Two Castles in Italy

I look back on these moments as integral to my Italian journey...

If you asked me what my favourite book on Italy is I wouldn’t be able to answer it straight away. I would have to muse and calculate and sift through the archives, but I would certainly mention a book A Castle in Tuscany by an Australian author Sarah Benjamin.

Late in the 19th Century Janet Ross was captured with the idea to buy a working farm outside of Florence in Italy. Janet was an enthusiastic traveler and lived in exotic places calling Egypt her home for a number of years. Moving from London to Florence seemed an acceptable option in her twenties and she moved to the large estate in the hills of Florence Poggio Gherardo and made a life in Italy with her husband Henry.

Ross was not full of romantic notions about the Italian ideal, but focused on the land and the produce, making the farm profitable while introducing modern agricultural methods over the years. At the time it was common place to use the Mezzadria system (share cropping) to yield crops, tend livestock and make wine, she was happy to work outdoors when necessary (unusual for a padrone.. a female) she developed a reputation for bottling vermouth, claiming a recipe from the Medici family archives. The vermouth was in high demand in England.

Ross held regular Sunday salons with the likes of Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain and her neighbour, the art historian Bernard Berenson and his wife Mary who lived at Villa I -Tatti (now the Harvard school of Renaissance studies in Settignano) and even had tea with Virginia Woolf when she made her way to Italy.

Tuscany was one of her many subjects. Ross was a great observer of Italy, wrote much about the peninsula and the daily life of her peasant farmers and her experiences living close to Florence. Her cookbook Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen exclaimed the virtues of her beloved cook Guiseppe Volpi and celebrated the garden produce and recipes from the Tuscan kitchen. It was this cookbook that led Sarah Benjamin to the library archives in Florence to research the life of Janet Ross. A cookbook can do that.

And it was the many gifts from the table that led me to her terrace in Sydney to a dinner party and taste menu with food writers Emiko Davies and Tessa Kiros that celebrated Emiko’s Tortellini at Midnight. Another beautiful and evocative cookbook that celebrates place and family history (the image below relates to another vermouth recipe). I had my own personal mission (no surprise there) and hoped I would get a chance to talk to Sarah about her publication A Castle in Tuscany and that is when she gifted it to me.

Ross’s niece Lina Waterfield wrote correspondence for the war living in Italy and interviewed Mussolini many times reporting back to England with her eyewitness accounts. Her wonderful autobiography A Castle in Italy I sourced from an American library in Illinois (thank you E-Bay), a second hand copy and way out of print but I treasure the letters and the personal anecdotes about her life and Italy. She made note, “Aunt Janet was full of surprising contradictions”…. I love that statement.

Soon after marrying Aubrey Waterfield they bought a medieval castle on the edge of Tuscany close to the marble quarries of Carrara in the Lunigiana. Fortezza Brunella is a striking site and a historic fortress that stands out in the distance dominating the town of Aulla. I managed to see it from the train once on the way from Parma to Genoa. Waterfield suggests it is sixteen miles from La Spezia.

It was a strange and beautiful coincidence because the first time I visited Italy we stayed in Pontremoli. The two train stations are a stone throw away from each other in Tuscany, and quite close to the borders of Emilia Romagna and Liguria. A place that is not exactly on the tourist radar and as I have said in the podcast, into the wilder side of Tuscany, yet Tuscany no less.

We had a family friend's apartment on the Magra River and made that our base as we scouted around Italy to all the usual iconic places from there on the train. Obviously it had an impact, but Italy had called me years earlier, strangely and provocatively, even if I was just a bibliophile and loved the visual inspiration back then.

I look back on these moments as integral to my Italian journey. It seems full circle to be curious about authors who have written about these places. It is no surprise to me that in the beginning I watched the film Enchanted April (thirty years ago) to later discover the man who owned Castello Brown, the film location overlooking the harbour of Portofino, Monty Yeats-Brown (bought it in 1870) would sell Fortress Brunella for a small sum to the Waterfields, Lina and her husband Aubrey. Nice to have two castles in Italy.

Aubrey was an artist and much despised by the dominating Aunt Janet Ross, however they were a happy union. Lina the writer and journalist while Waterfield painted and restored the fortress, letting the kids run wild. Meanwhile the war loomed so that indeed is another chapter to this story. You may have read the memoir by Lina and Aubrey’s daughter Kinta Beevor - A Tuscan Childhood that accounts for the days in Italy and England and growing up playing in the roof top garden of the Brunella Fortress.

Perhaps my vision has been somewhat romantic but who out there has not been lured by an Arcadia unlike our own? It seems it has been a thing for centuries. In fact, it was Monty Yeats-Brown whose father was British consul Timothy Yeats-Brown who found himself lured to Genoa following the trail of the poets, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Liguria does have its charm and wild beauty.

I felt somewhat calm reading these stories, like I belonged there too on some level. At least I was transported by the books. All I knew was that between the pages I was lost in a reverie of theirs and mine, that something in me was alive to the beauty of the time and location, to medieval palazzos, ancient city walls and gates, terracotta urns, historic gardens and that I had this secret place I could go with these stories. Unlike my own beautiful and ordinary life I felt a kinship with the adventures and the possibility that Italy could be a place to live, a place to write, a place to possibly seek.

I am not sure why I was drawn to these adventurous women who seemed to be far less conventional than the times would promote but I found them fascinating and assured with their decisions to live outside of society’s norms, to travel and live aboard (obviously easier when London was home). They were practical and hard working women managing farms and careers, forging their own paths with great conviction and tenacity.

I recently strolled along Via dei Tornabouni slowly searching in shop windows enjoying the lavish summer campaigns of designer goods. I admired the casual elegance of these temples of the high street and wondered what it was like to visit the historic cafes that once lined the street.

These recent travel adventures in Florence sparked something in me to remember what an easy and wondrous place it is to spend a few days walking around and enjoying the beauty of this grand Tuscan city. I didn't realise I was going to find it so beautiful and captivating and feeling like I was there for the first time. The stones seemed cool and gave shade in all the right places: the tan, ochres and biscuit coloured houses romantic and fresh with vibrant flower jeweled balconies. I even noticed a few people on the piano nobile sitting on the iron balconies sipping coffee on show for the Piazza del Duomo, the romance was alive, the mood ambient.

Perhaps the late spring state of mind had me feeling relaxed and open to the sun and the warmer days. Maybe it was that I was there alone and things seem to magnify when you are solo traveling. The architecture and the frescoes in the Santa Maria Novella Museum were so beautiful and captivating I was drawn into the narratives and painterly gestures. I went there to see Plautilla Nelli’s restored, The Last Supper and an Annunciation painting by Neri di Bicci I recalled from 2019.

I quickly found accommodation close to the train station. Within a five minute walk I noticed a traditional restaurant and had Sunday lunch at Malatesta, the perfect Trattoria to enjoy a Tuscan Salcheto vino from Montepulciano and a plate of homemade pici pasta with sausage and mushroom. That is all I needed to begin my adventures in Florence. A perfectly humble Tuscan meal that restored my wits after a morning of traveling from the city of Bologna. Life is good when you travel and experience the beauty you seek.

I remembered how magical and noble the city was. I know these days it is important to seek out places that are not run over by tourists (like myself) but I did enjoy everything it had to offer in small, but beautiful ways. Just walking and walking and seeing what I bumped into.

I adored wandering through the Giardino di Boboli and resting near the limonaia lemon house as the days were hot and steamy. But that was nice because it made me take stock and enjoy the refreshing verdant space. I could hear the bees and enjoyed walking over crunchy pebbles looking at faded roses and the mauve sage that bloomed wildly.

And now, back at home living the ordinary days, keeping the garlic bulbs and fava beans alive, planting seeds for the future. These enchanting books take pride of place at my table for treasured memories on a winter's day reading the pages, sipping lemon balm tea and imagining another life. Still I open and I soften, the pages hold some kind of fascination, a deeper curiosity. Perhaps a knowing.

I like a story where an author reveals the inner workings of their own journey, pilgrimage or discovery. I understand the pull. I guess that is how it starts - the trickle, the curiosity, the yearning to know more, the desire and the ache toward something bigger and more expansive.

Perhaps Henry James wrote it best …

“She sat in the sunshine beside her yellow river like the little treasure-city she has always seemed… with nothing but the little unaugmented stock of her medieval memories, her tender-coloured mountains, her churches and palaces, pictures and statues” - Italian Hours

Michelle Johnston

Author & Podcast - A Writer in Italy

Image Credits - Michelle Johnston - And here is the Giardino di Boboli in Florence

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See you next time for another beautiful adventure in books, travel and writing…..