My love letter to Venice
Life in a palazzo, boat rides with Nancy Mitford… GILL JOHNSON relives her year in the City of Water
In 1957, Gill Johnson had a name change. She was working as a nanny for a family in Venice and the Italians struggled to pronounce her first name. So, for a year, the 25-year-old became Giulietta. Or, sometimes, Giuli. Johnson, now 92, has written a memoir about that year, called Love From Venice. I say Johnson has written it, but the book is a joint effort: she would tell her son – journalist Rory Ross – her memories, which he then wrote down. Dotted throughout the chapters are letters Johnson sent her then fiancé, David Ross, who was working at the time as an architect in Paris. David died in 2009, and in 2015 the family discovered the letters in a box of his things. ‘When I realised he’d kept every letter I’d written to him I was so thrilled,’ says Johnson, from her home in London. ‘You always slightly hope that your husband really loves you. David must have loved me.’
Johnson got the Venice gig through the recruitment firm Universal Aunts (still going strong). She was selling postcards at London’s National Gallery and living with her parents in Victoria. But her situation in Italy was rather different. Johnson was to nanny for the Brandolini d’Adda family. The father, Conte Brando Brandolini d’Adda, was the Count of Valmareno. If that sounds grand, the mother, Contessa Cristiana Brandolini d’Adda, was grander: she was part of the Agnelli family, which owned Fiat. Her brother Gianni controlled
4.4 per cent of Italy’s GDP.
The Brandolinis, and Johnson, lived in a 15th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal. There was an enormous garden, which is practically unheard of in Venice; frescos by Palma Vecchio; a silk-lined lift; and so many rooms that Johnson doesn’t know the number. As she wrote in a letter to David, ‘I can’t start to tell you all about the drawing rooms.’
Her job was to entertain the children – two boys, Ruy and Leonello, aged nine and seven. She started work in early summer
Top: Gill at the palazzo on the Grand Canal. Above: on the Lido with Ruy, one of her two charges
and most days they would travel to Venice’s beach on the Lido. They’d build sandcastles and read books, and Johnson taught Leonello how to swim. At lunch time, two butlers wearing white gloves would arrive, spread a tablecloth over their daybed and serve a four-course picnic. (The word picnic here is used loosely.
The menu normally consisted of vitello tonnato, prosciutto, melon, fresh gnocchi, cheese, fruit and chilled white wine.)
Johnson earned £9 a week, around €234 today, and spent it, mostly, on haircuts – which were important in Italian high society.
The conte and contessa lived peripatetic lifestyles; they’d go to Switzerland to give birth (possibly, Johnson thinks, because they wanted neutral birthplaces for their children) and to Milan for Christmas presents. When they were gone, Johnson ran the house. She would approve the daily menus, instruct the boatmen and manage the staff. In one letter she writes, ‘David, it really is enormously funny suddenly to be left in charge of a palace.’
When the couple were home, they entertained a starry social circle. In the summer, Johnson and the Brandolinis went for tea on the Christina O – the 325ft yacht owned by Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. The boat had dolphin-shaped gold taps, an El Greco painting and a ballroom that transformed into a swimming pool. Onassis gave Johnson lectures about money and life advice: ‘rise early’ and ‘always have a tan’.
‘He was a hideous little man,’ she says. He was charismatic, ‘but partly because you knew who he was’. He was also ‘rather greasy’.
Nancy Mitford receives a more sympathetic assessment. Johnson met the author at the Lido before the summer season. Mitford was staying with Venice’s most famous family, the Cicognas, but would hitch a lift to the beach in the Brandolinis’ boat. She was more melancholy than you’d expect. ‘Nancy had a very sad face,’ says Johnson. ‘She went to Venice when it was out of season on purpose. She just sat on her own, with a book, looking out to sea occasionally.’ (That same year, Mitford divorced her husband and separated from her French lover, Gaston Palewski.)
In January 1958, Johnson left Venice, married David and went on to have four children. She’s been back to the city ten times, but never to the palazzo – which the Brandolinis still own. (The conte died in 2005; the contessa will turn 97 next month.) The Brandolini family hasn’t been involved in Love From Venice but, about 20 years ago, Johnson saw Ruy at a party in South Kensington: ‘We embraced.
I was very glad to see him.’
Many grumble about Venice being too commercial – last year local authorities announced plans to charge day-trippers €5 to enter the city; a consequent article in the New Statesman had the headline, ‘Just let Venice sink’.
Johnson thinks this is nonsense. The city is touristy, expensive and busy – but it’s still wonderful.
‘You can’t spoil Venice.’
Love From Venice by Gill Johnson (Hodder & Stoughton, €23.80)
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