Days spent on a Doge's Farm

Preface

. $k TT was under my father's influence and with his help that this small book was written. Living for awhile a life apart from his, I always thought of him, and for him I chronicled the things I saw and did. When I came home we read these chronicles together, laughing at the crudities, which he forgave. He pro mised to write an introduction for the book, which would have brought it more together and given it a point by showing the historical interest of the country which I, through ignorance, have only superficially described ; and, chiefly, he meant to dwell on Virgil's connection with the Lombard scenes. My father and I were on our way to Vescovana, where he hoped to write this preface, when he fell ill. In Rome he died. The writing seems to me now incomplete — a thing with the spirit gone out of it. But my father's marks are over all the manuscript ; i*

PREFACE.

. and because he liked the book, because he took an interest in it and wanted me to print it, I do so now, and give it back to him, the strength of whose love and influence it was which taught me since child hood to love and understand a little, not only the charm of a Doge's Farm, but of the whole and living world. MARGARET SYMONDS. Davos Platz, July 3, 1893. LION OF S. MARK AND INDIAN CORN. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface 5 Introduction ........ ll CHAP. i. Rise of the Pisanis and Purchase of Vescovana i 7 11. The Making of the Doge's Farm . . 24 in. First Impressions . . . -35 iv. Second Thoughts ...... 63 v. May Wanderings ...... S2 CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE vi. In Early June ...... 9+ vii. The Melancholy of the Plain ... 99 viii. Flowers of the Plain . ... 108 ix. The Stables and the People . . . .115 x. A Gromboolian Serenade . . . 133 xi.

Old Houses of Gromboolia .... 142 xii. Fishing in Gromboolia . . . . 154 xiii. The Festa of S. Antonio at Padua . .160 xiv. The Harvest ...... 173 xv. Gleaning . . . . . . .180 xvi. Threshing ....... 188 xvii. A Day at Trissino ..... 194 xviii. On the Banks of the Adige and Palazzo Rosso 215 xix. In the Euganean Hills ..... 223 xx. Last Days . . . . . . . 250 Epilogue . . . . . . . . -253 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE I. Doge Alvise Pisani .... Frontispiece 2. Lion of S. Mark and Indian Corn . . 7 3. Lamps of the Pisani Admiral . . . .11 4. Home of the Long-tailed Tit . . . 17 5. Boca delle Denoncie Secrete .... 24 6. The Doge's Farm on the South Side . . 27 7. Ground Plan of the Doge's Farm and Garden in 1700 34 8. Gates of the Doge's Farm . . . . 35 9. Doge Marin Grimani, Son of Donata Pisani.

Painted by Contarini, 1 595-1605. {In the Possession of Countess Pisani) . . . -37 10. Dogaressa Morosina Morosini, Wife of Doge Marin Grimani. Painted by Contarini, 1599. {In the Possession of Countess Pisani) . . 41 1 1. Shrine of the Red Madonna .... 48 12. Church and House of Vescovana, seen from the Canal ....... 62 13. Mulberry ........ 63 14. Petrarch's Tomb ...... 66 15. Back of the Church at Vescovana ... 69 16. Village of Vescovana, from the Canal LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 10 PAGE 17. City Walls of Este °I 18. Silkworm .....•• 82 19. Oleander Flower ...... 94 20. All' Albera .....•• 97 21. Cardinal's Umbrella ...... 99 22. Living House, with Euganean Hills and Alps in the Distance . . . . . • I0° 23. Copper Basin and Towel . . . . .100 24. Copper Water-Can . . . . . 101 25. Farmhouse and Stables ..... 101 26.

Corner of a Gromboolian Kitchen . . 103 27. Farmhouse, with Vine grown over the Porch . 105 28. In the Village of Vescovana . . . 106 29. Green Tree Frog ...... 108 30. Yoke of a Gromboolian Ox . . . . 115 31. Farm of the Manfredini ... .122 32. Stables, Fontana . . . . . . 123 33. Well at the Pioppa . . . . . .130 34. Doge's Cap . . . . . . . 1 33 35. Cardinal's Hat ....... 142 36. Grompa, Villa Estense ..... 147 37. Prize Bull of Signor Marchiori at Grompa . 149 38. Prize Ox of Signor Marchiori at Grompa . 150 39. Barchesse, Boara Pisani . . . . .151 40. Scene of the Fishing . . . . . 155 41. Image of the Madonna on Stable Wall . .159 4.2. Barchesse, Vescovana . . . . . 182 43. Steps leading to Front Door, Trissino . . 200 44. On the Banks of the Adige . . . . LAMPS OF THE riSANI ADMIRAL

Introduction

. As A LL travellers beyond the Alps are well acquainted with the plain of Lombardy— that immense body of land lying like a prostrate giant over Northern Italy. The giant's head is crowned by Apennines and Alps, his feet are bathed by the Adriatic, and down his entire length run the rivers Ticino, Adige, and Po. That which I have called the giant — what is generally known as the Lombard Plain — is really a broad valley scooped out ages ago bv those three great Alpine rivers. Many of its northern cities are familiar to the tourist, and it is certain that even the most hurried traveller pushes eastward to Venice. But the part which I describe

INTRODUCTION.

. 12 is all unknown to the inquiring stranger. It offers few attractions to the student of art or of history. The painter hitherto has shown no desire to put its charms on canvas. Quietly and unobserved life passes there. Virgil, it is true, observed it long ago. The Georgics are immortal, but the land which gave them birth is little trodden by their readers. And there the seed is sown, the corn is reaped, the grain gathered into the granaries, while the daily trains rush past to Bologna, Mantua, Venice, or Ferrara ; none of their multitudes descend upon those flat and cultivated fields which offer scant diversion to the lover of art or the seekers after pleasure. The actual interest of this country will be acknowledged by the agriculturist alone ; its attraction only by one who has abundant leisure, and takes delight in every side of Nature and in the workings of man amongst them.

The actual part of this country which I have attempted to describe goes in the maps by the name of Basso Padovano. It is that sea of fertile land, bounded by the Euganean Hills and the Adriatic, which Shelley has described so wonderfully well. Lombardy comes up to meet it ; Venetia and Padua claim it for their own. It has a charm which is peculiar to itself — a green, grey melancholy ; an absolute and endless calm. Even in storms you feel an infinite space of heaven around the bit of INTRO D UCTION. 13 sky where the hubbub rages ; and when that whole sky is a serene blue the sense of accumulated sunshine falling unchecked across innumerable miles of un broken fields can boast a solemn beauty all its own. Something of this charm may be found in every plain, but in this special one the nearness of the lagoons increases it, I fancy.

As I have shown in the first chapter the country is partly artificial — that is to say, it has been culti vated with enormous pains and at great expense for over six hundred years. But even now it is yearly threatened with destruction. The river Adige crosses this smooth plain (which has a fall of only seven and a half metres in the space of thirty-four miles) before it can reach the sea. The Adige bears with it all the waters of the distant Alps, and deposits in its slow progress all those vast accumulations of mountain sediment, which in due time pile up an artificial mountain in the actual bed of the river which brought them. Thus the very cause of the land's fertility (its abundant water supply) may prove its ruin ; and not all the intricate system of canals and ditches can save those flourishing fields on the day when the big river breaks its banks.

These banks are calculated to inspire something like panic in the mind of the most ignorant observer. They rise to a height of from twentysix to twenty nine feet above the level of the land, and the church-

INTRODUCTION.

. 14 spires and houses which once commanded now are shadowed by these mountainous banks. Standing on their summit you see the entire plain for miles spread like a map below you. Interminable fields of corn or maize, stretching between ditches hedged by mulberry and willow, with here and there a mud hut or a stable, now and then a small, thin campanile. In the far background faint shadows of the Alps arise, and on the breeze a suspicion of salt air is borne from the invisible lagoon. In the heart of this country, and in the house of one of its most active and charming inhabitants — Countess Pisani — it has often been my privilege to stay. This lady is an admirer of the works of Edward Lear, and has bestowed upon her country the name of Gromboolia, which hitherto undiscovered land is often mentioned in Lear's poems.

The title is so exactly adapted to the country that I shall not scruple to adopt it in the following pages. She has also called her house the " Doge's Farm." For it was in Gromboolia that the families of old Venetian doges made their land settlements ; and I have shown in what manner the Pisani family bought and cultivated a part of it. These nobles spent most of their spare money in decorating and living sumptuously within their city palaces ; their country house was built in a style more suited to their bailiffs. It is INTRO D UCTION. 15 probable that the Pisani doge never even came to Vescovana ; it is certain that he lived long centuries after the land had been bought ; at a time, indeed, when it was falling into decay together with the Republic. I must, therefore, openly acknowledge that the title of "Doge's Farm " was bestowed more for the sake of its new and pleasing sound than for any historical fitness in the term.

Also I acknowledge that this small book is half a jest. It contains few facts and little history. Letters and notes written out of a happy time, I put together and give them here. Any local information con tained in the book I owe to the kindness and accurate knowledge of my friend, Countess Pisani, who showed me the things which I describe, and who also supplied me with those photographs of Pisani portraits, and of local views which have been reproduced in the following pages. The remainder of the illustrations are from my own sketches. HOME OF THE LONG-TAILED TIT.

Chapter I. Rise Of The

H1SANIS AND PURCHASE OF VESCOVANA. ' I VHE Pisani family were not of Venetian origin. We find the following account of them in the Libro d'Oro : The family removed about the year 905 from Pisa to Venice, on account of party feuds, and was included in the Patriciate at the closing of the Great Council. Luigi Pisani was Doge in 1735 ; Francesco and Alvise were Cardinals of the Holy 2 Church ; and the family reckons a very long series of worthy citizens adorned by the most conspicuous dignities of the State. The Pisanis were originally merchants in skins, and travelled regularly once a year from Pisa to Venice in order to sell their wares. In the year 905, as the above quotation from the Libro d'Oro shows, they removed from their native town and took up their final abode in Venice. We hear little or nothing of importance concerning any member of the family in connection with Venetian affairs till the year 1355, when Beltrame Pelizzaro (a Pisani) discovered the plot of Doge Marin Fallier against the Republic.

This Beltrame thought himself injured by the Re public, in that his discovery had not been better rewarded, and by his huge demands for money he first brought the family into evidence. At this time it was the fashion in Venice for its nobles and citizens to purchase estates upon the mainland, partly with a view to agricultural profit, but chiefly as a safeguard in case of an attack upon their city from country neighbours — a belt around the lagoon. Thus in the year 1468 a member of the Pisani family purchased from the Marquises of Ferrara a grant of land, and in 1688 they renewed the settle ments and regained all those privileges which the Emperor Frederick II. bestowed upon the house of Este in 1200. These privileges, I may as well mention, continue for the convenience of Vescovana proprietors up to the end of this civilised nineteenth century, and the weekly fair of the country is held regularly in the miniature piazza of Vescovana — a mere hamlet when compared with its neighbouring villages.

Azzo and Bertaldo d'Este — two generals serving in the Venetian army — had fallen into debt, and were pleased to sell this portion of their property through the hands of the Republic to Almoro III. Pisani, a wealthy Pisan merchant. The estate at that time reached from Este to the Adige, covering an expanse of some eighteen thousand acres. But the ground was absolutely uncultivated. The soil, rich though it was, suffered from lack of drainage, and was constantly under water. Little, save marsh plants and rushes, existed in these swamps. Wild duck and snipe no doubt there were in plenty. They supplied the tables of the nobles in their Venetian palaces, but the nobles themselves could not in habit such damp wildernesses. It is impossible for us who travel through Lom bardy nowadays, and see it in its present finished and excellently fertile condition, to realise from what a chaos this cultivation first arose.

It must, how ever, be remembered that, though soil and climate have undoubtedly been favourable, the work of men and oxen has been colossal on this great delta of the Alpine rivers, and that the drainage of many thousands of square acres, with a fall of only some eight to ten metres to the sea, has been a stupendous feat requiring centuries of patient toil and hidden labour. From the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century the Pisanis have tended and cared for their grant of land. If the dead indeed walk, Almoro III. Pisani, the old Pisan merchant, who purchased it more than five hundred years ago, may feel just pride in prowling unseen across his fat and flourishing country. Fields upon fields of waving wheat he there will see ; trim-clipped acacia hedges lining the roads, and mulberries with vines upon them to separate the wheat and corn.

The youno maize shoots from shining sods, and quiet oxen, tall and white, stand in their well-kept stalls. No inch is left untrodden or uncared for, and so it is all over Lombardy. The cultivated fields stretch on for miles. They lap the feet of the Euganeans, they kiss the slopes of Apennines, and end by the Adriatic. In writing about the Pisanis I must not omit to mention one of the Venetian Republic's greatest heroes, namely, Vettor Pisani, the admiral who in the year 1378 saved Venice from the Genoese at a minute when indeed she was almost vanquished. The admiral, it is true, belonged to a different branch of the Pisani family than those of whom I write, but his name, so famous in history, will inevitably recur to the mind of the reader. We read later in the Libro d'Oro that two of the family obtained the title of cardinal — Francesco and Alvise, an uncle and nephew.

The nephew spent his days in scheming for the advancement of his uncle to the Holy See. But the plot was discovered early, and led to the ruin of both. The fresco portrait of Cardinal Francesco, fresh and vivid in colour, still looks down from the walls of the big room at Vescovana. In 1735 Alvise Pisani was created Doge. This was in the extreme decadence of the Republic, at a period of which there is little to recall. Luigi's life is interesting for things outside Venice itself. He was first sent as Venetian ambassador to the courts of France and England. To the latter country he went in the year 1702 to offer the congratulations of the Venetian Republic to Queen Anne upon the occasion of her accession. Amongst the Pisani pictures at the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice there is a portrait of this English queen, presented probably by herself at the time.

There is also a very fascinating picture of the ambassador's arrival in London : a thoroughly Venetian conception of the Tower of London and the Thames. It was Alvise's son — Almoro Luigi Pisani — who, through his immense ambition and a love of luxury, acquired during his residence at the French court, practically ruined the Pisani family. Luigi, godchild of Louis XIV. of France, was, like his father, chosen by the Venetian Republic for their ambassador to foreign courts. In the year 1795 he was recalled to Venice from London, and returning, full of his newly-acquired tastes, he determined to spend his fortune upon some monumental show. He purchased land upon the Brenta, a little way out of Padua, instead of using his own land at Vescovana, and there he built his palace of Stra. Stra may now be seen — a splendid edifice in splendid grounds.

Its trees are planted in geo metrical designs : towers and statues, elaborate iron gates and temples lead up to it. But the house is uninhabited, abandoned by owners who could not desire, even if they possessed the wealth, to inhabit such a soulless monument. Stra is a mighty pleasure house fit for a selfish soul, a silly king surrounded by a troop of idle courtiers to take his summer ease in. But put down square on the bare Venetian plain it becomes a mockery. Little hills, deep woods, and running rivulets are needed for palaces like these. Maize fields clash with hornbeam labyrinths, and the big unshadowed sun is pitiless in bare Venetia. To cover the building expenses of Stra, Luigi called continually for money from his bailiffs at Vescovana. When these supplies were exhausted the bailiffs were forced to borrow money.

Consequently when the father of the last owner succeeded to the property he found it so heavily mortgaged that his whole life's energy was spent in the attempt to bring it back to some state of order and freedom. One jewel and joy alone is left to the Pisanis from the folly of Luigi, and that is the portrait of himself and his family painted by Longhi. This picture hangs in the drawing-room of the present owner's house at Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. Here we meet a bright eyed, laughing lady in flowered brocade, surrounded by a tumbling heap of very fat and fascinating chil. dren. Some older men and mythological figures stand behind her. A Pisani brother is in the foreground wearing black satin and a white periwig, and Luigi stands behind him pointing to a distant landscape, where the buildings of Stra rise over the tree-tops.

This picture is so living, so vivid in colour, that one seems to know and love the people painted there, and to join them in laughter and in the pleasure of their costly toy. Luigi's grandchildren and great-grandchildren put all their energies into bringing the estates of Vesco vana into order. They abandoned Stra, they left their palaces in Venice, and the last of the Pisanis, Almorb III., lived almost entirely in the country, where, with the help of his English wife, he worked to make Vescovana the model " Doge's Farm," which we who go there now regard with such delight, and where we spend such pleasant days. BOCA DELI.E DENONCIE SEGRETE.

Chapter II. The Making Of The Doge's Farm

TT is not easy to describe the Doge's Farm to those who have not been in Italy. It would not be easy to describe to an Italian, who had never visited England, an English manor-house and its surrounding scenes. In many ways the two resemble each other, and work on the same principles, yet it would be difficult to find poles wider apart than the village-green and the southern piazza. Both DAYS SPENT ON A DOGE'S FARM. 25 serve the same purpose. How differently is life conducted in each ! In England you talk of the church tower, in Italy of the campanile. The English rector will very likely know how many owls have built in his tower, and it is possible that the young men of his parish may have accomplished a chime, which they will ring on Sunday morning, when the people of the village and the inhabitants of the " house " go quietly to church.

In Italy, on the other hand, the owls haven't much of a chance, for the campanile is public property. Any lounger, bored by the piazza, may rush upon the bell ropes in the campanile at any hour of the day, and pull them singly or in numbers, till the bells clash above him. On Sundays the girls will trip through the Italian piazza in thin lace veils — as across the English green in sailor hats. Love and calm may grow round the green, but romance and southern callousness are bred in the piazza. The Doge's Farm remains at root absolutely Italian, though a tinge of England entered with an English bride. This is chiefly marked by the manner in which the villa has been shut off from the piazza. In most Italian villages the two are more merged into one another. Vescovana lies beside the canal of Santa Caterina, about twenty miles from Padua.

Its nearest railway DA YS SPENT ON A DOGE 'S FARM. 26 station is Stanghella, but the express trains from Venice to Florence only stop at Rovigo, which is seven miles from Vescovana and the largest town in the district. Even as far back as the fifteenth century we find the name of Vescovana printed on local maps. It is a small village, chiefly composed of low mud huts, which straggle singly down the banks of the canal. The piazza is deeply shadowed by acacia-trees, and is a cool and pleasant place where the market is held on Fridays. Here, too, on big feast days the procession leaves the church and makes the round of the square. To the left the priest's house is built — a small cottage almost hidden by its magnolia-trees and creeping plants. Next to this comes the campanile — one of those slender brick buildings peculiar to Lombardy, and quite discon nected with the body of the church, as is the fashion in Gromboolian bell-towers.

The church itself is large, its facade painted in pure white. On Sundays the entire population waits outside its doors till a Pisani is prepared to go to mass. The mass also waits, for patriarchal principles are preserved on the Doge's Farm. The whole of the third part of the triangle is filled by the villa. But the house is so low, and is painted in so dark a colour, that at first you scarcely discover its presence there as you approach through the sunlight of the road. Also it is surrounded by THE DOGE'S FARM ON THE SOUTH SIDE A DOGE 'S FARM. 29 tall shrubs and trees, and there is a sombre, mysterious look about the ancient, building which has given rise to many local myths. The central part is bare of creepers, but the long wings which stretch away almost out of sight — so absurdly long do they appear to be — are covered with a dense growth of ivy and are used above as granaries.

Birds and big tussore moths, mice, snails, and lizards make this creeper their abode. It is splendid cover for the naturalist. Over the front door, the parti-coloured lioness of the Pisanis ramps above the date, M.D.CXIII., when the house was last renewed. From this rather sombre approach one suddenly passes through the halls and out to the south side, which is most literally the sunny side of the Doge's Farm. Here the light blazes on yellow walls ; here the bees have their hives, the dogs their home, and the hum of life comes on the air from the stables and the kitchen. There is, in fact, an accumulation of warmth, and sound, and colour, which people passing along the outside road have never dreamed of. At any season of the year you will find that southern garden full of flowers, for she who made it loves it well.

The garden >is the sole creation of a modern English fancy, and has nothing to do with the old Pisani nobles. They did not use their spare ground thus, but planned it in a stiffer style, and for purposes of use, not beauty (see p. 34). In the year 1850, Count Almoro III., the last of the Pisanis of San Stefano, came into the property. A few years later he married, and brought his young English bride to live with him upon the Doge's Farm. Her first impressions of the place were not exactly pleasant. The great long villa stood bare and flat upon the plain. No single tree shielded it from the baking suns of summer, no flower-bed was there to strengthen the buds of spring. And worst of all, the one claim of the big house to architectural beauty, its colonnaded flight of entrance steps, had been ruthlessly torn down to suit the fashion of the day, and to flatter the imagined tastes of an English bride.

The garden consisted of square plots of earth, hedged in with box. Its principal features were the two huge threshing-floors in front of the dining-room windows. On these squares all the wheat of the entire property was spread, threshed, and stacked in season. A single pear-tree stood alone to tell of an avenue long ago died down, and a little rose bush, a maiden blush, had clung to its life by the threshing-floor. The high-road led straight up through the village to the front door. The peasants came and went along it. They not unnaturally lingered at times to peer through the windows and watch how the great folk ate. The family lived entirely in the basement of the house, and passing pairs of pigs would wander in on a warm morning to wallow on the silk divan where the young bride sat at work.

Their owners, following to fetch these vagrant hogs, marvelled greatly at the new padrona's screams of horror. All the large rooms on the first floor were uninhabited, and used for drying beans or storing lumber. Strings were stretched from end to end of the big drawing-room, and here the washing was hung to dry. It is true that the room had the reputation of being haunted, but the beauty of its lines, the charm of its airy vastness, do away with the thought of ghosts. Throughout the country the same condition of things existed. Roads were scarce, and often so rough and miry that they could only be crossed in heavy cars drawn by oxen. A drive from Vescovana to Este was taken by the Pisani ladies early in this century with all the pomp of a Roman procession. They mounted a springless van, and were dragged through furrowed paths by teams of white cattle to the town at the foot of the hills.

To us this pro ceeding may sound new, and to our fancy sweet, but to the ladies and the oxen the charm was of a most mixed character. On the north side of the house, by the door, a strange remnant of past centuries existed, namely, a lion's head carved in stone, let into the wall. Under it the words, "Bocca delle Denoncie Segrete," are written. Into this mysterious hole any writing against the management of the property, complaints against individuals, secret and usually unpleasant communications were slipped. Inside the house they were opened and read. Indeed, the whole house retained a something of austerity : an utter lack of modern comfort and refinements. Its immense size, too, made it the more unmanageable. The Contessa has told me how in the Austrian's time they thought nothing of lodging a company of some two hundred men and horses in the house itself.

It is natural that the strong English instincts of the new Contessa should have made her shudder at the general sunbaked and unsoftened aspect of this huge farm-house, or villa, which was to be her home. Yet she saw that there was a beauty in the scene, quite apart from the bareness and breadth of sky, namely, a glorious fertile soil. There were lilies in the ditches, water-flags and rushes, but so few flowers in the fields, and she needed flowers, as English women do, and shade — above all things, shade — then the roses would grow and the birds would come. Also, a beautiful house must hold beautiful things. Slowly but surely the thing was begun. Gradually a new and growing world of green and coloured things arose round the bare walls ; and within, bit by bit, the rooms became furnished and habitable.