Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent. It
has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station of
San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the water
of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like a
river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy, above
deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The Riva is
fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the
personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable
resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by
pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world quiet,
leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant'Erasmo
to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and
bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant'Elisabetta
offers.
But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth
sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies
from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a limitless
horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant'Elisabetta. Our
boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across the island and back
again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with
them in the shade of the little _osteria's_ wall.
A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido
was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are
welcome to the artist's soul. I have always held that in our modern life
the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense--that sense
which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of
earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places,
under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the appearance at
some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates for our
imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It seems, at
such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for this
revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been previously
felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone
of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly
sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form and
excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain, no
longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex
conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail, judged by
this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.
I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the
lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful
risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their
shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked
myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity
of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the AEgean or
Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons
of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the fierce-eyed
youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave, crying aloud
to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows
plunge in tideless instability.
We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic shore.
Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad
_pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish
of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon
rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged
man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender, for
these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is
equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the
muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free
sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed
these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to
its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved
with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown back
upon his matted _zazzera_ of dark hair tipped with dusky brown. This
shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of the
lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and sunset
gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed intensely, with
compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild glance of a Triton.
Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin bronzed, but showing white
and healthful through open front and sleeves of lilac shirt. The dashing
sparkle of this animate splendour, who looked to me as though the
sea-waves and the sun had made him in some hour of secret and unquiet
rapture, was somehow emphasised by a curious dint dividing his square
chin--a cleft that harmonised with smile on lip and steady flame in
eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon a reader to compare
eyes to opals. Yet Stefano's eyes, as they met mine, had the vitreous
intensity of opals, as though the colour of Venetian waters were
vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a rough, hoarse voice,
which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god, might have screamed in
storm or whispered raucous messages from crests of tossing billows.
I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the
lagoons was humanised; the spirit of the salt-water lakes had appeared
to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I
was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.
Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. It is a quiet
place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian, lie
deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would fain
believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had left
the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet, knowing
nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm so much.
There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which seems to contradict my
charitable interpretation. It is not far from San Nicoletto. No
enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes. Acacia-trees sprout
amid the monuments, and break the tablets with their thorny shoots
upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and rabbis sleep for
centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and defile these
habitations of the dead:
Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.
Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing-path; and
one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Itrian
marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a
Christian dog.