there on moonlight nights, in their beautiful broken Venetian patois,
verses from Tasso. It is long since they have done this as a habit;
but they will do it sometimes if you pay them sufficiently well. One
often hears them singing on the lagoon to the accompaniment of an
Englishman's golden coins. You can almost imagine on such occasions
that you are living away back in the Middle Ages--except that now the
Venetians drink a good deal, as they certainly never did then, and
sing in thick, guttural voices, somewhat hoarse, but on the whole
beautiful, as the musical Venetian dialect must always be. The songs
that they sing are all about lovely maidens and romantic excursions on
the water. The singing is very fine from a distance, the melody of a
human voice floating out on the calm and silence of the night. The
gondoliers are proud of their talent, and value it highly.
Nearly every gondolier belongs to a bank. He is a capable financier.
In company with twenty-nine other men, he deposits 10 lire, and
pledges to pay a weekly sum of 1 lira throughout the year. On his
failing to pay up once a week, 10 per cent. on each lira is charged.
Gondoliers are supposed to borrow a certain amount, for which 10 per
cent. is charged, every year. The accounts of the bank are settled in
September, and then a new venture is started.
The gondolier is an inflammable person. He is much taken up with
pretty women getting in and out of gondolas. Love-making with him
begins on the bridges in the narrow canals, or at the windows. One
fine day, generally very early in life, when propelling his boat
slowly down a side canal, he sees at an iron grated window the face of
a girl. Instantly becoming enamoured, boldly he takes up his position
every day underneath her casement, waiting for a look, sighing for a
smile. If by chance the maiden should appear and return his salute, he
takes himself off with great joy; and at the end of the day, when his
work is done, he and a friend in whom he has confided dress themselves
in their best, and call upon the father of the girl, formally to ask
her hand. He states his family, his profession, the amount of his
income, and the extent of his love. Two or three months are allowed to
elapse. Then there will be more gazing at the window and meeting in
the calle. If by the end of that time their affection has
declared itself sincere, the lover and his parents are invited to
supper at the girl's home. Every stage in a Venetian's love affair is
marked by feasts, generally suppers. On this occasion the young man
again asks the father's consent. This is accorded him, and the pair
are blessed. The ceremony is called the "dimanda." A little later
comes the betrothal ("segno"), when the lover presents the girl with
her wedding ring, and, if he can afford it, other rings as well. There
is a sumptuous supper, and thenceforward they are called respectively
"novizza" and "spoza." During the time of the betrothal the poor
gondolier is kept very busy buying and giving presents to the lady of
his choice. He must give the proper things at the proper times, and
never by any chance make the mistake of purchasing a comb or scissors,
for one is an emblem of the witch, and the other signify a cutting
tongue. He must remember to present to her at Christmas a confitura of
fruit and raw mustard-seed, and a box of mandolato; on All Souls' Day
a box of fare; at the Feast of St. Mark a boccolo or button-hole of
rosebuds; at Easter a fugazza or cake; at Martinmas roast chestnuts.
The thing for the girl to give in return is a silk handkerchief: it
is not considered etiquette to present her lover with a gift of great
value.
[Illustration: MARIETTA]
In Venice everything is ruled by custom. The most important acts in a
Venetian's life are bound and fettered by it, and he would never dream
of breaking through. He will sacrifice anything for custom, and never
count the cost. For example, if one saw a gondolier at a festa, or at
a baptism, or at a wedding, you might take him for either a rich man
or a spendthrift. As a matter of fact, he is neither the one nor the
other. Only, he is bound by custom to do certain things and spend a
certain amount of money at a festa, and he does it regally. He may
have to pinch and scrape at home afterwards; but that is another
matter.
The gondoliers are a very conservative people. They are the slaves of
custom. Custom is to them a religion. They much prefer their ancient
customs to any new order of comfort or convenience. Their lives are
simple, bright, and easy; their wants are very few and moderate.
House-rent is cheap: they can procure a fallen palace in moderately
good repair for half a franc a day. They are frugal and easily
pleased; their constitutions are sound; their climate is fine, and the
air they breathe is pure. Consequently, the gondolier can live
happily, with his wife, on a franc and a half a day. His meals, to be
sure, are always the same--coffee and bread in the morning, polenta
and fish at mid-day, a soup of shell-fish or artichokes at night. When
the family begins to be large, the gondolier's life is not ideal;
still, in spite of the hunger and poverty and crowding in Venetian
houses, a great deal of joy manages to find room. If a baby lives, he
grows up into a fine healthy man, robust and happy; but usually he
dies, especially if he is one of many. Venetian women seem to have
naturally not the slightest idea how to bring up a baby. It is only
after constant habit and practice, and the loss of lives, that a
mother seems to grasp the first principles of a baby's upbringing.
Before that she will feed it, at two months old, on black coffee, sour
apples, and wine; allow it to swallow all kinds of lotions and
concoctions prepared by the doting old crones of the quarter. As the
child grows older she lets it wear during winter the clothes which it
wore in summer. Then she wonders why out of eight children only four
are living. It is a beautiful sight to see a great gondolier nursing
his little child. He may be harsh and bullying to his fellows; but he
treats Baby with the utmost tenderness and gentleness. The child is a
good deal safer in his arms than in those of the mother.
The chief amusements of the gondolier are to go to the opera or to see
marionettes, to make up a party and spend the day in the country, to
compete in a rowing match, and to give a little supper at a wine-shop.
It is on such days as these that the true freshness and warmth of his
nature appear, and one sees the gondolier as he is--mirthful, pungent,
gay.
There are two things about which the gondolier is particular. One is
his bread, and the other is his wine. One seldom finds good wine in
Venice. It is only when the red wine arrives fresh from Padua and
Verona that it is good. Then everyone rushes to the wine-shops; for
nothing spreads quicker than the reputation of a good wine, and
everyone clamours for it. Very soon it becomes watery and sour. The
white wine the gondoliers do not like at all. Of bread there are all
kinds. One is expected to have a preference for a certain make, and
there are many different makes. There are the Chioggian bread, the
"pane Commune," the "pane col agid," and many others.
[Illustration: BAMBINO]
Men of the gondolier class do not think a great deal of religion. That
is reserved for women. Church-going is no longer a habit with the men.
Still, whenever matters of ancient custom step in they invariably do
their duty--as in events of domestic life, such as confirmations,--and
the little chapel to the Madonna at each traghetto has always its
flowers and its few candles placed there by the reverent hands of the
gondoliers.
Times were good for the gondoliers when Venice was rich and
prosperous. Nowadays their gains are meagre, and they number hundreds
where they numbered thousands in the old days. Noblemen kept six or
seven gondolas, with attendant gondoliers, and, besides paying them an
ample salary, on festa days allowed them to exact any payment they
chose.
If you are staying in Venice for any length of time, it is better to
hire a gondola and gondolier by the month than by the day. One only
pays five francs a day, and when off duty the youth makes an excellent
servant in the house. He comes and knocks at your water-gate at a
certain time every day; also he will wait at table, act as footman,
take care of the children; in fact, he will do everything one wishes;
and he pays the proprietor of the gondola, out of his own pocket, one
franc a day. It is the ambition of every gondolier to serve an
"Inglese."
They say that Venice is always silent; but I can vouch that it is not
so. At night, if your lodgings are anywhere near a landing-place, you
will find that it is very noisy indeed. The gondoliers sleep at their
posts on the pedestals of the two columns as they sit waiting for a
job, and they love their repose in the sunshine; but at night they
become extremely lively, and keep up a perpetual disturbance of
laughter, shouts, and songs until two o'clock in the morning. They sit
on the marble steps, or on the ends of their gondolas; or they eat
shell-fish and drink wine under the light of the lamps in the niches
of the Madonnas at street corners; vagabonds from their beds in the
street arise and join them.
One sees on the lagoons gondolas of all kinds, carrying passengers of
all kinds, and it is sometimes interesting to peep inside as they
pass. There are official gondolas, with the Italian banner floating at
their sterns, carrying some cold, stiff functionary in full-dress
uniform, his breast covered with decorations. Another carries English
people, phlegmatic tourists, to Chioggia; another, with lowered felce,
hides lovers who are going to breakfast somewhere on the lagoon; yet
another, a larger gondola, takes a family to the sea baths at the
Lido. There is a red craft waiting at the foot of some steps; a red
bier is brought out of a church by a red cortege,--it is a corpse, to
be buried in a cemetery on an island on the way to Murano. (When
anyone dies in Venice a notice is posted up on his house, and on the
houses round about, stating the age, place of birth, and the illness
of which he died; also saying that he has received the Sacrament and
died a good Christian; prayers are asked for his soul.) There are
gondolas in which are musical instruments of all kinds--violins of
Cremona, cornets, mandolines, tambourines,--a complete orchestra.
Quite a large flotilla of gondolas follow in its wake. One has
fastened to the side a bluish monster splashing and making the water
foam. That is a dolphin, a marine curiosity which is displayed by the
proud possessors under all the balconies as they pass, collecting
money in a hat. In order that it may be seen to advantage, the animal
is kept half in the water and half out.
If one is at all interested in gondolas--that is to say, in the making
of them,--nothing could be more fascinating than to spend a few hours
in a squero (building yard). Any gondolier will be pleased to take
you there, for he is inordinately proud of his craft. The squeri are
picturesque; but somehow one always associates them with pitch. The
place reeks with it. Always in one corner there stands the pitch-pot,
sending a stream of thick black smoke up into the air. Small boys
prance around, looking like young imps among the smoke and blaze, and
wave smearing brushes in their hands. Long lines of boats, like some
strange fish out of water, are drawn up, waiting to be cleaned or
mended. The bottom of a gondola has to be dried thoroughly and quickly
before receiving its coat of melted tallow. This is done by lighting a
blazing fire of reeds under the boat, the flames leaping high into the
air. Volumes of smoke arise, roll up over the house-tops, and are
swept away by the breeze. Boys dance a kind of war-dance round the
flames. The art of gondola-building is exacting. Three qualities are
absolutely necessary to the formation of a perfect craft. It must draw
but little water; it must turn easily; and it must be rowable by one
oarsman only. To secure this, the hull is built of light thin boards,
and only a portion of the flat bottom rests upon the water. Thus the
boat swings as on a pivot. Then, the gondola is not equally divided by
a line drawn from stern to bow: in order that the rower may be
balanced, there is more bottom on one side than on the other. The
various woods of which a gondola is made must be chosen with great
care. They must be well seasoned and without knots, for the planks are
liable to warp and the knots to start. Once every twenty days in
summer the gondolier forfeits his four lire and takes his gondola to
the squero to be cleaned and scraped. Weeds rapidly collect at the
bottom when the water is warm, and the deadly toredo bores holes
through the planking. The gondola is hauled up high and dry, and a
fire burnt underneath it. A whole day's earnings in the summer season
is a great loss to the gondolier; but if he keeps his gondola in good
condition it will last him for a considerable time, perhaps for five
years, and, besides, when the bottom of the boat is kept clear of
weeds and well greased the speed is greater. When a gondolier sells
his craft it becomes a ferry-boat for five years, the woodwork slowly
bowing and bending until it becomes a gobbo half buried in the water.
Later it is sold for five lire, broken up, and burnt in the glass
manufactories of Murano.
[Illustration: A SQUERO OR BOAT-BUILDING YARD IN VENICE]
The natural history of these objects and their gradual development
through centuries would form a fascinating chapter. To gain some idea
of what the gondola once was, it is as well to study the pictures of
Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio in the Academy. There you will see
Venetian nobles in their gondolas with their light Eastern rugs. The
ferro was not then hatchet-shaped, with six teeth, as it is now, but a
round club of metal. The rower was tall and graceful, standing on the
poop in his parti-coloured hose and slashed doublet. One can see by
these pictures what a great change the gondola has undergone. Those
who have not been to Venice, and wish to know something of a gondola
in its later stage, would do well to study the pictures of Guardi and
Canaletto. Therein the gondola has not its old brilliant colouring;
but what it has lost in colour it has gained in grace.
Some of the gondoliers are most skilful in managing without either
keel or rudder; like the Vikings of old, steering with an oar behind.
A good man is devotedly attached to his gondola. He knows its
character and peculiarities. To the initiated every gondola differs in
a hundred details from its fellow, although they may all have
apparently been built on the same model. A gondolier's skill in rowing
depends largely upon his knowledge of his craft. One can generally
gauge the efficiency of a man by the brightness of his ferro. The
slightest spot of dew or rain upon it produces a spot of rust which
takes weeks of constant rubbing to efface. There is a good deal of
brass-work which has to be kept clean; the cushions must be brushed,
and the paint scrubbed; and altogether a gondolier spends quite an
hour and a half a day on the toilet of his craft, polishing, oiling,
and scrubbing. His own person does not occupy nearly so much of his
attention.
[Illustration: UNDER THE MIDDAY SUN]
The gondola is so closely connected with the life of the sea city that
most of one's impressions of Venice are wound round and about it. It
is not always safe out on the lagoon in a gondola. Often in summer or
in autumn a gale will suddenly arise. Great masses of cloud will
gather in the east, and gain upon you; they are curved into an arc by
the pressure of the wind from behind, although upon the water there is
scarcely enough breeze to fill a sail. These great billowy battalions,
dark and angry, advance slowly, steadily; the water changes from a
pale transparent to a pale sea-green as thick as jade. A feeling of
oppression fills the air, a brooding stillness, for five minutes,
while the storm-clouds gradually overtake you. Then comes a low
humming noise like that of a threshing machine: it is the wind on the
nearest island. You down sail and make for the first port in view. The
hurricane leaps out from the city, striking the water and tearing it
into foam, flinging the spray high in air. There is hurry and
confusion in the sky; the thundery clouds are rent and riven; and
through the gaps of dull-coloured vapour you see the steely blue of
the storm-clouds boiling as in a cauldron; and far above all is blue
sky and sunlight; a rainbow spans the lagoon. Then the whole tornado
sweeps away south-westward. The sun sets, leaving the sky dark, but
with flaming streamers; then night falls over all. There is lightning
and storm away in the distance. The heavens assume their customary
deep blue, and the breeze is fresh and cool. These summer storms are
sometimes almost tropical in their fury; but they are quickly over.
Their path is narrow--usually confined to one line on the lagoon;--but
where they strike they leave devastation in their track.
The Venetians love festas, and in the days of the city's wealth and
pride the State lavished great sums and much care upon its
entertainments. Certainly the natural capacities of the city gave
splendid scope for great spectacles. It was a magnificent background,
and seemed to invite display. The pictures of Bellini, Carpaccio,
Veronese, and all the rest of the old Venetian masters, prove how
deeply the people must have loved the pageants and State processions.
With the collapse of the State these customs fell into disuse. For
example, there was that wonderful old sport--how picturesque it must
have been!--the battle on the bridge between the Nicolotti and the
Castellani, rival factions of black and red. There also was the
regatta (I am not sure if it continues)--a great spectacle that could
not be surpassed by any in Europe. A race was rowed in light gondolas,
smaller than those of ordinary use. The Grand Canal was crowded with
boats of all sizes--sandolas, barche, barchette, tipos, cavaline,
vigieri, bissoni,--there is no end to the variety of Venetian craft.
The façades of the palaces fluttered with flags, tapestries, carpets,
and curtains,--anything that would add to the general mass of colour.
The balconies were filled with people; every window had its bevy of
heads. Down below on the water the scene was brilliant. The course was
kept by large twelve-oared boats, all decorated symbolically. One
represented the Arctic regions, the rowers being dressed as polar
bears, with blocks of ice for seats; another the tropical regions,
with palms and gorgeous flowers. In the evening there was a serenade,
starting from a point above the Rialto. The singers and the orchestra
were placed on a barge decorated and lighted by many coloured lamps,
and the music of Donizetti's "A te, o cara" filled the air. The object
of every gondolier on an occasion of this kind was to get his padrone
as near to the music as possible, whether he wanted it or not. The
singers' barge, therefore, was surrounded by a solid mass of gondolas,
which floated slowly down the canal together, getting denser as the
canal narrowed to pass under the Rialto bridge. It was a fantastic
scene--with the masses of Bengal lights, the rising moon, the gondolas
swaying gently to the rhythm of the song and the sea, and the
statuesque gondoliers, creatures of the sea, standing upright on the
stern of their vessels, or, oars in hand and hair blown by the breeze,
silhouetted against a background of deep-blue sky.
[Illustration: THE RIALTO]
The gondolier in Venice is an important person to the stranger. Half
one's comfort depends on his worthiness or unworthiness. He is like
the girl of childhood's fame "who, if she was good, was very very
good, but, if she was bad, was horrid." If you are the employer
of an ideal gondolier you will find him thorough, ready-handed, and
versatile. In passing rapidly through Venice one does not properly
appreciate his worth. You must own him for some months before you
discover that he will attach himself to you and identify himself with
your interests in an almost feudal manner. He will save you an
infinity of trouble, and repay your confidence with honesty. The
gondolier usually prefers to have a foreigner for a master. The
foreigner pays well, never grumbling at the full tariff of five lire a
day: also, as the foreigner does not know the language or the place,
the gondolier becomes of some importance in the eyes of his
neighbours, who bid for his patronage. With a Venetian master he would
be paid from three to five lire a day; the work would be harder, and
the hours later.
When the squerariola (gondola builders) have finished their work, the
vessel will probably have cost three hundred lire. Even then the craft
is not by any means complete. There are the steel ornaments and many
other details to be bought and bargained for,--things not procurable
at the squero. For the steel prow (ferro), which must have the edges
of its teeth in one straight line, and in these days of hurried
workmanship is not always to be found, one must seek in all the
smithies in Venice. A good gondolier, however, will often possess a
ferro, an heirloom, made of hand-wrought iron, not cast in mould,
heavy and brittle, as are the new ferri, but light and pliant. A ferro
of the good and ancient make, if properly cared for and not allowed to
rust, will outlive many a gondola. For the sea-horses, the rude
carvings, the pictured Madonnas, the rugs and the covering for the
felce,--all, in fact, that helps to make the gondola the picturesque
craft it is,--one must go to the various shops in Venice.
Modern progress and modern ideas are rapidly sweeping away the ancient
and hereditary profession of the gondolier. One feels that his life
and that of the traghetto are drawing to a close--that soon they will
be things of the past. What would the Grand Canal be like without its
swiftly gliding gondola, black-hulled, black-roofed,--its most
characteristic feature? What a terrible thing it will be when that
exquisite art is forgotten,--when the Venetian can no longer judge the
turn of a corner or balance himself on the poop,--when for the
picturesque cries "Stali!" and "Premi!" will be substituted the clank
and thud of the steamers' screws! When a company first began to run
steamers from Venice to the railway station and public gardens, the
gondoliers struck. For three whole days there were no gondolas running
in Venice; the canals were full of tightly packed vessels, while their
owners hung together in groups at the wine-shops, talking. A strange
and scratch fleet of nondescript boats plied between Venice and the
islands, and the expression of the gondoliers, as they leaned over the
bridges and watched the amateur watermen struggling with their oars,
was quite unique. On the second day a notice was posted up in every
traghetto begging the men to return to their work, and not to bring
dishonour on a profession which had always been such a source of pride
to Venice. This had no effect. The gondoliers merely enlisted the
services of a barrister, getting him to take a copy of their demand to
the Company--that the offending steamers should be removed. That was
impossible. The steamers were cheap and useful, and the gondoliers
could not be allowed to dictate to the State. However, they were told
that if they returned peaceably to their work something might be done
for them. They persisted in their strike, until suddenly--no one ever
knew why, or whence it came--a single gondola started running from
one of the ferries. That broke the ice. The gondoliers rushed to their
crafts and untied them. The strike was forgotten. The men's first
thought was to find good custom. I have always felt that there was
something touching in this hopeless struggle of the gondoliers against
the modernity that is fast settling on and demoralising Venice.
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