Penelope's Postscripts. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith
I have just bought a photograph taken on that day last year when it was first uncovered. It shows the flags and the decorations, the flowers and garlands, and ever so many children standing in the sunshine, dressed in white and singing hymns of praise. You are all in the picture, I am sure!”
This was a happy stroke. The children crowded about me and showed me where they were standing in the photograph, what they wore on the august occasion, how the bright sun made them squint, how a certain malheureuse Henriette couldn’t go to the festival because she was ill.
I could understand very little of their magpie chatter, but it was a proud moment. Alone, unaided, a stranger in a strange land, I had gained the attention of children while speaking in a foreign tongue. Oh, if I had only left the door open that Salemina might have witnessed this triumph! But hearing steps in the distance, I said hastily, “Asseyez-vous, mes enfants, tout-de-suite!” My tone was so authoritative that they obeyed instantly, and when the teacher entered it was as calm as the millennium.
We rambled through the village for another hour, dined at a quaint little inn, gave a last look at the monument, and left for Geneva at seven o’clock in the pleasant September twilight. Arriving a trifle after ten, somewhat weary in body and slightly anxious in mind, I followed Salemina into the tiny cake-shop across the street from the station. She returned the tumbler, and the man, who seemed to consider it an unexpected courtesy, thanked us volubly. I held out my hand and reminded him timidly of the one franc fifty centimes.
He inquired what I meant. I explained. He laughed scornfully. I remonstrated. He asked me if I thought him an imbecile. I answered no, and wished that I knew the French for several other terms nearer the truth, but equally offensive. Then we retired, having done our part, as good Americans, to swell the French revenues, and that was the end of our day in Pestalozzi-town; not the end, however, of the lemonade glass episode, which was always a favourite story in Salemina’s repertory.
II
PENELOPE IN VENICE
This noble citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I should describe her also as well as the other cities I saw in my journey, partly because she gave me most louing and kinde entertainment for the sweetest time (I must needes confesse) that euer I spent in my life; and partly for that she ministered vnto me more variety of remarkable and delicious objects than mine eyes euer suruayed in any citie before, or euer shall . . . the fairest Lady, yet the richest Paragon and Queene of Christendome.
I
I have always wished that I might have discovered Venice for myself. In the midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied dissemination of knowledge, these latter days, we miss how many fresh and exquisite sensations! Had I a daughter, I should like to inform her mind on every other possible point and keep her in absolute ignorance of Venice. Well do I realize that it would be impracticable, although no more so, after all, than Rousseau’s plan of educating Émile, which certainly obtained a wide hearing and considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it would be, it would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days of logic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might possibly succumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some stranger, whom she might meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of doing it first.
The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice, barring the lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.
It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much better informed than I could wish. Salemina’s mind is particularly well furnished, but, luckily she cannot always remember the point wished for at the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all, she is nearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant. Her knowledge never bulks heavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-distance, like that of Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it should, in the haze of a melting and delicious perspective. She has plenty of enthusiasms, too, and Miss Van Tyck has none. Imagine our plight at being accidentally linked to that encyclopædic lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance of Salemina’s and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying for a month, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler,—Kitty Copley now,—who is in Spain with her husband.
Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons, Genoa, Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never have blighted Venice with her presence. She insisted, however, on accompanying us, and I can only hope that the climate and associations will have a relaxing effect on her habits of thought and speech. When she was in Florence, she was so busy in “reading up” Verona and Padua that she had no time for the Uffizi Gallery. In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare’s “Venice,” vaccinating herself, so to speak, with information, that it might not steal upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anything that Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that she knows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort that comes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of God.
We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and began to consult about trains when we were in Milan. The porter said that there was only one train between the eight and the twelve, and gave me a pamphlet on the subject, but Salemina objects to an early start, and Miss Van refuses to arrive anywhere after dusk, so it is fortunate that the distances are not great.
They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found that the train leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled to arrive at ten minutes past eighteen.
“You could never sit up until then, Miss Van,” I said; “but, on the other hand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in the morning, we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-one! I haven’t the faintest idea what time that will really be, but it sounds too late for three defenceless women—all of them unmarried—to be prowling about in a strange city.”
It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o’clock is only nine in Christian language (that is, one’s mother tongue), so we united in choosing that hour as being the most romantic possible, and there was a full yellow moon as we arrived in the railway station. My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola, while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van’s company.
“Do come with us, Penelope,” she said, as we issued from the portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers’ pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble steps—“Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter ‘dangerous and sweet-charmed Venice’ together. It does, indeed, look a ‘veritable sea-bird’s nest.’”
She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric’s secretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark is out of key. I can always see it printed in small type in a footnote at the bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it, as I do other footnotes, and annotations, and marginal notes and addenda. If Miss Van’s mother had only thought of it, Addenda would have been a delightful Christian name for her, and much more appropriate than Celia.
If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that the new note is as likely to be struck by the ’prentice as by the master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of Venice. My best successes in life have been achieved by knowing what not to do, and I consider it the finest common sense to step modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up, even there, any more dust than is necessary. If my friends and acquaintances ever go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, their Goethe, their Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier, Michelet, their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old “Coryat’s Crudities,” and be thankful I spared them mine.
It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging in the blue. I wished with all my heart that