me. Allow a sculptor of renown and parts, not to say genius, to be
dragged off to prison under the pretence that he was breaking the law
by selling his wares, when really he was only exhibiting to a brother
artist an evidence of his handiwork, etc., etc.! It was a narrow
escape, and I am afraid the bystanders, as well as the frozen images of
the law, lost all respect for my truthfulness,--but it sufficed.
On my way home that night this waif of the streets told me that
since he had been ten years old--he was then only seventeen--he had
troubadoured it through Europe, even as far as Spain, his only support
being his spatula and a lump of clay. With these he could conjure
a breakfast out of the head waiter of a caffè in exchange for his
portrait in clay, or a lodging in some cheap hotel for a like payment
to the proprietor. He is still tramping the streets of Venice, his
little wooden board filled with Madonnas, Spanish matadors, and Don
Quixotes. Now he has money in the bank and the striped-pantalooned
guardians of the peace let him alone.
And the girls!
Not the better class, with mothers and duennas dogging every footstep,
but the girls who wander two and two up and down the Riva, their
arms intertwined; not forgetting the bright-eyed _signorina_ that I
once waylaid in a by-street. (Don’t start! Espero helped.) I wanted
a figure to lean over a crumbling wall in a half-finished sketch,
and sent Espero to catch one. Such a vision of beauty! Such a wealth
of purple--grape purple--black hair; such luminous black eyes, real
gazelle’s, soft and velvety; so exquisitely graceful; so charming and
naïve; so unkempt,--so ragged,--so entirely unlaundered, unscrubbed,
and slovenly!
But you must look twice at a Venetian beauty. You may miss her good
points otherwise. You think at first sight that she is only the last
half of my description, until you follow the flowing lines under the
cheap, shabby shawl and skirt, and study the face.
This one opened her big eyes wide in astonishment at Espero, listened
attentively, consented gracefully, and then sprang after him into the
gondola, which carried her off bodily to my sketching ground. Truly
one touch of the brush, with a paper _lira_ neatly folded around
the handle, is very apt to make all Venice, especially stray amateur
models, your kin.
But this is true of all the people in the streets. Every Venetian, for
that matter, is a born model. You can call from under your umbrella
to any passer-by, anybody who is not on a quick run for the doctor,
and he or she will stand stock still and fix himself or herself in any
position you may wish, and stay fixed by the hour.
And the gossip that goes on all day! In the morning hours around
the wells in the open Campo, where the women fill their copper
water-buckets, and the children play by the widening puddles; in the
narrow streets beside a shadow-flecked wall; under the vines of the
_traghetto_, lolling over the unused _felsi_; among the gondoliers at
the gondola landings, while their boats lie waiting for patrons; over
low walls of narrow slits of canals, to occupants of some window or
bridge a hundred feet away. There is always time to talk, in Venice.
Then the _dolce far niente_ air that pervades these streets! Nobody in
a hurry. Nobody breaking his neck to catch a boat off for the Lido;
there will be another in an hour, and if, by any combination of cool
awnings, warm wine, and another idler for company, this later boat
should get away without this one passenger, why worry?--to-morrow will
do.
All over Venice it is the same. The men sit in rows on the stone
benches. The girls idle in the doorways, their hands in their laps. The
members of the open-air club lounge over the bridges or lie sprawled
on the shadow-side of the steps. Up in the fishing quarter, between
naps in his doorway, some weather-beaten old salt may, perhaps, have
a sudden spasm of energy over a crab-basket that must be hoisted up,
or lowered down, or scrubbed with a broom. But there is sure to be a
lull in his energy, and before you fairly miss his toiling figure he is
asleep in his boat. When his _signora_ wakes him into life again with a
piece of toasted pumpkin,--his luncheon, like the Professor’s, is eaten
wherever he happens to be,--he may have another spasm of activity, but
the chances are that he will relapse into oblivion again.
[Illustration: NARROW SLITS OF CANALS]
Even about the Piazza, the centre of the city’s life, every free seat
that is shady is occupied. So, too, are the bases of the flag-poles in
front of the Loggietta and behind the Campanile. Only when something
out of the common moves into the open space--like the painter with
the canvas ten feet long and six feet high--do these _habitués_ leave
their seats or forsake the shelter of the arcades and stand in solemn
circle. This particular painter occupies the centre of a square bounded
by four chairs and some yards of connecting white ribbon,--the chairs
turned in so that nobody can sit on them. He has been here for many
seasons. He comes every afternoon at five and paints for an hour. The
crowds, too, come every day,--the same people, I think. Yet he is not
the only painter in the streets. You will find them all over Venice.
Some under their umbrellas, the more knowing under short gondola-sails
rigged like an awning, under which they crawl out of the blazing heat.
I am one of the more knowing.
The average citizen, as I have said, almost always walks. When there
are no bridges across the Grand Canal he must of course rely on the
gondola. Not the luxurious gondola with curtains and silk-fringed
cushions, but a gondola half worn-out and now used as a ferryboat at
the _traghetto_. These shuttles of travel run back and forth all day
and all night (there are over thirty _traghetti_ in Venice), the fare
being some infinitesimally small bit of copper. Once across, the
Venetian goes on about his way, dry-shod again. For longer distances,
say from the railroad station to the Piazza, the Public Garden, or
the Lido, he boards one of the little steamers that scurry up and
down the Grand Canal or the Giudecca and the waters of some of the
lagoons--really the only energetic things in Venice. Then another bit
of copper coin, this time the size of a cuff-button, and he is whirled
away and landed at the end of a dock lined with more seats for the
weary, and every shaded space full.
Another feature of these streets is the _bric-à-brac_ dealer. He has
many of the characteristics of his equally shrewd brethren along
Cheapside and the Bowery. One in particular,--he is always on the
sidewalk in front of his shop. The Professor insists that these men
are the curse of Venice; that they rob poor and rich alike,--the poor
of their heirlooms at one-tenth their value, the rich of their gold
by reselling this booty at twenty times its worth. I never take the
Professor seriously about these things. His own personal patronage must
be very limited, and I suspect, too, that in the earlier years of his
exile, some of his own belongings--an old clock, perhaps, or a pair of
paste buckles, or some other relic of better days--were saved from the
pawnshop only to be swallowed up by some shark down a back street.
But there is one particular Ananias, a smug, persuasive, clean-shaven
specimen of his craft, who really answers to the Professor’s epithet.
He haunts a narrow crack of a street leading from the Campo San Moisè
to the Piazza. This crevice of a lane is the main thoroughfare between
the two great sections of Venice. Not only the Venetians themselves,
but, as it is the short cut to San Marco, many of the strangers from
the larger hotels--the Britannia, the Grand, the Bauer-Grünwald, and
others--pass through it night and day.
Here this wily spider weaves his web for foreign flies, retreating with
his victim into his hole--a little shop, dark as a pocket--whenever he
has his fangs completely fastened upon the fly’s wallet. The bait is,
perhaps, a church lamp, or an altar-cloth spotted with candle-grease.
There are three metres in the cloth, with six spots of grease to the
metre. You are a stranger and do not know that the silk factory at the
corner furnished the cloth the week before for five francs a metre,
Ananias the grease, and his wife the needle that sewed it together.
Now hear him!
“No, nod modern; seexteenth century. Vrom a vary olt church in Padua.
Zat von you saw on ze Beazzi yesterday vas modern and vary often, but I
assure you, shentleman, zat zees ees antique and more seldom. Ant for
dree hundredt francs eet ees re-diklous. I bay myselluf dree hundredt
an’ feefty francs, only ze beesiness is so bad, and eet ees de first
dime zat I speak wis you, I vould not sell eet for fife hundredt.”
You begin by offering him fifty francs.
“_Two hundredt_ and feefty francs!” he answers, without a muscle in his
face changing; “no, shentleman, it vould be eemposseeble to--”
“No, fifty,” you cry out.
Now see the look of wounded pride that overspreads his face, the dazed,
almost stunned expression, followed by a slight touch of indignation.
“Shentleman, conseeder ze honor of my house. Eef I sharge you dree
hundredt francs for sometings only for feefty, it ees for myselluf I am
zorry. Eet ees not posseeble zat you know ze honorable standing of my
house.”
Then, if you are wise, you throw down your card with the name of your
hotel--and stroll up the street, gazing into the shop windows and
pricing in a careless way every other thing suspended outside any other
door, or puckered up inside any other window.
In ten minutes after you have turned the corner he has interviewed the
porter of your hotel--not Joseph of the Britannia; Joseph never lets
one of this kind mount the hotel steps unless his ticket is punched
with your permission. In five minutes Ananias has learned the very hour
of the day you have to leave Venice, and is thereafter familiar with
every bundle of stuffs offered by any other dealer that is sent to your
apartment. When you pass his shop the next day he bows with dignity,
but never leaves his doorway. If you have the moral courage to ignore
him, even up to the last morning of your departure, when your trunks
are packed and under the porter’s charge for registering, you will meet
Ananias in the corridor with the altar-cloth under his arm, and his
bill for fifty francs in his pocket. If not, and you really want his
stuffs and he finds it out, then cable for a new letter-of-credit.
At night, especially _festa_ nights, these Venetian streets are even
more unique than in the day. There is, perhaps, a festa at the _Frari_,
or at _Santa Maria del Zobenigo_. The Campo in front of the church
is ablaze with strings of lanterns hung over the heads of the people,
or fastened to long brackets reaching out from the windows. There are
clusters of candles, too, socketed in triangles of wood, and flaring
torches, fastened to a mushroom growth of booths that have sprung up
since morning, where are sold hot waffles cooked on open-air griddles,
and ladles full of soup filled with sea horrors,--spider-like things
with crawly legs. Each booth is decorated with huge brass plaques,
_repoussèd_ in designs of the Lion of St. Mark, and of the Saint
himself. The cook tells you that he helped hammer them into shape
during the long nights of the preceding winter; that there is nothing
so beautiful, and that for a few _lire_ you can add these specimens of
domestic _bric-à-brac_ to your collection at home. He is right; hung
against a bit of old tapestry, nothing is more decorative than one of
these rude reproductions of the older Venetian brass. And nothing more
_honest_. Every indentation shows the touch of the artist’s hammer.
In honor of the _festa_ everybody in the vicinity lends a hand to the
decorations. On the walls of the houses fronting the small square,
especially on the wall of the wine-shop, are often hung the family
portraits of some neighbor who has public spirit enough to add a touch
of color to the general enjoyment. My friend, Pasquale D’ Este, who is
_gastaldo_ at the _traghetto_ of Zobenigo, pointed out to me, on one of
these nights, a portrait of his own ancestor, surprising me with the
information that his predecessors had been gondoliers for two hundred
years.
While the _festa_ lasts the people surge back and forth, crowding
about the booths, buying knick-knacks at the portable shops. All are
good-natured and courteous, and each one delighted over a spectacle
so simple and so crude, the wonder is, when one thinks how often a
_festa_ occurs in Venice, that even a handful of people can be gathered
together to enjoy it.
Besides all these varying phases of street merry-making, there are
always to be found in the thoroughfares of Venice during the year, some
outward indications that mark important days in the almanac--calendar
days that neither celebrate historical events nor mark religious
festivals. You always know, for instance, when St. Mark’s day comes,
in April, as every girl you meet wears a rose tucked in her hair out
of deference to the ancient custom, not as a sign of the religious
character of the day, but to show to the passer-by that she has a
sweetheart. Before Christmas, too, if in the absence of holly berries
and greens you should have forgotten the calendar day, the peddler of
eels and of nut candy and apple sauce would remind you of it; for,
in accordance with the ancient custom, dating back to the Republic,
every family in Venice, rich or poor, the night before Christmas, has
the same supper,--eels, a nut candy called _mandorlato_, and a dish
of apple sauce with fruits and mustard. This is why the peddlers in
Venice are calling out all day at the top of their lungs, “_Mandorlato!
Mostarda!_” while the eel and mustard trade springs into an activity
unknown for a year. On other saints’ days the street peddlers sell a
red paste made of tomatoes and chestnut flour, moulded into cakes.
Last are the caffès! In winter, of course, the _habitués_ of these
Venetian lounging places are crowded into small, stuffy rooms; but in
the warmer months everybody is in the street. Not only do Florian’s and
the more important caffès of the rich spread their cloths under the
open sky, but every other caffè on the Riva,--the Oriental, the _Veneta
Marina_, and the rest--push their tables quite out to the danger-line
patrolled by the two cocked-hat guardians of the peace. In and out
between these checkerboards of good cheer, the peddlers of sweets,
candies, and fruit strung on broom-straws, ply their trade, while the
flower girls pin tuberoses or a bunch of carnations to your coat, and
the ever-present and persistent guide waylays customers for the next
day’s sightseeing. Once or twice a week there is also a band playing in
front of one of these principal caffès, either the Government band or
some private orchestra.
On these nights the people come in from all over Venice, standing in a
solid mass, men, women, and children, listening in perfect silence to
the strains of music that float over the otherwise silent street. There
is nothing in Europe quite like this bareheaded, attentive, absorbed
crowd of Venetians, enjoying every note that falls on their ears. There
is no gathering so silent, so orderly, so well-bred. The jewelled
occupants of many an opera box could take lessons in good manners from
these denizens of the tenements,--fishermen, bead stringers, lace
makers--who gather here from behind the Ship Yard and in the tangle of
streets below _San Giorgio della Schiavoni_. There is no jostling or
pushing, with each one trying to get a better place. Many of the women
carry their babies, the men caring for the larger children. All are
judges of good music, and all are willing to stand perfectly still by
the hour, so that they themselves may hear and let others hear too.
NIGHT IN VENICE
NIGHT in Venice! A night of silver moons,--one hung against the velvet
blue of the infinite, fathomless sky, the other at rest in the still
sea below.
A night of ghostly gondolas, chasing specks of stars in dim canals; of
soft melodies broken by softer laughter; of tinkling mandolins, white
shoulders, and tell-tale cigarettes. A night of gay lanterns lighting
big barges, filled with singers and beset by shadowy boats, circling
like moths or massed like water-beetles. A night when San Giorgio
stands on tip-toe, Narcissus-like, to drink in his own beauty mirrored
in the silent sea; when the angel crowning the Campanile sleeps with
folded wings, lost in the countless stars; when the line of the city
from across the wide lagoons is but a string of lights buoying golden
chains that sink into the depths; when the air is a breath of heaven,
and every sound that vibrates across the never-ending wave is the music
of another world.
No pen can give this beauty, no brush its color, no tongue its delight.
It must be seen and felt. It matters little how dull your soul may be,
how sluggish your imagination, how dead your enthusiasm, here Nature
will touch you with a wand that will stir every blunted sensibility
into life. Palaces and churches,--poems in stone,--canvases that
radiate, sombre forests, oases of olive and palm, Beethoven, Milton,
and even the great Michael himself, may have roused in you no quiver of
delight nor thrill of feeling.
But here,--here by this wondrous city of the sea,--here, where the
transcendent goddess of the night spreads her wings, radiant in the
light of an August moon, her brow studded with stars,--even were your
soul of clay, here would it vibrate to the dignity, the beauty, and the
majesty of her matchless presence.
[Illustration: SAN GIORGIO STANDS ON TIP-TOE]
As you lie, adrift in your gondola, hung in mid-air,--so like a mirror
is the sea, so vast the vault above you,--how dreamlike the charm! How
exquisite the languor! Now a burst of music from the far-off plaza,
dying into echoes about the walls of San Giorgio; now the slow tolling
of some bell from a distant tower; now the ripple of a laugh, or a
snatch of song, or the low cooing of a lover’s voice, as a ghostly
skiff with drawn curtains and muffled light glides past; and now the
low plash of the rowers as some phantom ship looms above you with
bow-lights aglow, crosses the highway of silver, and melts into shadow.
Suddenly from out the stillness there bursts across the bosom of the
sleeping wave the dull boom of the evening gun, followed by the long
blast of the bugle from the big warship near the arsenal; and then, as
you hold your breath, the clear deep tones of the great bell of the
Campanile strike the hour.
Now is the spell complete!
The Professor, in the seat beside me, turns his head, and, with a
cautioning hand to Espero to stay his oar, listens till each echo has
had its say; first San Giorgio’s wall, then the Public Garden, and last
the low murmur that pulsates back from the outlying islands of the
lagoon. On nights like these the Professor rarely talks. He lies back
on the yielding cushions, his eyes upturned to the stars, the glow of
his cigarette lighting his face. Now and then he straightens himself,
looks about him, and sinks back again on the cushions, muttering over
and over again, “Never such a night--never, never!” To-morrow night
he will tell you the same thing, and every other night while the moon
lasts. Yet he is no empty enthusiast. He is only enthralled by the
splendor of his mistress, this matchless Goddess of Air and Light and
Melody. Analyze the feeling as you may, despise its sentiment or decry
it altogether, the fact remains, that once get this drug of Venice
into your veins, and you never recover. The same thrill steals over
you with every phase of her wondrous charm,--in the early morning, in
the blinding glare of the noon, in the cool of the fading day, in the
tranquil watches of the night. It is Venice the Beloved, and there is
none other!
Espero has breathed her air always, and hundreds of nights have come
and gone for him; yet as he stands bareheaded behind you, his oar
slowly moving, you can hear him communing with himself as he whispers,
“_Bella notte, bella notte_,” just as some other devotee would tell
his beads in unconscious prayer. It is the spirit of idolatry born of
her never-ending beauty, that marks the marvellous power which Venice
wields over human hearts, compelling them, no matter how dull and
leaden, to reverence and to love.
And the Venetians never forget! While we float idly back to the city,
the quays are crowded with people, gazing across the wide lagoons,
drinking in their beauty, the silver moon over all. Now and then a
figure will come down to the water’s edge and sit upon some marble
steps, gazing seaward. There is nothing to be seen,--no passing ship,
no returning boat. It is only the night!
Away up the canal, Guglielmo, the famous singer, once a gondolier, is
filling the night with music, a throng of boats almost bridging the
canal, following him from place to place, Luigi, the primo, in the
lead,--the occupants hanging on every note that falls from his lips.
Up the Zattere, near San Rosario, where the afternoon sun blazed
but a few hours since, the people line the edge of the marble quay,
their children about them, the soft radiance of the night glorifying
the Giudecca. They are of all classes, high and low. They love their
city, and every phase of her beauty is to them only a variation of her
marvellous charm. The Grand Duchess of the Riva stands in the doorway
of her caffè, or leans from her chamber window; Vittorio and little
Appo, and every other member of the Open-Air Club, are sprawled over
the Ponte Veneta Marina, and even the fishermen up the Pallada sit in
front of their doors. Venice is decked out to-night in all the glory of
an August moon. They must be there to see!
You motion to Espero, and with a twist of his blade he whirls the
gondola back to the line of farthest lights. As you approach nearer,
the big Trieste steamer looms above you, her decks crowded with
travellers. Through her open port-holes you catch the blaze of the
electric lights, and note the tables spread and the open staterooms,
the waiters and stewards moving within. About her landing-ladders is a
swarm of gondolas bringing passengers, the porters taking up the trunks
as each boat discharges in turn.
A moment more and you shoot alongside the Molo and the water-steps of
the Piazzetta. An old man steadies your boat while you alight. You bid
Espero good-night and mingle with the throng. What a transition from
the stillness of the dark lagoon!
The open space is crowded with idlers walking in pairs or groups. The
flambeaux of gas-jets are ablaze. From behind the towering Campanile in
the great Piazza comes a burst of music from the King’s Band. Farther
down the Riva, beyond the Ponte Paglia, is heard the sound of another
band. Everywhere are color and light and music. Everywhere stroll the
happy, restful, contented people, intoxicated with the soft air, the
melody, and the beauty of the night.
If you think you know San Marco, come stand beneath its rounded portals
and look up. The deep coves, which in the daylight are lost in the
shadows of the dominant sun, are now illumined by the glare of a
hundred gas-jets from the street below. What you saw in the daylight
is lost in the shadow,--the shadowed coves now brilliant in light. To
your surprise, as you look, you find them filled with inscriptions and
studded with jewels of mosaic, which flash and glint in the glare of
the blazing flambeaux. All the pictures over the great doors now stand
out in bold coloring, with each caramel of mosaic distinct and clear.
Over every top-moulding you note little beads and dots of gray and
black. If you look closer two beads will become one, and soon another
will burst into wings. They are the countless pigeons roosting on
the carving. They are out of your reach, some fifty feet above you,
undisturbed by all this glitter and sound.