VENETIAN DINNERS AND DINERS.
When I first came to Venice, I accepted the fate appointed to young men
on the Continent. I took lodgings, and I began dining drearily at the
restaurants. Worse prandial fortunes may befall one, but it is hard to
conceive of the continuance of so great unhappiness elsewhere; while
the restaurant life is an established and permanent thing in Italy,
for every bachelor and for many forlorn families. It is not because the
restaurants are very dirty--if you wipe your plate and glass carefully
before using them, they need not stomach you; it is not because the
rooms are cold--if you sit near the great vase of smoldering embers in
the centre of each room you may suffocate in comparative comfort; it is
not because the prices are great--they are really very reasonable; it
is not for any very tangible fault that I object to life at the
restaurants, and yet I cannot think of its hopeless homelessness without
rebellion against the whole system it implies, as something unnatural
and insufferable.
But before we come to look closely at this aspect of Italian
civilization, it is better to look first at a very noticeable trait of
Italian character,--temperance in eating and drinking. As to the poorer
classes, one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare,
and how with a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb
_mangiare_ remains in fact for the most part inactive with them. But
it is only just to say that this virtue of abstinence seems to be not
wholly the result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes which
could well afford the opposite vice. Meat and drink do not form the
substance of conviviality with Venetians, as with the Germans and the
English, and in degree with ourselves; and I have often noticed on the
Mondays-at-the-Gardens, and other social festivals of the people,
how the crowd amused itself with any thing--music, dancing, walking,
talking--any thing but the great northern pastime of gluttony. Knowing
the life of the place, I make quite sure that Venetian gayety is on few
occasions connected with repletion; and I am ashamed to confess that I
have not always been able to repress a feeling of stupid scorn for the
empty stomachs everywhere, which do not even ask to be filled, or, at
least, do not insist upon it. The truth is, the North has a gloomy
pride in gastronomic excess, which unfits her children to appreciate the
cheerful prudence of the South.
Venetians eat but one meal a day, which is dinner. They breakfast on
a piece of bread with coffee and milk; supper is a little cup of black
coffee, or an ice, taken at a caffè. The coffee, however, is repeated
frequently throughout the day, and in the summertime fruit is eaten, but
eaten sparingly, like everything else. As to the nature of the dinner,
it of course varies somewhat according to the nature of the diner; but
in most families of the middle class a dinner at home consists of a
piece of boiled beef, a _minestra_ (a soup thickened with vegetables,
tripe, and rice), a vegetable dish of some kind, and the wine of the
country. The failings of the repast among all classes lean to the
side of simplicity, and the abstemious character of the Venetian finds
sufficient comment in his familiar invitation to dinner: “_Venga a
mangiar quattro risi con me_.” (Come eat four grains of rice with me.)
But invitations to dinner have never formed a prime element of
hospitality in Venice. Goldoni notices this fact in his memoirs, and
speaking of the city in the early half of the last century, he says
that the number and excellence of the eating-houses in the city made
invitations to dinner at private houses rare, and superfluous among the
courtesies offered to strangers.
The Venetian does not, like the Spaniard, place his house at your
disposition, and, having extended this splendid invitation, consider the
duties of hospitality fulfilled; he does not appear to think you want to
make use of his house for social purposes, preferring himself the caffè,
and finding home and comfort there, rather than under his own roof.
“What caffè do you frequent? Ah! so do I. We shall meet often there.”
This is frequently your new acquaintance’s promise of friendship. And
one may even learn to like the social footing on which people meet at
the caffè, as well as that of the parlor or drawing-room. I could not
help thinking one evening at Padua, while we sat talking with some
pleasant Paduans in one of the magnificent saloons of the Caffè
Pedrocchi, that I should like to go there for society, if I could always
find it there, much better than to private houses. There is far greater
ease and freedom, more elegance and luxury, and not the slightest weight
of obligation laid upon you for the gratification your friend’s company
has given you. One has not to be a debtor in the sum of a friend’s
outlay for house, servants, refreshments, and the like. Nowhere in
Europe is the senseless and wasteful American custom of _treating_
known; and nothing could be more especially foreign to the frugal
instincts and habits of the Italians. So, when a party of friends at a
caffè eat or drink, each one pays for what he takes, and pecuniarily,
the enjoyment of the evening is uncostly or not, according as each
prefers. Of course no one sits down in such a place without calling for
something; but I have frequently seen people respond to this demand of
custom by ordering a glass of water with anise, at the expense of two
soldi. A cup of black coffee, for five soldi, secures a chair, a table,
and as many journals as you like, for as long time as you like.
I say, a stranger may learn to like the life of the caffè,--that of the
restaurant never; though the habit of frequenting the restaurants, to
which Goldoni somewhat vaingloriously refers, seems to have grown upon
the Venetians with the lapse of time. The eating-houses are almost
without number, and are of every degree, from the shop of the
sausage-maker, who supplies gondoliers and facchini with bowls of
_sguassetto_, to the Caffè Florian. They all have names which are not
strange to European ears, but which ape sufficiently amusing to people
who come from a land where nearly every public thing is named from
some inspiration of patriotism or local pride. In Venice the principal
restaurants are called The Steamboat, The Savage, The Little Horse, The
Black Hat, and The Pictures; and I do not know that any one of them is
more uncomfortable, uncleanly, or noisy than another, or that any one of
them suffers from the fact that all are bad.
You do not get breakfast at the restaurant for the reason, before
stated, of the breakfast’s unsubstantiality. The dining commences about
three o’clock in the afternoon, and continues till nine o’clock, most
people dining at five or six. As a rule the attendance is insufficient,
and no guest is served until he has made a savage clapping on the
tables, or clinking on his glass or plate. Then a hard-pushed waiter
appears, and calls out, dramatically, “Behold me!” takes the order,
shrieks it to the cook, and returning with the dinner, cries out again,
more dramatically than ever, “Behold it ready!” and arrays it with a
great flourish on the table. I have dined in an hotel at Niagara, to the
music of a brass band; but I did not find that so utterly bewildering,
so destructive of the individual savor of the dishes, and so conducive
to absent-minded gluttony, as I at first found the constant rush and
clamor of the waiters in the Venetian restaurants. The guests are,
for the most part, patient and quiet enough, eating their minestra and
boiled beef in such peace as the surrounding uproar permits them, and
seldom making acquaintance with each other. It is a mistake, I think,
to expect much talk from any people at dinner. The ingenious English
tourists who visit the United States from time to time, find us silent
over our meat, and I have noticed the like trait among people of divers
races in Europe.
As I have said, the greater part of the diners at the restaurants are
single, and seem to have no knowledge of each other. Perhaps the gill
of the fiendish wine of the country, which they drink at their meals,
is rather calculated to chill than warm the heart. But, in any case, a
drearier set of my fellow-beings I have never seen,--no, not at evening
parties,--and I conceive that their life in lodgings, at the caffè and
the restaurant, remote from the society of women and all the higher
privileges of fellowship for which men herd together, is at once the
most gross and insipid, the most selfish and comfortless life in the
world. Our boarding-house life in America, dull, stupid, and flat as
it often is, seems to me infinitely better than the restaurant life
of young Italy. It is creditable to Latin Europe that, with all this
homelessness and domestic outlawry, its young men still preserve the
gentleness of civilization.
The families that share the exile of the eating-houses sometimes make
together a feeble buzz of conversation, but the unfriendly spirit of
the place seems soon to silence them. Undoubtedly they frequent the
restaurant for economy’s sake. Fuel is costly, and the restaurant is
cheap, and its cooking better than they could perhaps otherwise afford
to have. Indeed, so cheap is the restaurant that actual experience
proved the cost of a dinner there to be little more than the cost of
the raw material in the market. From this inexpensiveness comes also the
custom, which is common, of sending home to purchasers meals from the
eating-houses.
As one descends in the scale of the restaurants, the difference is not
so noticeable in the prices of the same dishes, as in the substitution
of cheaper varieties of food. At the best eating-houses, the Gallic
traditions bear sway more or less, but in the poorer sort the cooking
is done entirely by native artists, deriving their inspirations from
the unsophisticated tastes of exclusively native diners. It is perhaps
needless to say that they grow characteristic and picturesque as they
grow dirty and cheap, until at last the cook-shop perfects the descent
with a triumph of raciness and local coloring. The cook-shop in Venice
opens upon you at almost every turn,--everywhere, in fact, but in the
Piazza and the Merceria,--and looking in, you see its vast heaps of
frying fish, and its huge caldrons of ever-boiling broth which smell
to heaven with garlic and onions. In the seducing windows smoke golden
mountains of _polenta_ (a thicker kind of mush or hasty-pudding, made
of Indian meal, and universally eaten in North Italy), platters of crisp
minnows, bowls of rice, roast poultry, dishes of snails and liver; and
around the fascinating walls hang huge plates of bronzed earthenware
for a lavish and a hospitable show, and for the representation of those
scenes of Venetian story which are modeled upon them in bass-relief.
Here I like to take my unknown friend--my scoundrel facchino or rascal
gondolier--as he comes to buy his dinner, and bargains eloquently with
the cook, who stands with a huge ladle in his hand capable of skimming
mysterious things from vasty depths. I am spell-bound by the drama which
ensues, and in which all the chords of the human heart are touched, from
those that tremble at high tragedy, to those that are shaken by broad
farce. When the diner has bought his dinner, and issues forth with
his polenta in one hand, and his fried minnows or stewed snails in the
other, my fancy fondly follows him to his gondola-station, where he eats
it, and quarrels volubly with other gondoliers across the Grand Canal.
A simpler and less ambitious sort of cook-shop abounds in the region
of Rialto, where on market mornings I have seen it driving a prodigious
business with peasants, gondoliers, and laborers. Its more limited
resources consist chiefly of fried eels, fish, polenta, and
_sguassetto_. The latter is a true _roba veneziana_, and is a
loud-flavored broth, made of those desperate scraps of meat which
are found impracticable even by the sausage-makers. Another, but more
delicate dish, peculiar to the place, is the clotted blood of poultry,
fried in slices with onions. A great number of the families of the poor
breakfast at these shops very abundantly, for three soldi each person.
In Venice every holiday has its appropriate viand. During carnival all
the butter and cheese shop-windows are whitened with the snow of
beaten cream--_panamontata_. At San Martino the bakers parade troops of
gingerbread warriors. Later, for Christmas, comes _mandorlato_, which is
a candy made of honey and enriched with almonds. In its season only can
any of these devotional delicacies be had; but there is a species
of cruller, fried in oil, which has all seasons for its own. On the
occasion of every _festa_, and of every _sagra_ (which is the holiday of
one parish only), stalls are erected in the squares for the cooking and
sale of these crullers, between which and the religious sentiment proper
to the whole year there seems to be some occult relation.
In the winter, the whole city appears to abandon herself to cooking for
the public, till she threatens to hopelessly disorder the law of demand
and supply. There are, to begin with, the caffè and restaurants of
every class. Then there are the cook-shops, and the poulterers’, and the
sausage-makers’. Then, also, every fruit-stall is misty and odorous with
roast apples, boiled beans, cabbage, and potatoes. The chestnut-roasters
infest every corner, and men, women, and children cry roast pumpkin at
every turn--till, at last, hunger seems an absurd and foolish vice,
and the ubiquitous beggars, no less than the habitual abstemiousness of
every class of the population, become the most perplexing and maddening
of anomalies.