WS: Tell me about Bernard Berenson.
GD: What does one say about the greatest art historian who ever lived?
WS: The “greatest”? Come now.
GD: Bernard was solely responsible for creating a market for Renaissance paintings. If not for him, there’d be no quote-unquote Old Masters.
WS: There is also the converse. Some say he manipulated the market and drove prices to unreasonable levels.
GD: A person has to earn a living.
WS: Customarily, yes. From what I’ve read, you and Berenson traveled together extensively.
GD: We did. I often joined him on trips to secure various pieces of art. He trusted my keen insight and objectivity. Assessing art may sound like a quite fanciful occupation but B.B. was under a lot of pressure. His clients were top-of-the-line.
WS: Such as?
GD: Henry Clay Frick. William Randolph Hearst. J. P. Morgan. Andrew Mellon. John D. Rockefeller. To name a few.
WS: That’s quite a pedigree.
GD: Well, he was quite a man. B.B. taught me a tremendous amount. About art, of course, but also dedication. He’d travel to monasteries in the farthest outreaches of civilization to examine a single brushstroke.
WS: Astounding.
GD: Not big enough a word.
WS: But the two of you were rather disparate in age.
GD: One year or a hundred between us, does it matter?
WS: And what about Berenson’s wife?
GD: Ah, old Mary. A serious woman, and a respected art critic in her own right. She liked to pretend I was a silly, simple girl. Couldn’t tolerate the intellectual competition because she couldn’t compete on looks. With me, there was nothing she could feel superior about.
WS: I thought you and Mary were friends. You once asked B.B. to pass along the following message to her. [Sound of papers rustling] “My love in honeyed streams to that sweetest of white mice cooked in gooseberry jam.”
GD: We were friends, for a time. But that’s what friendships do. They end.
WS: Ah, so cooked in gooseberry jam by and by. Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer appears wistful.
GD: Mr. Seton, I have no place in my life for wistful.
WS: But you cared about Berenson deeply, didn’t you?
GD: I loved him in ways you could never understand.
WS: Tell me, Mrs. Spencer, if you were so close, how come you stopped speaking in 1920?
GD: I believe he passed. That’s the problem I often faced, seeing as how I was so much younger than everyone I consorted with.
WS: That’s not true. I meant the first part! Please! Calm down! No need to throw things, Mrs. Spencer. I was referring to the bit about his passing. Berenson died in 1959. Not so long ago but long after you lost touch. Forty years almost.
GD: You sure know how to make a gal feel like roses.
WS: I’m sorry, Mrs. Spencer, I’m only trying to get a story, flesh out your varied cast of characters. So what happened?
GD: What happened? [Deep sigh, then three long beats] Same as always. A series of misunderstandings. My engagement to Lord Brooke, for one, he did not relish. Many rows followed and then a final, damaging crack. We never exchanged another word.
WS: How bleak.
GD: It’s the manner of human nature, though, isn’t it? Our bonds can’t last. Despite our best efforts, the rest of the world always gets in our way.