CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.
It often happens, even after the cold has announced itself in
Venice, that the hesitating winter lingers in the Tyrol, and a mellow
Indian-summer weather has possession of the first weeks of December.
There was nothing in the December weather of 1863 to remind us
Northerners that Christmas was coming. The skies were as blue as those
of June, the sun was warm, and the air was bland, with only now and then
a trenchant breath from the Alps, coming like a delicate sarcasm from
loveliness unwilling to be thought insipidly amiable. But if there was
no warning in the weather, there were other signs of Christmas-time
not to be mistaken: a certain foolish leaping of the heart in one’s
own breast, as if the dead raptures of childhood were stirred in their
graves by the return of the happy season; and in Venice, in weary,
forlorn Venice, there was the half-unconscious tumult, the expectant
bustle which cities feel at the approach of holidays. The little shops
put on their gayest airs; there was a great clapping and hammering
on the stalls and booths which were building in the campos; the
street-cries were more shrill and resonant than ever, and the air was
shaken with the continual clangor of the church bells. All this note of
preparation is rather bewildering to strangers, and is apt to disorder
the best-disciplined intentions of seeing Christmas as the Venetians
keep it. The public observance of the holiday in the churches and on the
streets is evident and accessible to the most transient sojourner;
but it is curious proof of the difficulty of knowledge concerning the
in-door life and usages of the Italians, that I had already spent
two Christmases in Venice without learning any thing of their home
celebration of the day. Perhaps a degree of like difficulty attends like
inquiry everywhere, for the happiness of Christmas contracts the
family circle more exclusively than ever around the home hearth, or the
domestic scaldino, as the case may be. But, at any rate, I was quite
ready to say that the observance of Christmas in Venice was altogether
public, when I thought it a measure of far-sighted prudence to consult
my barber.
In all Latin countries the barber is a source of information, which,
skillfully tapped, pours forth in a stream of endless gossip and local
intelligence. Every man talks with his barber; and perhaps a lingering
dignity clings to this artist from his former profession of surgeon:
it is certain the barber here prattles on with a freedom and importance
perfectly admitted and respected by the interlocutory count under his
razor. Those who care to know how things passed in an Italian barber
shop three hundred years ago, may read it in Miss Evans’s “Romola;”
those who are willing to see Nello alive and carrying on his art in
Venice at this day, must go to be shaved at his shop in the Frezzaria.
Here there is a continual exchange of gossip, and I have often listened
with profit to the sage and piquant remarks of the head barber and chief
_ciarlone_, on the different events of human life brought to his notice.
His shop is well known as a centre of scandal, and I have heard a fair
Venetian declare that she had cut from her list all acquaintance who
go there, as persons likely to become infected with the worst habits of
gossip.
To this Nello, however, I used to go only when in the most brilliant
humor for listening, and my authority on Christmas observances is
another and humbler barber, but not less a babbler, than the first. By
birth, I believe, he is a Mantuan, and he prides himself on speaking
Italian instead of Venetian. He has a defective eye, which obliges him
to tack before bringing his razor to bear, but which is all the more
favorable to conversation. On the whole, he is flattered to be asked
about Christmas in Venice, and he first tells me that it is one of the
chief holidays of the year:--
“It is then, Signore, that the Venetians have the custom to make three
sorts of peculiar presents: Mustard, Fish, and Mandorlato. You must have
seen the mustard in the shop windows: it is a thick conserve of fruits,
flavored with mustard; and the mandorlato is a candy made of honey, and
filled with almonds. Well, they buy fish, as many as they will, and a
vase of mustard, and a box of mandorlato, and make presents of them, one
family to another, the day before Christmas. It is not too much for a
rich family to present a hundred boxes of mandorlato and as many pots of
mustard. These are exchanged between friends in the city, and Venetians
also send them to acquaintance in the country, whence the gift is
returned in cakes and eggs at Easter. Christmas Eve people invite each
other to great dinners, and eat and drink, and make merry; but there
are only fish and vegetables, for it is a meagre day, and meats are
forbidden. This dinner lasts so long that, when it is over, it is almost
time to so to midnight mass, which all must attend, or else hear three
masses on the morrow; and no doubt it was some delinquent who made our
saying,--‘Long as a Christmas mass.’ On Christmas Day people dine at
home, keeping the day with family reunions. But the day after! Ah-heigh!
That is the first of Carnival, and all the theatres are opened, and
there is no end to the amusements--or was not, in the old time. Now,
they never begin. A week later comes the day of the Lord’s Circumcision,
and then the next holiday is Easter. The Nativity, the Circumcision, and
the Resurrection--behold! these are the three mysteries of the Christian
faith. Of what religion are the Americans, Signore?”
I think I was justified in answering that we were Christians. My barber
was politely surprised. “But there are so many different religions,” he
said, in excuse.
On the afternoon before Christmas I walked through the thronged Merceria
to the Rialto Bridge, where the tumultuous mart which opens at Piazza
San Marco culminates in a deafening uproar of bargains. At this time the
Merceria, or street of the shops, presents the aspect of a fair, and is
arranged with a tastefulness and a cunning ability to make the most of
every thing, which are seldom applied to the abundance of our fairs at
home. The shops in Venice are all very small, and the streets of lofty
houses are so narrow and dark, that whatever goods are not exposed
in the shop-windows are brought to the door to be clamored over by
purchasers; so that the Merceria is roused by unusual effort to produce
a more pronounced effect of traffic and noise than it always wears; but
now the effort had been made and the effect produced. The street was
choked with the throngs, through which all sorts of peddlers battled
their way and cried their wares. In Campo San Bartolomeo, into which
the Merceria expands, at the foot of Rialto Bridge, holiday traffic
had built enormous barricades of stalls, and entrenched itself behind
booths, whence purchasers were assailed with challenges to buy bargains.
More than half the campo was paved with crockery from Rovigo and
glass-ware from Murano; clothing of every sort, and all kinds of small
household wares, were offered for sale; and among the other booths, in
the proportion of two to one, were stalls of the inevitable Christmas
mustard and mandorlato.
But I cared rather for the crowd than what the crowd cared for. I had
been long ago obliged to throw aside my preconceived notions of the
Italian character, though they were not, I believe, more absurd than the
impressions of others who have never studied Italian character in Italy.
I hardly know what of bacchantic joyousness I had not attributed to them
on their holidays: a people living in a mild climate under such a lovely
sky, with wine cheap and abundant, might not unreasonably have been
expected to put on a show of the greatest jollity when enjoying
themselves. Venetian crowds are always perfectly gentle and kindly, but
they are also as a whole usually serious; and this Christmas procession,
moving up and down the Merceria, and to and fro between the markets of
Rialto, was in the fullest sense a solemnity. It is true that the scene
was dramatic, but the drama was not consciously comic. Whether these
people bought or sold, or talked together, or walked up and down in
silence, they were all equally in earnest. The crowd, in spite of its
noisy bustle and passionate uproar, did not seem to me a blithe or
light-hearted crowd. Its sole activity was that of traffic, for, far
more dearly than any Yankee, a Venetian loves a bargain, and puts his
whole heart into upholding and beating down demands.
Across the Bridge began the vegetable and fruit market, where whole
Hollands of cabbage and Spains of onions opened on the view, with every
other succulent and toothsome growth; and beyond this we entered the
glory of Rialto, the fish-market, which is now more lavishly supplied
than at any other season. It was picturesque and full of gorgeous color
for the fish of Venice seem all to catch the rainbow hues of the lagoon.
There is a certain kind of red mullet, called _triglia_, which is
as rich and tender in its dyes as if it had never swam in water
less glorious than that which crimsons under October sunsets. But
a fish-market, even at Rialto, with fishermen in scarlet caps and
_triglie_ in sunset splendors, is only a fish-market after all: it is
wet and slimy under foot, and the innumerable gigantic eels, writhing
everywhere, set the soul asquirm, and soon-sated curiosity slides
willingly away.
We had an appointment with a young Venetian lady to attend midnight mass
at the church of San Moisè, and thither about half-past eleven we went
to welcome in Christmas. The church of San Moisè is in the highest style
of the Renaissance art, which is, I believe, the lowest style of any
other. The richly sculptured façade is divided into stories; the fluted
columns are stilted upon pedestals, and their lines are broken by the
bands which encircle them like broad barrel-hoops. At every possible
point theatrical saints and angels, only sustained from falling to the
ground by iron bars let into their backs, start from the niches and
cling to the sculpture. The outside of the church is in every way
detestable, and the inside is consistently bad. All the side-altars have
broken arches, and the high altar is built of rough blocks of marble to
represent Mount Sinai, on which a melodramatic statue of Moses receives
the tables of the law from God the Father, with frescoed seraphim in
the background. For the same reason, I suppose, that the devout prefer a
hideous Bambino and a Madonna in crinoline to the most graceful artistic
conception of those sacred personages, San Moisè is the most popular
church for the midnight mass in Venice, and there is no mass at all in
St. Mark’s, where its magnificence would be so peculiarly impressive.
On Christmas Eve, then, this church was crowded, and the door-ways were
constantly thronged with people passing in and out. I was puzzled to
see so many young men present, for Young Italy is not usually in great
number at church; but a friend explained the anomaly: “After the guests
at our Christmas Eve dinners have well eaten and drunken, they all go to
mass in at least one church, and the younger offer a multiplied devotion
by going to all. It is a good thing in some ways, for by this means
they manage to see every pretty face in the city, which that night has
specially prepared itself to be seen;” and from this slender text my
friend began to discourse at large about these Christmas Eve dinners,
and chiefly how jollily the priests fared, ending with the devout wish,
“Would God had made me nephew of a canonico!” The great dinners of the
priests are a favorite theme with Italian talkers; but I doubt it is
after all only a habit of speech. The priests are too numerous to feed
sumptuously in most cases.
We had a good place to see and hear, sitting in the middle of the main
aisle, directly over the dust of John Law, who alighted in Venice
when his great Mississippi bubble burst, and died here, and now sleeps
peacefully under a marble tablet in the ugly church of San Moisè. The
thought of that busy, ambitious life, come to this unscheming repose
under our feet,--so far from the scene of its hopes, successes, and
defeats,--gave its own touch of solemnity to the time and place, and
helped the offended sense of propriety through the bursts of operatic
music, which interspersed the mass. But on the whole, the music was good
and the function sufficiently impressive,--what with the gloom of the
temple everywhere starred with tapers, and the grand altar lighted to
the mountain-top. The singing of the priests also was here much better
than I had found it elsewhere in Venice.
The equality of all classes in church is a noticeable thing always in
Italy, but on this Christmas Eve it was unusually evident. The rags of
the beggar brushed the silks of luxury, as the wearers knelt side by
side on the marble floor; and on the night when God was born to poverty
on earth, the rich seemed to feel that they drew nearer Him in the
neighborhood of the poor. In these costly temples of the eldest
Christianity, the poor seem to enter upon their inheritance of the
future, for it is they who frequent them most and possess them with the
deepest sense of ownership. The withered old woman, who creeps into St
Mark’s with her scaldino in her hand, takes visible possession of its
magnificence as God’s and hers, and Catholic wealth and rank would
hardly, if challenged, dispute her claim.
Even the longest mass comes to an end at last, and those of our party
who could credit themselves with no gain of masses against the morrow,
received the benediction at San Moisè with peculiar unction. We all
issued forth, and passing through the lines of young men who draw
themselves up on either side of the doors of public places in Venice, to
look at the young ladies as they come out, we entered the Place of
St. Mark. The Piazza was more gloriously beautiful than ever I saw it
before, and the church had a saintly loveliness. The moon was full, and
snowed down the mellowest light on the gray domes, which in their soft,
elusive outlines, and strange effect of far-withdrawal, rhymed like
faint-heard refrains to the bright and vivid arches of the façade. And
if the bronze horses had been minded to quit their station before the
great window over the central arch, they might have paced around the
night’s whole half-world, and found no fairer resting-place.
As for Christmas Day in Venice, it amounted to very little; every thing
was closed, and whatever merry-making went on was all within doors.
Although the shops and the places of amusement were opened the day
following, the city entered very sparingly on the pleasures of
Carnival, and Christmas week passed off in every-day fashion. It will be
remembered that on St. Stephen’s Day--the first of Carnival--one of the
five annual banquets took place at the Ducal Palace in the time of the
Republic. A certain number of patricians received invitations to the
dinner, and those for whom there was no room were presented with fish
and poultry by the Doge. The populace were admitted to look on during
the first course, and then, having sated their appetites with this
savory observance, were invited to withdraw. The patriotic Giustina
Renier-Michiel of course makes much of the courtesy thus extended to the
people by the State, but I cannot help thinking it must have been hard
to bear. The banquet, however, has passed away with the Republic which
gave it, and the only savor of dinner which Venetian poverty now inhales
on St. Stephen’s Day, is that which arises from its own proper pot of
broth.
New Year’s is the carnival of the beggars in Venice. Their business is
carried on briskly throughout the year, but on this day it is pursued
with an unusual degree of perseverance, and an enterprise worthy of all
disinterested admiration. At every corner, on every bridge, under every
door-way, hideous shapes of poverty, mutilation, and deformity stand
waiting, and thrust out palms, plates, and pans, and advance good wishes
and blessings to all who pass. It is an immemorial custom, and it is one
in which all but the quite comfortable classes participate. The facchini
in every square take up their collections; the gondoliers have their
plates prepared for contribution at every ferry; at every caffè and
restaurant begging-boxes appeal to charity. Whoever has lifted hand in
your service in any way during the past year expects a reward on New
Year’s for the complaisance, and in some cases the shop-keepers send to
wish you a _bel capo d’anno_, with the same practical end in view. On
New Year’s Eve and morning bands of facchini and gondoliers go about
howling _vivas_ under charitable windows till they open and drop
alms. The Piazza is invaded by the legions of beggary, and held in
overpowering numbers against all comers; and to traverse it is like a
progress through a lazar-house.
Beyond encouraging so gross an abuse as this, I do not know that Venice
celebrates New Year’s in a peculiar manner. It is a _festa_, and there
are masses, of course. Presents are exchanged, which consist chiefly of
books--printed for the season, and brilliant outside and dull within,
like all annuals.