It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not
a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been
painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of
the world is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the
first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the first
picture-dealer’s and you will find three or four high-coloured “views”
of it. There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject.
Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of
photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as about
our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as
the postman’s ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar
things, and I hold that for the true Venice-lover Venice is always in
order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the
old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when
there should be something new to say. I write these lines with the
full consciousness of having no information whatever to offer. I do not
pretend to enlighten the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his
memory; and I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in
love with his theme.
I
Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after extracting
half a lifetime of pleasure and an immeasurable quantity of fame from
it. We all may do the same, after it has served our turn, which it
probably will not cease to do for many a year to come. Meantime it is
Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps us to enjoy. He has indeed lately
produced several aids to depression in the shape of certain little
humorous--ill-humorous--pamphlets (the series of _St. Mark’s Rest_)
which embody his latest reflections on the subject of our city and
describe the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are
numerous and deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have spoiled
Venice would be to admit that Venice may be spoiled--an admission
pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty. Fortunately one reacts
against the Ruskinian contagion, and one hour of the lagoon is worth a
hundred pages of demoralised prose. This queer late-coming prose of
Mr. Ruskin (including the revised and condensed issue of the _Stones of
Venice_, only one little volume of which has been published, or perhaps
ever will be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to
children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and might
be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is, however,
all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just. There is an
inconceivable want of form in it, though the author has spent his life
in laying down the principles of form and scolding people for departing
from them; but it throbs and flashes with the love of his subject--a
love disconcerted and abjured, but which has still much of the force of
inspiration. Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice,
she has had the good fortune to become the object of a passion to a man
of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has made
her the world’s. There is no better reading at Venice therefore, as I
say, than Ruskin, for every true Venice-lover can separate the wheat
from the chaff. The narrow theological spirit, the moralism _à tout
propos_, the queer provincialities and pruderies, are mere wild weeds in
a mountain of flowers. One may doubtless be very happy in Venice without
reading at all--without criticising or analysing or thinking a strenuous
thought. It is a city in which, I suspect, there is very little
strenuous thinking, and yet it is a city in which there must be almost
as much happiness as misery. The misery of Venice stands there for all
the world to see; it is part of the spectacle--a thoroughgoing devotee
of local colour might consistently say it is part of the pleasure. The
Venetian people have little to call their own--little more than the bare
privilege of leading their lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their
habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their
opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life
presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this
meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with
it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the
sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into
attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal _conversazione_. It
is not easy to say that one would have them other than they are, and it
certainly would make an immense difference should they be better fed.
The number of persons in Venice who evidently never have enough to eat
is painfully large; but it would be more painful if we did not equally
perceive that the rich Venetian temperament may bloom upon a dog’s
allowance. Nature has been kind to it, and sunshine and leisure
and conversation and beautiful views form the greater part of its
sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but
to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility.
The Italian people have at once the good and the evil fortune to be
conscious of few wants; so that if the civilisation of a society is
measured by the number of its needs, as seems to be the common opinion
to-day, it is to be feared that the children of the lagoon would make
but a poor figure in a set of comparative tables. Not their misery,
doubtless, but the way they elude their misery, is what pleases the
sentimental tourist, who is gratified by the sight of a beautiful race
that lives by the aid of its imagination. The way to enjoy Venice is
to follow the example of these people and make the most of simple
pleasures. Almost all the pleasures of the place are simple; this may be
maintained even under the imputation of ingenious paradox. There is no
simpler pleasure than looking at a fine Titian, unless it be looking at
a fine Tintoret or strolling into St. Mark’s,--abominable the way one
falls into the habit,--and resting one’s light-wearied eyes upon the
windowless gloom; or than floating in a gondola or than hanging over
a balcony or than taking one’s coffee at Florian’s. It is of such
superficial pastimes that a Venetian day is composed, and the pleasure
of the matter is in the emotions to which they minister. These are
fortunately of the finest--otherwise Venice would be insufferably dull.
Reading Ruskin is good; reading the old records is perhaps better; but
the best thing of all is simply staying on. The only way to care for
Venice as she deserves it is to give her a chance to touch you often--to
linger and remain and return.