I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice: “I am sitting on the
edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never seemed half so
full before.” Was ever the city so beautiful as last night on the
arrival of foreign royalty? It was a memorable display and unique in its
peculiar beauty. The palaces that line the canal were bright with flags;
windows and water-steps were thronged, the broad centre of the stream was
left empty. Presently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view
a double line of gondolas—long, low, gleaming with every hue of brilliant
colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve, gondoliers in
resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white, orange, all bending over
their oars with the precision of machinery and the grace of absolute
mastery of their craft. In the middle, between two lines, came one small
and beautifully modelled gondola, rowed by four men in red and black,
while on the white silk cushions in the stern sat the Prince and
Princess. There was no splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly,
silently, with an air of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant
came, passed, and disappeared under the shining evening sky and the
gathering shadows of “the dim, rich city.” I never saw, or expect to
see, anything of its kind so beautiful.
I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the
thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina and
the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and byways of
Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath the grateful
shade of the black _felze_.
The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters in
light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round coil, are
sometimes bareheaded and sometimes have a lace scarf over their dark,
curly locks. A little fan is often in their hands, and one remarks the
graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon the women’s shoulders,
remembering that it is supposed to take generations to learn to wear a
shawl or wield a fan.
My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where some
scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls by the
canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that its leaves
inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the world; where,
too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning crabs with
scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity with the
language.
Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso, making a
brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She stops to prattle with the
man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the little _calle_. There are
beautiful bells standing in rows in the window, one having a border of
finely traced crabs and sea-horses at the base; another has a top like a
Doge’s cap, while the body of another has a delicately wrought tracery,
as if a fish-net had been thrown over it.
Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza San
Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists. If there are
only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my conscience and give
them something. If one gets a lira put into small coppers, one can give
them a couple of _centesimi_ apiece without feeling that one is
pauperizing them, but that one is fostering the begging habit in young
Italy is a more difficult sin to face.
To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their bonny little
heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming dimples and
sparkling eyes presented them to me for alms, I looked at them with
smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael’s cherubs they were, and
then said in my best Italian: “Oh, yes, I see them; they are indeed most
beautiful hats. I thank you for showing them to me, and I am pleased to
see you courteously take them off to a lady.”
This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully, and so
truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been denied. They ran,
still laughing and chattering, to the wood-carver’s shop near-by and told
him the story, or so I judged, for he came to his window and smiled
benignly upon me as I sat in the gondola with my writing-pad on my knees.
I was pleased at the friendly glance, for he is the hero of a pretty
little romance, and I long to make his acquaintance.
It seems that, some years ago, the Queen, with one lady-in-waiting in
attendance, came to his shop quite early in the morning. Both were
plainly dressed in cotton gowns, and neither made any pretensions. He
was carving something that could not be dropped, a cherub’s face that had
to be finished while his thought of it was fresh. Hurriedly asking
pardon, he continued his work, and at end of an hour raised his eyes,
breathless and apologetic, to look at his visitors. The taller lady had
a familiar appearance. He gazed steadily, and then, to his surprise and
embarrassment, recognized the Queen. Far from being offended, she
respected his devotion to his art, and before she left the shop she gave
him a commission for a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little
Genius to take me to see his work, but, alas! there will be an
unsurmountable barrier between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian
anything but the most commonplace and conventional statements.