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Review of Ernest Samuels, Bernard Berenson: the Making of A Reviews The Russell-Berenson connection by Andrew Brink Ernest Samuels. Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur. Cam­ bridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979. Pp. xviii, 477; 30 plates. US$15.00. C$18.75. BERNARD BERENSON AND Bertrand Russell were of contrary tempera­ ments, yet they were attracted to form a more than passing friendship. Berenson came into Russell's orbit by marriage to Mary Costelloe, the older sister of Russell's first wife, Alys Pearsall Smith. During his time in the British diplomatic service in Paris in 1894 Russell enjoyed Mary's enliven­ ing company. Her free spirit delighted him, and she figures frequently as Mariechen in the love correspondence with Alys. Until Ernest Samuels's biography of Berenson it has been difficult to picture this Philadelphia Quaker turned art critic and supporter of the most celebrated art expert of the century. Samuels's study gives her a vivid presence in the international set to which she belonged-a woman ofdrive and ingenuity without whom Berenson wouldn't have become the legend he was. Samuels stays close to the very full correspondences which constitute detailed documentation of their lives together. He interprets little, allowing the record to speak for itself. We hear in detail of the breakdown of Mary's marriage to Frank Costelloe, of tensions with her mother, ofloyalty to her two daughters and ofthe difficulties ofkeeping peace with Berenson. Stresses and tempests are not hidden. There are attractions to other men, Mary taking advantage of new sexual freedoms in the set she joined, freedoms which Berenson's firmer conscience forbade. We learn too ofher powerful ambition not only to excel in connoisseurship, to assist dealing in Renaissance paintings, but to live bountifully and beautifully in the environs ofFlorence. Ernest Samuels gives a much fuller picture ofMary Berenson than that in Robert Allerton Parker's The Transatlantic Smiths (New York, 1959). It is impossible to speak of Berenson apart from her. As she confessed, her "baleful" influence "profoundly modified his life, and gave him a secondary 43 44 Russell, nos. 35-6 (Autumn-Winter 1979-80) The Russell-Berenson connection 45 conscience about work, and especially about writing, that has never ceased So you see it is a Raphael ofexquisite quality, of finest Umbrian feeling, of to harass him" (p. 131). Berenson began as an aesthetic culture-seeker, a unquestionable authenticity, of perfect preservation and with an almost man of feeling; he turned out to be a brilliant and urbane talker, a cos­ matchless pedigree" (p. 349). It was probably a very good painting, able to mopolitan opinion-maker, a hard-driving scholar-critic and a shrewd take care ofitself without the humbug. businessman in one ofthe most risky trades on earth. It was Mary who put a It is doubtful that Berenson ever directed anything quite so fulsome to point on his talents, who set the peripatetic Harvard graduate in the way of Russell, but in any measure the lush aestheticism would not have appealed becoming the most influential art authority to write in English. Only Roger to the mind ofone who sought the most precise uses for language. Yet there Fry, with whom he both agreed and differed, could rival him in persuading is no escaping the fact that Russell needed Berenson to help him correct a a growing public that the pursuit of aesthetic values is as important as defective visual sensibility. As Russell's biographer Ronald Clark recounts, pursuing truth. Berenson's attempt to awaken Russell in the Uffizi had little effect: "I've No such influence as Mary's can be claimed for Russell, but the interplay looked at everything you wanted me to look at; I've listened to all you've of his personality with Berenson's is significant. I miss in Samuels's biog­ said; but the pictures still don't give me the funny feeling in the stomach raphy an explanation of what drew Russell to Berenson and of why their they give you." But there was hope. When Berenson pointed out the friendship failed to hold. If Samuels had addressed this question, he might extraordinary beauty ofa chance arrangement ofpebbles and wood, Russell have helped with a perennial puzzle about Russell-how it was that strong exclaimed: 'But this is out and out mysticism'" (Life [London, 1975], p. attractions to men of genius so often ended in misunderstanding and 60). The mock protest covers an undoubted perception. But Berenson antagonism. Broken alliances with Wittgenstein and D. H. Lawrence are could not carry him further-he would not have understood mysticism at the best known examples, although of course Russell had no such break the depth Russell did. Berenson was an international art expert, an author­ with that deeper searcher of hearts, the novelist Joseph Conrad. With ity using Morellian "scientific" techniques to authenticate Renaissance Berenson there was no flash point of differences realized, but there was paintings. Unless in his most private moments, he seems to have remained nothing like Conrad's power to sustain admiration either. Berenson had well this side of the unitive vision which aesthetic experience sometimes simply not experienced the refiner's fire that burns away infatuation with induces. The world's pull was irresistible. As Samuels writes with regret, the world. Russell spent a great deal oftime with the Berensons in Florence, "Though deviousness and mystification seemed inseparable from the trade yet his remarks and judgments on Berenson in the Autobiography are few. in art, he was confideht that his judgment would remain uncorrupted. But Nor did Russell favour Berenson with one ofthe brilliant brief"characters" as he began to be drawn more and more into the world ofthe professional art in Portraits from Memory. There are ostensible reasons why not, as we shall expert, he was to discover that there was another insidious temptation. That see, but he seems also to be making an implicit judgment upon Berenson's world promised to assure him the means of a comfortable, even luxurious intellectual importance. existence ..." (pp. 225-6). Russell's reason for near silence may be that he saw Berenson as an Russell and Berenson differed on aesthetic theory. Berenson's view of imperfectly realized man of talent rather than as one realizing his genius to "Tactile Values" and pleasure in The Florentine Painters ofthe Renaissance the full. Berenson the dealer was a main agent in the questionable export of led to a difference with Russell when Mary showed him the MS in 1895. Italian art treasure to America. His fame and fortune soared in just that turn Berenson said that through colour Florentine painters excelled in stimulat­ ofthe century period when Americans ofsuper wealth, more ostentatiously ing the "tactile imagination"-they were more "life enhancing" than the than knowledgeably, took to art collecting. The Berensons promoted mis­ Venetian. As Samuels writes, "Russell disputed the notion that pleasure sionary style art collecting in the mansions of Boston, Chicago and New resulted from the enhancement of'capacity for life', arguing that 'capacity' York. Samuels fully conveys the reiationship of charm, intrigue and greed involved capacity for something specific. In his view the 'pleasure' of art which Berenson long maintained with one of the most determined of arose from the satisfaction of desire. And as for a sense of heightened collectors, the Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner. Descriptions ofpictures awareness, that might come as well from pain, as in the case ofa toothache" he wanted her to buy are too often not in the language of strict truth but (pp. 231-2). Russell had little patience for the imprecise naturalistic emotive fancies to reach the heart of a none-too-well-informed woman of hedonism of Berenson's aesthetic, no matter how he dressed it up in the wealth. Speaking of a Raphael he was promoting, Berenson wrote to Mrs. language ofpositivism. As we have seen, Russell was out ofsympathy with Gardner that the painting was a "jewel ofthe most exquisite delicacy.... In a Berenson's aesthetic aims, this being well in advance of the period when word the little picture puts you in a mood as if far away and yet within Lady Ottoline awakened Russell's dormant capacity for liking the visual hearing you suddenly heard angels playing on their stringed instruments.... arts. It is interesting that she should succeed where Berenson failed. Beren- 46 Russell, nos. 35-6 (Autumn-Winter 1979-80) The Russell-Berenson connection 47 son's aesthetic sophistication was a much less effective stimulus to change found me as stimulating as I certainly should have found him." Samuels than was Lady Ottoline's spontaneous sense of aesthetic wonder, which does not enlighten us on the meaning of these bleak comments. Ronald combined with an exploration of personality more penetrating than any Clark, on the other hand, explains that the reason for estrangement was that Russell had known. Berenson had little of the natural psychologist about Mary had strongly disapproved of Russell's liason with Lady Ottoline him. It was only Lady Ottoline whose person and social position inspired (saying that Berenson disapproved too). There are two ironies in this, the the trust which allowed Russell to feel beyond the protective rigidities of first that Clark suggests Mary's relations with Russell in Paris to have been logical thought. an "affaire", which just avoided consummation (p. 54). Who was she to Berenson seems to have valued Russell's company more for the mental disapprove other such relations? The second is ofcourse that Lady Ottoline stimulation than because he could convince him ofanything. Russell valued aroused Russell's aesthetic sensibility, not Berenson.
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