A Wanderer in Venice Part 27

And through the leaves the sunlight is splashing on the cloisters, pillars, and white walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARMENIAN MONASTERY AND THE LAGOON]

The refectory is a long and rather sombre room. Here, says the little guide-book to the island, prepared by one of the fathers who had overcome most of the difficulties of our tongue, "before sitting down to dine grace is said in common; the president recites some prayer, two of the scholars recite a psalm, the Lord's prayer is repeated and the meal is despatched in silence. In the meantime one of the novices appears in the pulpit and reads first a lesson from the Bible, and then another from some other book. The meal finished, the president rings a bell, the reader retires to dine, the Community rises, they give thanks and retire to the garden."

Next upstairs. We are taken first to the room which was Byron's, where the visitors' book is kept. I looked from the window to see upon what prospect those sated eyes could fall, and found that immediately opposite is now the huge Excelsior Hotel of the Lido. In Byron's day the Lido was a waste, for bathing had hardly been invented. The reverence in which the name and memory of his lordship are still held suggests that he took in the simple brothers very thoroughly. Not only have they his portrait and the very table at which he sat, but his pens, inkstand, and knife. His own letters on his refuge are interesting. Writing to Moore in 1816 he says: "By way of divertis.e.m.e.nt, I am studying daily, at an Armenian monastery, the Armenian language. I found that my mind wanted something craggy to break upon; and this--as the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amus.e.m.e.nt--I have chosen, to torture me into attention. It is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it. I try, and shall go on; but I answer for nothing, least of all for my intentions or my success." He made a few metrical translations into Armenian, but his princ.i.p.al task was to help with an English and Armenian grammar, for which, when it was ready, he wrote a preface. Byron usually came to the monastery only for the day, but there was a bedroom for him which he occasionally occupied. The superior, he says, had a "beard like a meteor." A brother who was there at the time and survived till the seventies told a visitor that his "Lordship was as handsome as a saint."

In the lobby adjoining Byron's room are cases of autographs and photographs of distinguished visitors, such as Mr. Howells, Longfellow, Ruskin, Gladstone, King Edward VII when Prince of Wales, and so forth.

Also a holograph sonnet on the monastery by Bryant. Elsewhere are various curiosities--dolls dressed in national costumes, medals, Egyptian relics, and so forth. In one case is some manna which actually fell from the skies in Armenia during a famine in 1833.

The chief room of the library contains not only its priceless MSS., but a famous mummy which the experts put at anything from 2200 to 3500 years old. Another precious possession is a Buddhist ritual on papyrus, which an Armenian wandering in Madras discovered and secured. The earliest ma.n.u.script dates from the twelfth century. In a central case are illuminated books and some beautiful bindings; and I must put on record that if ever there was a cicerone who displayed no weariness and disdained merely mechanical interest in exhibiting for the thousandth time his treasures, it is Father Vardan Hatzouni. But the room is so pleasant that, were it not that one enjoys such enthusiasm and likes to stimulate it by questions, it would be good merely to be in it without too curiously examining its possessions.

Downstairs is a rather frigid little church, where an embroidered cloth is shown, presented by Queen Margherita. The S. Lazzaro Armenians, I may say, seem always to have attracted gifts, one of their great benefactors being Napoleon III. They are so simple and earnest and un.o.btrusive--and, I am sure, grateful--that perhaps it is natural to feel generous towards them.

Finally we were shown to the printing-room, on our way to which, along the cloisters from the church, we pa.s.sed through a group of elderly monks, cheerfully smoking and gossiping, who rose and made the most courtly salutation. Here we saw the printing-presses, some of English make, and then the books that these presses turn out. Two of these I bought--the little pamphlet from which I have already quoted and a collection of Armenian proverbs translated into English.

The garden is spreading and very inviting, and no sooner were we outside the door than Father Hatzouni returned to some horticultural pursuit.

The walks are long and shady and the lagoon is lovely from every point; and Venice is at once within a few minutes and as remote as a star.

In the garden is an enclosure for cows and poultry, and the little burial-ground where the good Mechitarists are laid to rest when their placid life is done. Among them is the famous poet of the community, the Reverend Father Gonidas Pakraduni, who translated into Armenian both the _Iliad_ and _Paradise Lost_, as well as writing epics of his own. The _Paradise Lost_ is dedicated to Queen Victoria. Some of the brothers have lived to a very great age, and Mr. Howells in his delightful account of a visit to this island tells of one, George Karabagiak, who survived until he was 108 and died in September, 1863. Life, it seems, can be too long; for having an illness in the preceding August, from which he recovered, the centenarian remarked sadly to one of his friends, "I fear that G.o.d has abandoned me and I shall live." Being asked how he was, when his end was really imminent, he replied "Well,"

and died.

As we came away we saw over the wall of the playground the heads of a few black-haired boys, embryo priests; but they wore an air of gravity beyond their years. The future perhaps bears on them not lightly. They were not romping or shouting, nor were any in the water; and just below, at the edge of the sea, well within view and stone range, I noticed an empty bottle on its end, glistening in the sun. Think of so alluring a target disregarded and unbroken by an English school!

The returning gondola pa.s.ses under the walls of the male madhouse. Just before reaching this melancholy island there is a spot at which it is possible still to realize what Venice was like when S. Mark's campanile fell, for one has the S. Giorgio campanile and this other so completely in line that S. Georgio's alone is visible.

Some of the Armenian proverbs are very shrewd and all have a flavour of their own. Here are a few:--

"What can the rose do in the sea, and the violet before the fire?"

"The mother who has a daughter always has a hand in her purse."

"Every one places wood under his own pot."

"The day can dawn without the c.o.c.k's crowing."

"If you cannot become rich, become the neighbour of a rich man."

"Our dog is so good that the fox has pupped in our poultry house."

"One day the a.s.s began to bray. They said to him: 'What a beautiful voice!' Since then he always brays."

"Whether I eat or not I shall have the fever, so better eat and have the fever."

"The sermon of a poor priest is not heard."

"When he rides a horse, he forgets G.o.d; when he comes down from the horse, he forgets the horse."

"Dine with thy friend, but do no business with him."

"To a bald head a golden comb."

"Choose your consort with the eyes of an old man, and choose your horse with the eyes of a young man."

"A good girl is worth more than seven boys."

"When you are in town, if you observe that people wear the hat on one side, wear yours likewise."

"The fox's last hole is the furrier's shop."

"The Kurd asked the barber: 'Is my hair white or black?' The other answered him: 'I will put it before you, and you will see'."

"He who mounts an a.s.s, has one shame; he who falls from it, has two."

"Be learned, but be taken for a fool."

Of a grumbler: "Every one's grain grows straight; mine grows crooked."

Of an impatient man: "He feeds the hen with one hand and with the other he looks for her eggs."

I have not printed these exactly as they appear in the little pamphlet, because one has only to turn one page to realize that what the S.

Lazzaro press most needs is a proof-reader.

I said at the beginning of this book that the perfect way to approach Venice for the first time is from Chioggia. But that is not too easy.

What, however, is quite easy is to visit Chioggia from Venice and then, returning, catch some of the beauty--without, however, all the surprise and wonder--of that approach.

Steamers leave the Riva, opposite Danieli's, every two hours. They take their easy way up the lagoon towards the Lido for a little while, and then turn off to the right, always keeping in the enclosed channel, for eighteen miles. I took the two o'clock boat on a hot day and am not ashamed to confess that upon the outward voyage I converted it (as indeed did almost everybody else) into a dormitory. But Chioggia awakened me, and upon the voyage back I missed, I think, nothing.

Choggia is amphibious. Parallel with its broad main street, with an arcade and cafes under awnings on one side, and in the roadway such weird and unfamiliar objects as vehicles drawn by horses, and even motor-cars noisy and fussy, is a long ca.n.a.l packed with orange-sailed fishing boats and crossed by many little bridges and one superb broad white one. All the men fish; all the women and children sit in the little side streets, making lace, knitting, and stringing beads. Beside this ca.n.a.l the dirt is abnormal, but it carries with it the usual alleviation of extreme picturesqueness, so that Chioggia is always artist-ridden.

The steamer gives you an hour in which to drift about in the sunshine and meditate upon the inferiority of any material other than water for the macadamizing of roads. There are sights too: Carpaccio's very last picture, painted in 1520, in S. Domenico; a Corso Vittorio Emmanuele; a cathedral; a Giardino Pubblico; and an attractive stone parapet with a famous Madonna on it revered by fishermen and sailors. The town is historically important, for was not the decisive battle of Chioggia fought here in 1379 between the Venetians and their ancient enemies the Genoese?

But I cannot pretend that Chioggia is to my taste. To come to it on the journey to Venice, knowing what is in store, might put one in a mood to forgive its earthy situation and earthy ways; but when, all in love with water, one visits it from Venice, one resents the sound and sight of traffic, the absence of gondolas, and the presence of heat unalleviated.

At five o'clock, punctually to the minute, the steamer leaves the quay and breaks the stillness of the placid lagoon. A few fishing boats are dotted about, one of them with sails of yellow and blue, as lovely as a Chinese rug; others the deep red that Clara Montalba has reproduced so charmingly; and a few with crosses or other religious symbols. The boat quickly pa.s.ses the mouth of the Chioggia harbour, the third spot at which the long thread of land which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic is pierced, and then makes for Palestrina, surely the narrowest town on earth, with a narrower walled cemetery just outside, old boats decaying on the sh.o.r.e, and the skin of naked boys who frolic at the water's edge glowing in the declining sun. Never were such sun-traps as these strips of towns along this island bank, only a few inches above sea level and swept by every wind that blows.

Hugging the coast, which is fringed with tamarisk and an occasional shumac, we come next to Porto Secco, another tiny settlement among vegetable gardens. Its gay church, yellow washed, with a green door and three saints on the roof, we can see inverted in the water, so still is it, until our gentle wash blurs all. Porto Secco's front is all pinks and yellows, reds, ochres, and white; and the sun is now so low that the steamer's shadow creeps along these facades, keeping step with the boat.

More market gardens, and then the next mouth of the harbour, (known as Malamocco, although Malamocco town is still distant), with a coastguard station, a fort, acres of coal and other signs of militancy on the farther side. It is here that the Lido proper begins and the island broadens out into meadows.

At the fort pier we are kept waiting for ten minutes while a live duck submits to be weighed for fiscal purposes, and the delay gives an old man with razor-fish a chance to sell several pennyworths. By this time the sun is very near the horizon, setting in a roseate sky over a lagoon of jade. There is not a ripple. The tide is very low. Sea birds fleck with white the vast fields of mud. The peacefulness of it all under such unearthly beauty is almost disquieting.

Next comes Malamocco itself, of which not much is seen but a little campo--almost an English village green--by the pier, and children playing on it. Yet three thousand people live here, chiefly growers of melons, tomatoes, and all the picturesque vegetables which are heaped up on the bank of the Grand Ca.n.a.l in the Rialto market and are carried to Venice in boats day after day for ever.

Malamocco was a seat of ducal government when Venice was only a village, and not until the seventh century did the honours pa.s.s to Venice: hence a certain alleged sense of superiority on the part of the Malamoccans, although not only has the original Malamocco but the island on which it was built disappeared beneath the tide. Popilia too, a city once also of some importance, is now the almost deserted island of Poveglia which we pa.s.s just after leaving Malamocco, as we steam along that splendid wide high-way direct to Venice--between the mud-flats and the sea-mews and those countless groups of piles marking the channel, which always resemble bunches of giant asparagus and sometimes seem to be little companies of drowning people who have sworn to die together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM THE DOGANA AT NIGHT]