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SEMELE
Mereweather loved Venice, its cultural heritage, its beauty. Semele of Greek mythology is turned into an orphan daughter of noble Anglo-French lineage. She explores the city and the lagoon giving the reader something of a guided tour. After her wish to see the Spirit of all Beauty is granted, she goes mad; she dies a few months later. The book, which impressed an Italian reviewer, became something of a guide to Mereweather's own inner struggle "loving Beauty and Art, Spirit and Embodiment, with a frenzied enthusiasm, excluding all rational consideration of human duties and every-day life" (Semele, p. x). One source of inspiration is the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In his Memorable Relations Semele "read how a too sensitive, or rather diseased, imagination carried the writer into the realms of spirits; and how at pleasure he could invade the Blissful Land". (Semele, p. 17) The set-up can be boring: the Spirit is the poetical cicerone of Semele who, in turn, is guiding the reader. Nevertheless, the book is full of cultural, historical and linguistic details, including an interesting description of the tableland of the Sette Comuni in the province of Vicenza. Click on the Sette Comuni link above. See below for some extracts.
Various illustrations have been added. "When Semele first arrived at Venice, she took up her
residence at a large hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni, once
belonging to the family Bernardo, built in the Pointed style
of architecture at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Under her windows ran a spacious quay, crowded with people
clad in a variety of costumes, and speaking a diversity of
tongues." (Semele, p. 35)
San Giorgio Maggiore "Before her, as she stood on the balcony, lay the
island of St. Giorgio Maggiore, once, in very old times,
crowned with cypresses, and refreshing the eye with its
verdure; now groaning under the weight of a Renaissance
church, barracks, and artillery." (Semele, p. 35)
The Madonna
dell'Orto area
On the Rialto in Venice
And soon Semele "arrived at the Ponte di Rialto, the
majestic proportions of which are destroyed by the
twenty-four shops which cloud and encumber the superjacent
arcades. (Palladio, Michel Angelo Buonarotti. Sansovino,
Scamozzi, and Fra Giocondo sent in models and plans for
this bridge. Those of Antonio dal Ponte were chosen, not
because they were the best, but because they were the
cheapest.) … … … And afterwards she descended the Bridge
of the Rialto, and at the bottom, looking behind her,
observed the people ascending and descending the stately
triple staircase, putting her in mind of a dream dreamt at
Bethel in times long past, save that the angelic natures
were wanting." (Semele,
p. 43ff)
"In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the population of Venice was nearly three hundred thousand, and the poor were prosperous, because fully occupied either as servants of the great families, or as employed in the vast commerce which flowed into this mart of nations. Besides this, their physical welfare was carefully promoted by the powerful Proveditori del Comune created for that purpose. These officers arranged that the food of the working population should be of the best and cheapest, and above all, they restrained by severe laws severely carried out, the vendors of necessaries from imposing on the poor. But now, Semele found that the population was reduced to less than a hundred thousand souls, and that the lower classes were no longer prosperous, but miserable; for no rich houses fed and lodged a crowd of gondoliers and servants, nor did the Port and Arsenal give work and wages, as of old, to hungry multitudes: nor were there any Proveditori to protect the people from the over-charges and trickery of the bread, meat, and wine sellers; whilst the innumerable charitable and mutual aid societies once flourishing, had disappeared. Consequently, thousands upon thousands were dependent for their wretched existence on extraneous aid. And yet they were good-tempered, courteous, intelligent, and even disinterested, at least those who had not been brought in contact with foreigners." (Semele, p. 47f)
"And then she walked to and fro on the Piazzetta, between the Giardinetto, or Royal Garden, and the Ponte della Paglia, close over which loomed in the darkness the Ponte de' Sospiri, built in 1591, after the plans of Antonio da Ponte the architect of the Rialto Bridge. This closed bridge she was informed, was divided longitudinally by a partition wall, the passage to the south leading from the department of the Avvogadori del Comun to the prison; that to the north, connecting the prison with the Tribunal of the Ten. For in Venice all was suspicious precaution and secrecy and accordingly it would not have been meet that the prisoners of the Council of the Ten should have been mingled in their gloomy transit with those of the Avvogadori." (Semele, p. 56)
View from San
Giorgio across the Bacino di San Marco
The Accademia bridge, built in 1854 by
the Austrians (demolished in the early 1930s) Semele slowly glided over the limpid waters of the Grand Canal from Punta della Dogana. "Then she rowed by the spot soon to be desecrated by the most hideous of bridges constructed by an English engineer, with a sense of beauty as hard as the iron he employed in his work." (Semele, p. 95)
Il Fondaco dei
Turchi,
Restauration of the façade on the Grand Canal
Torcello, the Piazza "... Semele landed on the grass-covered Piazza of the once
superb Torcello. Here indeed she found proof upon proof of
time's vicissitudes. Could this unpeopled waste, approached by
a stagnant canal hardly restrained within its crumbling banks;
these melancholy fever-stricken gardens without cultivators;
this group of churches without worshippers, have ever been
populous, rich, and magnificent, radiant with marble palaces,
the new Altinum, rival of the old? ... ... Yes! This mockery
of a Piazza, glaring forth its poverty and neglect, was once
the centre of a rich and flourishing city, existing from a
remote period, as the old Venetian, Lombard, Hunnish, Roman,
and Grecian coins, frequently found beneath the soil, attest.
... ... But, alas! owing to the changed course of the waters
of the river Sile, fever was produced in this once favoured
spot; and then little by little the inhabitants decreased; so
in time it ceased to be a Bishop's see, the monasteries were
dissolved or transferred elsewhere, and thus by easy
gradations it descended to its lamentable state of present
perdition – its handful of cottages, its fifty or sixty
denizens. And there in the Piazza, in front of a barn and
granary, once a loggetta, from whence were proclaimed the laws
of the Republic and the Municipality, probably the remains of
the palace of the Podestà, Semele saw a rude stone chair,
popularly called "the Chair of Attila", whence the early
tribunes used to minister justice. She paused before the two
churches, the Duomo and Santa Fosca, each of surpassing
interest in its way, and carrying the observer back to the
remotest ages of Christian architecture." (Semele,
109ff) "On the left hand, as one enters this church, there is to be seen a very curious old tombstone, covering a vault, which, as we learn from the inscription, belonged to the gondolier fraternity at that ferry over the Grand Canal which is called the Traghetto di San Barnaba. The inscription (in old Venetian) runs thus:— ‘In tempo de Zorzi da Cataro Then follows a rude representation of a boat, something
like this:— This is the church "of S. Pietro di Castello, containing, as legends tell, the marble chair in which S. Peter sat at Antioch". (Semele, p. 121f & note 5)
"One bright morning Semele walked on the terrace washed at its base by the laughing daughters of the Adriatic. On her left the terraced Alps reared themselves into the ether, commencing with the fertile verdure-covered declivites descending into the plain close to Conegliano, and ending with inaccessible spirelike Tyrolean dolomite rocks. The sharp air of the more early hours of the day at that advanced season had yielded to the Italian sunshine; the night-mists had passed away, and a most clear atmosphere rendered all distant objects visible with a startling distinctness seemingly unreal to an inhabitant of cloudy climes. And the leaves of the trees in the many gardens of Murano were changing colour in anticipation of the approach of winter with all its severity*;" (Semele, p. 131ff) " * Let no one think that Venetian winters are devoid of cold. What with the occasional Bora (Boreas), blowing from the north-east over the snow-covered Alps, its girdle of water, and its total absence of those endless appliances which in northern regions regard animal comfort, Venice, during the greater part of the months of January and February, is practically one of the coldest places in Europe to reside in. In January, 1858, the author saw the whole Lagune frozen thickly over between Venice and Mestre, the thermometer falling to 12° below zero (Réaumur) [ -15° C]. In other winters, the small canals in Venice are frequently frozen over. Whilst these frosts last, the nights feel milder than the days, during which, in spite of a good stove in the sitting-rooms, the pen will fall from the numbed fingers of the writer, shivering under a freezing temperature. Perhaps the following notes of extremely cold seasons in Venice will not be uninteresting to the reader. [Here follow comments on the severe winters of the years 568, 852, 1118, 1413, 1419, and 1431 when] a frost commenced the 6th of January, and lasted until the l2th of February, during which interval a bride came from Mestre in a carriage over the ice, bringing her dowry with her, [as well as 1486, 1514, 1548, 1549, 1598, 1601, 1608, 1684, 1709, 1716, 1740, 1758, and 1788-1789 when] the Lagunes were frozen over from the 28th of December to the 24th of January, and a road was kept clear to Mestre, by which passed all the heavy and light traffic, and public-houses and amusements were rife upon the ice. On the night of the commencement of this frost many people died of cold in the streets, the houses, and the cafes."
Isola San Francesco del Deserto, c. 1900 One night at "half-past nine Semele ordered her gondola with four rowers to be prepared to take her to the island of S. Francesco nel Deserto." (Semele, p. 153) "... she found her way into the half-ruined, desecrated church, and kneeling close to the narrow cell where S. Francis used to sleep, poured forth thanksgivings for having attained the object of her fondest hopes. Thence she passed into the open space, where was a rude hut, in which the venerable saint used to pray, now almost filled up by the lower part of the trunk of a large cypress tree. Then she, led by some mysterious impulse, moved joyfully and fearlessly forward into a large piece of ground at the back of the convent, looking towards the swampy shores of Erasmo, on the other side of which chafed the restless Adriatic. In the middle of this space grew five tall cypresses, so grouped together, that the largest stood in the centre surrounded by the four others. Against this tree she leaned, awaiting with fond confidence the arrival of the object of her strange and passionate love – her sense of the Beautiful accurately shaped forth in intensest concentration. The rain and wind had ceased, but the black cloud remained, and every now and then the vivid lightning laid open its lurid recesses, leaving every thing blacker than before. And then Semele, with hands erect, as one earnestly praying, said, 'O glorious Spirit, that fillest the universe with thy presence, behold me here, unceasing seeker of thee in visible form! Be present now according to thine infallible promise, and afford me, at least, one glance of thy divine attributes, thus satisfying the life-long cravings of a heart and brain, which would comprehend in one vivid concentration all the infinite beauty of the material universe.'" (Semele, p. 159f)  Further reading: P. Bernardino Barban, L'Isoletta di "S. Francesco del Deserto" nelle Lagune di Venezia, Vicenza 1927.
E · M · B Casa Alvisi [Venice] This would be Edith Millicent Bronson. She was born in Newport, RI, USA, in 1861. In 1895 she married Count Cosimo Rucellai, Florence.
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