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I sit at my desk today, the sun shining on the banana trees outside my window, and think of Venice. I am now writing about Woolson’s last year of life. She got up at 4:30 in the morning to write. (I’m only getting up at 5:30.) She wrote until 4:00, after which she bathed in the Lido. In the evenings her gondolier (the gondolier and lover of John Addington Symonds) took her out to the far-away islands in the lagoons.

I listen to Vivaldi, and his Violin Concerto in C Minor seems to perfectly sum up my mood as I read through Constance’s letters about her depression, her utter exhaustion, and the beauty of the city she had come to die in.