The Place We Occupy in the World
“One's destination is never a place,” the writer Henry Miller once said, “but a new way of seeing things.” As our horizons narrow because of the lockdown, armchair tourism is back in vogue.
People are turning to classic travel books, the TV and virtual tours of foreign locations to spread their wings and feed their imagination. The experience of journeying to exotic locations has taken on new meanings.
Traditional travel writing used to be the preserve of high-brow, and often adventurous, writers such as Eric Newby, Freya Stark or Patrick Leigh Fermor.
But the latter years of the 20th century saw the emergence of a new genre of travel writing. People moving to a new country, immersing themselves in an unfamiliar environment, trying to capture the essential characteristics of their new world.
Living astride frontiers
The template for this new style is often considered to be Peter Mayle’s memoir A Year in Provence. Published in 1989, and spawning countless imitations, it was the story of an English couple moving to the South of France. And the entertaining run-ins they had with the eccentric, sometimes dishonest, locals as they converted a 200-year-old farmhouse into a family home.
Arguably, however, Shirley Guiton got there first with the publication of No Magic Eden in 1972. It’s the story of how she fell in love with the remote Venetian island of Torcello, bought a dilapidated farmhouse, and encountered a series of difficulties in the course of building her new home and making the overgrown vineyard productive again.
As her publisher Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson said, “This was years before A Year in Provence or Driving Over Lemons reminded readers that they, too, could forsake the grey skies of northern Europe and find the sun - and a collection of locals who would make excellent copy for the books they might write. A publishing industry would blossom... Shirley was, in a sense, there first.'
On the face of it, it’s a simple narrative about her struggles with officialdom, the local dialect and Italian incomprehension of an independently minded English woman seeking to lay down roots far from home.
But as her understanding of local history and culture deepened, the book provided an opportunity to reflect on peasant life, systems of land tenure, the future of Venice itself. And, of course, the challenge of growing artichokes.
The best travel writing provides not just escape but connection with people and places. And there are wonderful passages in No Magic Eden exploring the shifting world of the lagoon. Quite literally, as early measurement revealed that tides and currents had washed away two metres of land from one side of her property but added two metres to the other!
She explores the fading prospects for gondoliers as they face competition from water taxis. The sheer majesty of the vaporetti, the waterbuses which provide a vital lifeline for the lagoon. And is frank about the exhilarations and anxieties that accompany the design and construction of a new house.
Her wonderful tale of the ganzega, the topping out ceremony attended by the architect and builders, that took place in a renowned local restaurant on the neighbouring island of Mazzorbo, is a treat in itself.
Mooring lines to the future
The book contains a raft of finely observed details about local life in the lagoon. And is interspersed with thoughtful reflections on the Italian character, cultural differences and the things that bind us together.
Shirley had tremendous affection for the place and the people. But also recognised her own restlessness and the restlessness of the times: “What I do know is that I always arrive at the Ca’ S. Toma with a sense of homecoming and that I am equally pleased to go away again. In Auden’s words it is ‘a place I may go both in and out of.’”
Belatedly, I must declare an interest here. Shirley Guiton was my aunt! And I have fond memories of visiting her in the house when I was a little boy, exploring the vineyard and wandering around the island.
So, I will leave the final words to former Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, who remarked that Shirley had managed, “to say something about Venice which previous visitors had not said before... These pages are touched with Venetian serenity and illuminated by the eccentric lights of the lagoon.”
Illustrations and jacket design by John Lawrence
