Nomboli, at the corner of the Ponte and the Fondamenta S. Tomà, in the
fine old house which contains the medallion portrait of the poet, and an
inscription stating that here Carlo Goldoni first saw the light in 1707.
It is still known as the Palazzo Centani, and it still possesses a
beautiful Gothic staircase, upon the railing of which a little marble
lion still placidly sits. But, as Mr. Howells points out,
notwithstanding the assertions of the guides and the guide-books to the
contrary, the dramatist could hardly have written many of his immortal
comedies here, unless he was unusually precocious even for a poet, for
he was a small child when his family moved to Chioggia.
Signor Tassini says that Goldoni was once a resident in the Campo
Rusolo, called also Campo Canova. The modern statue to Goldoni, 1883,
with its harmonious base, stands in the Campo S. Bartolommeo, near the
Rialto Bridge. And there is a tradition that Goldoni was at one time in
some way associated with the present Teatro Minerva in the Calle del
Teatro S. Moisè, off the modernized Via 22 Marzo, and now the home of
the intellectual Marionettes.
In an elaborate and very carefully prepared volume, entitled _J. J.
Rousseau à Venise, 1743-1744_, written by M. Victor Ceresole, and
published in Geneva and in Paris in 1885, the writer proves very
conclusively that Rousseau did not remain so long in Venice as Rousseau
declared he did in the _Confessions_; and he points out, upon
contemporaneous documentary evidence, that Rousseau occupied the tall
thin house in the Canareggio Quarter, which is to-day on the Fondamenta
delle Penitente, and bears the number 968. It is the warehouse of a firm
of wood merchants, who have removed the grand staircase and have
utilized a greater part of the aristocratic old mansion, which was once
the home of a powerful Venetian family, and later of the Spanish
Ambassadors, as a storehouse for their merchandise, imported from the
mountains of Cadore, the land of Titian, and retailed by the innkeepers
[Illustration: GOLDONI’S STATUE]
of the present at seventy cents an armful. Rousseau lived long enough in
Venice to have added to his own innate power of invention some of the
Venetian love of exaggeration; and if, in his _Confessions_, he
increased the length of his stay here by at least one-third, it is not
easy to say how much of what he said he did here is fiction or fact.
Upon the Ramo dei Fuseri side of the Hotel Victoria and upon the little
bridge of the same name is a tablet bearing the following inscription:
“_Goethe wohnte hier 28 Sep.-14 Oct. MDCCLXXXVI_.” Notwithstanding the
bad reputation for veracity which the Venetian tablets generally have
achieved for themselves, and despite the extraordinarily free and
phonetic translation of a distinguished American artist from Hartford,
Connecticut, to the effect that Goethe “weren’t here,” it seems from his
own confessions that Goethe _was_ here, on this identical spot, and at
that particular period of his existence, for he wrote: “I am comfortably
housed in ‘The Queen of England’ [so named in honor of the consort of
George III.], not far from St. Mark’s Square, and this is the greatest
advantage of my quarters. My windows look out on a small canal between
high houses; directly under me is an arched bridge, and opposite a
densely populated alley. So live I, and so shall I for some time remain,
until my packet is ready for Germany, and until I have had a surfeit of
the pictures of the city. The loneliness I have sighed for with such
passionate longing I now enjoy. I know perhaps only one man in Venice,
and I am not likely to meet him in some time.”
How much Goethe did for Venice, and for the Hotel of the English Queen,
Goethe himself probably never knew. But ever since Goethe expressed, in
print, his romantic love for the place, German brides have been
coming here on their wedding-trips, and have been trying to see
Venice as Goethe saw it, and have been quoting Goethe to their
husbands-of-a-day-or-two, and have been pretending an enthusiasm for
Venice which they do not always feel, simply because, somehow, this is
considered, on Goethe’s account, the proper thing for German brides to
do.
The biographers of Samuel Rogers have printed only fragmentary portions
of the _Diary and Letters_ written during his visit to Italy in 1814,
and very few of his personal experiences here have been preserved. We
learn that Venice greatly delighted him, and that he was particularly
fond of loitering about the Square of St. Mark. No doubt he was wont to
break his fast at the Restaurant Quadri, and very likely he was
accustomed to break the fast of the doves who loitered there too.
Byron spent the winter of 1816-’17 in Venice. On the 17th of November,
1816, he wrote to Moore: “I have fallen in love, which, next to falling
into the canal (which would be of no use, as I can swim), is the best,
or the worst, thing I could do. I have got some extremely good
apartments in the house of a Merchant of Venice, who is a good deal
occupied with business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year.” He
spoke more than once of these lodgings, but he gave no hint as to where
they were, and he asked Murray to address him _Poste Restante_. Moore,
however, says that for many months he continued to occupy the same rooms
“in an extremely narrow street, called the Spezzeria, at the house of a
linen-draper.”
The Spezzeria is not a street, but a district of the town, near the
Rialto Quarter. It was devoted, in Byron’s day, to the dealers in
spices. His Merchant of Venice, therefore, should have been a vender of
drugs, sugars, coffees, spices, wax-candles and the like, in wholesale.
But, alas for the romance of it all! tradition, in Venice, says that he
was a plain, commonplace baker who lived, in good enough style, not in
the Spezzeria, but in the Frezzeria, the Street of the Makers of Arrows.
In December Byron wrote to Murray: “I have begun, and am proceeding in,
a study of the Armenian language, which I acquire, as well as I can, at
the Armenian Convent here, where I go every day to take lessons of a
learnèd friar, and have gained some singular and not useless
information
[Illustration: BYRON’S STUDY IN THE ARMENIAN MONASTERY]
with regard to the literature and customs of that Oriental people. They
have an establishment here--a church and convent of ninety monks, very
learned and accomplished men, some of them. They have also a press, and
make great efforts for the enlightening of their nation. I find the
language (which is twin, the literal and the vulgar) difficult, but not
invincible (at least I hope not). I shall go on. I found it necessary to
twist my mind ’round some severe study; and this, as being the hardest I
could devise here, will be a file for the serpent.”
He twisted his mind around the Armenian tongue for upwards of half a
year, a long time for Byron; and his memory is still held dear among the
Armenian brothers, although, of course, none of those are left now who
remember him personally; and there are only a few relics of him to be
found here. A poor portrait, not contemporaneous; his desk; his
inkstand; his pen; and some of his manuscript Armenian exercises are
reverently preserved. An aged monk who came to Venice after Byron’s day
showed me, one sunny afternoon, his own apartment, which he said had
once been the English poet’s. Although large and comfortable, and
scrupulously clean, it is scantily and plainly furnished, and is not
very inviting in itself. It has but one window, which is almost directly
over the main entrance of the establishment, with an outlook on to the
little canal and the open waters beyond. The beautiful old monastery,
with its more beautiful old garden, is peaceful and restful; far from
the madding crowd, and surrounded by an air of intellect and learning
which might tempt one to try to twist one’s mind around something sweet
and nourishing for one’s own sake, if not for Byron’s.
On the 14th June, 1817, Byron wrote to Murray again, this time from “the
banks of the Brenta, a few miles from Venice, where I have colonized for
six months to come.” He was again in Venice in 1818 and 1819, and he
wrote, “I transport my horse to the Lido bordering the Adriatic (where
the fort is), so that I get a gallop of some miles daily along the strip
of beach which reaches to Malamocco.” At this period he was occupying
the centre of the three Mocenigo Palaces, on the Grand Canal.
Moore met Byron in Venice in 1819, and he describes the five or six days
they spent together here. He found Byron with whiskers, and fuller both
in face and person than when he had seen him last, and leading anything
but a reputable life. In Venice portions of _Manfred_, _Childe Harold_,
and _Don Juan_ were written.
Bakers and poets, in Venice, seem to have a mutual attraction, for there
are men still living here who remember Gautier when he was a lodger over
the baker’s shop in the Campo S. Moisè, on the left-hand side, and
opposite the corner of the church, as one goes towards the Square of St.
Mark. His landlord, like Byron’s, was a Merchant of Venice in bread and
cakes, in a retail way; and the establishment is still to be seen on the
same spot, its window filled with the staff of life of all sizes and in
every shape, some of the latter often fantastic.
The gondolas of Venice have frequently been compared to hearses, but
Shelley likened them to “moths, of which a coffin might have been the
chrysalis.” Clara Shelley, a daughter of the poet, died “at an inn” in
Venice in 1818, and “she sleeps on bleak Lido, near Venetian seas.”
In _Julian and Maddalo_, written in 1818, Shelley tells us how he--
“ ... rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of sand which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes,
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight.”
The Lido, of course, is here referred to. Later, in the same poem, he
says:
“Servants announced the gondola, and we
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
Sailed to the island where the mad-house stands.”
Elsewhere he speaks of “ocean’s nurseling, Venice”; but he never states
where he lodged in Venice during any of his brief visits here.
Scott arrived in Venice on the 19th of May, 1832, and he remained here
until the 23d. His biographer says that he showed no curiosity about
anything but the Bridge of Sighs and the adjoining dungeons, down into
which latter he would scramble, though the exertion was exceedingly
painful to him. It is not recorded where he lodged here, and he went
slowly and sadly home to die.
George Sand and Alfred de Musset spent a number of months, in 1833-34,
at the Hotel Danieli, and there De Musset was very ill of a brain-fever,
caused, according to the story of old residents, by Mme. Dudevant’s
desertion of him, although other, and perhaps better, authorities
declare that she never left his bedside until he was pronounced out of
danger. All statements agree, however, that she was not with him when
his brother came for him, in the spring of 1834, and carried him back to
Paris.
James Fenimore Cooper, on his arrival here in 1838, “spent a day or two
at the Hotel Leone Bianco, on the northwest side of the Square”; but
later he “took apartments near the Palazzo, where he set up his own
gondola.” He did what we all do on our first visit to Venice; but his
conclusions are so unlike those of most of us that they are worth
recording. “Although Venice was attractive at first,” he says, “in the
absence of acquaintances it became monotonous and wearying. A town in
which the sound of wheels and hoofs is never known, in which the
stillness of the narrow, ravine-like canals is seldom broken, unless by
the fall of an oar or the cry of a gondolier, fatigues one by its
unceasing calm. I do not remember to have been so much struck with any
place on entering it. I do not recollect ever to have been so soon tired
of a residence in a capital.”
The very absence of the noise of hoof and wheel, the very silence of
which he complains, are, to most tired-minded travellers, the greatest
of the charms of the capital city of Venice. But happily we each have
our own points of view.
Dickens came first to Venice in 1844, when he wrote to Forster: “Here I
sit in the sober solitude of a famous inn, with the great bell of St.
Mark ringing twelve at my elbow; with three arched windows in my room
(two stones high) looking down upon the Grand Canal, and away, beyond,
to where the sun went down to-night in a blaze.” He did not tell the
name of the famous inn; but it sounds like Hotel Danieli. Elsewhere he
said to the same correspondent: “My Dear Fellow--Nothing in the world
that you have ever heard of Venice is equal to the magnificent and
stupendous reality; the wildest visions of _The Arabian Nights_ are
nothing to the Piazza of St. Mark, and the first impression of the
inside of the Church. The gorgeous and wonderful reality of Venice is
beyond the fancy of the wildest dreamer. Opium couldn’t build such a
place, and enchantment couldn’t shadow it forth in vision.” In 1853 he
wrote to Forster: “We live in the same house I lived in nine years ago,
and have the same sitting-room--close to the Bridge of Sighs and the
Palace of the Doges. The room is at the corner of the house, and there
is a narrow street of water running round the side.” Again, no doubt,
Hotel Danieli.
In 1845 Mrs. Jameson wrote to Catharine Sedgwick: “Did you visit Venice?
I forget. In the world there is nothing like it. It seems to me that we
can find a similitude for everything else, but Venice is like nothing
else--Venice the beautiful, the wonderful. I had seen it before, but it
was as new to me as if unbeheld; and every morning when I arose I was
still in the same state of wonder and enchantment.” She made several
visits to Venice, but she gave no hint as to her places of lodgement
here.
George Eliot and Lewes arrived in Venice on the night of the 4th June,
1860. “What stillness!” she wrote, “what beauty! Looking out from the
high windows of our hotel, I
[Illustration: THE “NOAH CORNER” OF THE DOGE’S PALACE]
felt it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was more beautiful than romance
had feigned.”
On the 15th May, 1864, she wrote to the Trollopes, from the Hôtel de
Ville: “We reached Venice three days ago, and have the delight of
finding everything more beautiful than it was to us four years ago.” Her
last visit to Venice was made with Mr. Cross, in the summer of 1880,
when her husband was very ill at the Hotel Europa.
Nearly opposite the Europa, on the Grand Canal, stands the Casa
Simitecolo, in the parish of S. Gregorio, where Miss Constance Fenimore
Woolson died, on the 24th January, 1894. She had, during the preceding
year, occupied apartments in the Casa Biondetti, on the same side of the
Canal, but nearer the Suspension-Bridge. As was her own desire, Miss
Woolson was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
Mr. Hare says that Châteaubriand was once a guest at the Europa; and
that Wagner, in the same house, wrote a certain Literary-Musical
Landmark, called _Tristram and Isolde_. Wagner died in 1883, in the
Palazzo Vendramin Calerghi, on the Grand Canal, a fine mansion, dating
back to the end of the Fifteenth Century. It is opposite the Museo
Civico, and is sometimes called the “_Non Nobis_ Palace,” because of the
inscription “_Non Nobis Domine, Non Nobis_,” in great letters across its
front.
In the month of May, 1869, Helen Hunt wrote: “We are most comfortably
established at the Hotel Vittoria, _not_ on the Grand Canal, thank
Heaven! When N---- at first said that she did not dare to stay on the
Grand Canal, because she feared too much sea air, I was quite dismayed.
But now I am thankful enough to have dry land, that is, a stone floor
laid on piles, on _one_ side of our house. I look down from any window
into one of the cracks called streets; the people look as if they were
being threaded into the Scriptural needle’s eye, and a hand-organ looks
like a barricade.” “Cracks called streets” is good.
On “Thanksgiving Day, 1873,” Lowell wrote to Thomas Hughes: “To-day the
weather is triumphant, and my views of life consequently more cheerful.
It is so warm that we are going out presently in the gondola, to take up
a few dropped stitches. Venice, after all, is incomparable, and during
this visit I have penetrated into little slits of streets in every
direction on foot. The canals only give one a visiting acquaintance. The
_calli_ make you an intimate of the household.”
In October, 1881, Lowell wrote to Mr. Gilder from Hotel Danieli: “It is
raining; never mind, I am in Venice. Sirocco is doing his worst; I defy
him, I am in Venice. I am horribly done; but what can I expect? I am in
Venice.”
Lord Houghton was living in 1878 at the Pension Suisse, or Hôtel de
Rome, on the Grand Canal.
In 1878 Browning was at the Albergo dell’ Universo, the Palazzo
Brandolin-Rota, on the shady side of the Grand Canal, just below the
Accademia and the Suspension-Bridge. Here he remained for a fortnight;
and he visited the same hotel again in 1879, 1880, and 1881. In 1885 he
occupied a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Alvise, on the other side of
the Grand Canal, and about midway between the Grand Hotel and the Hôtel
Grande Bretagne; and during the same year he entered into negotiations
for the purchase of the Palazzo Montecuccoli, next door to the Albergo
dell’ Universo, which he used to frequent. He wrote: “It is situated on
the Grand Canal, and is described by Ruskin--to give no other
authority--as ‘a perfect and only rich example of Byzantine Renaissance:
its warm yellow marbles are magnificent.’ And again, ‘an exquisite
example [of Byzantine Renaissance] as applied to domestic architecture.’
So testifies _The Stones of Venice_.” He never owned the palace,
however, the foundations of the house proving insecure.
During the last year of his life he lived in a beautifully restored
palace on the Grand Canal. It is one of the finest private residences in
Europe; but as it is now the home of the poet’s son, it is not, of
course, except in his absence, open to the public view. It contains many
original portraits of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by
different
[Illustration: THE HOUSE IN WHICH BROWNING DIED]
artists and at different ages, a number of bronze and marble busts of
them by the present occupant, and notably their private libraries. Never
was seen such a collection of absolutely invaluable “presentation
copies” from all the writers of note who were the contemporaries and the
friends of the wonderfully gifted husband and wife. To at least one
visitor to Venice it is the most interesting spot in the interesting
city; and he would rather be the possessor of that private library than
of all the rest of the great treasures of Venice put together.
Off the library, and on what, for want of a better term, may be called
the drawing-room floor, is a bow-windowed recess delicately and
exquisitely decorated in white and gold. It was originally the private
chapel of that member of the Rezzonico family who became Pope Clement
XIII.; and, carefully restored, it has been dedicated by the husband and
the son to the memory of Mrs. Browning. It is plainly visible from the
larger and the smaller canal; but it was not intended for the world to
see, and what is its nature, and what its contents, I have no right yet,
and no wish here, to disclose.
On the side of the Browning Palace, above the little Canal of S.
Barnaba, and immediately below the windows of the poet’s bedroom, is a
tablet with this inscription,
“Robert Browning died in this house 12th December, 1889.
“Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it ‘Italy.’”
This Rezzonico Palace was purchased by Mrs. Robert Barrett Browning in
1888, and here at the close of the next year the poet died. He had said
to Miss Browning, not very long before, that he wished to be buried
wherever he might chance to breathe his last: if in England, by the side
of his mother; if in France, by the side of his father; if in Italy, by
the side of his wife. Further interments having been prohibited in the
English Cemetery in Florence, where lies his wife, his body was placed
temporarily in the chapel of the Mortuary Island of S. Michele here. A
few days later he was laid at rest in the Poets’ Corner at Westminster
Abbey, with “Italy” graved inside his heart.
INDEX OF PERSONS
Addison, Joseph, 42.
Aldo II., Manuzio, 22.
Aldo, Paolo, 22.
Aldo, Pio, 20-22.
Barozzi, N., quoted, 17.
Boccaccio, 16-19.
Bollani, Bishop, quoted, 11.
Bolognese, Pietro, 19.
Brown, Horatio F., 37.
Brown, Horatio F., quoted, 19, 20-21.
Brown, Rawdon, 37-38.
Brown, Rawdon, quoted, 8, 29-30.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 60-61.
Browning, Robert, 59-63.
Byron, Lord, 30, 38, 47-51.
Byron, Lord, quoted, 27.
Ceresole, Victor, quoted, 44.
Châteaubriand, 57.
Cinthio, G. B., quoted, 11.
Clement, Clara Erskine, 42.
Clement, Clara Erskine, quoted, 21.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 54-55.
Dickens, Charles, 55-56.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 26-27.
D’Israeli, Isaac, 26-27.
D’Israeli, Isaac, quoted, v., 27-28.
Dudevant, Mme., 53-54.
Duse, Elenora, 9-10.
“Eliot, George,” 56-57.
Elze, Th., quoted, 6-7.
Erasmus, 23.
Evans, Mary Anne, 56-57.
Evelyn, John, 33-34.
Furness, Horace Howard, quoted, 6-7.
Gautier, Théophile, 51.
“George Eliot,” 56-57.
“George Sand,” 53-54.
Gibbon, Edward, quoted, 24.
Goethe, 45-47.
Goethe, quoted, 1, 27.
Goldoni, Carlo, 42-44.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 7.
Gregoropoulos, 21.
Hare, Augustus J. C., 42.
Hare, Augustus J. C., quoted, 10-11, 57.
Houghton, Lord, 59.
Howells, William Dean, 40-41.
Howells, William Dean, quoted, 5, 11, 19.
Hunt, Helen, 58.
James, G. P. R., 38-39.
Jameson, Anna, 56.
Landor, Walter Savage, quoted, 38-39.
Layard, Sir Henry, 39-40.
Lewes, George Henry, 56-57.
Lowell, James Russell, 58-59.
Luther, Martin, 23.
Milton, John, 32-33.
Montaigne, 31-32.
Moore, Thomas, quoted, 48, 51.
Moro, Christoforo, 7, 8, 9-10.
Musset, Alfred de, 53-54.
Oliphant, Margaret W., 42.
Oliphant, Margaret W., quoted, 29.
Petrarch, 16-20.
Polo, Marco, 13-15.
Polo, Nicolò, 14-15.
Robertson, Alexander, 41-42.
Robertson, Alexander, quoted, 22, 24.
Rogers, Samuel, 47.
Rousseau, J. J., 44-45.
Ruskin, John, 36, 37.
Ruskin, John, quoted, 1, 34-35, 60.
“Sand, George,” 53-54.
Sanudo, Marino, 28-30.
Sarpi, Paolo, 23-26.
Schuyler, Eugene, 38.
Scott, Walter, 53.
Shakspere, 4, 6-7.
Shakspere, quoted, 4, 13.
Shelley, Percy B., 52-53.
Symonds, John Addington, 37.
Tassini, Giuseppe, quoted, 8-9, 19, 30, 43.
Tasso, 30.
Wagner, Richard, 57-58.
Walpole, Horace, quoted, 42.
Warner, Charles Dudley, 41.
Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 57.
Zeno, Apostolo, 36.
INDEX OF PLACES
Accademia, 59.
Agostino, S., Parish, 20, 21.
Alvise, Palazzo, 60.
Armenian Convent, 48-50.
Barbaro, Palazzo, 41.
Barnaba, S., Canale, 62.
Bartolommeo, S., Campo, 35, 40, 43.
Biagio, S., Parish, 25.
Biondetti, Casa, 57.
Black Eagle, Inn, Evelyn’s, 33-35.
Black Eagle, Inn, Ruskin’s, 34-36.
Brandolin-Rota, Palazzo, 59.
Brenta, The, 50.
Briati, Fondamenta, 2.
Bridge of Sighs, 53, 56.
Brown, Casa, 37.
Calcina, Campiello della, 36.
Calcina, Ponte della, 36.
Calcina, Inn, 36, 37.
Calle:
Dose, del, 18.
Nomboli, dei, 43.
Pistor, del, 21.
Stagneri, dei, 35.
Teatro, del, S. Moisè, 44.
Campo or Campiello:
Bartolommeo, S., 35, 40, 43.
Calcina, della, 36.
Canova, 43.
Carmine, del, 7, 8.
Fosca, 26.
Incurabili, 37.
Manin, 22-23.
Maurizio, S., 42.
Moisè, S., 36, 51.
Paternian, S., 22-23.
Rusolo, 43.
Stefano, S., 23, 40.
Canale:
Barnaba, S., 62.
Calcina, della, 36.
Carmine, del, 7.
Giudecca, 36.
Grand Canal, 9, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 51, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61.
Canareggio, District, 10, 13, 44.
Canova, Campo, 43.
Cappello, Palazzo, 39-40.
Carmine, Campo del, 7 8.
Carmine, Canale del, 7.
Casa:
Biondetti, 57.
Brown, 37.
Falier, 40-41.
Leonardo, S., 42.
Simitecolo, 57.
Vida della, 37-38.
Centani, Palazzo, 43.
Chioggia, 43.
Churches:
Eustachio, S., 38.
Giobbe, S., 10.
Giorgio, S., 27.
Lorenzo, S., 15-16.
Maria della Salute, S., 25, 42.
Michele, S., 25.
Moisè, S., 51.
Servite, 24-26.
Stefano, S., 23.
Cicogna, Palazzo, 2.
Contarini delle Figure, Palazzo, 30.
Contarini-Fasan, Palazzo, 9.
Council Chamber of the Doges, 6, 32.
Croce, Rio della, 11.
Danieli, Hotel, 53-54, 55-56, 59.