The Venetian Affair

So it took me a while to stumble on this book. Finding books is sort of like working through a maze. You are always on the look out but sometimes the clues to good books or the direction sends you down another path. This book seems like an obvious candidate for my Pre-Venice reading but it is so so good. A great love story written by the lovers themselves from letters gathered from many parts the world. It is not really complete though because many of the letters of Andrea and Guistianna Wynn are still missing but there is hope they are in an attic somewhere.

Very interesting to read from such private letters during a time we think of as stuffy. Guistianna becomes a writer and this passage from one of her books was interesting. I thought as I read it that I am glad we live now. It must have been awful to think your life was done at 23.




Laugh heartily, charming and innocent youth! The age of smiling will soon be upon you. That will be followed in turn by the years of the expertly contrived smile: an air of peace and serenity will often hide the truly agitated state of your soul. And in your old age, when the book of passions is over, it will be too late even to smile. Your face will have lost all of that soft elasticity that allowed your expressions to change with so much ease. The Scissor of Time will have deepened those furrows drawn by the passions of your life: they will have become wrinkles that will never be erased. So what purpose could an awkward smile possibly have? It would only suggest ridiculous claims. An air of thoughtfulness and kindness will be all you really need. That is the natural order of things in the revolution that takes place on the face of a woman.
Guistiana Wynn 1786