VENICE.
It was an awful journey from Naples to Venice. I had another half-hour
in Rome _en route_. ‘Half an hour in Rome'--doesn’t it sound terrible?
Fancy being in Rome and going no further than the refreshment-room in
the railway-station! And at Bologna I was nearly frozen to death. The
snow lay thick everywhere, and the mountain passes looked like seas of
ice. When I arrived in Venice there was a dull November fog lying over
the city, and my heart went down into my boots. But I recovered myself
sufficiently to get into a gondola, which, however graceful it may be on
a fine day, looked on this occasion more like a frowning hearse than
ever. I asked if I couldn’t have a carriage and drive to the hotel, as
it was so foggy on the water. The gondolier stared at me in blank
amazement. ‘And where would monsieur get the horses?’ he said; and then
I learnt for the first time that there are no horses in Venice, and that
the gondola is absolutely the only means of locomotion. Some of the
Venetians, those who have never been to the mainland, have never seen a
horse in all their lives. A showman once brought one to a fair, and
called it a monster, and the factory girls and boys paid sixpence each
to see the marvellous curiosity.
This utter absence of wheels and animals makes this city in the sea a
city of silence and of perfect rest. A sense of perfect bliss steals
over the tired traveller from the towns of noise, and he glides along
past the marble palaces in his gondola as in a dream. And Venice is a
dream. The wonderful stories of her Bridge of Sighs, the weird tales of
the old romancers and poets, are all dreams. At any rate, they are not
true. But Venice is beautiful, and, though much of the romance that
enshrined her has been swept away by the ruthless hand of the modern
literary inquisitor, ‘A Day with the Doges’ is a day to be remembered in
one’s life, and Venice remains a city unique in the world. My gondolier
took me down short cuts--waterways all of them--which were overpowering
in their odour. We glided swiftly over waters that were simply floating
refuse heaps and dustbins. But out of the fishy water rose now and then
a glorious palace that made amends for all. Cutting into the Grand Canal
from one of these water-lanes, we grounded on the mud, and stuck there
for four or five minutes; but the spirit of romance breathed o’er the
scene, and I felt that I could have stuck in the mud for ever and not
found the position monotonous.
I was lucky enough to see the beginning of the Carnival in Venice, and
to make the acquaintance of a gentleman who has a palace on the Grand
Canal, and who was kind enough to take me about in his gondola and show
me everything. On the Rialto one afternoon, wanting to find out where
Shylock lived, I approached a gentleman, who was smoking a cigarette and
lounging about. I asked him my question in Italian. He replied in
English, with a strong German accent: ‘That’s the house--that one
yonder, Mr. ----,’ giving me my correct name. I stared at him. ‘Ah,’ he
said, ‘I thought you didn’t know me. I’m at Danielli’s Hotel here, but I
used to be coffee-room waiter at the Palace Hotel, Aberdeen. Don’t you
remember me now?’
One of the great show places of Venice is the museum of the Arsenal. Of
course I stopped enraptured before the magnificent gold barge in which
the old Doges went forth and married the Adriatic, flinging a gold ring
into the sea; but what interested me most was the case which contained
relics of Duke Francesco Carrara, commonly called ‘the Tyrant of Padua.’
I was in a very bad temper myself the day I saw his ‘relics.’ The bitter
cold had upset my liver, and made me extra fiendish, and so I felt in
perfect sympathy with the gentleman who wreaked his vengeance on his
enemies in the most ingeniously diabolical manner possible.
The first ‘specimen’ which attracts your attention is a beautifully
decorated jewel-box--all velvet and gold, and set with precious stones.
Duke Francis was in love with a lady who one day snubbed him before
company. Francis smiled a sweet smile and bit his lip, but never by word
or deed allowed the fair charmer to see that she had trodden on his
corns. But when her birthday came round he sent her anonymously this
beautiful box, with an inscription upon it to say that it was from an
unknown admirer to the Queen of Beauty. When the box was delivered the
lady was out, so her maid took it in, and, with the natural curiosity of
the female sex, she began to wonder what the beautiful box contained. It
was delivered uncovered, and attached to it by a ribbon was a little
golden key. The maid thought to herself, ‘I’ll just open this, and see
what lovely thing is inside it for my mistress.’ She put the golden key
in the lock, she gave it a turn; up then flew the lid, and all that
remained of the inquisitive maid was gathered up from the floor and
scraped off the walls. The Duke’s notion of a birthday present for a
lady who had rejected his addresses was decidedly original, was it not?
He must have been the ancestor of the gentleman who, when Sir William
Harcourt was Home Secretary, used to send him such curious hampers and
brown-paper parcels.
Another delightful relic of the life and times of the Tyrant of Padua is
in the same case as the beautiful box. It is a simple key--about the
size of an ordinary door-key. It was the key of the Duke’s library in
his private room. When he wanted to get rid of any of his suite or any
person of his household, he used to ring his bell and ask for Mr. John
to be sent to him (fancy name, of course). When John entered, the Duke
would say: ‘Oh, John, I wish you would go to the bookcase in my private
room and bring me Lecky’s “European Morals.”’ ‘Certainly, your grace,’
Mr. John would say; and away he would trot with the key in his hand.
When he got to the library, he would put the key in the lock of the
bookcase and turn it. But directly he turned it, out of the handle of
the key shot a long poisoned needle, which stabbed the hand of the
holder, and instantly shot back again. John would take his hand from the
key, and say: ‘What the deuce was that?’ He would look at his hand and
see only a small dark blue spot. He would think nothing of it, but all
of a sudden he would begin to feel queer in his head. Presently someone
would come in and find him in a fit on the floor, and the household
would be alarmed. ‘Mr. John has had a stroke or a fit,’ the people would
say. A doctor would be sent for, but his services would be of no avail.
In twenty-four hours Mr. John would be dead, and everybody would think
that he had died through a fit. There were no bothering coroners’
inquests to upset the plans of clever fellows like Duke Francis in those
days.
Everybody knows what a Venetian gondola is, but I doubt if everybody
knows why they are all of one pattern, and all black and funereal. My
Venetian friend gave me the information. What brought the subject up was
this. As we passed along the Grand Canal, he pointed out to me Sir Henry
Layard’s palace. Sir Henry’s gondola was waiting at his door. ‘Why,’ I
said, ‘it’s exactly the same pattern as yours; everybody here seems to
have the same pattern and colour. Wouldn’t it be gayer if there were a
little variety?’
‘It would,’ replied my friend, after he had pointed out to me the palace
of the late Comte de Chambord and the palace which Taglioni, the famous
danseuse, bought for her son, and which the naughty son lost in one
night at cards. ‘It would,’ replied my friend: ‘but the fashion is the
result of a sumptuary law of olden times. In those days there was
constant rivalry between the nobles and the wealthy merchants of Venice.
The merchants went out in glorious gondolas that cost thousands of
pounds. The nobles tried to outdo them. The liveries of the gondoliers
cost small fortunes. At last the nobles, who were not so rich as the
merchants, found that they were crippling themselves to have more
magnificent gondolas than the merchants. So, like artful fellows, having
influence in the council of the city, they got a law passed which
compelled every gondola on the canal to be of one pattern and one
colour, whether private or public.’ The design was the gondola which
to-day walks the Grand Canal like a thing of li---- like a thing of
death, because it is a floating funeral-coach, and nothing else.
A funeral at Venice is very curious. A gondola in black and silver comes
for the body at the house of mourning. The coffin is put into the open
boat, and the family and the priests then get in and sit round it. The
gondoliers are dressed in black and silver, and they row away towards
the cemetery, which stands in the middle of a broad lagoon. The sight is
a mournful and impressive one. It is far pleasanter to see the great
canal and the glorious city bathed in moonlight, and to watch the
gondolas filled with gaily-dressed masqueraders and masqueraderesses in
all their Carnival finery as they float along to the sound of music and
of song. I have never been so carried away by the dreamy beauty of a
scene as I was when a boat-load of laughing damsels in dainty costumes
stopped just under my sitting-room window one night and serenaded me. It
was a delicate little attention, for which I found I was indebted to my
Venetian friend.