never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so
unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations
of every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate,
that every traveller finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to
see, and can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for
the first time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are
acquainted with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces,
the Piazza di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series
of arcades that form the two long sides of the parallelogram which
has the gorgeous front of St. Mark’s Church occupying the entirety of
one of the shorter sides. Well, about half-way up the length of the
piazza six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark’s
Church are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed
rooms, corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are
very small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part
of the throng which finds itself at Florian’s, quite as a matter of
course, every fine summer’s night. But nobody thinks of entering these
smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the
hours of the day.
Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats under the arcade,
either immediately in front of the cabinets or around the pillars
which support the arches, and thus have an opportunity of observing
the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of life that flows by them
under the arcade. But the vast majority of the crowd place themselves
on chairs arranged around little tables set out on the flags of the
piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables are placed in long rows
extending far out into the piazza, and far on either side beyond the
extent of the six arches which are occupied by the caffè itself. A
London or New York policeman would have his very soul revolted, and
conclude that there must be something very rotten indeed in the state
of a city in which the public way could be thus encumbered and no cry
of ‘move on’ ever heard. Assuredly, it is public ground which Florian,
in the person of his nineteenth-century representative, thus occupies
with his tables and chairs. Probably, if a Venetian were asked by what
right he does so, the question would seem to him much as if one asked
by what right the tide covers the shallows of the lagoon. It always has
been so. It is in the natural order of things. And how could Venice
live without Florian’s?...
I am tempted to endeavour to give the reader some picture of the scene
on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other
evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space,
and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force--to describe the
wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken
by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay
clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow
tone of the great clock of St. Mark, with importunate warning that
another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream
of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed
portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all
circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few
traits of the popular life of Venice, which the magnificent Piazza
of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most
characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The
strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other
parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy,
which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other
Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.
But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of Venice,
it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre of the
piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which opens out
of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon opposite
the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the corner of
the Ducal Palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which above our
head is spanned by the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ with its ‘palace and a prison
on each hand,’ as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the ‘Riva degli
Schiavoni’--the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived, and arrive
still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in Venice,
paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic form of
Venetian life from early morning till late into the night.
There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva,
for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good
one; and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and
not too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for
the Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know
what coffee is, and will not take chicory or other such detestable
substitutes in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen
centimes--just over one penny--and study as he drinks it the moving and
ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbour, perhaps,
will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old ‘pantaloon,’
whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation
of Venice. There are the long, slender, and rather delicately cut
features, terminating in a long, narrow, and somewhat protruding chin;
the high cheek-bones, the lank and sunken cheeks, the high nose, the
dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy,
and evidently _very_ poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat
beside him, with the air of an ex-member of ‘The Ten’; his ancient
hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high
shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of
a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his
poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking--which can do much, but,
alas! not all things--can make them. His expenditure of a penny will
entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a
glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline colour by
the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops
from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which
is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to
come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of
his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as
he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must
be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline
mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys the
cool evening breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of _dolce far
niente_, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford
him....
Presently a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station
themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffè. The elder
woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in
her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly
dressed, and as shining as oil can make it. She has large gilt earrings
in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-coloured shawl in
good condition. Whatever might be beneath and below this, is in dark
shadow--_et sic melius situm_. She is not starved, however, for, as
she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not
ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of those pale delicate, oval
faces so common in Venice; she also has a good shawl--an amber-coloured
one--which so sets off the olive-coloured complexion of her face as to
make her a perfect picture. This couple do not in any degree assume
an attitude of appealing _ad misericordiam_. They pose themselves _en
artistes_. The girl sets about arranging her music in a businesslike
way, and then they play the well-known air of ‘La Stella Confidente’
the little violinist really playing remarkably well. Then the elder
woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions. No
slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the
refusal of those who give nothing. The saucer is presented to each in
turn. I supposed that the application to Si’or Pantaleone was an empty
form. But no. That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to
patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime--the fifth part of a
cent--into the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross
of the Golden Fleece.
Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines
curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing part-songs, not
badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying
of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance
of a body of soldiers returning to some neighbouring barracks. Then
there are fruit sellers and fish sellers and hot-chestnut dealers, and,
most vociferous of all, the cryers of ‘Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!’
There, making its way among the numerous small vessels from Dalmatia,
Greece, etc., moored to the quay of the Schiavoni, comes a boat from
the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which arrived this morning from
Alexandria, with four or five Orientals on board. They come on shore,
and proceed to saunter along the Riva towards the Grand Piazza, while
their dark faces and brightly coloured garments add an element to
the motley scene which is perfectly in keeping with old Venetian
reminiscences.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE
Amid these fragments of heroic days,
When thought met deed with mutual passions’ leap,
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap
What short-lived rumour of ourselves we raise;
They had far other estimate of praise
Who stamped the signet of their soul so deep
In art and action, and whose memories keep
Their height like stars above our misty ways;
In this grave presence to record my name,
Something within me hangs the head and shrinks;
Dull were the soul without some joy in Fame:
Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks,
Like him who in the desert’s awful frame,
Notches his cockney initials on the sphinx.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
A TOUR ROUND VENICE WITH GOLDONI
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The genius of Goldoni, like his character and his life, was in perfect
harmony with his allotted work.... Given the style, no individual could
be imagined more supremely its master: he had the perfect facility of
conception, the perfect ease of execution, the absolute facility of
finish and detail, the immense fecundity of the providentially sent
artist. He was never at a loss for a subject, and never at a standstill
for its treatment; a moment at a window, a glance round a drawing-room,
a word caught in the street, was sufficient material for a comedy.
The sight of the dirty grey-beard Armenian goody-seller, snarling out
‘Baggigi, Abaggigi’ over his basket of lollipops near the clock-tower
of St. Mark’s, produced the delightful little play, ‘I pettegolezzi
delle donne....’
Goldoni was best pleased with the humblest, forming in this a strange
contrast with the French comic writers; the shopkeepers, ridiculous
gullible M. Jourdains and Sganarelles in the eyes of Molière, never
ceased to be respectable for Goldoni.... This democratic, domestic
Goldoni naturally refused to show us the effeminate, corrupt Venice
of nobles, and spies, and courtezans, which shameful adventurers
like Casanova, heaping up all the ordure of their town and times,
have made some of us believe to have been the sole, the real Venice
of the eighteenth century. But Goldoni has another Venice to show, a
Venice undiscovered by gallant idlers like the Président de Brosses,
or pedantic guide-book makers like La Lande. Let us follow Goldoni
across the Square of St. Mark’s, heedless of the crowd in mask and
cloak, of the nobles in their silk robes, of the loungers at the
gilded coffee-houses, of the gamblers and painted women lolling out of
windows; let us pass beneath the belfry where the bronze twins strike
the hours in vain for the idlers and vagabonds who turn day into night
and night into day; and let us thread the network of narrow little
streets of the _Merceria_. There, in those tall dark houses, with
their dingy look-out on to narrow canals floating wisps of straw, or
on to dreary little treeless, grassless squares, in those houses is
the real wealth, the real honour, the real good of Venice; there, and
not in the palaces of the Grand Canal, still lingers something of the
spirit and the habits of the early merchant princes. Merchant princes
no longer, alas! only shopkeepers and brokers, but thrifty, frugal,
patriarchal as in olden days, the descendants of the great Pantalone
de’ Bisognosi, once clothed in scarlet-lined robe and pointed cap, now
dressed austerely in black, without hair-powder, gold lace, swords,
or scarlet cloaks; active, honest, gruff, and puritanical.... Let us
follow Goldoni yet further from St. Mark’s to the distant wharves,
to the remoter canals and _campieli_, to the further islands of the
archipelago of Venice, and he will show us all that remains of the
force of the city, of the savage simplicity and austerity of the
boatmen, and fishers, and working classes. There are the gondoliers,
forming a link between the artisans and the seamen--a strange,
Janus-like class which Goldoni loved to depict: servants of the upper
classes, devoted, faithful, and pliant; steering along with equal
indifference, political conspiracy, household corruption ... beneath
the black, tasselled roof of their boats; witnesses of all the most
secret life of the nobles and merchants, and, while on their prow, mute
and cynical; but, once on shore, independent, arrogant, despising the
indoor servants, contemptuous towards their masters, whose secrets they
possess, frugal and austere at home, jealous and revengeful among each
other. Goldoni has shown us the gondoliers seated on the slimy steps
by their moored boats, exchanging witticism on witticism, criticizing
the performances at the theatre, discussing city life with ineffable
arrogance: he has shown them coming along the Grand Canal, chanting the
flight of Erminia through the ancient forest; he has shown them, again,
quarrelling in the narrow twisting canals, each refusing to make way
for another, yelling and cursing, forcing their passengers to alight
in terror, and then pursuing each other with their oars and their
short, sharp _tatare_ daggers. The gondoliers, besides being good comic
stuff for Goldoni, were an influential part of his audience, and had
to be propitiated by being shown on the stage in all their originality
and waywardness. The gondoliers lived, when off their boats, among a
savage population of ferrymen, bargees, and fishers; poor, violent,
and austere, whose daughters had at once the freedom of speech and
strength of action of amazons, and the purity--nay prudery--of nuns:
large-limbed, sunburnt, barefoot creatures, with the golden tints of
hair and cheek of Titian and Palma, with the dark, savage eyes of an
animal, with the arms of an athlete and the language of a trooper,
of whom Goldoni has painted a magnificent portrait, idealized but
intensely real, in his Bettina....
Let us call Goldoni’s favourite gondolier, the rough and caustic Menego
Cainello, and bid him steer us through the last canals, among the
remotest Venetian islands, leaving the towers of Venice behind us; bid
him row us across the shallow open lagoon, with its vast, snake-like
rows of sea-corroded posts, its stunted marine reeds, and its tangled
sea-grass waving lazily on the rippled water; row on till we get to
that tiny other Venice, still perhaps like the greater Venice in the
days of her earliest Doges, to the little fishing-town of Chiozza.
There, in the port, Goldoni will show us the heavy fishing-boat, grimy
and oozy, just returned from a week’s cruise in the Adriatic, with her
yellow sail, emblazoned with the winged lion, leisurely flapping, and
her briny nets over her sides; the master of the boat, Paron Fortunato,
is shouting in unintelligible dialect, Venetian further insularized
into Chiozzot, and Chiozzot rarefied on sea into some strange nautical
lisping jargon; the rest of the fishermen, Tita-Nane, and Menegheto,
and Tonì, are collecting the fish they have brought into baskets,
reserving the finest for His Excellency the Governor of Chiozza. And,
when the fish are disposed of, follow we the fishermen to the main
street of the little town, where, facing the beach, their wives,
daughters, and sisters sit making lace on their cushions, chattering
like magpies; some eating, others holding disdainfully aloof from
the baked pumpkin with which the gallant peasant Toffolo Marmottina
regales them. Suddenly a tremendous gabble begins, gabble turning into
shrieking and roaring, and upsetting of chairs and cushions; and a
torrent of abuse streams forth in dialect, and all is lost in scuffling
confusion; the men come up, seize sticks, daggers, and stones, and rush
to the rescue of their female relatives, till the police hasten up and
separate the combatants. Then let us watch the recriminations of the
lovers, hear them accusing each other of perfidy, calling each other
dog, assassin, beggar, ginger-bread, jewel, pig, all in turns; clinging
and nudging, weeping and roaring, till at length the good-natured
little Venetian magistrate of Chiozza, contemptuously called ‘Mr.
Wig-of-Tow’ (_Sior paruca de stopa_), makes up all the quarrels, bids
the innkeeper send wine and pumpkins and delicious fried things, and,
after regaling the pacified Chiozzoti and Chiozzote, calls for fiddles
and invites them all to dance some _furlane_. Is it reality? Has Menego
rowed us over the lagoon? Have we seen the ship come in and the fish
put in baskets? Have we seen the women at their lace cushions? Have
we heard that storm of cries, and shrieks, and clatter, and scuffling
feet? Have we really witnessed this incident of fishing life on the
Adriatic? No; we have only laid down a little musty volume at the place
marked ‘Le Baruffe Chiozzotte.’
VERNON LEE.
VENETIAN BELLES
Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore,--
And at the moment when I fix my story,
That sea-born city was in all her glory.
They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch’d brows, and sweet expressions still;
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick’d ill;
And like so many Venuses of Titian’s
(The best’s at Florence--see it, if ye will),
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepp’d from out a picture by Giorgione,
Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini’s palace go,
The picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to _your_ zest,
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so:
’Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,
And self; but _such_ a woman! love in life!...
I said that, like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they _are_,
Particularly seen from a balcony
(For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar),
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,
They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar;
And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty,
And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!
LORD BYRON.
A VENETIAN CARNIVAL
Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging
up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along
the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden haze,
and all the westward-facing palace windows flashed and shone with an
illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were to be lighted after
sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. It was Shrove
Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been shining on the city
and on the lagoons all day long. It was one of those Shrove Tuesdays
which recall the familiar proverb--
‘Sunshine at Carnival,
Fireside at Easter.’
But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence when
to-day is fair and balmy? A hum of joyous, foolish voices echoed from
those palace façades, and floated out seaward, and rang along the
narrow calle, and drifted on the winding waterways, and resounded under
the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the City by the Sea men,
women, and children were making merry, and had given themselves up to
a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning mirth, ready to explode
into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An old man tapped upon the
shoulder by a swinging paper lantern--a boy whose hat had been knocked
off--a woman calling to her husband or her lover across the gay
flotilla--anything was food for mirth on this holiday evening, while
the great gold orb sank in the silvery lagoon, and all the sky over
yonder Chioggia was dyed with the crimson afterglow, and the Chioggian
fishing-boats were moving westward in all the splendour of their
painted sails.
M. E. BRADDON.
THREE VENETIAN FEASTS