Venice, 9th November, 1876, 7 morning.
I have set my writing-table close to the pillars of the great window of
the Ca’ Ferro, which I drew, in 1841, carefully, with those of the next
palace, Ca’ Contarini Fasan. Samuel Prout was so pleased with the
sketch that he borrowed it, and made the upright drawing from it of the
palace with the rich balconies, ‘which now represents his work very
widely as a chromolithotint. [107]
Between the shafts of the pillars, the morning sky is seen pure and
pale, relieving the grey dome of the church of the Salute; but beside
that vault, and like it, vast thunderclouds heap themselves above the
horizon, catching the light of dawn upon them where they rise, far
westward, over the dark roof of the ruined Badia;—but all so massive,
that, half an hour ago, in the dawn, I scarcely knew the Salute dome
and towers from theirs; while the sea-gulls, rising and falling hither
and thither in clusters above the green water beyond my balcony, tell
me that the south wind is wild on Adria.
“Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ.”—The Sea has her Lord, and the sea-birds
are prescient of the storm; but my own England, ruler of the waves in
her own proud thoughts, can she rule the tumult of her people, or,
pilotless, even so much as discern the thunderclouds heaped over her
Galilean lake of life?
Here is a little grey cockle-shell, lying beside me, which I gathered,
the other evening, out of the dust of the Island of St. Helena; and a
brightly-spotted snail-shell, from the thistly sands of Lido; and I
want to set myself to draw these, and describe them, in peace.
‘Yes,’ all my friends say, ‘that is my business; why can’t I mind it,
and be happy?’
Well, good friends, I would fain please you, and myself with you; and
live here in my Venetian palace, luxurious; scrutinant of dome, cloud,
and cockle-shell. I could even sell my books for not inconsiderable
sums of money if I chose to bribe the reviewers, pay half of all I got
to the booksellers, stick bills on the lamp-posts, and say nothing but
what would please the Bishop of Peterborough.
I could say a great deal that would please him, and yet be very good
and useful; I should like much again to be on terms with my old
publisher, and hear him telling me nice stories over our walnuts, this
Christmas, after dividing his year’s spoil with me in Christmas
charity. And little enough mind have I for any work, in this
seventy-seventh year that’s coming of our glorious century, wider than
I could find in the compass of my cockle-shell.
But alas! my prudent friends, little enough of all that I have a mind
to may be permitted me. For this green tide that eddies by my threshold
is full of floating corpses, and I must leave my dinner to bury them,
since I cannot save; and put my cockle-shell in cap, and take my staff
in hand, to seek an unincumbered shore. This green sea-tide!—yes, and
if you knew it, your black and sulphurous tides also—Yarrow, and
Teviot, and Clyde, and the stream, for ever now drumly and dark as it
rolls on its way, at the ford of Melrose.
Yes, and the fair lakes and running waters in your English park
pleasure-grounds,—nay, also the great and wide sea, that gnaws your
cliffs,—yes, and Death, and Hell also, more cruel than cliff or sea;
and a more neutral episcopal person than even my Lord of Peterborough
[108] stands, level-barred balance in hand,—waiting (how long?) till
the Sea shall give up the dead which are in it, and Death, and Hell,
give up the dead which are in them.
Have you ever thought of, or desired to know, the real meaning of that
sign, seen with the human eyes of his soul by the disciple whom the
Lord loved? Yes, of course you have! and what a grand and noble verse
you always thought it! “And the Sea——” Softly, good friend,—I know you
can say it off glibly and pompously enough, as you have heard it read a
thousand times; but is it, then, merely a piece of pomp? mere drumming
and trumpeting, to tell you—what might have been said in three
words—that all the dead rose again, whether they had been bedridden, or
drowned, or slain? If it means no more than that, is it not, to speak
frankly, bombast, and even bad and half unintelligible bombast?—for
what does ‘Death’ mean, as distinguished from the Sea,—the American
lakes? or Hell as distinguished from Death,—a family vault instead of a
grave?
But suppose it is not bombast, and does mean something that it would be
well you should think of,—have you yet understood it,—much less,
thought of it? Read the whole passage from the beginning: “I saw the
Dead, small and great, stand before God. And the Books were
opened;”—and so to the end.
‘Stand’ in renewed perfectness of body and soul—each redeemed from its
own manner of Death.
For have not they each their own manner? As the seed by the drought, or
the thorn,—so the soul by the soul’s hunger, and the soul’s
pang;—athirst in the springless sand; choked in the return-wave of
Edom; grasped by the chasm of the earth: some, yet calling “out of the
depths;” but some—“Thou didst blow with Thy wind, and the sea covered
them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” But now the natural
grave, in which the gentle saints resigned their perfect body to the
dust, and perfect spirit to Him who gave it;—and now the wide sea of
the world, that drifted with its weeds so many breasts that heaved but
with the heaving deep;—and now the Death that overtook the lingering
step, and closed the lustful eyes;—and now the Hell, that hid with its
shade, and scourged with its agony; the fierce and foul spirits that
had forced its gates in flesh: [109]—all these the Loved Apostle saw
compelled to restore their ruin; and all these, their prey, stand once
again, renewed, as their Maker made them, before their Maker. “And the
Sea gave up the Dead which were in it, and Death, and Hell, the dead
which were in them.”
Not bombast, good reader, in any wise; nor a merely soothing melody of
charming English, to be mouthed for a ‘second lesson.’
But is it worse than bombast, then? Is it, perchance, pure Lie?
Carpaccio, at all events, thought not; and this, as I have told you, is
the first practical opinion of his I want you to be well informed of.
Since that last Fors was written, one of my friends found for me the
most beautiful of all the symbols in the picture of the Dream;—one of
those which leap to the eyes when they are understood, yet which, in
the sweet enigma, I had deliberately twice painted, without
understanding.
At the head of the princess’s bed is embroidered her shield; (of which
elsewhere)—but on a dark blue-green space in the cornice above it is
another very little and bright shield, it seemed,—but with no bearing.
I painted it, thinking it was meant merely for a minute repetition of
the escutcheon below, and that the painter had not taken the trouble to
blazon the bearings again. (I might have known Carpaccio never would
even omit without meaning.) And I never noticed that it was not in a
line above the escutcheon, but exactly above the princess’s head. It
gleams with bright silver edges out of the dark-blue ground—the point
of the mortal Arrow!
At the time it was painted the sign would necessarily have been
recognised in a moment; and it completes the meaning of the vision
without any chance of mistake.
And it seems to me, guided by such arrow-point, the purpose of Fors
that I should make clear the meaning of what I have myself said on this
matter, throughout the six years in which I have been permitted to
carry on the writing of these letters, and to preface their series for
the seventh year, with the interpretation of this Myth of Venice.
I have told you that all Carpaccio’s sayings are of knowledge, not of
opinion. And I mean by knowledge, communicable knowledge. Not merely
personal, however certain—like Job’s ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’
but discovered truth, which can be shown to all men who are willing to
receive it. No great truth is allowed by nature to be demonstrable to
any person who, foreseeing its consequences, desires to refuse it. He
has put himself into the power of the Great Deceiver; and will in every
effort be only further deceived, and place more fastened faith in his
error.