Garibaldi outfit

I found a lovely little passage in one of Ulla Bjerne's novels in the Förförare (”Seducers”) collection. The novels were written in Swedish, this one is called San Martino and it tells the story of the protagonist – in this case, as it all sounds very autobiographical I could as easily write Ulla – arriving in Naples and being recommended a visit at the Certosa di San Martino, an old and – already 1920 – dusty museum.

Not impressed by the museum she instead describes some people she observes: a threesome also on their way to San Martino. Ulla, ever intrigued by anybody who questions the norm, identifies the group as two female prostitutes and a watchmaker/traveling salesman/waiter on an outing.

The novel is no masterpiece, however, I want to translate a part of it here since it's about one of Ulla's own outfits.

Ulla Bjerne was a notorious cross dresser at a time when notoriety was well established, cross-dressing was not. During the 1910's she would live and travel around Europe wearing pantsuits and pantskirts long before those words were invented and more than a decade before la garçonne entered the fashion scene.

I have known her to systematically dress in menswear, smoke the pipe, wear a monocle and even a tophat. Here I have found a description in her own words of some of her clothing.

Before I left the museum I had a new experience. In a cabinet I discovered a torn, red shirt and a pair of very worn trousers with a hole in the behind. These garments had once clothed the grand hero of freedom Garibaldi. In my memory I made a sketch of the shirt, which I am wearing at this moment, not without success on Capri.

Again, the year was 1920. The same year, incidentally, that the picture above was taken, although I don't think it shows the Garibaldi shirt.

Italian Escapades, part 3

Here is part three of six of Ulla's radio broadcast account on Finnish radio from 1957.

- - -

Italian Escapades

3.

Doctor Munthe had not yet written the Story of San Michele which led to a horrible invasion of old American ladies and other tourist hordes. Asphalt roads did not yet exist, neither buses or cars, chairlifts or similar arrangements.The Monte Solaro hillsides shimmered proudly and majestically and the walk to Anacapri with ever increasing contour lines all the way up to the old Hotel Molaro* from where there is a view over the Gulf of Naples and where the lights at night from Naples like a string of pearl lights bordered all of Posilippo. Those were unforgettable walks.

Since 1920 I have been to Capri seven times and sometimes stayed half a year. When I went the last time 1954 and saw the whole misery I told myself that this is probably the last time I come here.

”Capri nowadays is a waste bin framed with diamonds” an old cultivated Italian put it lately, saddened by the degradation of the island. Of course nature can't be ruined but God save us from all these elderly foreign women who, wearing shorts and with flabby thighs like accordion bellows loaf around on the piazza and pay for a lover, usually an ex chauffeur or a fishing boy who has climbed in life with the help of the distasteful charity of these ladies. Finito signora. At least for those who have lived on Capri before World War I.

This is where I settled at the beginning of April 1920 and stayed well into August. On the island their were plenty of Italian artists who in those days could rent a villa for a few hundred lire a month. The Germans who formerly flooded Capri were now after World War I completely gone. Mostly Neapolitans lived there, oftentimes in splendid private villas.

During all week the island was peaceful, only on Saturdays some Neapolitans would come to stay over the weekend and on Sunday mornings ordinary people would show up and go home again with the evening ferry.

Early mornings were for swimming among the rocks down at Torre Saracena. After the siesta everybody was working until meeting again around eight on the piazza to look at the evening ferry from Naples make the harbor. Later during dinner one would usually sit at the terrace of Café Morgana in the warm starry sky night of the South, drinking coffee or wine.

This is where I wrote a collection of Italian novels during the summer. I called it ”Seducers” (Förförare) and I had already had a few ideas in Rome. The rest I picked up at Capri, for that was an island where strange things always took place.

When the book was finished I stayed a few weeks in Venice but my real goal, which I had aimed for all summer, was Sardinia.