Footnotes

'MY SPARE SANDALS (POMPEIAN PATTERN, VERMILLION)': part of a Venetian tale by Baron Corvo, bound and annotated by A.J.A. Symons, author of The Quest for Corvo, for Lloyd George's notorious honours broker, Maundy Gregory (for whose own part in the tale of how Symons uncovered the facts of Corvo's life and his improbable passion for collection Corvine rarities, see Chapter XX, 'The End of the Quest' of The Quest). The story was published as 'On Cascading into the Canal' in Blackwood's Magazine for July 1913; and in this form was reprinted in Three Tales of Venice (1950) by the Corvine Press, a copy of which is included in the lot (Woolf A11; no. 78 of 140 copies).

The manuscript paints a mockingly bizarre self-portrait of its author and his life in Venice, recounting not only his own accidents ("....I was splendidly retrieved from the flood, & set on foot in my own boat, still immutably solemn, though weeping water in streams from every fold of my habiliments. I slowly wiped my eyeglass on the cushions & stuck it in its place...") but those that happened to others, such as an English artist friend whom he was serving as gondolier: "with puffed cheeks, shut eyes, & a meek splosh, my master cascaded into the canal... A barcheta, rowed by friars minor from San Francesco in Deserto, went by with solemn & most unfranciscan disgust. Blessed Father Francis would have joined in our merriment: they did not even proffer Extreme Unction. Insued a most astounding toilette. I hanged my paron's wet garments on my lofty forcola to drain; & lent him my spare sweater (fearfully & wonderfully decolletè it was), & my spare sandals (Pompeian pattern, vermillion), & my white linen hat in place of which I wound a white silk neck-square round my head, making myself look like an erudite but honest Jesuit posing as one of Brangwyn's brigands, so my master declared... And, in this garb, he demanded his tea – a hilarious meal consisting of cucumber & egg sandwiches, with a red wine & cigarettes; &, afterward, we turned & went back with the tide, passing through the small canals which extend inward from Rio dei Mendicante was a voyage richly pimpled all over with chuckles on the part of both of us. I know that we presented an exposition as startling as a carnival: but the dear Venetians understand that the English (though quite admirable) are stark mad, & the spectacle of one in two coats, a low-necked sweater, vermillion sandals, & a white hat, & of another coifed like a pirate & doing gondogliere, simply struck them speechless. No one even spat over a bridge on us. No one even tittered when we reached the palace, & my paron had to skip pink-leggily over a barge of ice-blocks which was moored to his own watergate". See illustration on preceding page.