The Journal of Madame Giovanni

The Journal of Madame Giovanni is the intriguing story of a young and beautiful French woman who in the 1850s, when women were still regarded as merely household decorations, travelled to little known parts of the world and recorded the exoticisms lying beyond the rim of most people’s experience.

Jeanne and her husband, a Venetian merchant and adventurer, visited New Zealand, then a curious conglomeration of ruling aristocrats, exiled prisoners, and natives with definite leanings toward a diet of human flesh. During her stay in this land of strange customs and taboos, she encountered Sir George, a mysterious nobleman who fell hopelessly in love with her. She visited the wild and lovely island of Tahiti, where, because of her friendship with Queen Pomare, she was able to participate in many ceremonies denied to the ordinary traveller. Jeanne describes the Tahitian maidens and their languorous life, their fetes, and their phantasmal superstitions. Sir George followed her everywhere, always displaying steadfastness and strong devotion. She saw lawless San Francisco, in the grip of gold-hungry miners, lusty, seething with excitement. Then to Hawaii and Old Mexico, where she ran into a revolution and crossed the mountains on mule-back through the lines of the insurgents. Sir George was near her, as always, ready to aid her, powerless to break the enchantment she had woven around him.