From the Oak to the Olive: A Plain record of a Pleasant Journey

by Julia Ward Howe

For over the said mantel-piece, two fair, fat babes, modelled in flat-relief, playfully contended for the mastery, their laughing faces near together, their swinging heels wide apart, as the festoon required. Elsewhere in the same relief were arabesques with birds and flowers. This bedroom of ours has been a room of state in its day. A passage-way and dressing-room have been taken from its stately proportions, and still it remains very spacious for our pretensions. Our salon is larger still, and largely mirrored. Two of its windows give upon a leafy garden, whose tree-tops lie nearer to us than to their owners. Its furniture has been hastily thrown together, and is mostly composed of odds and ends. But one of its pieces moves our admiration. It is a toilet table, enclosing a complete set of utensils in the finest Venetian glass—basins, ewers, toilet bottles and glasses, and the little boxes for soap and powder, all cut after the finest pattern. This toilet was made for a royal personage, a queen of something, whose effects somehow seem to have been sold at auction in these parts. Another relic of her we discover in a bureau entirely incrusted with mother-of-pearl, an article that makes one's mouth water, if one has any mouth, which all men, like all horses, have not. The doors which divide our sitting from our sleeping room are at once objects of wonder and of fear to us. Their size is monstrous, and each of them hangs, or rather clings, by the upper hinge, the lower being dismounted. These doors are left all day at a conciliatory angle between closing and opening. We fear their falling on our heads whenever we approach them. We hear vaguely of some one who shall come to put them in order; but he never appears. Our own veteran, arriving at last, sets this right in as summary a manner as he has dealt with other nuisances. For the veteran, worn with travel, does arrive from Greece one morning, rowing up to our palace just as we have stepped from it to meet our gondola. He has a tale to tell like the wanderings of Ulysses. But between this event and those that precede it, the diary shows the following important entry:—

Thursday, Aug. 1.—To Malamocco this A. M., with three rowers—our own, and two others, who received one florin between them. The row, both in going and returning, was delightful. Arrived at Malamocco, the men demanded one franc for breakfast, and disappeared within the shades of the Osteria. This is a small settlement at the very entrance of the lagoons. It was strongly fortified by the Austrians. The heat, however, did not permit us to inspect the fortifications. We saw little of interest, but visited the church and a peasant's house. One of the daughters was engaged in stringing beads for sale. The beads were in a tray, and she plunged into them a bunch of wire needles some six inches in length, each carrying its slender thread. The merchant, she said, came weekly to bring the beads, and to take away those ready strung for the market. "To earn a penny, signora," said the mother, a substantial-looking person, wearing large gold earrings. The houses here looked very comfortable for people of the plain sort. The men seemed to be mostly away, whether engaged in fishing, or following the sea to foreign parts. On our way back we stopped at San Clementi, an ancient church upon a little island, now undergoing repairs. Within the church we found a marble tabernacle with solid walls, built behind the high altar. It may have been forty feet in length by twenty in breadth, and twelve or more feet in height. A massive door of bronze gave entrance to this huge strong-box, which was formerly used as a prison for refractory priests. We found the interior divided into two compartments. The larger of these was fitted up as a chapel; the smaller had served as the cell of confinement. The altar was erected at the partition which separated the two, and a grating inserted behind the altar figure allowed the prisoner the benefit of the religious services carried on in the chapel. The dreariness of this little prison can scarcely be described. No light had it, unless that of a lamp was allowed. A church within a church, and within the inner church a place of torment! This arrangement seemed to violate even the Catholic immunity of sanctuary. Think of the unfortunate shut up within on a feast day, when faint sounds of outward jubilee might penetrate the marble walls, and heighten his pain by its contrast with the general joyous thrill of life. Think of the cheerless mass or vespers vouchsafed to him,—no friendly face, no brother voice, to sweeten worship. And if he continued recalcitrant, how convenient was this isolation for the final disposition to be made of him! De profundis clamavit, doubtless, and the church did not know that God could hear him.

The diary does not record our second visit to the Armenian convent, which took place in these days. I do not even find in its irregular columns any mention of a franc which I am sure I paid to the porter, and which, I faintly hope, has been put to my credit elsewhere. Despite this absence of pièces justificatives, the visit still remains so freshly in my memory that I may venture to speak of it. The elder neophyte not having been with us before in Venice, the convent was new ground to her. We who had already seen it felt much more at home on the occasion of our second visit than of our first. For Padre Giacomo had answered our invasion by a friendly call; and did we not now know him to be a most genial and hospitable person? Had we not, moreover, made ourselves familiar with his religion, on our late voyage, by frequent converse with two priests of his profession? Did I not possess Father Michel's views concerning the demonio, as well as his version of the Book of Job? And of Père Isaak did I not know the polished, uncommunicative side which covered his intimate convictions, whatever they may have been? The Armenian ladies, too,—had they not made me free of the guild? One of them had shown me her prayer-book. The other, being but fifteen years of age, had no prayer-book. So, with an assured step, we entered the sacred parlor, and demanded news of Padre Giacomo, and of his monkey. And the father came, smiling a little better than before, but with a sweet Oriental gravity. And he showed us again the library, and hall, and chapel, with the refectory, from whose cruel pulpit one brother is set to read while the others feast. We saw again the printing presses, worked by hand. And in the sacristy he commanded two of the younger brethren to bring the chiefest embroidered garments, reserved for high occasions, judging of us unjustly by our sex. And these satin and velvet wonders were, indeed, embossed with lambs, and birds, and flowers, in needlework of silver and gold, and of various colors, meet for the necks of them that divide the spoil. And we saw also a very fine mummy, as black, and dried, and wizened, as any old Pharaoh could be. A splendid bead covering lay over him, in open rows of blue and white, with hieroglyphic-looking men in black and yellow. This covering had been lately cleaned and repaired at the glass-works of Murano, as Padre Giacomo recounted with pride. He showed us in the old part of the work some curious double beads, which Venice itself, he said, was unable to imitate. The colors were as fresh and clear as if the mummy had clothed himself from the last fancy fair, with a description of afghan well suited to the Egyptian climate.

Having done justice to this human preserve, the padre now regaled us with a preparation of rose leaves embalmed in sugar. He also bestowed upon us one of the convent publications, a tolerable copy of verses composed on the spot itself by the late Louis of Bavaria, celebrating its calm and retirement. I myself could have responded to the royal suspiria with one distich.

"Here no people comes to beg thee,

Here no Lola comes to plague thee."

As we passed from the building to the garden, the wicked monkey, chained and lying in wait, sprang at my hat, and, snatching my lilac veil, bore it off with a flying leap of animal grace and malice. Padre Giacomo anxiously apologized for his pet's misconduct, which was certainly surprising. But the monkey's education, as every one knows, is dependent, not upon precept, but upon example, and Padre Giacomo's example, to the monkey, was only a negative. We parted from our cloistered friend, sincerely desiring, if not hoping, to see him again.

Of our last day in fairest Venice the diary gives this meagre account:—

Sunday, August 4. Early to Piazza, where we encountered the Bishop of Rhode Island. At San Marco's, visited Luccati's beautiful mosaics in the sacristy. The three figures over the door are especially fine—Madonna in the middle, and a saint on either side. A colossal cross adorns the ceiling, and the wall on one side is occupied by figures of twelve prophets; on the other, by the twelve disciples. The cross almost seems to bloom with beautiful devices. Luccati was imprisoned, they say, in the Piombi.

To the Italian Protestant service, held in a good hall in the neighborhood of the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo. The hall was densely crowded. I found no seat, and barely room to stand. The audience seemed a mixed one, so far as worldly position goes, but was entirely respectable in aspect and demeanor, the masculine element largely predominating. Signor Comba, a young man, is quite eloquent and taking. He delivers himself clearly, and with energy. He criticised at some length the unchristian doctrines of the Romish church—this is part of his work.

The service ended, I passed into the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo, and enjoyed my visit unusually. The vivid light of the day and hour made many of the monuments appear new to me. The doges in this, as in other churches, are stowed away on shelves, like mummies. Found a monument to Doge Sterno, dated early in the fifteenth century, and beside it the effigy of a youth designated as Aloysius Trevisano, æt. 23, deeply regretted, and commemorated for his attainments in Greek, Latin, and philosophy. The figure is recumbent, the face of a high and refined character, with the unmistakable charm of youth impressed upon it. The date is also of the fifteen century. From the church to the sacristy, to take a last look at the two pictures, Titian's Death of St. Peter, martyr, and a fine Madonna of Gian Bellini. The Titian was glorious to-day. It has great life and action. The Dominican in the foreground, who has his arm raised as if appealing to heaven and earth against the barbarous act, seems to have communicated a touch of his passion to the two cherubs above, who bear the martyr palm. They are stormy little cherubs, and seem in haste to bring in sight the recompense of so much suffering.