A Dante Collection At Cornell: A Short History
An Italian Paradise
Fiske soon bought the villa of the English poet, Walter Savage Landor, in Fiesole, an elegant suburb of Florence. It was said that Dante’s contemporary Boccaccio had set some of the scenes of the Decameron on the villa’s grounds. Fiske hired a Neapolitan chef and began to entertain his fellow-Americans. Mark Twain became a friend. By contrast, writer Henry James found Fiske, “though friendly and hospitable, an absolutely colorless little personage.”
Fiske also rented a place in downtown Florence, Via Lungo il Mugnone, which became the headquarters of his book business. Indeed, with old age, Fiske spent more and more time building, cataloging, and studying rare books brought from all Europe, with the assistance of an Italian secretary. He corresponded with more than a hundred book dealers and scholars, occasionally venturing out on buying expeditions to various cities, but more frequently using the services of a London-based American agent. [In June 1893, Fiske wrote: “I trust that mail packages from Harrassowitz [Berlin], Trübner [Strasbourg], Hoepli [Milan], Clausen [Turin], Loescher & Seeber [Florence], and from Geneva and Lausanne, are coming in rapidly.” In his last years, half of his mail was made of catalogs and invoices for books.
Unidentified photographer
The Villa Landor in Fiesole, April 1892
Albumen print photograph
Each image: 4 1/4 x 6 3/8 inches (10.80 x 16.19 cm)
Cornell University Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections
13-1-1165
(4 images)
Unidentified photographer
Willard Fiske Playing Chess on the Terrace of Villa Landor in Fiesole, ca. 1900
Printed-out photograph
image: 3 1/8 x 4 1/8 inches (7.94 x 10.48 cm)
Cornell University Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections
13-1-1165
(1 image)
A chess champion, Fiske organized the first American Chess Congress (New York City, 1857) and published the first American chess magazine, “Chess Monthly,” when he was only twenty-five. Like other scholars, Fiske was certain that Dante also played chess, based on several mentions of the game in the Divine Comedy. For example, Dante writes about the angels in Paradiso, 28: Eran tante, che il numero loro/ Più che il doppiar degli scacchi s'immilla (They were so many that their number ran to thousands more than the successive doubling of a chessboard's squares.) The “doubling” is an allusion to the “Wheat and Chessboard” mathematical story.
Unidentified photographer
Fiske’s Study in Florence, ca. 1895
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches (19.05 x 25.08 cm)
Cornell University Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections
13-1-1165
(2 images)
Letter from Willard Fiske to Susan Lee Warner, from Nice, France, March 3, 1904
Cornell University Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections
13-1-348 | view/download PDF
(5 images)
This letter provides a window into time Fiske spent in the Tuscan countryside with Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).
“For the past two years [...] I camped out among my books... and sat down at my desk all day, for my three meals were placed upon it on a tray. My only breaks were when I drove up for a call at the distant villa of the Clemenses, or when Mark came down for a talk and an afternoon's smoke.”