THE GRAND CANAL. V: BYRON IN VENICE
The beautiful Marianna--Rum-punch--The Palazzo Albrizzi--A play
at the Fenice--The sick _Ballerina_--The gondola--Praise of
Italy--_Beppo_--_Childe Harold_--Riding on the Lido--The inquisitive
English--Shelley in Venice--_Julian and Maddalo_--The view from the
Lido--The madhouse--The Ducal prisons.
The name of Byron is so intimately associated with Venice that I think a
brief account of his life there (so far as it can be told) might be
found interesting.
It was suggested by Madame de Flanhault that Byron was drawn to Venice
not only by its romantic character, but because, since he could go
everywhere by water, his lameness would attract less attention than
elsewhere. Be that as it may, he arrived in Venice late in 1816, being
then twenty-eight. He lodged first in the Frezzeria, and at once set to
work upon employments so dissimilar as acquiring a knowledge of the
Armenian language in the monastery on the island of San Lazzaro and
making love to the wife of his landlord. But let his own gay pen tell
the story. He is writing to Tom Moore on November 17, 1816: "It is my
intention to remain at Venice during the winter, probably, as it has
always been (next to the East) the greenest island of my imagination. It
has not disappointed me; though its evident decay would, perhaps, have
that effect upon others. But I have been familiar with ruins too long to
dislike desolation. Besides, I have fallen in love, which, next to
falling into the canal (which would be of no use, as I can swim), is the
best or the worst thing I could do. I have got some extremely good
apartments in the house of a 'Merchant of Venice,' who is a good deal
occupied with business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year.
Marianna (that is her name) is in her appearance altogether like an
antelope. She has the large, black, oriental eyes, with that peculiar
expression in them which is seen rarely among _Europeans_--even the
Italians--and which many of the Turkish women give themselves by tinging
the eyelid, an art not known out of that country, I believe. This
expression she has _naturally_--and something more than this. In
short--." The rest of this amour, and one strange scene to which it led,
very like an incident in an Italian comedy, is no concern of this book.
For those who wish to know more, it is to be found, in prose, in the
Letters, and, in verse, in _Beppo_.
On this his first visit to Venice, Byron was a private individual. He
was sociable in a quiet way, attending one or two salons, but he was not
splendid. And he seems really to have thrown himself with his customary
vigour into his Armenian studies; but of those I speak elsewhere. They
were for the day: in the evening, he tells Moore, "I do one of many
nothings--either at the theatres, or some of the conversaziones, which
are like our routs, or rather worse, for the women sit in a semi-circle
by the lady of the mansion, and the men stand about the room. To be
sure, there is one improvement upon ours--instead of lemonade with their
ices, they hand about stiff _rum-punch_--_punch_, by my palate; and this
they think _English_. I would not disabuse them of so agreeable an
error,--'no, not for "Venice"'."
The chief houses to which he went were the Palazzo Benzon and the
Palazzo Albrizzi. Moore when in Venice a little later also paid his
respects to the Countess Albrizzi. "These assemblies," he wrote home,
"which, at a distance, sounded so full of splendour and gallantry to me,
turned into something much worse than one of Lydia White's
conversaziones."
Here is one of Byron's rattling descriptions of a Venetian night. The
date is December 27, 1816, and it is written to his publisher, Murray:
"As the news of Venice must be very interesting to you, I will regale
you with it. Yesterday being the feast of St. Stephen, every mouth was
put in motion. There was nothing but fiddling and playing on the
virginals, and all kinds of conceits and divertisements, on every canal
of this aquatic city.
"I dined with the Countess Albrizzi and a Paduan and Venetian party, and
afterwards went to the opera, at the Fenice theatre (which opens for the
Carnival on that day)--the finest, by the way, I have ever seen; it
beats our theatres hollow in beauty and scenery, and those of Milan and
Brescia bow before it. The opera and its Syrens were much like all other
operas and women, but the subject of the said opera was something
edifying; it turned--the plot and conduct thereof--upon a fact narrated
by Livy of a hundred and fifty married ladies having _poisoned_ a
hundred and fifty husbands in the good old times. The bachelors of Rome
believed this extraordinary mortality to be merely the common effect of
matrimony or a pestilence; but the surviving Benedicts, being all seized
with the cholic, examined into the matter, and found that their possets
had been drugged; the consequence of which was much scandal and several
suits at law.
"This is really and truly the subject of the Musical piece at the
Fenice; and you can't conceive what pretty things are sung and
recitativoed about the _horreda straga_. The conclusion was a lady's
head about to be chopped off by a Lictor, but (I am sorry to say) he
left it on, and she got up and sang a trio with the two Consuls, the
Senate in the background being chorus.
"The ballet was distinguished by nothing remarkable, except that the
principal she-dancer went into convulsions because she was not applauded
on her first appearance; and the manager came forward to ask if there
was 'ever a physician in the theatre'. There was a Greek one in my box,
whom I wished very much to volunteer his services, being sure that in
this case these would have been the last convulsions which would have
troubled the _Ballerina_; but he would not.
"The crowd was enormous; and in coming out, having a lady under my arm,
I was obliged in making way, almost to 'beat a Venetian and traduce the
state,' being compelled to regale a person with an English punch in the
guts which sent him as far back as the squeeze and the passage would
admit. He did not ask for another; but with great signs of
disapprobation and dismay, appealed to his compatriots, who laughed at
him."
Byron's first intention was to write nothing in Venice; but fortunately
the idea of _Beppo_ came to him, and that masterpiece of gay
recklessness and high-spirited imprudence sprang into life. The desk at
which he wrote is still preserved in the Palazzo Mocenigo. From _Beppo_
I quote elsewhere some stanzas relating to Giorgione; and here are two
which bear upon the "hansom of Venice," written when that vehicle was as
fresh to Byron as it is to some of us:--
Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear
You should not, I'll describe it you exactly:
'Tis a long covered boat that's common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly.
Rowed by two rowers, each call'd "Gondolier,"
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
And up and down the long canals they go,
And under the Rialto shoot along,
By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
And round the theatres, a sable throng,
They wait in their dusk livery of woe,--
But not to them do woeful things belong,
For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,
Like mourning coaches when the funeral's done.
Those useful ciceroni in Venice, the Signori Carlo and Sarri, seem to
have had Byron's description in mind. "She is all black," they write of
the gondola, "everything giving her a somewhat mysterious air, which
awakens in one's mind a thousand various thoughts about what has
happened, happens, or may happen beneath the little felze."
It is pleasant to think that, no matter upon what other Italian
experiences the sentiments were founded, the praise of Italy in the
following stanzas was written in a room in the Mocenigo Palace, looking
over the Grand Canal upon a prospect very similar to that which we see
to-day:--
With all its sinful doings, I must say,
That Italy's a pleasant place to me,
Who love to see the Sun shine every day,
And vines (not nailed to walls) from tree to tree,
Festooned, much like the back scene of a play,
Or melodrama, which people flock to see,
When the first act is ended by a dance
In vineyards copied from the South of France.
I like on Autumn evenings to ride out,
Without being forced to bid my groom be sure
My cloak is round his middle strapped about,
Because the skies are not the most secure;
I know too that, if stopped upon my route,
Where the green alleys windingly allure,
Reeling with _grapes_ red wagons choke the way,--
In England 'twould be dung, dust or a dray.
I also like to dine on becaficas,
To see the Sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow,
Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as
A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow,
But with all Heaven t'himself; the day will break as
Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow
That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers
Where reeking London's smoky cauldron simmers.
I love the language, that soft bastard Latin
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which were obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all.
I like the women too (forgive my folly!),
From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley
Of rays that say a thousand things at once,
To the high Dama's brow, more melancholy,
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance,
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
Byron's next visit to Venice was in 1818, and it was then that he set up
state and became a Venetian lion. He had now his gondolas, his horses on
the Lido, a box at the Opera, many servants. But his gaiety had left
him. Neither in his letters nor his verse did he recapture the fun
which we find in _Beppo_. To this second period belong such graver
Venetian work (either inspired here or written here) as the opening
stanzas of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_. The first line takes the
reader into the very heart of the city and is one of the best-known
single lines in all poetry. Familiar as the stanzas are, it would be
ridiculous to write of Byron in Venice without quoting them again:--
I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs";
A Palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the Enchanter's wand:
A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was;--her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
FROM THE PAINTING BY CIMA
_In the Church of S. Giovanni in Bragora_]
Byron wrote also, in 1818, an "Ode on Venice," a regret for its decay,
in spirit not unlike the succeeding _Childe Harold_ stanzas which I do
not here quote. Here too he planned _Marino Faliero_, talking it over
with his guest, "Monk" Lewis. Another Venetian play of Byron's was _The
Two Foscari_, and both prove that he attacked the old chronicles to some
purpose and with all his brilliant thoroughness. None the less he made
a few blunders, as when in _The Two Foscari_ there is an allusion to the
Bridge of Sighs, which was not, as it happens, built for more than a
century after the date of the play.
No city, however alluring, could be Byron's home for long, and this
second sojourn in Venice was not made any simpler by the presence of his
daughter Ada. In 1819 he was away again and never returned. No one so
little liked the idea of being rooted as he; at a blow the home was
broken.
The best account of Byron at this time is that which his friend Hoppner,
the British Consul, a son of the painter, wrote to Murray. Hoppner not
only saw Byron regularly at night, but used to ride with him on the
Lido. "The spot," he says, "where we usually mounted our horses had been
a Jewish cemetery; but the French, during their occupation of Venice,
had thrown down the enclosure, and levelled all the tombstones with the
ground, in order that they might not interfere with the fortifications
upon the Lido, under the guns of which it was situated. To this place,
as it was known to be that where he alighted from his gondola and met
his horses, the curious amongst our country-people, who were anxious to
obtain a glimpse of him, used to resort; and it was amusing in the
extreme to witness the excessive coolness with which ladies, as well as
gentlemen, would advance within a very few paces of him, eyeing him,
some with their glasses, as they would have done a statue in a museum,
or the wild beasts at Exeter 'Change. However flattering this might be
to a man's vanity, Lord Byron, though he bore it very patiently,
expressed himself, as I believe he really was, excessively annoyed at
it.
"The curiosity that was expressed by all classes of travellers to see
him, and the eagerness with which they endeavoured to pick up any
anecdotes of his mode of life, were carried to a length which will
hardly be credited. It formed the chief subject of their inquiries of
the gondoliers who conveyed them from _terra firma_ to the floating
city; and these people who are generally loquacious, were not at all
backward in administering to the taste and humours of their passengers,
relating to them the most extravagant and often unfounded stories. They
took care to point out the house where he lived, and to give such hints
of his movements as might afford them an opportunity of seeing him.
"Many of the English visitors, under pretext of seeing his house, in
which there were no paintings of any consequence, nor, besides himself,
anything worthy of notice, contrived to obtain admittance through the
cupidity of his servants, and with the most barefaced impudence forced
their way even into his bedroom, in the hopes of seeing him. Hence
arose, in a great measure, his bitterness towards them, which he has
expressed in a note to one of his poems, on the occasion of some
unfounded remark made upon him by an anonymous traveller in Italy; and
it certainly appears well calculated to foster that cynicism which
prevails in his latter works more particularly, and which, as well as
the misanthropical expressions that occur in those which first raised
his reputation, I do not believe to have been his natural feeling. Of
this I am certain, that I never witnessed greater kindness than in Lord
Byron."
Byron's note to which Hoppner alludes is in _Marino Faliero_. The
conclusion of it is as follows: "The fact is, I hold in utter abhorrence
any contact with the travelling English, as my friend the Consul General
Hoppner and the Countess Benzoni (in whose house the Converzasione
mostly frequented by them is held), could amply testify, were it worth
while. I was persecuted by these tourists even to my riding ground at
Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable circuits to avoid them. At
Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused to be introduced to them; of a
thousand such presentations pressed upon me, I accepted two, and both
were to Irish women."
Shelley visited Byron at the Mocenigo Palace in 1818 on a matter
concerning Byron's daughter Allegra and Claire Clairmont, whom the other
poet brought with him. They reached Venice by gondola from Padua, having
the fortune to be rowed by a gondolier who had been in Byron's employ
and who at once and voluntarily began to talk of him, his luxury and
extravagance. At the inn the waiter, also unprovoked, enlarged on the
same alluring theme. Shelley's letter describing Byron's Venetian home
is torn at its most interesting passage and we are therefore without
anything as amusing and vivid as the same correspondent's account of his
lordship's Ravenna ménage. Byron took him for a ride on the Lido, the
memory of which formed the opening lines of _Julian and Maddalo_.
Thus:--
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as then I rode;--for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aërial merriment.
When the ride was over and the two poets were returning in Byron's (or
Count Maddalo's) gondola, there was such an evening view as one often
has, over Venice, and beyond, to the mountains. Shelley describes it:--
Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar
And aëry Alps towards the North appeared
Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many-folded hills: they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles--
And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent.
Browning never tired, says Mrs. Bronson, of this evening view from the
Lido, and always held that these lines by Shelley were the best
description of it.
The poem goes on to describe a visit to the madhouse of S. Clemente and
the reflections that arose from it. Towards the close Shelley says:--
If I had been an unconnected man
I, from this moment, should have formed some plan
Never to leave sweet Venice,--for to me
It was delight to ride by the lone sea;
And then, the town is silent--one may write
Or read in gondolas by day or night,
Having the little brazen lamp alight,
Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there.
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry, and all
We seek in towns, with little to recall
Regrets for the green country.
Later in 1818 Mrs. Shelley joined her daughter in Venice, but it was a
tragic visit, for their daughter Clara died almost immediately after
they arrived. She is buried on the Lido.
In a letter to Peacock, Shelley thus describes the city: "Venice is a
wonderfully fine city. The approach to it over the laguna, with its
domes and turrets glittering in a long line over the blue waves, is one
of the finest architectural delusions in the world. It seems to
have--and literally it has--its foundations in the sea. The silent
streets are paved with water, and you hear nothing but the dashing of
the oars, and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard nothing at
Tasso. The gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic and
picturesque appearance; I can only compare them to moths of which a
coffin might have been the chrysalis. They are hung with black, and
painted black, and carpeted with grey; they curl at the prow and stern,
and at the former there is a nondescript beak of shining steel, which
glitters at the end of its long black mass.
"The Doge's Palace, with its library, is a fine monument of aristocratic
power. I saw the dungeons, where these scoundrels used to torment their
victims. They are of three kinds--one adjoining the place of trial,
where the prisoners destined to immediate execution were kept. I could
not descend into them, because the day on which I visited it was festa.
Another under the leads of the palace, where the sufferers were roasted
to death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun: and others called
the Pozzi--or wells, deep underneath, and communicating with those on
the roof by secret passages--where the prisoners were confined sometimes
half-up to their middles in stinking water. When the French came here,
they found only one old man in the dungeons, and he could not speak."