Thornton in Italy: "Fancy, Hedda, A Villa Overlooking Rome, All Mine!"
Thornton Wilder sailed for Italy from New York Harbor and a stay at the American Academy in Rome on September 1, 1920. As the Academy was not ready to receive him until later in the fall, he spent some three weeks in and around Sorento working like mad on his Italian, taking long hikes (including to the top of Mt. Vesuvius), meeting all sorts of people and putting words on the page. By the time he set off for Rome, he had completed three acts of a new play about a young, medically doomed American heiress’s encounters on Capri and an attractive Italian male named Dario Stiavelli. He finally reached the Eternal City for the first time, pen close at hand, on a crowded train that arrived late the evening of October 14, 1920. To his parents he writes at 10:30 pm that evening: “The train was two-and-a-half hours late, and I know no more of Rome than can be gained on rainy evenings crossing the street that separates the station from the Hotel Continentale.”
Six years later, on April 20, 1926, the New York publisher Albert and Charles Boni published Thornton Wilder’s first novel, The Cabala, inspired by his stay in Rome and dedicated “To my friends at the American Academy in Rome, 1920-1920.” Its first sentence fills out an arrival story with predictable dramatic license:
“The train that first carried me into Rome was late, overcrowded and cold. There have been several unexpected waits in an open field, and midnight found us still moving slowly across the Campagna towards the faintly-colored clouds that hung above Rome.”
The Cabala’s dust jacket contained another example of dramatic license: It stated that the novel was inspired by Wilder’s “two year” stay at The American Academy in Rome, a mistake the publisher never corrected, Altogether, Wilder spent only an eight-month association with that institution's Classical Studies Program. But it is also fair to say that Wilder packed a good two years of experience into his stay in the Academy by way of studies, archeological expeditions, his signature walks throughout the city and a happy, active regimen of social engagements. And the American Academy and experience in Rome and Italy was only a beginning; ahead lay such works as The Woman of Andros, The Ides of March, and The Alcestiad which chart overt references to the Classics, as well as their reverberations in all of his major plays, novels and selected short plays.
We salute Wilder and the Classics, and the distinguished classicists who are working on this significant theme in Wilder’s artistry, with a excerpt from another of his 1920 letters home from Rome. It is now October 21, a week after his late arrival, and he is at last at the American Academy in Rome. Where is he housed?
I must save my reservations on Italy until another letter, if ever.
The Academy has finished shilly-shallying and has taken me in. But I am to live in Villa Ballacci, a tiny darling house, with a garden and a great grille gate, and a little side door for the middle-sized bear and a tiny back gate by a box ledge for the tiny bear. It was owned by a nobleman and has associations of gallantries
more becoming to Janicula than Mt. [ ]. He filed a complaint against the Academy when they built next door so to avoid litigation, they bought it. I am to live there all alone until some travelling fellows return. Fancy, Hedda, a villa overlooking Rome, all mine! I have a bed-room, dressing-room and the bath, all in a row. Here’s a picture of the location:
I move in tomorrow. Going on trip to Orvietto Sat. Dine with Riggs at the Grand Hotel Sat. evening. Met the Bjoüruson at the opera. Chatted in German! More soon. Much love to every one.
Thornton
Learn more about Wilder's time in Rome and his friendship with Lauro de Bosis at an online event hosted by the American Academy in Rome:
Thornton Wilder, Lauro de Bosis: Life and Letters at the American Academy in Rome, 1920–21
March 30 at 12pm ET