VENETIAN TRAITS AND CHARACTERS.
On a small canal, not far from the railroad station, the gondoliers
show you a house, by no means notable (except for the noble statue of
a knight, occupying a niche in one corner), as the house of Othello. It
was once the palace of the patrician family Moro, a name well known in
the annals of the Republic, and one which, it has been suggested, misled
Shakespeare into the invention of a Moor of Venice. Whether this
is possibly the fact, or whether there is any tradition of a tragic
incident in the history of the Moro family similar to that upon which
the play is founded, I do not know; but it is certain that the story
of Othello, very nearly as Shakespeare tells it, is popularly known in
Venice; and the gondoliers have fixed upon the Casa Moro in question as
the edifice best calculated to give satisfaction to strangers in search
of the True and the Memorable. The statue is happily darkened by time,
and thus serves admirably to represent Othello’s complexion, and to
place beyond the shadow of a doubt the fact of his residence in the
house. Indeed, what can you say to the gondolier, who, in answer to your
cavils, points to the knight, with the convincing argument, “There is
his statue!”
One day I was taken to see this house, in company with some friends, and
when it had been victoriously pointed out, as usual, we asked meekly,
“Who was Othello?”
“Othello, Signori,” answered the gondolier, “was a general of
the Republic, in the old times. He was an African, and black; but
nevertheless the State valued him, and he beat the Turks in many
battles. Well, Signori, this general Othello had a very young and
beautiful wife, and his wife’s cousin (_sic!_), Cassio was his
major-domo, or, as some say, his lieutenant. But after a while happens
along (_capita_) another soldier of Othello, who wants Cassio’s
employment, and so accuses him to the general of corrupting his wife.
Very well, Signori! Without thinking an instant, Othello, being made so,
flew into a passion (_si riscaldò là tèsta_), and killed his wife; and
then when her innocence came out, he killed himself and that liar; and
the State confiscated his goods, he being a very rich man. There has
been a tragedy written about all this, you know.”
“But how is it called? Who wrote it?”
“Oh! in regard to that, then, I don’t know. Some Englishman.”
“Shakespeare?”
“I don’t know, Signori. But if you doubt what I tell you, go to any
bookseller, and say, ‘Favor me with the tragedy of “Othello.”’ He will
give it you, and there you will find it all written out just as I tell
it.”
This gondolier confirmed the authenticity of his story, by showing us
the house of Cassio near the Rialto Bridge, and I have no doubt he would
also have pointed out that of Iago if we had wished it.
But as a general thing, the lore of the gondoliers is not rich nor very
great. They are a loquacious and a gossiping race, but they love better
to have a quiet chat at the tops of their voices, as they loaf idly at
the ferries, or to scream repartees across the Grand Canal, than to tell
stories. In all history that relates to localities they are sufficiently
versed to find the notable places for strangers, but beyond this they
trouble themselves as little with the past as with the future. Three
tragic legends, however, they know, and will tell with the most amusing
effect, namely: Biasio, _luganegher_; the Innocent Baker-Boy, and
Veneranda Porta.
The first of these legends is that of a sausage-maker who flourished
in Venice some centuries ago, and who improved the quality of the broth
which the _luganegheri_ make of their scraps and sell to the gondoliers,
by cutting up into it now and then a child of some neighbor. He was
finally detected by a gondolier who discovered a little finger in his
broth, and being brought to justice, was dragged through the city at the
heels of a wild horse. This most uncomfortable character appears to
be the first hero in the romance of the gondoliers, and he certainly
deserves to rank with that long line of imaginary personages who have
made childhood so wretched and tractable. The second is the Innocent
Baker-Boy already named, who was put to death on suspicion of having
murdered a noble, because in the dead man’s heart was found a dagger
fitting a sheath which the baker had picked up in the street, on
the morning of the murder, and kept in his possession. Many years
afterwards, a malefactor who died in Padua confessed the murder, and
thereupon two lamps were lighted before a shrine in the southern façade
of St. Mark’s Church,--one for the murdered nobleman’s soul, and the
other for that of the innocent boy. Such is the gondoliers’ story, and
the lamps still burn every night before the shrine from dark till
dawn, in witness of its truth. The fact of the murder and its guiltless
expiation is an incident of Venetian history, and it is said that the
Council of the Ten never pronounced a sentence of death thereafter, till
they had been solemnly warned by one of their number with _“Ricordatevi
del povero Fornaretto!”_ (Remember the poor Baker-Boy!) The poet Dall
‘Ongaro has woven the story into a beautiful and touching tragedy; but I
believe the poet is still to be born who shall take from the gondoliers
their Veneranda Porta, and place her historic figure in dramatic
literature. Veneranda Porta was a lady of the days of the Republic,
between whom and her husband existed an incompatibility. This was
increased by the course of Signora Porta in taking a lover, and it at
last led to the assassination of the husband by the paramours. The head
of the murdered man was found in one of the canals, and being exposed,
as the old custom was, upon the granite pedestal at the corner of St.
Mark’s Church, it was recognized by his brother who found among the
papers on which the long hair was curled fragments of a letter he had
written to the deceased. The crime was traced to the paramours, and
being brought before the Ten, they were both condemned to be hanged
between the columns of the Piazzetta. The gondoliers relate that when
the sentence was pronounced, Veneranda said to the Chief of the Ten,
“But as for me this sentence will never be carried out. You cannot hang
a woman. Consider the impropriety!” The Venetian rulers were wise men
in their generation, and far from being balked by this question of
delicacy, the Chief replied, solving it, “My dear, you shall be hanged
in my breeches.”
It is very coarse salt which keeps one of these stories; another is
remembered because it concerns one of the people; and another for its
abomination and horror. The incidents of Venetian history which take the
fancy and touch the sensibility of the world seem hardly known to the
gondoliers, the most intelligent and quick-witted of the populace, and
themselves the very stuff that some romantic dreams of Venice are made
of. However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the
sausage-maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy
who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the expense of the
murderess, interest these people more than the high-well-born sorrows
of the Foscari, the tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of
Falier,--which last they know partly, however, because of the scandal
about Falier’s wife. Yet after all, though the gondoliers are not
the gondoliers of imaginative literature, they have qualities which
recommended them to my liking, and I look back upon my acquaintance
with two or three of them in a very friendly spirit. Compared with
the truculent hackmen, who prey upon the traveling public in all other
cities of the civilized world, they are eminently intelligent and
amiable. Rogues they are, of course, for small dishonesties are the
breath in the nostrils of common carriers by land or water, everywhere;
but the trickery of the gondoliers is so good-natured and simple that
it can hardly offend. A very ordinary jocular sagacity defeats their
profoundest purposes of swindling, and no one enjoys their exposure
half so much as themselves, while a faint prospect of future employment
purifies them of every trait of dishonesty. I had only one troublesome
experience with them, and that was in the case of the old gondolier who
taught me to row. He, when I had no longer need of his services, plunged
into drunkenness, and came and dismissed me one day with every mark of
ignominy. But he afterwards forgave me, and saluted me kindly when we
met.
The immediate goal of every gondolier’s ambition is to serve, no matter
for how short a time, an Inglese, by which generic title nearly all
foreigners except Germans are known to him. The Inglese, whether he
be English or American, is apt to make the tour of the whole city in
a gondola, and to give handsome drink money at the end, whereas your
Tedesco frugally walks to every place accessible by land, or when, in
a party of six or eight, he takes a gondola, plants himself upon the
letter of the tariff, and will give no more than the rate fixed by law.
The gondolier is therefore flowingly polite to the Inglese, and he is
even civil to the Tedesco; but he is not at all bound in courtesy to
that provincial Italian who comes from the country to Venice, bargains
furiously for his boat, and commonly pays under the tariff. The Venetian
who does not himself keep a gondola seldom hires one, and even on this
rare occasion makes no lavish demand such as “How much do you want for
taking me to the rail-way station?” Lest the fervid imagination of the
gondolier rise to zwanzigers and florins, and a tedious dispute ensue,
he asks: “How many centissimi do you want?” and the contract is made,
for a number of soldi.
The number of private gondolas owned in Venice is not very great. The
custom is rather to hire a gondolier with his boat. The exclusive use of
the gondola is thus secured, and the gondolier gives his services as a
domestic when off his special duty. He waits at table, goes marketing,
takes the children to school, and serves the ladies as footman, for five
francs a day, himself paying the proprietor of the gondola about a
franc daily for the boat. In former times, when Venice was rich and
prosperous, many noble families kept six or seven gondolas; and what
with this service, and the numerous gala-days of the Republic, when the
whole city took boat for the Lido, or the Giudecca, or Murano, and
the gondoliers were allowed to exact any pay they could, they were a
numerous and prosperous class. But these times have passed from Venice
forever, and though the gondoliers are still, counting the boatmen of
the Giudecca and Lido, some thousands in number, there are comparatively
few young men among them, and their gains are meagre.
In the little city of Venice, where the dialect spoken at Canareggio or
Castello is a different tongue from that heard under the Procuratie of
St. Mark’s Place, the boatmen of the several quarters of the city of
course vary greatly in character and appearance; and the gondolier who
lounges at the base of the columns of the Piazzetta, and airily invites
the Inglesi to tours of the Grand Canal, is of quite a different type
from the weather-beaten _barcaiuolo_, who croaks _“Barca!”_ at the
promenaders on the Zattere. But all, as I say, are simple and harmless
enough, and however loudly they quarrel among themselves, they never
pass from the defamation of their female relatives to blows. As for
the game of knives, as it is said to be played at Naples, and as About
describes it at Rome, I doubt if it is much known to the populace of
Venice. Only the doctors let blood there--though from their lancets it
flows pretty freely and constantly.
It is true that the gondolier loves best of everything a clamorous
quarrel, carried on with the canal between him and his antagonist; but
next to this, he loves to spend his leisure at the ferry in talking
of eating and of money, and he does not differ from many of his
fellow-citizens in choice of topics. I have seldom caught a casual
expression from passers in the streets of Venice which did not relate
in some way to gold Napoleons, zwanzigers, florins, or soldi, or else
to wine and polenta. I note this trait in the Venetians, which Goldoni
observed in the Milanese a hundred years ago, and which I incline to
believe is common to all Italians. The gondoliers talk a great deal in
figure and hyperbole, and their jocose chaff is quite inscrutable even
to some classes of Venetians. With foreigners, to whom the silence and
easy progress of the gondola gives them the opportunity to talk, they
are fond of using a word or two of French. They are quick at repartee,
and have a clever answer ready for most occasions. I was one day
bargaining for a boat to the Lido, whither I refused to be taken in
a shabby gondola, or at a rate higher than seventy-five soldi for the
trip. At last the patience of the gondoliers was exhausted, and one of
them called out, “Somebody fetch the Bucintoro, and take this
gentleman to the Lido for seventy-five soldi!” (The Bucintoro being the
magnificent barge in which the Doge went to wed the Adriatic.)
The skill with which the gondoliers manage their graceful craft is
always admired by strangers, and is certainly remarkable. The gondola is
very long and slender, and rises high from the water at either end. Both
bow and stern are sharp, the former being ornamented with that deeply
serrated blade of steel, which it is the pride of the gondolier to keep
bright as silver, and the poop having a small platform, not far behind
the cabin, on which he stands when he rows. The danger of collision has
always obliged Venetian boatmen to face the bow, and the stroke with the
oar (for the gondolier uses only a single oar) is made by pushing, and
not by pulling. No small degree of art (as I learnt from experience)
is thus required to keep the gondola’s head straight,--all the strokes
being made on one side,--and the sculling return of the oar-blade,
preparatory for each new stroke, is extremely difficult to effect. Under
the hands of the gondolier, however, the gondola seems a living thing,
full of grace and winning movement. The wood-work of the little cabin is
elaborately carved, and it is usually furnished with mirrors and seats
luxuriously cushioned. The sensation of the gondola’s progress, felt by
the occupant of the cabin, as he falls back upon these cushions, may be
described, to the female apprehension at least, as “_too_ divine.” The
cabin is removable at pleasure, and is generally taken off and replaced
by awnings in summer. But in the evening, when the fair Venetians go out
in their gondolas to take the air, even this awning is dispensed with,
and the long slender boat glides darkly down the Grand Canal, bearing
its dazzling freight of white _tulle_, pale-faced, black-eyed beauty,
and flashing jewels, in full view.
As for the singing of the gondoliers, they are the only class of
Venetians who have not good voices, and I am scarcely inclined to regret
the silence which long ago fell upon them. I am quite satisfied with the
peculiar note of warning which they utter as they approach the corner of
a canal, and which meaning simply, “To the Right,” or “To the Left,” is
the most pathetic and melancholy sound in the world. If, putting
aside my own comfort, I have sometimes wished for the sake of a dear,
sentimental old friend at home, who loves such idle illusions with an
ardor unbecoming his years, that I might hear the voice
“of Adria’s gondolier,
By distance mellowed, o’er the waters sweep,”
I must still confess that I never did hear it under similar
circumstances, except in conversation across half a mile of lagoon,
when, as usual, the burden of the lay was polenta or soldi.
A recent Venetian writer, describing the character of the lower classes
of Venice, says: “No one can deny that our populace is loquacious
and quickwitted; but, on the other hand, no one can deny that it
is regardless of improvement. Venice, a city exceptional in its
construction, its customs, and its habits, has also an exceptional
populace. It still feels, although sixty-eight years have passed, the
influence of the system of the fallen Republic, of that oligarchic
government, which, affording almost every day some amusement to the
people, left them no time to think of their offended rights.... Since
1859 Venice has resembled a sepulchre of the living,--squalor and
beggary gaining ground with each day, and commerce, with few exceptions,
converted into monopoly; yet the populace remains attached to its old
habits, and will have its pleasure. If the earnings are little, what
then? Must one die of ennui? The caffè is depopulated: not so the
drinking-house. The last day before the drawing of the lottery, the
offices are thronged with fathers and mothers of families, who stint
their children of bread to buy dearly a few hours of golden illusion....
At the worst, there is the Monte di Pietà, as a last resort.”
It is true, as this writer says, that the pleasure-loving populace still
looks back fondly to the old Republican times of feasting and holidays;
but there is certainly no truth any more in the old idea that any part
of Italy is a place where people may be “idle with impunity,” or make
amusement the serious business of life. I can remember that the book
from which I received my first impressions of geography was illuminated
with a picture professing to represent Italian customs. The spirit of
inquiry had long before caused me to doubt the exact fidelity of this
representation; but it cost me a pang to learn that the picture was
utterly delusive. It has been no part of my experience in Venice to see
an Italian sitting upon the ground, and strumming the guitar, while two
gayly dressed peasants danced to the music. Indeed, the indolence
of Venetians is listless and silent, not playful or joyous; and as I
learned to know their life more intimately, I came to understand that
in many cases they are idle from despair of finding work, and that
indolence is as much their fate as their fault. Any diligence of theirs
is surprising to us of northern and free lands, because their climate
subdues and enervates us, and because we can see before them no career
open to intelligent industry. With the poorest, work is necessarily
a hand-to-hand struggle against hunger; with those who would not
absolutely starve without it, work is an inexplicable passion.
Partly because the ways of these people are so childlike and simple in
many things, and partly from one’s own swindling tendency to take one’s
self in (a tendency really fatal to all sincerity of judgment, and
incalculably mischievous to such downfallen peoples as have felt the
baleful effects of the world’s sentimental, impotent sympathy), there is
something pathetic in the patient content with which Italians work. They
have naturally so large a capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of
selfdenial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these
children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt
with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be
truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly
make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work
in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy,
modern fashion. Neither the habits nor the implements of labor are
changed since the progress of the Republic ceased, and her heart
began to die within her. All sorts of mechanics’ tools are clumsy and
inconvenient: the turner’s lathe moves by broken impulses; door-hinges
are made to order, and lift the door from the ground as it opens upon
them; all nails and tacks are hand-made; window-sashes are contrived to
be glazed without putty, and the panes are put in from the top, so that
to repair a broken glass the whole sash is taken apart; cooking-stoves
are unknown to the native cooks, who work at an open fire, with crane
and dangling pot-hooks; furniture is put together with wooden pegs
instead of screws; you do not buy a door-lock at a hardware store,--you
get a _fabbro_ to make it, and he comes with a leathern satchel full
of tools to fit and finish it on the door. The wheelbarrow of this
civilization is peculiarly wonderful in construction, with a prodigious
wooden wheel, and a ponderous, incapable body. The canals are dredged
with scoops mounted on long poles, and manned each by three or four
Chiozzotti. There never was a pile-driving machine known in Venice;
nor a steam-tug in all the channels of the lagoons, through which the
largest craft are towed to and from the ports by row-boats. In the model
of the sea-going vessels there has apparently been little change from
the first. Yet in spite of all this backwardness in invention, the city
is full of beautiful workmanship in every branch of artificing, and the
Venetians are still the best sailors in the Adriatic.
I do not offer the idea as a contribution to statistics, but it seems to
me that the most active branch of industry in Venice is plucking fowls.
In summer the people all work on their thresholds, and in their windows,
and as nearly out of doors as the narrowness of the streets will let
them,--and it is hard to pass through any part of the city without
coming to a poulterer’s shop, in the door of which inevitably sits a
boy, tugging at the plumage of some wretched bird. He is seldom to be
seen except in that crisis of plucking when he seems to have all but
finished; yet he seems never to accomplish the fact perfectly. Perhaps
it is part of his hard fate that the feathers shall grow again under
his hand as fast as he plucks them away: at the restaurants, I know,
the quantity of plumage one devours in consuming roast chicken is
surprising--at first. The birds are always very lean, too, and have but
a languid and weary look, in spite of the ardent manner in which the boy
clasps them while at work. It may be that the Venetians do not like
fat poultry. Their turkeys, especially, are of that emaciation which
is attributed among ourselves only to the turkey of Job; and as for the
geese and ducks, they can only interest anatomists. It is as if the long
ages of incursion and oppression which have impoverished and devastated
Italy had at last taken effect upon the poultry, and made it as poor as
the population.
I do not want to give too exclusive an impression of Venetian industry,
however, for now I remember the Venetian _lasagnoni_, whom I never saw
doing any thing, and who certainly abound in respectable numbers.
The lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a loafer, without the
admixture of ruffianism, which blemishes most loafers of northern race.
He may be quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot be
a rowdy,--that pleasing blossom on the nose of our fast, high-fed,
thick-blooded civilization. In Venice he must not be confounded with
other loiterers at the caffè; not with the natty people who talk
politics interminably over little cups of black coffee; not with those
old habitués, who sit forever under the Procuratie, their hands folded
upon the tops of their sticks, and staring at the ladies who pass with
a curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in
the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness
to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces
comically anglicized by leg-of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, the
lasagnone does not flourish in the best caffè; he comes to perfection
in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich. It often happens that a
glass of water, flavored with a little anisette, is the order over which
he sits a whole evening. He knows the waiter intimately, and does not
call him “Shop!” (Bottega,) as less familiar people do, but Gigi, or
Beppi, as the waiter is pretty sure to be named. “Behold!” he says, when
the servant places his modest drink before him, “who is that loveliest
blonde there?” Or to his fellow-lasagnone: “She regards me! I have
broken her the heart!” This is his sole business and mission, the cruel
lasagnone--to break ladies the heart. He spares no condition,--neither
rank nor wealth is any defense against him. I often wonder what is in
that note he continually shows to his friend. The confession of some
broken heart, I think. When he has folded it, and put it away, he
chuckles _“Ah, cara!”_ and sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar.
It is unlighted, for fire consumes cigars. I never see him read the
papers,--neither the Italian papers nor the Parisian journals, though
if he can get “Galignani” he is glad, and he likes to pretend to a
knowledge of English, uttering upon occasion, with great relish, such
distinctively English words as “Yes” and “Not,” and to the waiter,
“A-little-fire-if-you-please.” He sits very late in the caffè, and he
touches his hat--his curly French hat--to the company as he goes out
with a mild swagger, his cane held lightly in his left hand, his coat
cut snugly to show his hips, and genteelly swaying with the motion of
his body. He is a dandy, of course,--all Italians are dandies,--but his
vanity is perfectly harmless, and his heart is not bad. He would go
half an hour out of his way to put you in the direction of the Piazza. A
little thing can make him happy,--to stand in the pit at the opera, and
gaze at the ladies in the lower boxes--to attend the Marionette, or
the Malibran Theatre, and imperil the peace of pretty seamstresses and
contadinas--to stand at the church doors and ogle the fair saints as
they pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, to thy lodging in some mysterious
height, and break hearts if thou wilt. They are quickly mended.
Of other vagabonds in Venice, if I had my choice, I think I must select
a certain ruffian who deals in dog-flesh, as the nearest my ideal of
what a vagabond should be in all respects. He stands habitually under
the Old Procuratie, beside a basket of small puppies in that snuffling
and quivering state which appears to be the favorite condition of very
young dogs, and occupies himself in conversation with an adjacent dealer
in grapes and peaches, or sometimes fastidiously engages in trimming the
hair upon the closely shaven bodies of the dogs; for in Venice it is the
ambition of every dog to look as much like the Lion of St. Mark as the
nature of the case will permit. My vagabond at times makes expeditions
to the groups of travelers always seated in summer before the Caffè
Florian, appearing at such times with a very small puppy,--neatly poised
upon the palm of his hand, and winking pensively,--which he advertises
to the company as a “Beautiful Beast,” or a “Lovely Babe,” according to
the inspiration of his light and pleasant fancy. I think the latter term
is used generally as a means of ingratiation with the ladies, to whom my
vagabond always shows a demeanor of agreeable gallantry. I never saw him
sell any of these dogs, nor ever in the least cast down by his failure
to do so. His air is grave, but not severe; there is even, at times, a
certain playfulness in his manner, possibly attributable to sciampagnin.
His curling black locks, together with his velveteen jacket and
pantaloons, are oiled and glossy, and his beard is cut in the
French-imperial mode. His personal presence is unwholesome, and it is
chiefly his moral perfection as a vagabond that makes him fascinating.
One is so confident, however, of his fitness for his position and
business, and of his entire contentment with it, that it is impossible
not to exult in him.
He is not without self-respect. I doubt, it would be hard to find any
Venetian of any vocation, however base, who forgets that he too is a
man and a brother. There is enough servility in the language,--it is the
fashion of the Italian tongue, with its _Tu_ for inferiors, _Voi_ for
intimates and friendly equals, and _Lei_ for superiors,--but in the
manner there is none, and there is a sense of equality in the ordinary
intercourse of the Venetians, at once apparent to foreigners.
All ranks are orderly; the spirit of aggression seems not to exist among
them, and the very boys and dogs in Venice are so well-behaved, that I
have never seen the slightest disposition in them to quarrel. Of course,
it is of the street-boy--the _biricchino_, the boy in his natural,
unreclaimed state--that I speak. This state is here, in winter, marked
by a clouded countenance, bare head, tatters, and wooden-soled shoes
open at the heels; in summer by a preternatural purity of person, by
abandon to the amphibious pleasure of leaping off the bridges into the
canals, and by an insatiable appetite for polenta, fried minnows, and
water-melons.
When one of these boys takes to beggary, as a great many of them do, out
of a spirit of adventure and wish to pass the time, he carries out the
enterprise with splendid daring. A favorite artifice is to approach
Charity with a slice of polenta in one hand, and, with the other
extended, implore a soldo to buy cheese to eat with the polenta. The
street-boys also often perform the duties of the _gransieri_, who draw
your gondola to shore, and keep it firm with a hook. To this order
of beggar I usually gave; but one day at the railway station I had
no soldi, and as I did not wish to render my friend discontented with
future alms by giving silver, I deliberately apologized, praying him to
excuse me, and promising him for another time. I cannot forget the lofty
courtesy with which he returned,--“_S’accomodi pur, Signor!_” They have
sometimes a sense of humor, these poor swindlers, and can enjoy the
exposure of their own enormities. An amiable rogue drew our gondola to
land one evening when we went too late to see the church of San Giorgio
Maggiore. The sacristan made us free of a perfectly dark church, and we
rewarded him as if it had been noonday. On our return to the gondola,
the same beggar whom we had just feed held out his hat for another
alms. “But we have just paid you,” we cried in an agony of grief and
desperation. _“Sì, signori!”_ he admitted with an air of argument, _“è
vero. Ma, la chiesa!”_ (Yes, gentlemen, it is true. But the church!) he
added with confidential insinuation, and a patronizing wave of the hand
toward the edifice, as if he had been San Giorgio himself, and held the
church as a source of revenue. This was too much, and we laughed him to
scorn; at which, beholding the amusing abomination of his conduct, he
himself joined in our laugh with a cheerfulness that won our hearts.
Beggary is attended by no disgrace in Italy, and it therefore comes that
no mendicant is without a proper degree of the self-respect common to
all classes. Indeed, the habit of taking gifts of money is so general
and shameless that the street beggars must be diffident souls indeed if
they hesitated to ask for it. A perfectly well-dressed and well-mannered
man will take ten soldi from you for a trifling service, and not
consider himself in the least abased. The detestable custom of largess,
instead of wages, still obtains in so great degree in Venice that a
physician, when asked for his account, replies: “What you please to
give.” Knowing these customs, I hope I have never acted discourteously
to the street beggars of Venice even when I gave them nothing, and I
know that only one of them ever so far forgot himself as to curse me for
not giving. Him, however, I think to have been out of his right mind at
the time.
There were two mad beggars in the parish of San Stefano, whom I should
be sorry to leave unmentioned here. One, who presided chiefly over the
Campo San Stefano, professed to be also a facchino, but I never saw him
employed, except in addressing select circles of idlers whom a brawling
noise always draws together in Venice. He had been a soldier, and he
sometimes put himself at the head of a file of Croats passing through
the campo, and gave them the word of command, to the great amusement of
those swarthy barbarians. He was a good deal in drink, and when in this
state was proud to go before any ladies who might be passing, and clear
away the boys and idlers, to make room for them. When not occupied in
any of these ways, he commonly slept in the arcades of the old convent.
But the mad beggar of Campo Sant’ Angelo seemed to have a finer sense
of what became him as a madman and a beggar, and never made himself
obnoxious by his noise. He was, in fact, very fat and amiable, and in
the summer lay asleep, for the most part, at a certain street corner
which belonged to him. When awake he was a man of extremely complaisant
presence, and suffered no lady to go by without a compliment to her
complexion, her blond hair, or her beautiful eyes, whichever it might
be. He got money for these attentions, and people paid him for any
sort of witticism. One day he said to the richest young dandy of the
city,--“Pah! you stomach me with your perfumes and fine airs;” for which
he received half a florin. His remarks to gentlemen had usually this
sarcastic flavor. I am sorry to say that so excellent a madman was often
drunk and unable to fulfill his duties to society.
There are, of course, laws against mendicancy in Venice, and they are,
of course, never enforced. Beggars abound everywhere, and nobody molests
them. There was long a troop of weird sisters in Campo San Stefano,
who picked up a livelihood from the foreigners passing to and from the
Academy of Fine Arts. They addressed people with the title of Count,
and no doubt gained something by this sort of heraldry, though there
are counts in Venice almost as poor as themselves, and titles are
not distinctions. The Venetian seldom gives to beggars; he says
deliberately, “_No go_” (I have nothing), or “_Quando ritornerò_” (when
I return), and never comes back that way. I noticed that professional
hunger and cold took this sort of denial very patiently, as they did
every other; but I confess I had never the heart to practice it. In
my walks to the Public Gardens there was a venerable old man, with the
beard and bearing of a patriarch, whom I encountered on the last bridge
of the Riva, and who there asked alms of me. When I gave him a soldo,
he returned me a blessing which I would be ashamed to take in the United
States for half a dollar; and when the soldo was in some inaccessible
pocket, and I begged him to await my coming back, he said
sweetly,--“Very well, Signor, I will be here.” And I must say, to his
credit, that he never broke his promise, nor suffered me, for shame’s
sake, to break mine. He was quite a treasure to me in this respect, and
assisted me to form habits of punctuality.
That exuberance of manner which one notes, the first thing, in his
intercourse with Venetians, characterizes all classes, but is most
excessive and relishing in the poor. There is a vast deal of ceremony
with every order, and one hardly knows what to do with the numbers of
compliments it is necessary to respond to. A Venetian does not come to
see you, he comes to revere you; he not only asks if you be well when
he meets you, but he bids you remain well at parting, and desires you to
salute for him all common friends; he reverences you at leave-taking;
he will sometimes consent to incommode you with a visit; he will relieve
you of the disturbance when he rises to go. All spontaneous wishes
which must, with us, take original forms, for lack of the complimentary
phrase, are formally expressed by him,--good appetite to you, when you
go to dinner much; enjoyment, when you go to the theatre; a pleasant
walk, if you meet in promenade. He is your servant at meeting and
parting; he begs to be commanded when he has misunderstood you. But
courtesy takes its highest flights, as I hinted, from the poorest
company. Acquaintances of this sort, when not on the _Ciò ciappa_
footing, or that of the familiar thee and thou, always address each
other in _Lei_ (lordship), or _Elo_, as the Venetians have it; and their
compliment-making at encounter and separation is endless: I salute you!
Remain well! Master! Mistress! (_Paron! parona!_) being repeated as long
as the polite persons are within hearing.
One day, as we passed through the crowded Merceria, an old Venetian
friend of mine, who trod upon the dress of a young person before us,
called out, “_Scusate, bella giovane_!” (Pardon, beautiful girl!) She
was not so fair nor so young as I have seen women; but she half turned
her face with a forgiving smile, and seemed pleased with the accident
that had won her the amiable apology. The waiter of the caffè frequented
by the people, says to the ladies for whom he places seats,--“Take
this place, beautiful blonde;” or, “Sit here, lovely brunette,” as it
happens.
A Venetian who enters or leaves any place of public resort touches his
hat to the company, and one day at the restaurant some ladies, who had
been dining there, said “_Complimenti!_” on going out, with a grace that
went near to make the beefsteak tender. It is this uncostly gentleness
of bearing which gives a winning impression of the whole people,
whatever selfishness or real discourtesy lie beneath it. At home it
sometimes seems that we are in such haste to live and be done with it,
we have no time to be polite. Or is popular politeness merely a vice of
servile peoples? And is it altogether better to be rude? I wish it were
not. If you are lost in his city (and you are pretty sure to be lost
there, continually), a Venetian will go with you wherever you wish.
And he will do this amiable little service out of what one may say old
civilization has established in place of goodness of heart, but which is
perhaps not so different from it.
You hear people in the streets bless each other in the most dramatic
fashion. I once caught these parting words between an old man and a
young girl;
_Giovanetta_. Revered sir! (_Patron riverito!_)
_Vecchio_. (With that peculiar backward wave and beneficent wag of the
hand, only possible to Italians.) Blessed child! (_Benedetta!_)
It was in a crowd, but no one turned round at the utterance of terms
which Anglo-Saxons would scarcely use in their most emotional moments.
The old gentleman who sells boxes for the theatre in the Old Procuratie
always gave me his benediction when I took a box.
There is equal exuberance of invective, and I have heard many fine
maledictions on the Venetian streets, but I recollect none more
elaborate than that of a gondolier who, after listening peacefully to
a quarrel between two other boatmen, suddenly took part against one of
them, and saluted him with,--“Ah! baptized son of a dog! And if I had
been present at thy baptism, I would have dashed thy brains out against
the baptismal font!”
All the theatrical forms of passion were visible in a scene I witnessed
in a little street near San Samuele, where I found the neighborhood
assembled at doors and windows in honor of a wordy battle between
two poor women. One of these had been forced in-doors by her prudent
husband, and the other upbraided her across the marital barrier. The
assailant was washing, and twenty times she left her tub to revile the
besieged, who thrust her long arms out over those of her husband, and
turned each reproach back upon her who uttered it, thus:--
_Assailant_. Beast!
_Besieged_. Thou!
_A_. Fool!
_B_. Thou!
_A_. Liar!
_B_. Thou!
_E via in seguito!_ At last the assailant, beating her breast with both
hands, and tempestuously swaying her person back and forth, wreaked her
scorn in one wild outburst of vituperation, and returned finally to
her tub, wisely saying, on the purple verge of asphyxiation, “_O, non
discorre più con gente_.”
I returned half an hour later, and she was laughing and playing sweetly
with her babe.
It suits the passionate nature of the Italians to have incredible ado
about buying and selling, and a day’s shopping is a sort of campaign,
from which the shopper returns plundered and discomfited, or laden with
the spoil of vanquished shopmen.
The embattled commercial transaction is conducted in this wise:
The shopper enters, and prices a given article. The shopman names a
sum of which only the fervid imagination of the South could conceive as
corresponding to the value of the goods.
The purchaser instantly starts back with a wail of horror and
indignation, and the shopman throws himself forward over the counter
with a protest that, far from being dear, the article is ruinously cheap
at the price stated, though they may nevertheless agree for something
less.
What, then, is the very most ultimate price?
Properly, the very most ultimate price is so much. (Say, the smallest
trifle under the price first asked.)
The purchaser moves toward the door. He comes back, and offers one third
of the very most ultimate price.
The shopman, with a gentle desperation, declares that the thing cost
him as much. He cannot really take the offer. He regrets, but he cannot.
That the gentleman would say something more! So much--for example. That
he regard the stuff, its quality, fashion, beauty.
The gentleman laughs him to scorn. Ah, heigh! and, coming forward, he
picks up the article and reviles it. Out of the mode, old, fragile, ugly
of its kind. The shopman defends his wares. There is no such quantity
and quality elsewhere in Venice. But if the gentleman will give even so
much (still something preposterous), he may have it, though truly its
sale for that money is utter ruin.
The shopper walks straight to the door. The shopman calls him back from
the threshold, or sends his boy to call him back from the street.
Let him accommodate himself--which is to say, take the thing at his own
price.
He takes it.
The shopman says cheerfully, “Servo suo!”
The purchaser responds, “Bon dì! Patron!” (Good day! my Master!)
Thus, as I said, every bargain is a battle, and every purchase a triumph
or a defeat. The whole thing is understood; the opposing forces know
perfectly well all that is to be done beforehand, and retire after the
contest, like the captured knights in “_Morgante Maggiore_” “calm as
oil,”--however furious and deadly their struggle may have appeared to
strangers.
Foreigners soon discern, however, that there is no bloodshed in such
encounters, and enter into them with a zeal as great as that of natives,
though with less skill. I knew one American who prided himself on such
matters, and who haughtily closed a certain bargain without words, as he
called it. The shopman offered several articles, for which he demanded
prices amounting in all to ninety-three francs. His wary customer
rapidly computed the total and replied “Without words, now, I’ll give
you a hundred francs for the lot.” With a pensive elevation of the
eyebrows, and a reluctant shrug of the shoulders, the shopman suffered
him to take them.
Your Venetian is _simpatico_, if he is any thing. He is always ready to
feel and to express the deepest concern, and I rather think he likes to
have his sensibilities appealed to, as a pleasant and healthful exercise
for them. His sympathy begins at home, and he generously pities himself
as the victim of a combination of misfortunes, which leave him citizen
of a country without liberty, without commerce, without money, without
hope. He next pities his fellow-citizens, who are as desperately
situated as himself. Then he pities the degradation, corruption, and
despair into which the city has fallen. And I think his compassion is
the most hopeless thing in his character. That alone is touched; that
alone is moved; and when its impulse ceases he and every thing about him
remain just as before.
With the poor, this sensibility is amusingly mischievous. They never
speak of one of their own class without adding some such ejaculation as
“Poor fellow!” or, “Poor little creature!” They pity all wretchedness,
no matter from what cause, and the greatest rogue has their compassion
when under a cloud. It is all but impossible to punish thieves in
Venice, where they are very bold and numerous for the police are too
much occupied with political surveillance to give due attention to mere
cutpurses and housebreakers, and even when they make an arrest, people
can hardly be got to bear witness against their unhappy prisoner.
_Povareto anca lu!_ There is no work and no money; people must do
something; so they steal. _Ci vuol pazienza!_ Bear witness against an
ill-fated fellow-sufferer? God forbid! Stop a thief? I think a burglar
might run from Rialto to San Marco, and not one compassionate soul in
the Merceria would do aught to arrest him--_povareto!_ Thieves came to
the house of a friend of mine at noonday, when his servant was out. They
tied their boat to his landing, entered his house, filled their boat
with plunder from it, and rowed out into the canal. The neighbors on the
floor above saw them, and cried “Thieves! thieves!” It was in the most
frequented part of the Grand Canal, where scores of boats passed and
repassed; but no one molested the thieves, and these _povareti_ escaped
with their booty. [Footnote: The rogues, it must be confessed, are often
very polite. This same friend of mine one day found a man in the act
of getting down into a boat with his favorite singing bird in its cage.
“What are you doing with that bird?” he thought himself authorized to
inquire. The thief looked about him a moment, and perceiving himself
detected, handed back the cage with a cool “_La scusi!_” (“Beg pardon!”)
as if its removal had been a trifling inadvertance.]
One night, in a little street through which we passed to our ferry,
there came a wild rush before us, of a woman screaming for help,
and pursued by her husband with a knife in his hand; their children,
shrieking piteously, came after them. The street was crowded with
people and soldiers, but no one put out his hand; and the man presently
overtook his wife and stabbed her in the back. We only knew of the rush,
but what it all meant we could not tell, till we saw the woman bleeding
from the stab, which, happily, was slight. Inquiry of the bystanders
developed the facts, but, singularly enough, scarcely a word of pity.
It was entirely a family affair, it seemed; the man, poor little fellow,
had a mistress, and his wife had maddened him with reproaches. _Come si
fa_? He had to stab her. The woman’s case was not one that appealed to
popular compassion, and the only words of pity for her which I heard
were expressed by the wife of a fruiterer, whom her husband angrily
silenced.