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 Ægean
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 saltwater 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 renownèd 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 Istrian
marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a
Christian dog.