Letter from Abroad

I am very ignorant of Italy. If anyone had told me eighteen years ago that these words would one day cross my lips I’d have replied, Sure, and the cow will jump over the moon. For I was quite certain that Italy withheld no secrets from me—how could it, when Father had willed otherwise? For six weeks we did Italy, in 1939, under my father’s supervision. We being my mother, a brace of sisters, a Russian (White) chauffeur-aesthete we picked up in Paris (we gave up the practice of segregated meals shortly after we espied Bibikoff sharing his dinner table with Alfonso XIII); an Italian guide (a bewhiskered, stiffbacked, venerable old count, who mourned the fact that he had so long outlived his beloved countess, the opera singer Ella Russell); our French governess; and our music teacher. We peered down the crater of Vesuvius, ate fettucine at Alfredo’s, climbed the tower of Pisa, stared at the mosaics at Ravenna, memorized the pictures at the Uffizi, conversed—wide-eyed—with the newly-installed Pope; and left the country secure in the knowledge that, on the subject of Italy, we were, each one of us, an authority.

And now I am back; and, as I say, essentially ignorant of the country and, moreover, unable to communicate even the most primitive message in Italian. But things have a way of opening up for you in Europe, even if you are as lackadaisical about things as my wife and I are. Sure enough, in Gibraltar we bumped into an American family on the way to Rome to spend the year, the purpose being to send their seventeen year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son to Italian schools. Fentress Kuhn is an Idaho rancher, an active Republican who ran a few years ago for the Senate and got beat, and a genial and intelligent man. He both graduated from Yale and speaks to me; and what is more, he reads—and even, from time to time, agrees with—national review. At dinner with him and his beautiful wife I found myself seated beside a Roman lady who, conversation revealed, is a member of a remarkable household.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

I am very ignorant of Italy. If anyone had told me eighteen years ago that these words would one day cross my lips I’d have replied, Sure, and the cow will jump over the moon. For I was quite certain that Italy withheld no secrets from me—how could it, when Father had willed otherwise? For six weeks we did Italy, in 1939, under my father’s supervision. We being my mother, a brace of sisters, a Russian (White) chauffeur-aesthete we picked up in Paris (we gave up the practice of segregated meals shortly after we espied Bibikoff sharing his dinner table with Alfonso XIII); an Italian guide (a bewhiskered, stiffbacked, venerable old count, who mourned the fact that he had so long outlived his beloved countess, the opera singer Ella Russell); our French governess; and our music teacher. We peered down the crater of Vesuvius, ate fettucine at Alfredo’s, climbed the tower of Pisa, stared at the mosaics at Ravenna, memorized the pictures at the Uffizi, conversed—wide-eyed—with the newly-installed Pope; and left the country secure in the knowledge that, on the subject of Italy, we were, each one of us, an authority.

And now I am back; and, as I say, essentially ignorant of the country and, moreover, unable to communicate even the most primitive message in Italian. But things have a way of opening up for you in Europe, even if you are as lackadaisical about things as my wife and I are. Sure enough, in Gibraltar we bumped into an American family on the way to Rome to spend the year, the purpose being to send their seventeen year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son to Italian schools. Fentress Kuhn is an Idaho rancher, an active Republican who ran a few years ago for the Senate and got beat, and a genial and intelligent man. He both graduated from Yale and speaks to me; and what is more, he reads—and even, from time to time, agrees with—national review. At dinner with him and his beautiful wife I found myself seated beside a Roman lady who, conversation revealed, is a member of a remarkable household.