Trumbology

C'était une histoire d'amour

I'll Be Seeing You

Song of the Damned

Parlez-moi d'amour

Travels with my Aunt

Gran

Aunt Anne abroad V

With characteristic discretion Aunt Anne left us few clues as to her true feelings about the various companions with whom she traveled south. With some pride she hung onto a tiny snapshot of a skiing trophy she won at Saint-Cergue in the Jura, but we know little else about Daphne, Margot, Pat, Nipper, Colleen, Liz, Cynthia, and Diana, or indeed David and André, other than that they had a lot of fun. By their arrangement in the album, the photographs outline an itinerary brimming with internal logic, and there are occasional flashes of insight to be found among Anne’s spare notations on the reverse. Here, for example, she writes simply: “Me knitting David a face washer (!) on the Route Napoléon near Grenoble.”

But Nipper (above) is invariably just “Nipper”;

David simply “David”;

groups identified, as in this boating shot at Cassis, as “Nipper, Me, Mr. and Mrs. Roland,” the first person pronoun satisfactorily capitalized.

As far as I can tell (apart from carefully noting the identity of Margaret Cilento, another Australian artist who coincided with the party on the Riviera) this was Anne’s only nod to celebrity: “Mr. Roland, and back view of Margaret Olley [in hat],” although I am not quite sure how well-known Miss Olley was at this date. She is, of course, still going, more or less strong.

In a telling variation, however, Anne only very occasionally names André. Her only note on the reverse of this photograph is “Aix, Les Beaux again.”

What a very handsome young man he was.

Aunt Anne abroad IV (further South, and back again)

In Florence, the party made friends with some slightly overenthusiastic young ciceroni, who naturally brought them to see the Duomo (over Anne’s shoulder), the Campanile farther distant, and the Baptistery in the background, as well as other famous sights. “Unfortunately my friend Lauro wasn’t with us. He looks even worse. This is Guido and Ferdinando.”

The weather improved, however, and again we find André, Nipper, and Anne at the Piazzale Michelangelo. David took this one.

The mood becomes ever more playful. “André and me having Good Clean Fun when the car boiled outside Ravenna. David looking on. Just after this I got the whole contents of the jug. Very Funny for all.”

“Cynthia, Liz and me having lunch [on the Via Appia Antica] near the Catacombs of S. Sebastian.”

Capri must have been relatively unspoiled, even then. Here is Anne, or, as she put it, “Me in a cart, Capri.”

All tourists went swimming in the famous Blue Grotto. “Cynthia, Me, Liz, Margot, taken by Umberto the boatman at Capri.”

And here is Umberto himself.

On the way back to England by way of the Riviera, the party went on another boat trip to see the Calanques at Cassis, not far from Marseilles. Left to right, André, Margaret Cilento [the artist; daughter of Sir Raphael and Lady Cilento, and older sister of the actress Diane Cilento], Boatman, and Nipper.

They continued up through Provence, visiting Avignon, Orange, the Pont de Gard near Remoulins, Le Castellet in the Var, and on to Paris. At a certain point there is a newcomer to the party. Here he is, on the far left, with an unidentified companion; Anne in the center; David, looking as usual slightly lugubrious; and Nipper on the far right. Tucked behind this photo, effectively hidden from view, was another one that slipped out when I turned the page:

It is the same, handsome young man, sitting on a window-sill, sunning himself, and reading a book. He looks up, turns his head slightly, but Anne wrote nothing at all on the back. Who was he?

Aunt Anne abroad III (South)

In the autumn of the first or possibly the second year she spent in England, Aunt Anne went with her Australian girlfriends on a long trip by car through France, across the Pyrenees into Spain, and back again; up into the Swiss alps for skiing at Saint-Cergue in the Jura, Lucerne, and La Cure in the Franche-Comté, and thence across into Italy via Como, Bellagio, Lago Maggiore, Milan, Verona, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Monte Cassino, Naples, Sorrento, Capri, and back again via Termoli in the Molise on the Adriatic coast. This is “Jenny Linden [right], Nipper [middle] and me [left] polishing the car in the yard at Ardura,” in northern Spain. (Note the hearty piano accordion.) As well as reflecting the far better climate, the photographs begin to radiate a new sense of fun, as well as of relaxation, even languor.

Among the party of at least six, two traveling companions jostle for prominence in the photographs, “André” and “David.” Here, for example, is “Picnic lunch. André [left], David [middle] and Gypsy Rose Lee [as Anne describes herself] with the car in the background,” and a faint reflection in the beautifully polished rear door of Nipper, who took the shot.

Here is “David looking Rather Arty, with Florence in the background, taken from the Piazzale Michelangelo.”

And here is André at Les Baux-de-Provence in the Bouches-du-Rhône, near Aix,

and again, with Nipper in the middle and Anne on the right, never more relaxed or radiant. Note the elegant rear-buckling belt, and brilliant figure.

Crossing the frontier between Switzerland and Italy a few miles northwest of Como involved the usual flirtation with Italian customs, and a cheerful detachment of “alpini.”

Anne wrote on the back of this one: “This is us fraternizing like mad with the Italian customs at a place called Maslianico. The top of my head just visible behind the gent leaning negligently on the bonnet.”

Anne again: “Piazza del Dante or something, Verona. [in fact the Piazza dei Signori, with the last few bays of the Loggia del Consiglio, and the famous statue of Dante Alighieri in the background on the left]. André, Nipper, and me, and one of the locals seems to have got in too. N.B. the new sandals. (This outfit is my Scala Theatre (Milan) opera-going one, with all the diamond tiaras and furs.”