Two go (slightly) wild in Florence
A FLORENCE DIARY by Diana Athill (Granta £9.99) JANE SHILLING
ALMOST 70 years ago, in August 1947, Diana Athill and her cousin Pen set off on an adventure.
To celebrate the end of World War II, Diana’s aunt Joyce had paid for the two young women to travel to Florence for two weeks. It was Diana’s first excursion abroad. ‘I, of course, was thrilled by this wonderful gift,’ she writes.
In an age where we can hop on a cheap flight in the morning and be in Paris, Madrid or Stockholm by lunchtime, it is hard to imagine the sheer exoticism of ‘abroad’ after ‘the cruel bottling up of six years of war’.
So many decades later, Diana recalls how thrilling it was to ‘wake on a train that had stopped in the middle of the night, push a blind aside and see a lantern carried along an unknown platform by a man talking to another in an unknown language — those voices, the tiny glimpse of foreign ordinariness giving you such a tingle of excitement’.
Before the cousins left, Diana’s mother asked her to keep a diary, and it is this account of an Englishwoman’s experiences in post-war Italy that is published in this charming short book.
The excitement and relish with which she greets so many new experiences have the freshness of someone who has escaped from the gloom and privation of wartime Britain into the sunlit warmth and grace of Italy.
Diana and Pen ‘could hardly have been more different, but we travelled together as comfortably as a pair of old bedroom slippers’.
They set off from London Victoria Station on the Golden Arrow — the boat train that would take them to Paris. There they changed on to the Orient Express, which proved less luxurious than its glamorous name, and very crowded.
Diana found herself sharing a carriage with several families and a Roman prince with the glorious name of Alfonso Caracciolo di Forino. ‘He was extraordinarily nice — corduroy trousers and knapsack — and of an extremely sociable disposition.’
Gallantly escorted by Alfonso, they arrived in Florence (pictured) at midnight and woke to find that he had sent them a huge bunch of flowers. As the beginning of an adventure, it could hardly have been more promising.
Like Britain, Italy was recovering from the ravages of war, but there is little sense of this in Diana’s rapturous accounts of exquisite Florentine art and equally exquisite food.
Back home, ingredients such as sugar and butter would continue to be rationed until 1954, but in Florence, Diana found ‘pastry shops full of the most miraculous little objects, that are as exotic as sweets and not much bigger, but more varied in taste and texture. I could eat them for ever’.
The only dull moment was a meeting with a fellow Brit with a passion for sharing his holiday snaps. ‘He was such an old bore... He lives with his mother and sister... Gosh! What a frightful week they’ll have when he gets home.’
After two weeks of la dolce vita, the return journey seemed an uninviting prospect: ‘We became sadder and sadder the nearer we got to home.’
The trip was brief, and so is the journal. But its vivid intensity and Athill’s joy at being young and alive and abroad make it perfect for travellers of any age.