she behaved with the greatest devotion to her daughter and her
grandchildren. ‘I have hardly any company but that of children,’ she
wrote to a friend. ‘I think very highly of their patience, since there
is between me and them the same distance of age which exists between
them and me. I find I have nothing in common with them but the taste for
“anguria,” and this is a good argument for the truth of what I say.’
Her most intimate friend was Isabella Teodochi Albrizzi. This lady was
born in Greece, and was a passionate worshipper of the beautiful; her
taste in all matters seems to have been more delicate than Giustina’s
and her character was much more gay and forgetful. Giustina lived in the
past, Isabella in the present. Everything about Giustina was Venetian,
the mantilla she wore on her head, the furniture she had in her house,
the refreshments she offered her friends; to the very last everything
connected with her belonged to the eighteenth century. With Isabella
Albrizzi nothing, on the contrary, was Venetian, nothing was durable; at
one moment the French taste ordered her furniture, her bibelots, and her
books, and provided her with subjects of conversation; at another,
everything about her was English. ‘When you left the Michiel’s
drawing-room you had learned to love Venice,’ says her biographer; ‘when
you left Madame Albrizzi’s drawing-room you had learned to love Madame
Albrizzi.’
They died nearly at the same time. Giustina breathed her last at the age
of seventy-seven on April sixth, 1832, surrounded by her grandchildren
and her friends. Andrea Maffei wrote that the death of Giustina Michiel
was indeed a public loss. ‘To the excellence of her mind she united in a
high degree the beauty of her character, and I know of no writer who
more dearly loved his country than she.’
[Illustration]
XI
THE LAST CARNIVALS--THE LAST FAIRS THE LAST FEASTS
No people ever combined business with pleasure so advantageously as the
Venetians, and few governments have understood as well as theirs how to
make use of amusement in managing the people; indeed, the method was so
convenient that at last the Signory preferred it to all others, and took
most pains to promote the public gaiety just when the Republic was on
the verge of dissolution. There is something unnatural
[Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 213._]
in the contrast between the outward life and the inward death of Venice
in those last years; something that reminds one of the strangest tales
ever told by Hoffmann or Edgar Poe.
Never dull, even at the last, all Venice went mad with delight at the
feast of the Ascension, when the great fair was held. It will be
remembered that Pope
[Sidenote: _1177._]
Alexander III., on the occasion of his visit to Venice, issued a brief
granting numerous indulgences to all persons who would pray in the
basilica of Saint Mark between the hour of Vespers on the eve of
Ascension Day and Vespers on the day itself; and the brief concluded by
invoking the malediction of heaven on any one who should oppose this
practice or destroy the document itself.
With their usual keen eye for business, the Venetians saw at once that
while their souls were profiting by the much-needed indulgence, their
pockets could be conveniently filled without vitiating that state of
grace which is especially necessary during such religious exercises.
Many strangers from the mainland would visit the city on the
anniversary, and by holding out a rational and sufficient inducement
they could be made to come again, in greater numbers, year after year.
Nothing was so sure to attract a rich class of pilgrims as a great
annual fair, and to make their coming absolutely certain it was only
necessary to suspend the duties on imported wares during eight days.
The first Ascension Fair was held in the year 1180, when Orio
Mastropiero was Doge, and it was a vast financial and popular success.
Merchants of all the nations of the earth spread out their merchandise
for sale in booths and tents, and under every sort of improvised
shelter. For more than a week the Square of Saint Mark’s was a vast
bazaar of little shops, following the most irregular and winding lanes,
just wide enough for two persons. Every merchant, foreign or Venetian,
was free to set up his booth as he pleased and where he pleased, and
there were thousands of them, in each of which at least one person had
to sleep at night. The effect of it all must have been vastly
picturesque, as many things were when effect was never thought of.
The annual fair was held in this same way for about five hundred years,
during which time it did not occur to any of the Signory that the
contrast between the amazing irregularity of the bazaar and the solemn
symmetry of the surrounding architecture was disagreeable.
[Sidenote: _1678._]
Then in the Barocco age came artificial taste and set things to rights,
and the Senate issued a decree ordering that the shops should be set up
in straight lines, and by squares, like Chicago; and it seems to me that
about that time the Ascension Fair turned itself into the first
Universal Industrial Exhibition. From that time there was a commission
established to which all exhibitors were required to send a detailed
list of their merchandise. There were no prizes and no medals, yet I
have no doubt but that the result was much the same, and that certain
houses of merchant-manufacturers made their reputations and their
fortunes on the strength of the impression they created at the Venetian
Fair.
It was destined to be still more like a modern exhibition. In 1776 the
Signory commissioned an architect to put up a vast oval building of
wood, like a double portico, looking both inwards and outwards, and
almost filling the Square of Saint Mark’s. It was very practically
arranged, for to those who sold the more valuable objects shops were
assigned on the inside of the oval, where they were better protected,
and the shops on the outside, facing the porticoes of the Procuratie,
were filled with the more ordinary wares, which would naturally attract
more buyers from the lower classes.
On this occasion painters and sculptors exhibited their work, and
Canova, who was then but nineteen years old, is said to have shown one
of
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, vol. i. 279._]
his earliest groups. But we learn without surprise that the products
offered for sale by Venetians
[Sidenote: _Marble Group, Daedalus and Icarus, Accademia, Room XVII._]
were of inferior quality, and that there was a bad contrast between the
showy architectural shops and the poor wares they contained. The end was
at hand, and Venetian manufacture was dead.
But the people cared not for that, and were as gay and happy over the
Fair as their ancestors had been hundreds of years ago. It mattered
nothing to them; if the wares were poor, the charlatans who cried them
up were wittier than ever. There was one in particular, a certain Doctor
Buonafede Vitali of Parma, who employed four celebrated actors, one of
whom was Rubini, famous in Goldoni’s companies; they were dressed in the
four Italian theatrical masks, and by their clever improvisations and
witty sallies they advertised the doctor’s miracles, and amused the
clients that waited to be cured by him.
There were professional jesters, too, who joked on their own account,
and there was usually somewhere a black African buffoon-contortionist;
and there were long-legged tumblers, called ‘guaghe,’ absurdly dressed
as women, who kept the crowd laughing, and while the people looked on
they chewed the pods of carobs, which were sold off trays with nuts and
other things by the Armenians who moved about in the throng. In the
motley multitude nobles and magistrates
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult._]
and foreign ambassadors elbowed each other, and great ladies and light
ladies, all effectually disguised under the ‘tabarro,’ the ‘bauta,’ and
the mask, which were allowed in public during the Fair.
The Espousal of the Sea was the great ceremony of the week, and the one
which most directly recalled the visit of Alexander III. It was last
performed by the last Doge in 1796, the six-hundred-and-eighteenth time,
I believe, since its institution, and all the ancient ceremonial was
carefully followed.
On the eve of the Ascension, the Bucentaur was hauled out of the Arsenal
and anchored off the Piazzetta
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Lessico._]
in full view of the delighted population. It was no longer the ‘Busus
aureus,’ built by the Senate in 1311, and towed by a small boat from
Murano, called the ‘peota.’ In four hundred years new ones had been
constructed several times, and the last
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE MIRACLE]
Bucentaur was built in 1728. It was about one hundred and fifteen feet
over all, with twenty-two feet beam, and was twenty-six feet deep from
upper poop-deck to keel. In length and beam it had therefore about the
dimensions of a fair-sized schooner yacht, but it was vastly higher out
of water, and was flat-bottomed, so as to draw very little. The
consequence was that even in smooth water it might have been laid over
by a squall, and it was never used except in absolutely fine weather. It
was rowed by one hundred and seventy-eight free artisans from the
Arsenal, who swung forty-two oars, each of which, however, according to
the model now preserved, consisted of three, linked and swung together
in one rowlock. The rowers occupied what we should call the main deck,
and the upper deck was fitted up
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, Origini, i. 197._]
as one long cabin or saloon, taking the whole length of the vessel, but
rising by a step at the after end, and having a small window at the
stern from which the Doge threw out the ring in the course of the
ceremony. His throne was further raised by two steps. Over the cabin
were spread enormous draperies of crimson velvet, ornamented with gold
fringe, gold lace, and gold tassels. In the stern, within the cabin, was
figured a marine Victory with appropriate trophies, and two carved
babies, of the rotund and well-creased breed dear to the eighteenth
century, supported a huge shell as a canopy over the throne. The fair
Giustina Michiel’s description of the decorations makes one’s blood run
cold. Prudence and Strength stood sentinels at the Doge’s elbows. In the
ceiling of the saloon Apollo smiled upon the nine Muses, pleased to
consider the Bucentaur as his temple; the Virtues were inappropriately
present, too, and with more reason the Arts, or Occupations, of
Shipbuilding, Fishing, Hunting, and the like. The saloon had no less
than forty-eight windows, from which the numerous party of ambassadors,
magistrates, and distinguished strangers who accompanied the Doge could
see all that went on. Lastly, the vessel’s figurehead was a colossal
wooden statue of Justice, ‘protecting goddess of every well-regulated
government,’ says the lady Giustina, and therefore as inappropriate
there as the Virtues themselves.
At the hour of tierce, which was somewhere near eight o’clock in the
morning at Ascension, all the bells began to ring, except, I think, that
solemn one that tolled while condemned men were being led to death; and
excepting, too, that one of lighter tone, the ‘Bankrupt’s Bell,’ which
was rung every day for half an hour about noon, during which time
debtors might walk abroad and sun themselves without being arrested.
Then the Doge came from his palace preceded by his squires, and the
silver trumpets, and the standards, and the bearer of the ducal sword,
and the
[Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali._]
Missier Grande, who was nothing more nor less than the head constable of
Venice; and after his Serenity came the High Chancellor, the Pope’s
Nuncio, the ambassadors, and the principal magistrates. When all were on
board the Bucentaur, a salute of artillery gave the signal of departure,
and the huge oars began to swing and dip; and after the big barge came
the smaller one of the ‘Doge’ of the fishermen, the Niccolotti, the
little ‘peota’ of the Murano glass-blowers, and the barges and boats of
the Signory, and all the gondolas of Venice, richly draped for that one
day. So all moved slowly out; and when they passed the statue of the
Virgin before the Arsenal all the people sang, and sent up prayers and
invocations with suppliant gestures ‘to the Great Mother of Victories,’
and the sailors cheered and yelled. Then they went on to Saint Helen’s
island.
There the Patriarch was waiting with his flat boat, and the monks of
Saint Helen served him a collation of chestnuts and red wine, which, at
eight or nine o’clock in the morning, was cruelly ungastronomic; and the
Patriarch gave his sailors bread and fresh broad beans in the shell.
The Patriarch sent acolytes to the Doge with a nosegay of Damascus
roses; and his flat boat having been taken in tow by the Bucentaur, and
another boat in which a choir sang the hymns composed for the occasion,
they all moved out towards the open sea.
Then, in profound silence, the Doge opened the little stern window
behind his throne, and the Patriarch,
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venice._]
who had come on board, poured holy water into the sea and prayed,
saying, ‘Lord, vouchsafe calm and quiet weather to all them that journey
by sea’; after which prayer the Patriarch handed the ring to the Doge,
who dropped
[Sidenote: _Carrer, Annali._]
it into the sea just where the holy water had been poured, saying, ‘We
espouse thee, O Sea, in token of perpetual sovereignty.’
The guns of the fortresses thundered out a salute, and all the thousands
of spectators cheered for Saint Mark, and all the young men waved flags;
then the whole company began to throw flowers, freshly cut, from boat to
boat, and the Patriarch presented great silver dishes full of flowers to
the Doge; and all went ashore at San Nicola on the Lido to hear the
pontifical high mass, after which every man went home to his own house.
That was the ceremony at which the Venetians assisted in 1796, little
guessing that they saw it for the last time. A few months later a vandal
mob
[Sidenote: _Rom. x. 305; Mutinelli, Lessico and Ult._]
beached the Bucentaur on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and
stripped it of all its ornaments, to burn them and get the gold. The
hull was then armed with four heavy old guns, and was turned into a sort
of floating battery and sailors’ prison at the entrance of the harbour.
On her stern was painted her new name ‘Idra,’ the Hydra, and there she
rotted for years. A few fragments of the old vessel are now preserved in
the Arsenal. More than two hundred men worked at reducing the Bucentaur
and the two big carved boats of the Signory to the democratic standard
of beauty.
The last pilot of the Bucentaur was Andrea Chiribini, who, like all his
predecessors, called himself ‘admiral,’ and was a ruffian not worth the
rope with
[Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult.; Bembo, Ben. 265._]
which he should have been hanged when he was young. He was one of the
worst types in the Venetian revolution; and after living all his life on
the bounty of the Signory, he was the first to help in breaking up the
Bucentaur, and in sacking the Arsenal. In order to reward him for these
noble acts of patriotism, and in the absence of appropriate funds, he
was given a magnificent carved jewel of oriental chalcedony from the
treasure of Saint Mark. The talisman did not bring the fellow luck.
After wandering about for nearly thirty years, living more or less
dishonestly by his wits,
[Illustration: THE PROCESSION OF THE REDENTORE]
he presented himself one day in 1826 at one of the asylums for the poor,
where he spent a day; but when towards evening he was requested to put
on the dress of the establishment, he flew into such a terrible rage
that he had fever all night, and had to be watched. On the following
morning he shook the dust from his feet and departed, declaring that a
gentleman like himself could not live among such brigands. During two
years the workmen of the Arsenal subscribed to give him a pittance; at
the end of that time, feeling that his days were numbered, he consented
to enter the little hospice of Saint Ursula, which a pious person of the
fourteenth century had founded for the perpetual support of three poor
old men.
It is said that the last Carnival of Venice was the gayest in all her
history, and fully realised the condition of things described by Goldoni
some years earlier in his comedy _La Mascherata_. I translate the
couplet into prose:--
Here the wife and there the husband,
Each one does as best he likes;
Each one hastens to some party,
Some to gamble, some to dance.
Provided every one in Carnival
May do exactly as he chooses,
It would not seem a serious matter
Even to go raving mad.
A good many different traditional and legendary feasts amused the
Venetians in old times, but the only one that has survived to our own
day is
[Sidenote: _G. R. Michiel, iii. 389._]
the Festa del Redentore, the feast of the Redeemer, which was instituted
as a thanksgiving after the cessation of the plague in 1576, and is kept
even now both as a civil and religious holiday. The serenades,
illuminations, and feasts in the island of the Giudecca certainly
delight the Venetian populace of to-day as much as in the times when the
old flag of Saint Mark floated over everything, and the little movable
kitchens on wheels were adorned with the symbols of the Evangelist
prettily outlined with flowers on a ground of green leaves.
The central point of all amusement in Carnival was the theatre, for the
Venetians always had a passion for spectacles, and, at a time when the
worst possible taste debased the stage throughout Italy, the reform
which has since raised the Italian theatre so high began in Venice with
Goldoni’s comedies. Properly speaking, there was no dramatic art in
Italy before him. As I have explained in speaking of the sixteenth
century, the Hose Club founded the first theatre, but most of the
performances were what we still call mummeries, in which more or less
symbolic personages said anything witty or profound that occurred to
them, or talked nonsense in the absence of inspiration. Pantaloon was
the national mask of Venice, and was always supposed to be a doctor who
became involved in the most astonishing adventures. Valaresso, a man of
taste in those days, produced a play that ended with a battle supposed
to be fought behind the scenes. In his satire the poet makes the
prompter appear upon the stage carrying a little lamp. ‘Ladies and
[Sidenote: _Aureli, Vita del Pergolesi._]
gentlemen,’ he says, ‘I see that you are expecting some one to bring you
news of the battle; but it is of no use to wait, for every one is dead.’
Thereupon he blows out his lamp, and goes off to bed.
In his memoirs Goldoni explains the rules then followed by dramatic
authors. He had occasion to
[Sidenote: _Goldoni, i. xxviii._]
learn them himself when he read his first piece, _Amalasunta_, to Count
Prata, director of one of the large theatres in Milan.
‘It seems to me,’ said the Count, ‘that you have studied tolerably
well the _Poetics_ of Aristotle and the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace,
and that you have written your composition according to the true
principles of tragedy. Then you did not know that a musical drama
is an imperfect work, subject to rules and traditions which have no
common sense, it is true, but which must be followed to the very
letter. If you had been in France you might have thought more of
pleasing the public, but here you must please actors and actresses,
you must satisfy the composer of the music, you must consult the
scene-painter; everything has its rules, and it would be a crime of
_lèse majesté_ against the art of playwriting to dare to break them
or not to submit to them. Listen to me,’ he continued, ‘I am going
to point out to you some rules which are unchangeable, and which
you do not know. Each of the three principal characters in the
drama must sing five airs--two in the first act, two in the second
act, and one in the third. The second actress and the second “man”
soprano can only have three, and the third parts must be satisfied
with one, or two at the most. The author of the words must provide
the musician with the different shades which form the chiaroscuro
of the music, taking good care that two pathetic airs shall not
follow each other. It is also necessary to separate with the same
care showy airs, airs of action, of undefined character, minuets,
and rondeaux. One must be especially careful to give no airs of
affection or movement nor showy airs nor rondeaux to the second
parts. These poor people must be contented with what is assigned to
them, for they are not allowed to make a good figure.’
Count Prata would have said more, but Goldoni stopped him, for he had
heard quite enough. He went home in that state of mind which some young
authors have known, and obtained a sort of morbid satisfaction from
burning his manuscript.
‘As I was poking the pieces of my manuscript together to complete
the burning,’ he says, ‘it occurred to me that in no case had any
disappointment made me sacrifice my supper. I called the waiter,
and told him to lay the cloth and bring me something to eat at
once.... I ate well, drank better, went to bed and slept with the
most perfect tranquillity.’
Goldoni was of the strong, to whom is the race.
[Sidenote: _Portrait of Goldoni, P. Longhi; Museo Civico, Room IX._]
From the ashes of his Amalasunta rose comedies that reformed the Italian
stage.
The composers were not much better off than the playwrights.
‘The modern master,’ says Marcello, ‘must make his manager give him
a large orchestra of violins, hautboys, horns,
[Sidenote: _Teatro alla moda, Benedetto Marcello, quoted by
Molmenti in Nuovi Studi._]
and so forth, saving him rather the expense of the double basses,
as he need not use these except for giving the chords at the
beginning. The Symphony is to consist of a French time, or
_prestissimo_ of semiquavers in major, which as usual must be
succeeded by a _piano_ of the same key in minor, closing finally in
a minuet, gavotte, or jig, again in the major, thus avoiding
fugues, _legature_, themes, etc., etc., as old things outside of
the modern fashion. He will endeavour to give the best airs to the
prima donna, and if he has to shorten the opera he will not allow
the suppression of airs or roundels.’
The same master observes wittily that the authors of the words to
accompany this sort of music generally excused themselves from reading
the works of older writers, on the ground that the latter had not been
able to read their successors, but had, nevertheless, done very well.
When the playwright or musician had succeeded in pleasing the actors,
the actresses, the manager, the scene-painter, and all the rest of the
company, he still had to please the Council of Ten, not to mention the
Inquisitors of State and the Inquisitors of the Holy Office, for they
all had something to say in the censorship of the theatre.
The infamous Jacopo Casanova, who amongst a number of ignoble
occupations acted as a confidant or spy to the Council of Ten, called
attention
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi, 300._]
in 1776 to a piece called _Coriolanus_, which was being given in the
theatre of San Benedetto. It appears to have been a sort of pantomime,
which presented on the stage a starving population, a cruel nobility,
the unjust condemnation of Coriolanus, the tears of Virgilia and
Volumnia, everything, in short, which, according to the scrupulous
Casanova, could pervert the Venetian people; and the Inquisitors
accordingly suppressed the piece.
Sometimes these gentlemen shut up the provincial theatres altogether for
a time with a view to stopping the advance of modern ideas. Here is an
edict relating to these measures of prudence, signed by the Doge one
year before the fall of the Republic. The first paragraph is in Latin,
the rest is in Italian.
Ludovicus Manin, by the grace of God Doge of Venice,
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Nuovi Studi._]
to the noble and wise man, Federicus Bembo, by his commission
Podestà and Captain of Mestre, Fid. Dil. Sal. et Dil. Aff. [_Fideli
dilecto salutem et dilectionis affectum._]