The Arrival of the English Ambassadors

The Arrival of the English Ambassadors is a scene from Carpaccio’s Legend of St Ursula cycle, reproduced on a postcard that Patrick Hazlewood sends to Marion Burgess and Tom Burgess from Venice. Its image of two young men gives Marion a vivid object through which to read the intimacy between Patrick and Tom, and, years later, becomes part of her effort to revisit their past and find Patrick again.

The Image and Its Meaning

The postcard shows two young men in tomato-coloured tights and fur-collared jackets leaning on a railing. Their extravagant hair curls to their shoulders, and one holds a peregrine falcon. Marion sees them as both spectators and performers: they watch, but are also conscious of being watched. That double position gives the image a particular force for her as she considers the closeness between the two men who have sent the card.

The postcard’s image is not a conventional Venetian view. It offers neither St Mark’s Square nor the Rialto Bridge, and shows no canal or gondolier. Instead, it presents a painted scene whose two male figures invite Marion to imagine the relationship she cannot witness directly. The work thus becomes less a souvenir of the city than a way of seeing Patrick and Tom together.

The Postcard from Venice

On the back, Patrick comments on Carpaccio’s association with the name given to thin slices of raw beef and describes Venice as too beautiful to describe. Tom adds that the journey was long but went well, calls the city a great place, and says he misses Marion. The contrasting messages matter to her: Patrick’s note is vivid and particular, while Tom’s seems to say almost nothing. The postcard carries both men’s handwriting, but not the same degree of disclosure from each.

The card reaches Marion days after Patrick and Tom have returned. She burns it immediately. That act destroys the physical keepsake, but does not remove the picture from her memory; the painted men will return to her thoughts when she later visits Venice herself.

Marion’s Later Return to the Painting

Years afterward, Marion travels to Verona with an organised opera trip and takes a day trip to Venice. She has not told Tom that Venice was part of the itinerary, and the city remains among the subjects they do not discuss. As she walks alone, she imagines Patrick and Tom arriving at Santa Lucia station, crossing bridges, and waiting together for a vaporetto. The imagined scenes make the absent men present throughout the city.

At Santa Maria della Salute, Marion watches two young men reading a guidebook together, each tenderly holding the edge of a page, and thinks again of Patrick and Tom. She also seeks out Carpaccio’s paintings at Gallerie dell’Accademia and studies the two men in The Arrival of the English Ambassadors. The image prompts her to imagine Patrick explaining the painting to Tom and Tom listening closely. The postcard reproduction has become a route back into a shared past that Marion could only picture from outside.

Narrative Significance

Marion’s later visit does not simply repeat the postcard’s effect. She wonders whether retracing the men’s steps is a pilgrimage or a way of laying the ghosts of 1958 to rest, but concludes that it is neither: Venice acts as a catalyst. Soon afterward, she takes the long-delayed step of seeking Patrick out and bringing him back. The painting therefore links the postcard’s immediate contrast between Patrick’s expressive message and Tom’s reticence to Marion’s eventual action; an image she once burned remains part of the memory that helps move her from imagining the past to confronting it.