In leaving Florence I seemed to be leaving home; on reaching Venice I
seemed only on a visit, and so I felt as long as I was there. So striking
is this city, that all who reach it determine to remain for a length of
time; but it palls upon them, and a fortnight is generally the limit of
their stay.
But it is always great in memory.
Venice! One sits in peaceful repose, no sound of voices, or wheels, or
hoofs, in the Piazza San Marco, over coffee, which the place turns to
nectar. One swallows with insatiate mental appetite the Duomo; and what
a breakfast it is for hungry eyes! One walks round the palace of those
Doges, more majestic than man ever was or can ever be; a prison on the
right side for the commission of cruel sins, a cathedral round the corner
for their pardon, and that even up to plenary indulgence.
What a curious thing it is not to be at home, but how most curious of all
it is to be at Venice! Would you know what it is to be there, imagine
such a town as Brighton, with all the streets filled with water and
changed to canals, with little bridges everywhere to enable you to cross
from one side of the way to the other! Then, to turn the sea into a Grand
Canal, imagine a row of palaces outside the piers, from Hove to Kemptown,
and you are at Venice!
I walked all over Venice, where walking was possible: down _calle_, or
lanes, with opposite houses so near to each other that a good harlequin
might turn a somersault across from one window to another!
Edmund Kean would have done this, though the windows were closed.
One gets from _calle_ to _calle_ over the daintiest little bridges,
some of white chiselled marble; from these you look up and down a canal
between towering houses, and here and there see a family keep its
gondola, as some of us at home keep our carriage. There the gondolas are
tethered to the house steps, as our horses are to the manger.
When there is no more walking possible, one takes to a gondola at the
Piazzetta, which sweeps by palaces of loveliest architecture on both
sides of the Grand Canal. A sort of Thames, down stream, reaches the
Rialto bridge, not built so early as Shakespeare’s time; still, there was
a bank of that name, Riva Alto, where the merchants of Venice met, close
by; but it is a scanty spot, and little suited to business transactions.
At the Rialto one gets out of the gondola and crosses the bridge. It has
paltry shops on either side, that might have been stocked from the vast
surplus of Manchester or Birmingham. One returns to one’s gondola, ready
to drop a mean opinion, and resume one’s sense of beauty. “What palace is
this, O songless Signor Gondolier?” “The General Post Office, signor,”
answers the gondolier. We glide to and fro, we pause before the Fondaco
dei Turchi, and look at it until we feel that its beauty can never be
erased from our mental vision.
We pause before the Palazzo Pesaro, before La Ça Doro, Il Palazzo
Guistiniani, Il Palazzo Foscari. We think we should like to live in them
all, and we think what a great lord it would take to live in any one of
them.
A tremendous organization is that of Venice still. The fine arsenal that
stands boldly out, as one looks down the canal, might say _aut pax, aut
bellum_! The Gallery, a convent turned into a palace of art. It supplied
me with an answer once, when I was shown a property in Titians by a
friend in London. He confidently inquired of me if I did not think they
were genuine works. My answer was, “Go to Venice, look at the Titians
there, and on your return ask me the question again.”
Then the churches; they are of course noble, but I cannot love anything
that is angular, which to me—but I am only one!—is the fault of
ecclesiastical architecture in Italy. I could say much of angularity:
all that ranks beneath the human form is angular. As a type, study the
features of a cat! Its ears are angular, its eyes are angularly set, its
nose, its mouth all form angles. I love the dome,—my own St. Paul’s,
St. Peter’s at Rome, S. Maria del Fiore at Florence, the Basilica di
San Marco, and the S. Maria della Salute at Venice—all noble churches;
and yet the wonderful St. Mark’s is provokingly like the Pavilion at
Brighton, only it is not Chinese but Byzantine.
The Doge’s palace, empty but full of reminiscences! Art there takes the
place of old Reality: it laughs at the security of living queens and
kings. St. Mark’s Square is like another and more charming Palais Royal;
its arched windows soothe and fascinate the eyes.
There is a long, broad street in Venice—the Via Garibaldi. It is sixty of
my feet wide; and there are two good squares, the Piazza Santo Maurizio
and the Piazza Santo Stefano.
I had a very odd sensation on reaching these squares: I felt just as if I
was on dry land!
When one thinks of a city of solid houses situated on a network of water,
it may naturally recall the moats that surround fortified castles. But an
enemy could cross a moat: could he riddle his way through the countless
canals of Venezia? How safe must the inhabitants of the interior feel in
time of war! If an army starting from the square of St. Marco reached the
_calle_, it would have to march in single file between windows that might
be used as loopholes.
Venice was very cold in the month of March. I complained. “Never mind,”
was the reply; “we shall have the mosquitoes in April, and they will
bring six months of warm weather!”
This is Italy: cold winters and no provision against cold! The natives
get hot-through in the six spring and summer months, and it takes the
remaining six to cool them.
If I ascended in a captive balloon which broke loose, making me a
prisoner, to undergo the sentence of transportation with hard-breathing
in the cold, scant air; and if offered a ticket-of-leave and a parachute,
with a choice of where I would descend, it would be in St. Mark’s Square,
the sun shining, the band playing, the cup of hot coffee on the table
just poured out. It is the only perfect square upon earth—no dust, no
noisy cabs to run over your toes as you stretch out your legs on the
smoothly paved ground.
Seated in the Piazza San Marco over coffee and cigar, one reflects how
Venice has more than one Shakespearian interest: how the Rialto, now a
bridge, was in our dramatist’s day a bank of the Grand Canal, the _riva
alto_. But a yet greater interest attaches to the circumstance which led
him wrong, yet right, in his not knowing that there were two Othello
families, one of which was distinguished as Il Moro, the Mulberry,
because they held estates in the Morea.
And this was Shakespeare’s Moor!
London is dusty, every other town is dusty; Venice is not. London
registers a good one death per diem under cab wheels. In Venice a cab
wheel is never seen; but whether the bicycle has reached it now I do not
know.
I went one evening to the Malibran theatre, and on Sunday to the Fenice
opera house. I had indulged my eyes to the full, so I gave my ears a
turn, and they were gratified in hearing William Tell. I did not fail to
visit the island of Lido in a steam ’bus to see the true Adriatic. The
clean sands, whence no land is visible, is all that is to be seen there,
though, as I did, you walk across from shore to shore.
I scarcely completed the traditional fortnight at Venice, but it was not
my last visit there. What had I seen? It was like something colossal,
though only human; it was like having turned over a huge book of
wonderful pictures, leaf after leaf: the first an enchanted square, its
mosque, its more than kingly palace, its obtrusive campanile; lastly,
a wonderful line of arches, a mile long between Venice and the coast,
along which glided a railway train.
When I had dwelt on every page of the volume and reached the end, I had
no desire to begin again, but took the treasured-up remembrance of it
across the Brenner.
Sleeping at Verona, I stayed there for a day that I might see the great
fortress, which forms part of the quadrilateral, and also the Roman
coliseum there, which is in a very perfect state. The town must have
suffered much from time, even since Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen” left it
to make the acquaintance of Sylvia. As I stood on the bridge and looked
about me, the houses seemed to be crumbling before my very eyes. This
done, I proceeded to Stassfurt, taking Munich on my way.
I remained for several months at Stassfurt, the summers in Germany
always being for the most part fine. I made excursions with some of my
family into the Harz, went up and round the mountains, spent a night on
the Brocken, witnessed the sun rise from beneath my feet, and made a
stay afterwards at Thale, ascending the picturesque heights from that
locality. We took our route to the Harz by the weird Affenthaler valley,
visiting the admirable old lordly castle of Falconstein on our way, and
not for the last time. The sombre hills, the narrow pass, the pine forest
on either side, the river, once seen can never but be recalled to mind
again.
The Brocken is covered with huge masses of stone, evidently the work of
a volcano. Other masses have been hurled downwards, rudely paving the
pine-covered descent. I suggested that the scattered heaps on the summit
should be piled up as a rude and lasting monument to Goethe.
I had yet to make my visit to Rome; it was from Stassfurt again. The
weather in October was getting cold over the plains of Saxony, and my
son-in-law, Dr. Dupré, reminded me that it would be still colder on the
Alps. He went with me on part of my journey; we took train from Leipsic
to Munich, arriving at dark, and renewed our tickets for Botzen. There we
had supper in company with a smart English-Greek, a native of Corfu, and
his friend, together with a French lady of fine proportions and laughing
face, besides a young Bavarian officer of the rapid-mannered kind.
There were other rooms in the hotel besides the one in which we supped,
and to which the three gentlemen described followed the lady wherever she
went, her laughter taking the form of fits. And such is the politeness
of what we call foreigners, they accompanied her even to her chamber
door. She returned to the supper-room after all this. Dr. Dupré was there
alone, and she told him, half in complaint, the other half in fun, what
had been going on.
With this company of three I found myself in the same carriage the next
day, the Greek and his friend leaving us the following day, at noon, at
a house in that wonderful Alpine gorge between Botzen and Verona.
Dr. Dupré was on his return home, _viâ_ Strasburg, where he went to
purchase a horse from the king’s stables. I proceeded with the young
officer and the lady.
The journey to Bologna which we made together was a comedy in a hundred
acts, as long as a great Chinese drama. The gentleman perched himself on
the arm of the seat, and took out a well-thumbed book of conversations
in the usual four languages, to practise himself in the Italian, and
from this he read aloud to the lady, who sat opposite to him, in the
tone of one earnestly addressing another, now on business as if she were
hotel-keeper, waiter, chambermaid, jeweller, dressmaker, or barber. She
heartily enjoyed his frankness, and laughed over every question and
answer.
That night we slept at Bologna, the lady proceeding to Naples, the
officer taking down her address and promising to pay her a visit there
before long.
When I left the German side of the Brenner it was in the cold season; the
leaves were colouring, drooping, and falling. When I reached the plain of
Lombardy the summer had not stirred, all was green and warm.
I went from Bologna to Florence (the beloved) with my Bavarian. There
were two English ladies and their brother, a surgeon-major of artillery,
in the same carriage with us, and we entered into a rapid acquaintance,
I and the gentleman through professional, and the young officer and the
ladies through moral, sympathy. He amused them as effectually as he had
done the madame. We proceeded to the same hotel at Florence, the Porta
Rossa. My German took the ladies about, with his open Bädeker, and showed
them all the sights. They were single ladies, and, therefore, very much
charmed. One day, walking with them on a country stroll, it evidently
occurred to him that it was his duty to tell them who he was, and his way
of doing this afforded them much amusement. He suddenly stopped before a
cluster of violets, and bending his head to address them, said, “Sweet
flowers, I dare say you would be pleased to know my name, who and what I
am. My name is ⸺, and I am a captain in the Bavarian army!”
I lingered at Florence for a month, looking at my favourite models of
art, the chief of which now was the Perseus, by Cellini, and what I loved
to linger over, never tiring, the Six Vestals, of Greek sculpture in the
Loggia dei Lanzi.
But to dwell too long on such exquisite works of man’s genius almost
infatuates; whilst gazing on a single object one seems to frame from
memory an old and new testament of the inspired artists, and to call some
of them evangelists, and some apostles.
Look at Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper at Milan, in the refectory of
Santa Maria delle Grazie: it is amongst the finest pictures in the
world. And was it not inspired?
Look at the Twilight and the Dawn, the Night and Morning, of Michael
Angelo: would it not illustrate the book of the creation?
Look at the Paradiso of Fra Angelico for a new art testament, and for an
old one go back to the Parthenon, to the sculptures of ancient Greece.
During my short stay I visited all my most valued friends, and on the
21st of November I took train to Rome.