Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [1]
6. THE SLOANE STREET CLUB
7. LOVE LETTERS
8. LADIES OF SMALL MEANS
Oxford
9. UP AT OXFORD
10. A COTSWOLD ENCOUNTER
11. THE DANCING PROFESSOR
Italy
12. MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
13. WE OPEN IN VENICE
14. SPANISH STEPS
15. JANE EYRE IN SIENA
16. PAST PERFECT
Illustration Credits
A Reader’s Guide
A CONVERSATION WITH ALICE STEINBACH
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
SUGGESTED READING
INTRODUCTION
I write this sitting in my cozy kitchen on a wintry morning, my old cat dozing beside me on the warm, hissing radiator. An ice storm passed through Baltimore last night, and I can hear the evergreen trees outside my window creaking under the weight of their glazed branches. Six years ago, on a winter’s day not unlike this one, I sat at the same table and made a decision that, for me, was quite daring: I decided to take a chance and temporarily jump ship, so to speak, from the life I’d fashioned for myself.
This morning I got out a box containing some reminders of where that decision took me. Although I’ve been searching for a particular item, it’s fun seeing whatever turns up.
Here, for instance, is the bill for the ten-dollar cappuccino I drank one morning in Venice at the caffè Florian. And here’s a program from a student production in Oxford of Much Ado About Nothing. Next comes a ticket to the Museum of Garden History in London, and the receipt for a pair of black silk pumps with four-inch heels, bought in Milan and worn once. The menu from a dinner enjoyed in the Umbrian town of Perugia follows, reminding me of how delicious the Veal Escalope with Red Chicory was that night.
Finally, in a smaller box labeled PARIS, I find what I’m looking for: a postcard with a view of the city’s loveliest bridge, Pont Alexandre III. Dated 9 May 1993, and sent from me to me, the postcard signals the beginning of an adventure:
Dear Alice,
It is my first morning in Paris and I have walked from my hotel on the Left Bank to the Seine. The river is silver; above it, an early morning sun the color of dull nickel burns through a gray sky, its light glancing off the ancient buildings that line the quai Voltaire. It is the Paris I have come to know from the photographs of Atget and Cartier-Bresson: a city of subtle tonalities, of platinum and silver and gray; a city of incomparable beauty. Now, from this perfect place, I begin a journey.
The postcard is signed: Love, Alice.
It is the first of many such postcards that I would write and send home to myself as I traveled over the next several months. Or, as I affectionately came to call that interlude in my life, The Year of Living Dangerously.
Most of us, I suppose, have had at one time or another the impulse to leave behind our daily routines and responsibilities and seek out, temporarily, a new life. Certainly, it was a fantasy that more than once had taken hold of me. At such times I daydreamed about having the freedom to travel wherever chance or fancy took me, unencumbered by schedules and obligations and too many preplanned destinations.
But the daydream always retreated in the face of reality. I was, after all, a working, single mother and my life was shaped in large measure by responsibilities toward my two sons and my work as a newspaper reporter at the Baltimore Sun.
By 1993, however, I was entering a new phase of my life, one that caused me to rethink its direction. My sons had graduated from college and were entering new adult lives of their own; one as a translator in Japan, the other as a graduate physics student in Colorado. I was happy for them, and proud too. After all, watching a child march successfully into the larger world is one of the greatest satisfactions parenthood has to offer. Still, letting go of my sons left me feeling vulnerable in a way I didn’t understand. The powerful bonds between us remained; but physically the boys I had raised were gone.
If I close my eyes, I can see them still, on a long-ago summer’s night. Two boys, so different: one lying in bed listening to an Orioles game and bouncing a ball off the wall; the other outside in the backyard,