command of the Venetian forces and commissioned to drive the Turks from
the islands of Santa Maura and other strong places in the Ionian Sea. On
the eleventh of August 1687 a swift felucca brought to Venice news that
Morosini had taken Patras and Corinth, besides Santa Maura. In joyful
[Sidenote: _Bust of Francesco Morosini, Hall of the Council of Ten._]
enthusiasm the Senate forthwith voted the victor a bronze bust, which
was placed in hall of the Council of Ten, with the standard taken from
the Turks. It bears the inscription:--
FRANCISCO MAUROCENO
Peloponnesiaco adhuc viventi
Senatus.
Another monument in Venice recalls the glorious war of the Peloponnesus.
After having taken Athens, Morosini hastened to the Parthenon, for he
[Sidenote: _Quadri, 302; Rom. vii. 491._]
appears to have been a man of highly cultivated tastes. To his
inexpressible disappointment he found the temple half ruined, for the
Turks had used it as a powder magazine, and a Venetian bomb had blown it
up. Morosini was so much overcome that he broke out into lamentations
over a loss which nothing could replace. But there amidst piles of ruins
he saw two splendid lions of marble from Pentelicus, which he at once
caused to be placed on board his vessel, rather to save them, perhaps,
than to exhibit them as trophies. In Venice they were set up on each
side of the gate of the Arsenal.
Morosini was one of the few Venetian generals who was not made to suffer
for his success. When
[Sidenote: _1688. Rom. vii. 504._]
at the very height of his triumph he learnt that he was elected Doge,
and though he had little success in the campaign after that, and was
even dangerously ill, he was magnificently received when he returned to
Venice. Pope Alexander VIII., Ottoboni, sent him the staff and military
hat which it was customary to give to generals who had distinguished
themselves in war against infidels. But it was clear that in his absence
nothing could be accomplished, and he soon obtained permission of the
government to take command of the Venetian forces once more. His
departure on the twenty-fourth of May 1693 was a sort of national
festivity. The Senate went to fetch him in his own apartment, and a long
procession accompanied him to Saint Mark’s. Preceded by halberdiers,
singers, files of servants in liveries of scarlet velvet and gold, many
priests, canons, and the Patriarch himself, besides the traditional
silver trumpets, the Doge walked between the Pope’s nuncio and the
French ambassador. He wore the full dress of a Venetian
commander-in-chief, which was of gold brocade with a long train. But
even in his glory the Venetians noticed with displeasure and suspicion
that he carried in his hand the staff of the General, which he evidently
preferred to the sceptre of the Doge, and which suggested to the crowd
the thought that he might seize the supreme power.
[Illustration: THE NAVE OF S. STEFANO]
On the following day he embarked upon the Bucentaur, which took him on
board his flagship amidst the applause of the crowd, the pealing of the
church bells, and a salute of artillery from the fort of Saint Nicholas
on the Lido, as his vessel got under way.
The expedition proved of little advantage to the Republic, and cost
Morosini his life, for his health was undermined by the fatigues of his
previous campaigns, and he died in the Greek province of Romania, where
he had hoped to rest for a few weeks. His body was brought back to
Venice, and buried with great pomp in the church of Santo Stefano.
The war went on under his successor, Silvestro Valier, but it now
entered upon a new phase, for the Czar Peter the Great threatened the
Turks on their northern frontier, while the Venetian fleet held them in
check in the south. A treaty of peace was signed at Carlowitz in 1699,
by which the Republic kept her conquests in the Morea as far as the
isthmus of Corinth, including the islands of Egina, Santa Maura, and
other less important places. Dalmatia was also left to her, but she was
obliged to withdraw her troops from Lepanto and Romania on the north
side of the Gulf of Corinth.
From all this it is clear that the military spirit was still alive in
Venice, when the administration had almost
[Sidenote: _Rom. vii. 370, 371, 487; Quadri, 293._]
completely broken down. Nothing gives the measure of the situation
better than the fact that in order to meet the expenses of the war in
Crete any Venetian who would engage to support a thousand soldiers for
one year, or any foreigner who would support twelve hundred for the same
period, was allowed thereby to have and hold all the privileges of
nobility. This speculation was never sanctioned by law, and was even
rejected by the Great Council when proposed, but it was nevertheless
actually practised, and a number of seats in the Great Council were
sold to the highest bidder. The government went one step farther, and
sold the office of procurator of Saint Mark. The decadence had reached
the point of decay.
[Illustration: THE RIVA FROM THE DOGANA]
X
THE LAST HOMES--THE LAST GREAT LADIES
Two men, a painter and a dramatist, have left us the means of knowing
exactly what the eighteenth century
[Sidenote: _Pictures of Venetian life by Longhi; Accademia, Room XIV.,
and Museo Correr, Rooms II. and IX._]
was in Venice. It is not a paradox to say that Longhi painted comedies,
and that Goldoni wrote portraits. Both were Venetians, and they had the
courage to depict and describe respectively the glaring faults of their
own people, not realising, perhaps, that the general corruption was
beyond remedy, and that the end was at hand.
[Illustration: CAMPO S. BARTOLOMEO, STATUE OF GOLDONI]
Look at Longhi’s ‘Fortune-Teller’ or ‘Dancing-Master,’ at his ‘Tailor,’
his ‘Music-Master,’ or his ‘Toilet,’ and you may see precisely what the
Republic was when it died of old age; there are all the successions of
light colours, as in a pastel-painter’s box; you can hear the high
running laughter that rings from rosy lips, you can guess what dreams of
pleasure fill those pretty heads, and yet there is something sad about
it all; unless one belongs to that little band of human beings who love
the eighteenth century, it sets one’s teeth on edge--like the dance
music in the ‘Ballo in Maschera,’ danced while Riccardo is dying.
Something rings false; I think there is too much discrepancy between
what we see or read and what we really know about that time. About other
centuries, even the nineteenth and twentieth, we can still have
illusions, but the eighteenth was all a sham that went to pieces with
the French Revolution.
As for the position of women at that time, it was never lower. They were
dolls, and nothing more. They were perhaps more neglected in the
sixteenth century, but, at least in theory, there was still some respect
for them. In the eighteenth they existed only to adorn places of
amusement, theatres, and gambling houses. The biographer of that
remarkable woman, Giustina Renier Michiel, says they were so little
esteemed that it seemed useless to teach them anything, and he adds that
the Signory looked upon an educated woman as a being dangerous to
society and the State.
Most young girls of noble family were brought up in convents, where the
most crass ignorance accompanied the loosest ideas of morality. The
greater number of these convents were only nominally connected with the
ecclesiastical authorities. In practice
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 351._]
they were controlled by lay inspectors, ‘Provveditori sopra Monasteri,’
who were commissioned by the government to superintend the morals of
convents in general, but found it much more diverting to help in
undermining them.
While the girls were being brought up in such places, their father was
chiefly preoccupied in assuring and increasing the fortune which was to
be inherited by his eldest son. The natural consequence of this was that
the marriage portions of the daughters became smaller and smaller, so
that it was found hard to marry them at all, and much less troublesome
to leave them in their convents for life. Each of the fashionable
convents was a little court of noble ladies; in the one, Her Most
Reverend Excellency the Mother Abbess was a Rezzonico; in another, the
Noble Dame Eleonora Dandolo was Mistress of the Larder.
The scholars did not leave the convent at all while their education
lasted, but nothing was neglected which could amuse them, and their
principal lessons were in dancing, singing, and reciting verses. In
Carnival, the convent parlours were turned into theatres or ballrooms;
dames and cavaliers danced the minuet or the ‘furlana’; ‘Punch,’
‘Pantaloon,’ and ‘Pierrot’ vied with each other to make the bevies of
aristocratic young ladies laugh at jests they should never have
understood.
Even during the rest of the year the convents were what would now be
called brilliant social centres, to
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 92._]
which married women came accompanied by their officially recognised
‘cicisbei,’ while young gentlemen of leisure flirted with the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 61-62._]
scholars. It was even common for the girls to keep up a regular
correspondence with their admirers.
Take the following passage which I translate from Goldoni’s
autobiography, a book which may
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xix._]
be trusted and is singularly free from exaggeration. The adventure
happened to him in Chioggia.
I had always cultivated the acquaintance of the nuns of Saint
Francis, where there were some very beautiful scholars, and the
Signora B. (one of the nuns) had one under her direction who was
very lovely and very rich and amiable. She would have been exactly
to my taste, but my youth, my condition, and my want of fortune did
not allow me to entertain any illusions.
However, the nun did not refuse me hope, and when I went to see her
she always made the young lady come down to the parlour. I felt
that I should become attached to her in good earnest, and the
governess (the nun) seemed glad of it; and yet I could not believe
it possible. But one day I spoke to her of my inclination and of my
timidity; she encouraged me and confided the secret to me. This
young lady had good qualities and property, but there was something
doubtful about her birth. ‘This little defect is nothing,’ said the
veiled lady; ‘the girl is well behaved and well brought up, and I
will be surety to you for her character and conduct. She has a
guardian,’ she continued, ‘and he must be won over, but leave that
to me. It is true that this guardian, who is very old and ruined in
health, has some pretensions as to his ward, but he is wrong,
and--well, as I am also interested in this--leave it to me,’ she
repeated, ‘and I will manage for the best.’ I confess that after
this talk, after this confidence and this encouragement, I began to
think myself happy. The Signorina N. did not look unkindly on me,
and I considered the matter as settled. All the convent had noticed
my inclination for the pupil, and there were some young ladies who
knew the intrigues of the parlour and had pity on me, and explained
to me what was happening; and this is how they did it. The windows
of my room were precisely opposite the belfry of the convent. In
building it there had been placed in it several casements of cloudy
glass through which one could vaguely make out the outlines of
people who came near them. I had several times noticed at those
apertures, which were oblong, both figures and gestures, and in
time I was able to understand that the signs represented letters of
the alphabet, and that words were formed, and that one could talk
at a distance: almost every day I had half an hour of this mute
conversation, in which, however, we conversed properly and
decently.
By means of this hand-alphabet I learned that the Signorina N. was
very soon to be married to her guardian. Angry at the Signora B.’s
way of acting, I went to see her during the day in the afternoon,
quite determined to show her all my displeasure. She is sent for,
she comes, she looks steadily at me, and perceiving that I am
angry, guessing what had happened, she does not give me time to
speak but is the first to attack me vigorously, with a sort of
transport.
‘Well, sir,’ she said to me, ‘you are displeased, I see it in your
face’--I tried to speak, but she does not hear me, raises her voice
and goes on--‘Yes, sir, the Signorina N. is to be married, and she
is going to marry her guardian.’ I tried to raise my voice too.
‘Hush, hush,’ she cries, ‘listen to me; this marriage is my doing:
after having reflected upon it, I helped it on, and on your
account I wished to hasten it.’ ‘On my account?’ I said. ‘Hush,’
she replied, ‘you shall understand the conduct of a prudent woman
who has a liking for you. Are you,’ she went on, ‘in a position to
take a wife? No, for a hundred reasons. Was the Signorina to wait
your convenience? No, she had not the power to do so; it was
necessary to marry her; she might have married a young man and you
would have lost her forever. She marries an old man, a man in his
decline and who cannot live long; and though I am not acquainted
with the joys and disappointments of marriage, yet I know that a
young wife must shorten the life of an old husband, and so you will
possess a beautiful widow who will have been a wife only in name.
Be quite easy on this point, therefore; she will have improved her
own affairs, she will be much richer than she is now, and in the
meantime you will make your journey. And do not be in any anxiety
about her; no, my dear friend, do not fear; she will live in the
world with her old fellow and I shall watch over her conduct. Yes,
yes! She is yours, I will be surety to you for that, and I give you
my word of honour----’
And here comes in the Signorina N. and approaches the grating. The
nun says to me with an air of mystery, ‘Congratulate the young lady
on her marriage!’ I could bear it no longer; I make my bow and go
away without saying more. I never saw either the governess or her
pupil again, and thank God it was not long before I forgot them
both.
After reading such stories and looking into the archives of the
‘Superintendents of Convents,’ it is easy to understand that Pope
Gregory XIII.
[Sidenote: _Rom. vi. 360._]
should have exclaimed bitterly, ‘I am Pope everywhere except in Venice’;
and more than one of his successors in the eighteenth century had cause
to repeat his words. The Church protested in vain against the abuse of
the veil by Venetian ladies, for the State protected them on the
specious pretext of superintending their morals, and the remonstrances
of the popes and of the patriarchs of Venice were not even heard within
the walls of those sham cloisters. With such a system of education and
such examples the bankruptcy of morality was merely a question of time.
The number of marriages diminished amongst the aristocracy, and when a
young man made up his mind to matrimony he consulted nothing but his
financial interests.
The expenses of a fashionable marriage were considerable. There were
always several festive ceremonies in the bride’s house. The first was
the
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 86; Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xxvi._]
signature of the contract; the second, which followed soon afterwards,
was a gathering of all the relations and friends of the two families
with a sort of standing collation, and it was on this occasion that the
future bridegroom gave his betrothed the first present, which was
generally a big diamond set in other stones, and was called the
‘ricordino,’ the ‘little remembrance.’
A few days before the wedding the two families and their friends met
again, and if the man’s mother was still alive it was she who gave the
bride a pearl necklace; otherwise the duty fell to one of his near
female relations. This pearl necklace was thought absolutely
indispensable for the honour of the family, and the bride was bound to
put it on at once and to wear it till the end of the first year of her
marriage. Where it would have caused financial difficulty it was simply
hired for the time, and was returned to the jeweller at the end of the
year.
After her marriage every well-born woman took a ‘cicisbeo’ or ‘cavalier
servente.’ These cavaliers were in most cases, especially at the
beginning
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 13._]
of the century, neither young, nor handsome, nor the least lover-like,
though there were
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Grassi.’_]
exceptions to the rule. The choice of them was often the occasion of the
first conjugal dispute, and a lady of the Condulmer family retired to a
convent for life because her husband objected to the cavalier whom she
wanted.
The serving cavalier accompanied his lady on all occasions, for the
husband never did, and the two were
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 207, 303, and ix. II; Molmenti, Vita Priv._]
seen everywhere together, and especially under the felse of the gondola;
for ladies never used the gondola uncovered, even on beautiful summer
evenings. And they were perpetually out, so that grave historians inform
us that they only spent a few hours of the night in their palaces, and
during the day the time they needed for dressing. When required, the
‘cicisbeo’ waited on his lady instead of her maid; her smallest caprices
were his law, and she dragged him after her everywhere, to mass,
benediction, and the sermon. ‘The object of mass is to go to walk,’ said
Businallo in one of his satires, after saying that the proper purpose of
pilgrimages was to make a great deal of noise.
Not unfrequently the cicisbei were mere adventurers who pretended to be
great nobles from other Italian cities, and to have left their homes in
consequence of some misfortune.
Goldoni wrote a comedy called ‘Il Cavaliere e la Dama’ on the subject of
the ‘cicisbei,’ whom he calls ‘singular beings, martyrs to gallantry,
and slaves to the caprices of the fair sex.’ In speaking of this piece,
in his autobiography, he observes that he could not have printed the
word ‘cicisbeatura’ on the bill for fear of offending the numerous class
whom he intended to satirise.
He goes on to say of his play that a man is presented who is the husband
of one lady and the serving cavalier of another, and the mutual
satisfaction of the two women is exhibited. ‘A married woman,’ Goldoni
says, ‘complains to her cicisbeo that one of her lacqueys has been
disrespectful to her; the cavalier answers that the man should be
punished. “And whose business is it but yours to see that I am obeyed
and respected by my servants?” cries the lady.’
The playwright no doubt heard the speech in actual life. The cavalier
was the real master of the house in many families, yet now and then a
husband could be jealous, though not in the least in love.
Goldoni says that there were husbands who put up with their wives’
cavaliers in a submissive spirit, but that there were others who were
enraged
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, vol. ii. chap. x._]
by those strange beings, who were like second masters of the house in
disorganised families.
It is certain that the Venetian ladies cared more for gambling than for
adornment, or anything else. In the morning they wore a dress of more or
less rich stuff, but always black, and when they went out they wore a
long scarf, also black, which they disposed with much grace upon their
heads, crossed upon their bosom, and knotted loosely behind the waist.
This dress went by the general name of ‘Cendaleto,’ and it was the
custom to apply the appellation also to those who wore it. They said,
for instance, that there were so many ‘Cendaleti’ at a ceremony, meaning
that number of ladies. Giustina Renier Michiel, the historian of all
that was left of grace and beauty in Venice, says that the scarf had the
magic power of making the plainest women pretty.
Though dress was simple enough on ordinary occasions, conforming to
certain rules, yet on gala occasions the latest fashions were consulted.
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303._]
In earlier times Venice had set the fashion for the world, and
beautifully dressed dolls had been sent by the Venetian women’s tailors
as models to Paris. In the eighteenth century Paris sent dolls to
Venice. These dolls were exhibited at the fair of the Ascension, near
the entrance to the Merceria, and took the place of fashion-plates and
dressmakers’ journals. The men wore the cut-away coat, breeches, silk
stockings, shoes with buckles, wigs, and three-cornered hats, then
common throughout Italy and France; but they had invented a singular
fashion of their own, which was that of throwing a light mantle of
velvet, satin, or cloth over their hat and wig. It was called the
‘velada,’ and was adorned with embroidery, lace, or a fringe. In the
end, it was sometimes made of lace only. As the law did not allow any
member of the Great Council to appear in public without his toga, the
nobles introduced a fashion which soon became common in all classes;
they wore a black or white mask,
[Illustration: SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO]
and covered themselves entirely with a black silk mantle having a hood,
on the top of which they
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico; G. R. Michiel, i. 283._]
placed the three-cornered hat. This garment was nothing, in fact, but a
domino. Of course the women soon discovered the advantages of a dress in
which they could not only disguise themselves but could even pass for
men. The ‘Cendaleto’ remained as the proper dress for going out in the
morning, but in the afternoon and evening, at
[Illustration: NIGHT ON THE RIVA]
the theatre, at the ridotti, or in the piazza, the mask and domino
became indispensable, and men and women wore precisely the same
three-cornered hat.
It was soon noticed, however, that the domino did not tend to improve
the public morals, and a decree was issued limiting its use to the
period between the first Sunday in October and Advent Sunday, and during
Carnival and the festivities which took place at the Ascension.
The women, no doubt, amused themselves in various ways, not excepting
that form of diversion in which women have such marked advantages over
men; but their chief enjoyment, if not their principal occupation, was
gambling. Games of chance were played for very high stakes in the
ridotti, which were gaming-clubs, not much better than the ‘hells’ of
modern cities. The most celebrated was that connected with the theatre
of San Moisè, which the government protected as a useful social
institution. A patrician, generally a senator, presided in his toga at
the tables, in order to see that there was no cheating. The singular
rule of admission was that one must be either noble or masked, and the
consequence was that the Venetian ridotti were frequented not only by
the Venetians themselves, but by half the gamblers, adventurers, and
blacklegs in Europe.
King Frederick IV. of Denmark once visited San Moisè disguised in a
domino, and won a large sum of money from a Venetian noble who was
[Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Ridotto.’_]
risking the last remains of his fortune. On being told the
circumstances, he pretended to stumble, upset the table with all the
money on it, and disappeared, leaving the embarrassed gentleman to pick
up his gold again, which he did with marvellous alacrity. The number of
players at San Moisè was so great that in 1768 the government enlarged
the place, using for the purpose the proceeds of property confiscated
from the nuns, which terribly scandalised the population and provoked
some bitter epigrams. At the ridotto the most illustrious patrician
ladies quarrelled for places at the table with ladies of no character at
all, and a contemporary observes that in order to pay their gambling
debts and continue to
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 54._]
amuse themselves, they were reduced to the last extremity. He adds that
they played from the hour of tierce, which is half-way between dawn and
noon at all times of the year.
In 1780, when the Republic had but a few years more to live, the two
ridotti of San Moisè and San
[Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 303, and ix. II._]