Few English-speaking and, stranger still, few German-speaking guests
stay at the Albergo Tonelli in Venice. For one thing, it has not many
rooms; for another, it is far from the Grand Canal; and for yet
another, the fat proprietor Ettore Tonelli and his fatter wife are too
sluggish of body and brain to worry about _forestieri_ who have to be
communicated with in outlandish tongues, and, for their supposed
comfort, demand all sorts of exotic foolishness such as baths,
punctuality, and information as to the whereabouts of fusty old
pictures and the exact tariff of gondolas. The house was filled from
year's end to year's end with Italian commercial travellers; and
Ettore's ways and their ways corresponded to a nicety. The Albergo
Tonelli was a little red-brick fifteenth-century palazzo, its Lombardic
crocketed windows gaily picked out in white, and it dominated the
_campiello_ wherein it was situated. In the centre of the tiny square
was a marble well-head richly carved, and by its side a pump from which
the inhabitants of the vague tumble-down circumambient dwellings drew
the water to wash the underlinen which hung to dry from the windows. A
great segment of the corner diagonally opposite the Albergo was
occupied by the bare and rudely swelling brick apse of a
seventeenth-century church. Two inconsiderable thoroughfares, _calle_
five foot wide, lead from the _campiello_ to the wide world of Venice.
It was hither that Sir Hildebrand Oates, after a week of
nerve-shattering tumult at one of the great Grand Canal hotels, and
after horrified examination of the question of balance of expenditure
over income, found his way through the kind offices of a gondolier to
whom he had promised twenty francs if he could conduct him to the
forgotten church, the memorable scene of the adventure of the beggar
and the two-franc piece. With unerring instinct the gondolier had
rowed him to Santa Maria Formosa, the very spot. Sir Hildebrand
troubled himself neither with the church nor the heart-easing wonder of
Palma Vecchio's Santa Barbara within, but, with bent brow, traced the
course of the lame beggar from the step to the _fondamenta_, and the
course of the rolling coin from his Eliza's hand into the canal. Then
he paused for a few moments deep in thought, and finally drew a
two-lire piece from his pocket, and, recrossing the Campo, handed it
gravely to a beggar-woman, the successor of the lame man, who sat
sunning herself on the spacious marble seat by the side of the great
door. When he returned to the hotel he gave the gondolier his colossal
reward and made a friend for life. Giuseppe delighted at finding an
English gentleman who could converse readily hi Italian--for Sir
Hildebrand, a man of considerable culture, possessed a working
knowledge of three or four European languages--expressed his gratitude
on subsequent excursions, by overflowing with picturesque anecdote,
both historical and personal. A pathetic craving for intercourse with
his kind and the solace of obtaining it from one remote from his social
environment drew Sir Hildebrand into queer sympathy with a genuine
human being. Giuseppe treated him with a respectful familiarity which
he had never before encountered in a member of the lower classes. One
afternoon, on the silent _lagune_ side of the Giudecca, turning round
on his cushions, he confided to the lean, bronzed, rhythmically working
figure standing behind him, something of the puzzledom of his soul.
Guiseppe, in the practical Italian way, interpreted the confidences as
a desire to escape from the tourist-agitated and fantastically
expensive quarters of the city into some unruffled haven. That evening
he interviewed the second cousin of his wife, the Signora Tonelli of
the Albergo of that name, and the next day Sir Hildebrand took
possession of the front room overlooking the _campiello_, on the _piano
nobile_ or second floor of the hotel.
And here Sir Hildebrand Oates, Knight, once Member of Parliament, Lord
of the Manor, Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Director of great
companies, orchid rival of His Grace the Duke of Dunster, important and
impeccable personage, the exact temperature of whose bath water had
been to a trembling household a matter of as much vital concern as the
salvation of their own souls--entered upon a life of queer discomfort,
privation and humility. For the first time in his life he experienced
the hugger-mugger makeshift of the bed-sitting room--a chamber, too,
cold and comfortless, with one scraggy rug by the bedside to mitigate
the rigour of an inlaid floor looking like a galantine of veal, once
the pride of the palazzo, and meagrely furnished with the barest
objects of necessity, and these of monstrous and incongruous ugliness;
and he learned in the redolent restaurant downstairs, the way to eat
spaghetti like a contented beast and the relish of sour wine and the
overrated importance of the cleanliness of cutlery. In his dignified
acceptance of surroundings that to him were squalid, he manifested his
essential breeding. The correct courtesy of his demeanour gained for
the _illustrissimo signore inglese_ the wholehearted respect of the
Signore and Signora Tonelli. And the famous scourge nailed
(symbolically) over his hard little bed procured him a terrible
reputation for piety in the _parrocchia_. After a while, indeed, as
soon as he had settled to his new mode of living, the inveterate habit
of punctilio caused him, almost unconsciously, to fix by the clock his
day's routine. Called at eight o'clock, a kind of eight conjectured by
the good-humoured, tousled sloven of a chamber-maid, he dressed with
scrupulous care. At nine he descended for his morning coffee to the
chill deserted restaurant--for all the revolution in his existence he
could not commit the immorality of breakfasting in his bedroom. At
half-past he regained his room, where, till eleven, he wrote by the
window overlooking the urchin-resonant _campiello_. Then with gloves
and cane, to outward appearance the immaculate, the impeccable Sir
Hildebrand Oates of Eresby Manor, he walked through the narrow,
twisting streets and over bridges and across _campi_ and _campiello_ to
the Piazza San Marco. As soon as he neared the east-end of the great
square, a seller of corn and peas approached him, handed him a paper
cornet, from which Sir Hildebrand, with awful gravity, fed the pigeons.
And the pigeons looked for him, too; and they perched on his arms and
his shoulders and even on the crown of his Homburg hat, the brim of
which he had, by way of solemn rite, filled with grain, until the
gaunt, grey, unsmiling man was hidden in fluttering iridescence. And
tourists and idlers used to come every day and look at him, as at one
of the sights of Venice. The supply finished, Sir Hildebrand went to
the Café Florian on the south of the Piazza and ordering a _sirop_
which he seldom drank, read the _Corriere de la Sera_, until the midday
gun sent the pigeons whirring to their favourite cornices. Then Sir
Hildebrand retraced his steps to the Albergo Tonelli, lunched, read
till three, wrote till five, and again went out to take the air.
Dinner, half an hour's courtly gossip in the cramped and smelly apology
for a lounge, with landlord or a commercial traveller disinclined for
theatre or music-hall, or the absorbing amusement of Venice, walking in
the Piazza or along the Riva Schiavoni, and then to read or write till
bedtime.
No Englishman of any social position can stand daily in the Piazza San
Marco without now and then coming across acquaintances, least of all a
man of such importance in his day as Sir Hildebrand Oates. He accepted
the greetings of chance-met friends with courteous resignation.
"We're at the Hôtel de l'Europe. Where are you staying, Sir
Hildebrand?"
"I live in Venice, I have made it my home. You see the birds accept me
as one of themselves."
"You'll come and dine with us, won't you?"
"I should love to," Sir Hildebrand would reply; "but for the next month
or so I am overwhelmed with work. I'm so sorry. If you have any time
to spare, and would like to get off the beaten track, let me recommend
you to wander through the Giudecca on foot. I hope Lady Elizabeth is
well. I'm so glad. Will you give her my kindest regards? Good-bye."
And Sir Hildebrand would make his irreproachable bow and take his
leave. No one learned where he had made his home in Venice. In fact,
no one but Messrs. Thomas Cook and Son knew his address. He banked
with them and they forwarded his letters to the Albergo Tonelli.
It has been said that Sir Hildebrand occupied much of his time in
writing, and he himself declared that he was overwhelmed with work. He
was indeed engaged in an absorbing task of literary composition, and
his reference library consisted in thirty or forty leather-covered
volumes each fitted with a clasp and lock, of which the key hung at the
end of his watch-chain; and every page of every volume was filled with
his own small, precise handwriting. He made slow progress, for the
work demanded concentrated thought and close reasoning. The rumour of
his occupation having spread through the parrocchia, he acquired, in
addition to that of a pietist, the reputation of an _erudito_. He
became the pride of the _campiello_. When he crossed the little
square, the inhabitants pointed him out to less fortunate out-dwellers.
There was the great English noble who had made vows of poverty, and
gave himself the Discipline and wrote wonderful works of Theology. And
men touched their hats and women saluted shyly, and Sir Hildebrand
punctiliously, and with a queer pathetic gratitude, responded. Even
the children gave him a "Buon giorno, Signore," and smiled up into his
face, unconscious of the pious scholar he was supposed to be, and of
the almighty potentate that he had been. Once, yielding to an obscure
though powerful instinct, he purchased in the Merceria a packet of
chocolates, and on entering his _campiello_ presented them, with
stupendous gravity concealing extreme embarrassment, to a little gang
of urchins. Encouraged by a dazzling success, he made it a rule to
distribute sweetmeats every Saturday morning to the children of the
_campiello_. After a while he learned their names and idiosyncrasies,
and held solemn though kindly speech with them, manifesting an interest
in their games and questioning them sympathetically as to their
scholastic attainments. Sometimes gathering from their talk a notion
of the desperate poverty of parents, he put a lire or two into grubby
little fists, in spite of a lifelong conviction of the immorality of
indiscriminate almsgiving; and dark, haggard mothers blessed him, and
stood in his way to catch his smile. All of which was pleasant, though
exceedingly puzzling to Sir Hildebrand Oates.