I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists and
crowded _tables-d'hôte_. 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. Barelegged 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 wine-barge 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.'