Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife by Marietta Holley (ebook reader android txt) 📖

The next morning after we arrived at Florence we sallied out sightseeing. We all went out together, but separated after a while, promising to meet at luncheon time at our tarven, but we all went together as fur as the Cathedral. It is a noble buildin’, covered with red, white and black marble, elegantly ornamented with panels and sculpture. And the hull meetin’-house is so beautiful, that it wuz remarked that “it ort to be kep’ in a glass case.”

Inside, the ceiling is one hundred and thirty-five feet high––good land! I told Josiah I wuz glad I did not have to whitewash or paper it overhead, for it ’most killed us Methodist Episcopal sisters to paper our meetin’-house ceilin’ which wuz only twenty feet high, and put a hundred and fifteen feet on top of that and where would we be, we never could done it in the world. The interior is full of statutes and pictures by Michael Angelo and other great sculptors and famous painters.

The Campanile or bell tower near it is most three hundred feet high, and a beautiful view is to be seen from the top way off onto the fur-off mountains, the city and the valley of the Arno, or that is I hearn so; I didn’t climb up myself to see, bein’ more’n willin’ to take Dorothy’s word and Robert Strong’s to that effect.

The bronze doors in the Baptistry are a sight to see. Michael Angelo said they wuz worthy to be the gates of paradise, but I could tell Mr. Angelo, and would if he had said it to me, that he little knew how beautiful them gates are and we ortn’t to compare anything earthly to ’em. Jest think, Mr. Angelo, I’d say, of an immense gate being made 351 of one pearl, the idee! we can’t hardly git into our heads any idees here below, and never will till the winds of heaven blow aginst our tired senses and brighten ’em up.

But I wuzn’t neighbor to Mr. Angelo; he died several years before I wuz born, four or five hundred years before, so of course I couldn’t advise him for his good. He lost a sight and never knowed it, poor creeter!

The Ufizzi and Pitti galleries contain enough pictures and statutes to make ’em more’n comfortable, I should think; beautiful pictures and beautiful statutes I must say. One of the most interestin’ things to me in the hull collection wuz the original drawings of the old masters with their names signed to ’em in their own handwritin’. It wuz like liftin’ up the mysterious curtain a little ways and peerin’ into the past. Michael Angelo’s sketches in chalk and charcoal; Titian’s drawings, little buds, as you may say from which they bloomed into immortal beauty; Rubens, Albert Durer and a throng of others. And then there wuz the autograph portraits of the great painters, Guido, Rembrandt, De Vinci, Vandyke, Raphael, and also the greatest works of all these painters. It wuz a grand and inspirin’ sight never to be forgot. Robert Strong and Dorothy wanted to see the statute of Dante; they set store by his writings. It is a splendid statute of white marble riz up in the Piazza Sante Croce; I hearn ’em talkin’ about its bein’ on a piazza and spozed it wuz built on some stoop and mistrusted he deserved a better pillow.

But it wuzn’t on the piazza of a house, it wuz out-doors, and the pedestal wuz over twenty feet high, all covered with carvin’s of seens took from his “Divinia Commedia,” and some lions, and the arms of Italy, and things. It wuz a good-lookin’ statute, better lookin’ as fur as beauty goes than Dante himself; he wuz kinder humbly I always thought, but then, I spoze, he didn’t always wear that wreath on his head; mebby he looked better in a beaver hat or a fur cap. ’Tennyrate, Thomas J. always sot store by him. It wuz a noble statute, 352 more’n fifty feet high, I presoom, with two figures standin’ on each side and one on top. The one on the left seemed to have her hand outstretched telling to all the world just how Dante wuz used whilst he wuz alive, and the one on the right had just throwed herself down and wuz cryin’ about it, and Dante, settin’ on top, wuz leanin’ his hand on his head and meditatin’. What his meditations wuz, I don’t know, nor Josiah don’t. Mebby he wuz thinkin’ of Beatrice.

Thomas J. had read Dante’s books a sight to his pa and me. “The Divine Comedy,” “The Inferno,” “Bernadiso,” “New Life,” etc., etc. Thomas Jefferson thought “The Divine Comedy” a powerful work, showing the story of how a man wuz tempted, and how sorrow lifts up the soul to new hites.

I never approved of his praisin’ up Beatrice quite so much under the circumstances, and I dare presoom to say that he and Gemma (his pardner) had words about it. But then I couldn’t hender it, it havin’ all took place five or six hundred years before I wuz born.

Robert Strong said that his writings wuz full of eloquence, wit and pathos. His native land sets great store by his memory, though they acted in the usual genteel and fashionable way, and banished and persecuted him during his life. One thing he said I always liked. He wuz told he might return to his country under certain pains and penalties, but he refused and said:

“Far from a preacher of justice to pay those who have done him wrong as a favor. Can I not everywhere behold the mirrors of the sun and stars? Speculate on sweetest truths under any sky.”

Robert Strong said his poetry wuz far finer in the original.

And I said, “Yes, he wuz very original, for Thomas Jefferson always said so.”

He is buried in Ravenna, and the Florentines have begged for his ashes to rest in Florence. If when they burnt 353 up some of his books to show their contempt of him they had done as they wanted to, dug up his body and burnt it, there wouldn’t have been any ashes to quarrel about, for of course scornin’ him so they would have cast his ashes to the winds. But now they worship him when his ear is dead to their praise, the great heart silent that their love would have made beat with ecstasy. Well, such is life. They treated Tasso just about the same who writ “Jerusalem Delivered,” they imprisoned him for a lunatic, and now how much store they set by him.

And I had these same thoughts, only more extreme ones, as we stood in the cell of that noble preacher of righteousness and denouncer of sin, Savonarola. He wuz so adored by the populace, and so great a crowd pressed to see him to kiss his robe and applaud him, that he had to have a guard. And then this same adoring crowd turned against him, imprisoned him for heresy, tortured him, burnt him to the stake. And when he stood on the fagots, which wuz to be his funeral bed of flame, and the bishop said to him:

“I excommunicate you from the church militant,” he answered: “Thou canst not separate me from the Church Triumphant.”

A great life and a great death. I thought of this a sight as I looked on his tomb. I sot store by Mr. Savonarola.

In the Church of Sante Croce we see the tomb of Machiavelli, a very wise, deep man and a wise patriot, but a man lied about the worst kind by them that hate liberty; the tomb of the poet, Alfieri, with Italy weepin’ over it; the tombs of Michael Angelo and Galileo; the mother of the Bonapartes, and many, many others. Galileo’s monument wuz a sizeable one, but none too big for the man who discovered the telescope and the motion of the earth. But just as the way of the world is because he found new stars and insisted that the earth did move, his enemies multiplied, he wuz persecuted and imprisoned. I sot great store by him, and so did Robert Strong, and I sez to him, “Robert, you 354 too are discovering new and radiant stars in your City of Justice and proving that the world does move.” And I gin a queer look onto Miss Meechim and sez:

“I hope you won’t be persecuted for it.”

Miss Meechim looked some like her sirname with the last letter changed to n. But to resoom: The galleries of Florence contains priceless pictures and statuary, so many of ’em that to enjoy them as you should, and want to, would take years. Why, in the hall of Niobe I wanted to stay for days to cry and weep and enjoy myself. I took my linen handkerchief out of my pocket to have it ready, for I laid out to weep some, and did, the mother’s agony wuz so real, holdin’ one child while the rest wuz grouped about her in dyin’ agony. One of the sons looked so natural, and his expression of despair and sufferin’ wuz so intense that Arvilly said:

“I believe he drinked, his face shows a guilty conscience, and his ma looks jest as the mother of drunkards always looks.”

I told her that the death of Niobe’s children wuz caused by envy and jealousy, which duz just such things to-day as fur as they dast all the way from New York to Jonesville, and so on through the surroundin’ world. Sez I, “Apollo and Diana killed ’em all just because Niobe had such beautiful children and so many of ’em and wuz naterally proud and had boasted about ’em some, and Apollo and Diana didn’t want their ma looked down on and run upon because she had only two children, and probable their ma bein’ envious and jealous sot ’em up.”

But Arvilly wouldn’t give up; she said a ma would always try to cover up things and insisted on it to the last that she should always believe they drinked and got into a fight with Latony’s boy and girl.

“No,” sez I agin, “it wuz Envy and Jealousy that took aim and did this dretful deed.”

Josiah sez: “Why didn’t Ni-obe keep her mouth shet then?”

Well, it wuz vain to