Aldous Huxley and Florence

In the 1920s Huxley stayed in Florence fairly often, first from March to May 1921 in a flat at 4 Via Santa Margherita a Montici and later in a rented house at no. 15 of the same street from August 1923 until June 1925 (see Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. Grover Smith [London, 1969], 13, 194, 217, and https://www.walksinrome.com/italy-florence-a-literary-tour.html). During that period he occasionally visited friends or acquaintances who owned villas in Florence or nearby Fiesole, e.g., Villa I Tatti owned by Mary and Bernard Berenson; Villa Medici, owned by Lady Sybil Cutting (later, Lady Sybil Scott, then Lady Sybil Lubbock); Villa Il Palmerino, owned by Violet Paget (Vernon Lee); Villa La Pietra, owned by Harold Acton; Villa Poggio Gherardo, owned by Janet Ross (for detailed information see Katie Campbell, Paradise of Exiles: The Anglo-Florentine Garden (PhD thesis, Bristol, 2007; http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/paradise-of-exiles-the-anglo-florentine-garden).

Huxley’s Florentine milieu is in some degree reflected in the setting of several of his writings, e.g., short stories, such as “Little Mexican” and "Young Archimedes" in Little Mexican (1924), as well as “The Rest Cure” and “After the Fireworks” in Brief Candles (1930); essays, such as "The Best Picture" and “A Night at Pietramala” in Along the Road (1925); and novels, such as Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Time Must Have a Stop (1944).