandarin collar, but left my pillbox hat at home. I seem to recall that the flight took twelve hours. Could that be? It was a college charter, and besides Wellesley, the rest of the passengers were all guys from Cornell, so we didn’t mind.
And then there was my honeymoon, or as my friend Julie called it, the “Moonyhon,” since it was in July and we had been married in December. Oh that Moonyhon flight! Heaven! Air France, not a no-name charter—and we were going to the country itself! The dinner served tasted exquisite, as did the complimentary champagne.
I did not grow up in a gourmet environment. My mother was an artist, and feeding a family of five was somewhat of a chore, especially as she herself had grown up on a diet mostly of fish and boiled veggies, especially potatoes. She stuck to the tried and true with an occasional mad fling at a recipe from the book Casserole Cookery, a source of that northern New Jersey classic dinner-party staple—Green Bean and Mushroom Soup Casserole with Durkee fried onions sprinkled on top. One day someone told her about adding La Choy water chestnuts, and that was about as far as she ventured. When my parents went out, we thought the Swanson TV dinners Mom left for us were an exotic treat. Those and Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. But I stray.
I came to my love of cooking because of my husband, who still teases me about the first time he opened the fridge in my apartment and found only a container of OJ and a jar of herring (we got a full lunch at the place where I was then teaching, and you could tell all the single faculty, since we were the ones chowing down, making it the main meal of the day). Anyway, changing to the train for Lyon in Paris on our honeymoon that July we stopped to eat and I had my Julia Child moment, only it was an even simpler dish—omelette aux fines herbes with pommes frites and a salade verte. I had never tasted anything so perfect—the omelette with herbs, those crispy frites, so very unhealthy twice-fried in beef tallow, and the vinaigrette on that fresh frisée. There was much, much more to come. After several weeks with our friends in Lyon and then on to Provence, I realized if you wanted to eat that way you had to cook. I’ve never looked back. Living in France in the 1980s only made things worse—or rather much, much better.
Now back to this book. The Body in the Vestibule was a love letter to France, The Body in the Fjord to Norway, The Body in the Big Apple and The Body in the Boudoir to Manhattan, all the Sanpere books to Penobscot Bay in Maine, the Aleford books to the place where I’ve spent my life as a wife and mother in New England. Now The Body in the Piazza is a lettera d’amore to Italy and specifically the trip I took with my friend and fellow writer Valerie Wolzien. We left husbands and hearths, heading first to Rome, where neither of us, despite many travels, had ever been. We felt much like Faith—deliriously besotted. And then it was on to Tuscany. We had both spent time there, but not with the kind of freedom having no schedule provides. As E. M. Forster—and Freddy Ives—advised, “The point of travel is to get lost,” so we wandered. Especially in markets. Before we left the United States, we were extremely fortunate to happen upon and book “The Food Lovers Walking Tour” in Florence with Claire Hennessy, assistant extraordinaire to the food writer and chef Faith Willinger. It was a day, and food, to remember always. Claire introduced us to the Baronis among other people and places, many appearing in these pages. I cannot recommend this tour, and this young woman, highly enough—http://www.faithwillinger.com. Claire also serves as a travel consultant (http://www.boutiqueflorence.com).
And so it goes. My husband and I are marking a milestone traveling to Ireland this year, and I’ll be returning with Valerie to Italy. We need to sit on more rooftop terraces drinking Prosecco and I’m down to the last drop of the amazing balsamic vinegar I bought at the Mercato Centrale.
The Elizabeth Hardwick quote from Sleepless Nights at the opening of this book is one I think about a great deal. For me, even going on a trip to New York City, especially alone, for a day or two grants a kind of liberating anonymity. I don’t exist. And then there is its corollary—I could be anyone. Oddly enough it is at times like this when we let go that we are most ourselves.
Finally, besides being a love letter to Italy and the Italians, this is an epistle addressed to two groups of people. The first is my characters, led by Faith Fairchild, who while not Katherine Hall Page, is very close to her, and I’m glad Faith’s anniversary trip ended so happily. Jewelry is important. The wonderful mystery writer William Tapply, sadly gone from us, once wrote the following moving words about his character, lawyer Brady Coyne:
He has neither the cynical world view of some private eyes nor the excessive honor of others. He is, in other words, like you, gentle reader, and he’s very much like me. I’d rather have you identify with him than admire him. He’s not bigger than life. He’s just about life-sized.
I hope the same is true for Faith Sibley Fairchild.
The other group that has become similarly dear over these twenty-five years are you, my readers, many of whom have become friends outright and all of whom have become friends in my heart. I cannot thank you enough.