republic, and its tributary kingdoms, still waved in the Place of St.
Marc; the Bucentaur was not rotting in the Arsenal, and the warlike
galleys of the State cruised about the lagoon; a busy and picturesque
population swarmed in all directions; and the Venetian noble, the
haughtiest of men, might still be seen proudly moving from the council
of state, or stepping into a gondola amid a bowing crowd. All was
stirring life, yet all was silent; the fantastic architecture, the
glowing sky, the flitting gondolas, and the brilliant crowd gliding
about with noiseless step, this city without sound, it seemed a dream!
* * * * *
The ambassador had engaged for Lady Annabel a palace on the Grand
Canal, belonging to Count Manfrini. It was a structure of great size
and magnificence, and rose out of the water with a flight of marble
steps. Within was a vast gallery, lined with statues and busts on
tall pedestals; suites of spacious apartments, with marble floors and
hung with satin; ceilings painted by Tintoretto and full of Turkish
trophies; furniture alike sumptuous and massy; the gilding, although of
two hundred years’ duration, as bright and burnished as if it had but
yesterday been touched with the brush; sequin gold, as the Venetians
tell you to this day with pride. But even their old furniture will soon
not be left to them, as palaces are now daily broken up like old ships,
and their colossal spoils consigned to Hanway Yard and Bond Street,
whence, re-burnished and vamped up, their Titanic proportions in time
appropriately figure in the boudoirs of Mayfair and the miniature
saloons of St. James’s. Many a fine lady now sits in a Doge’s chair,
and many a dandy listens to his doom from a couch that has already
witnessed the less inexorable decrees of the Council of Ten.
LORD BEACONSFIELD.
FEEDING THE PIGEONS--VENICE
She is a chrysolite! her manners, too,
Are pure Venetian, haughty, yet endearing.
Didst ever see, my Claudio, such a bearing?
Just watch her as the pigeons round her woo
For more caresses,--voice like some dove’s coo,
And with that face so saint-like yet so daring--
By Bacchus! as you say here in your swearing,
She is as perfect as a drop of dew!
Yet she is of the South--the counterpart
Of vengeance with its hidden venomed dart....
Hush! for the gargoyles hear!... Though white as curds
That sweet soft hand--the hand that feeds the birds--
If you should hint about it certain words,
Would plunge its poisoned poniard through your heart.
LLOYD MIFFLIN.
A FIRST IMPRESSION IN VENICE
‘Is this Venice?--the rich bride of the sea?--the mistress of the
world?’
I saw the magnificent square of St. Mark. ‘Here is life!’ people
said.... The square of St. Mark’s is the heart of Venice, where life
does exist. Shops of books, pearls, and pictures, adorn the long
colonnades, where, however, it was not yet animated enough. A crowd
of Greeks and Turks, in bright dresses, and with long pipes in their
mouths, sat quietly outside the cafés. The sun shone upon the golden
cupola of St. Mark’s Church, and upon the glorious bronze horses over
the portal. From the red masts of the ships from Cyprus, Candia, and
Morea, depended the motionless flags. A flock of pigeons filled the
square by thousands, and went daintily upon the broad pavement.
I visited the Ponte Rialto, the pulse-vein which spoke of life; and
I soon comprehended the great picture of Venice--the picture of
mourning--the impression of my own soul. I seemed yet to be at sea,
only removed from a smaller to a greater ship, a floating ark.
The evening came; and when the moonbeams cast their uncertain light and
diffused broader shadows, I felt myself more at home; in the hour of
the spirit-world. I could first become familiar with the dead bride.
I stood at the open window: the black gondola glided quickly over the
dark, moonlit waters. I thought upon the seaman’s song of kissing and
of love; felt a bitterness towards Annunciata.... I entered a gondola,
and allowed myself to be taken through the streets in the silent
evening. The rowers sung their alternating song, but it was not from
the _Gerusalemme Liberata_; the Venetians had forgotten even the old
melodies of the heart, for their Doges were dead, and foreign hands had
bound the wings of the lion, which was harnessed to their triumphal car.
‘I will seize upon life--will enjoy it to the last drop!’ said I, as
the gondola lay still. I went to my own room, and lay down to sleep.
Such was my first day in Venice.
HANS ANDERSEN.
A VENETIAN DREAM
It was now quite night, and we were at the water-side. There lay here,
a black boat, with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful
colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled, by two
men, towards a great light, lying in the distance on the sea.
Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It ruffled the water,
and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds flying before the stars.
I could not but think how strange it was, to be floating away at that
hour: leaving the land behind, and going on, towards this light upon
the sea. It soon began to burn brighter; and from being one light
became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water, as
the boat approached towards them by a dreamy kind of track, marked out
upon the sea by posts and piles.
We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when I heard
it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at hand. Looking
out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and
massive--like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a
raft--which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers said it
was a burial-place.
Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out there, in
the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede
in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew
by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street--a phantom
street; the houses rising on both sides, from the water, and the black
boat gliding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some
of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with their
reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent.
So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course
through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water.
Some of the corners, where our way branched off, were so acute and
narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn
them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it
skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black
boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I
thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark shadow.
Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to
painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors, that opened straight
upon the water. Some of these were empty; in some, the rowers lay
asleep; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway
from the interior of a palace: gaily dressed, and attended by
torchbearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them, for a bridge, so low
and close upon the boat seemed ready to fall down and crush us; one of
the many bridges that perplexed the dream: blotted them out, instantly.
On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange place--with
water all about us where never water was elsewhere--clusters of
houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it--and,
everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. Presently, we shot across
a broad and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious
paved quay, where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated
showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and
great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoar-frost or
gossamer--and where, for the first time, I saw people walking--arrived
at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where,
having passed through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down
to rest; listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the
window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep.
The glory of the day that broke upon me in this dream; its freshness,
motion, buoyancy; its sparkles of the sun in water; its clear blue
sky and rustling air; no waking words can tell. But, from my window,
I looked down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, cordage, flags;
on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes of these vessels;
on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds;
on great ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence; on islands,
crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets: and where golden crosses
glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches, springing from the
sea! Going down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before
the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such
surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and
faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness.
It was a great piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the rest, in
the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a palace, more majestic and
magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the earth, in
the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries: so
light, they might have been the work of fairy hands: so strong that
centuries had battered them in vain: wound round and round this palace,
and enfolded it with a cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant
fancies, of the East. At no great distance from its porch, a lofty
tower, standing by itself and rearing its proud head, alone, into
the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the
stream were two ill-omened pillars of red granite; one having on its
top a figure with a sword and shield; the other, a winged lion. Not
far from these again, a second tower: richest of the rich in all its
decorations: even here, where all was rich: sustained aloft, a great
orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue: the Twelve Signs painted on
it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course around them: while above,
two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An
oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a
light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene; and,
here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the pavement
of the unsubstantial ground.
I thought I entered the cathedral, and went in and out among its many
arches: traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy structure, of
immense proportions; golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim
with the smoke of incense; costly in treasure of precious stones and
metals, glittering through iron bars; holy with the bodies of deceased
saints; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved
woods and coloured marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened
distances; shining with silver lamps and winking lights; unreal,
fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the
old palace; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old
rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures,
from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on
canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I wandered through
its halls of state and triumph--bare and empty now!--and musing on its
pride and might, extinct: for that was past; all past: heard a voice
say, ‘Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some consoling reasons for
its downfall, may be traced here, yet!’
I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms,
communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by a
lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed, the
Bridge of Sighs.
But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the lions’
mouths--now toothless--where, in the distempered horror of my sleep,
I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked Council,
had been dropped through, many a time, when the night was dark. So,
when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners were taken for
examination, and the door by which they passed out, when they were
condemned--a door that never closed upon a man with life and hope
before him--my heart appeared to die within me.
It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended from
the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, awful,
horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each had a loophole in
its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch was
placed--I dreamed--to light the prisoner within, for half an hour. The
captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had scratched and cut
inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour with
a rusty nail’s point, had outlived their agony and them, through many
generations.
One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four-and-twenty
hours; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by, another,
and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came--a monk
brown-robed, and hooded--ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but
in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope’s extinguisher, and Murder’s
herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, at the same dread hour,
the shriven prisoner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty
door--low browed and stealthy--through which the lumpish sack was
carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death
to cast a net.
Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it: licking the
rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime within:
stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the very
stones and bars had mouths to stop: furnishing a smooth road for the
removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the State--a road so
ready that it went along with them, and ran before them, like a cruel
officer--flowed the same water that filled this dream of mine, and made
it seem one, even at the time.
Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, the
Giant’s--I had some imaginary recollection of an old man abdicating,
coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell,
proclaiming his successor--I glided off, in one of the dark boats,
until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble lions. To make
my dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and
sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in an
unknown language; so that their purport was a mystery to all men....
In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of
time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were
days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the rays of
lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought:
plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide,
as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets.
Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I
wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths
of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed apartments where the
furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was mouldering away. Pictures
were there, replete with such enduring beauty and expression; with such
passion, truth and power: that they seemed so many young and fresh
realities among a host of spectres. I thought these, often intermingled
with the old days of the city: with its beauties, tyrants, captains,
patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests: nay, with its very stones, and
bricks, and public places; all of which lived again, about me, on the
walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped
and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and
went on in my dream.
Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and
chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the
water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled
heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the
wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright,
making unusual shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves.
Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing
and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine,
on flagstones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there
were idlers too; loitering and looking over. Below stone balconies,
erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest
houses. Past plots of garden, theatre, shrines, prodigious piles of
architecture--Gothic--Saracenic--fanciful with all the fancies of all
times and countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and black,
and white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong.
Twining among a tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at
last into a Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I
saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with
shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to know for
Desdemona’s leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower.
And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare’s spirit was abroad upon
the water somewhere: stealing through the city.
At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the Virgin, in
a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof, I fancied that
the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light,
and that its whole arcade was thronged with people; while crowds were
diverting themselves in splendid coffee-houses opening from it--which
were never shut, I thought, but open all night long. When the bronze
giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life
and animation of the city were all centred here; and as I rowed away,
abreast the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there, with
sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full length
upon the stones.
But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons: sucking at
their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town: crept
the water always. Noiseless and watchful: coiled round and round it, in
its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the time, I thought,
when people should look down into its depths for any stone of the old
city that had claimed to be its mistress.
Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place at
Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange
dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its
name be VENICE.
CHARLES DICKENS.
A VENETIAN RESTAURANT
Uncomforted in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often
rise from it unfed!
Far other be the doom of my own friends--of pious bards and genial
companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do
I desire a seat at Florian’s marble tables, or a perch in Quadri’s
window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a
bird’s-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain
humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending
little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a
cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies
a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo.
Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the
Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the _trattoria_ the view
is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship’s cabin.
Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion
and the _caffè_. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time.
Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved
court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood
in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all
sorts of birds--a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches,
canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a
_barchetta_ with his master, snuffs around. ‘Where are Porthos and
Aramis, my friend?’ Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his
stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe’s nose it
is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed
muzzle. But beneath this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not
even pretend to close on Athos’ jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a
decoration. A little further we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no
discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with
which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to
find Carlo--the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin,
whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and
the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen,
where the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped
_chef_ are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of
inspecting the larder--fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables,
several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild
ducks, chickens, woodcock, etc., according to the season. We select
our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds
beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of
it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house;
and the talk arising from the several little tables turns upon points
of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can
be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the _cuisine_, or
about the reasonable charges of this _trattoria_.... There is no noise,
no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And
when dinner is done, we can sit a while over our cigarette and coffee
until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a _giro_ in
the gondola.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
VENETIAN CAFFÈS
What is Florian’s? It is the principal, largest, and most fashionable
caffè on the Piazza di San Marco. The caffè in itself is in many
respects a speciality of Venetian life, and has been so since the
days of Goldoni. The readers of his comedies, so abundantly rich in
local colouring, will not have failed to observe that the caffè plays
a larger part in the life of Venice than is the case in any other
city. Probably no Venetian passes a single day without visiting once
at least, if not oftener, his accustomed caffè. Men of business write
their letters and arrange their meetings there. Men of pleasure know
that they shall find their peers there. Mere loafers take their seats
there, and gaze at the stream of life, as it flows past them, for
hours together. And, most marked speciality of all, Venice is the
only city in Italy where the native female aristocracy frequents the
caffè. Indeed, I know no place in all the Peninsula where so large an
amount of Italian beauty may be seen as among the fashionable crowd at
Florian’s on a brilliant midsummer moonlight night.