I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists and crowded
tables-d'hote. My garden stretches down to the Grand Canal, closed at
the end with a pavilion, where I lounge and smoke and watch the cornice
of the Prefettura fretted with gold in sunset light. My sitting-room and
bed-room face the southern sun. There is a canal below, crowded with
gondolas, and across its bridge the good folk of San Vio come and go the
whole day long--men in blue shirts with enormous hats, and jackets slung
on their left shoulder; women in kerchiefs of orange and crimson.
Bare-legged boys sit upon the parapet, dangling their feet above the
rising tide. A hawker passes, balancing a basket full of live and
crawling crabs. Barges filled with Brenta water or Mirano wine take up
their station at the neighbouring steps, and then ensues a mighty
splashing and hurrying to and fro of men with tubs upon their heads. The
brawny fellows in the winebarge are red from brows to breast with
drippings of the vat. And now there is a bustle in the quarter. A
_barca_ has arrived from S. Erasmo, the island of the market-gardens. It
is piled with gourds and pumpkins, cabbages and tomatoes, pomegranates
and pears--a pyramid of gold and green and scarlet. Brown men lift the
fruit aloft, and women bending from the pathway bargain for it. A
clatter of chaffering tongues, a ring of coppers, a Babel of hoarse
sea-voices, proclaim the sharpness of the struggle. When the quarter has
been served, the boat sheers off diminished in its burden. Boys and
girls are left seasoning their polenta with a slice of _zucca_, while
the mothers of a score of families go pattering up yonder courtyard with
the material for their husbands' supper in their handkerchiefs. Across
the canal, or more correctly the _Rio_, opens a wide grass-grown court.
It is lined on the right hand by a row of poor dwellings, swarming with
gondoliers' children. A garden wall runs along the other side, over
which I can see pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far
beyond are more low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes,
and the masts of an ocean-going ship against the dome and turrets of
Palladio's Redentore.
This is my home. By day it is as lively as a scene in _Masaniello_. By
night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the quarter has subsided.
Far away I hear the bell of some church tell the hours. But no noise
disturbs my rest, unless perhaps a belated gondolier moors his boat
beneath the window. My one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole day
through. My gondolier, Francesco, acts as valet. He wakes me in the
morning, opens the shutters, brings sea-water for my bath, and takes his
orders for the day. "Will it do for Chioggia, Francesco;" "Sissignore!
The Signorino has set off in his _sandolo_ already with Antonio. The
Signora is to go with us in the gondola." "Then get three more men,
Francesco, and see that all of them can sing."