Chapter II (4)

Far other be the doom of my own friends--of pious bards and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian’s marble tables, or a perch in Quadri’s window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird’s-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the _trattoria_ the view is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship’s cabin. Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion and the _caffè_. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds--a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a _barchetta_ with his master, snuffs around. ‘Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?’ Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe’s nose it is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos’ jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little further we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo--the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped _chef_ are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of inspecting the larder--fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, etc., according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house; and the talk arising from the several little tables turns upon points of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the _cuisine_, or about the reasonable charges of this _trattoria_.... There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can sit a while over our cigarette and coffee until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a _giro_ in the gondola.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

VENETIAN CAFFÈS

What is Florian’s? It is the principal, largest, and most fashionable caffè on the Piazza di San Marco. The caffè in itself is in many respects a speciality of Venetian life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his comedies, so abundantly rich in local colouring, will not have failed to observe that the caffè plays a larger part in the life of Venice than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his accustomed caffè. Men of business write their letters and arrange their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most marked speciality of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the native female aristocracy frequents the caffè. Indeed, I know no place in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian’s on a brilliant midsummer moonlight night.

Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that every traveller finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of arcades that form the two long sides of the parallelogram which has the gorgeous front of St. Mark’s Church occupying the entirety of one of the shorter sides. Well, about half-way up the length of the piazza six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark’s Church are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed rooms, corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are very small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part of the throng which finds itself at Florian’s, quite as a matter of course, every fine summer’s night. But nobody thinks of entering these smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the hours of the day.

Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats under the arcade, either immediately in front of the cabinets or around the pillars which support the arches, and thus have an opportunity of observing the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of life that flows by them under the arcade. But the vast majority of the crowd place themselves on chairs arranged around little tables set out on the flags of the piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables are placed in long rows extending far out into the piazza, and far on either side beyond the extent of the six arches which are occupied by the caffè itself. A London or New York policeman would have his very soul revolted, and conclude that there must be something very rotten indeed in the state of a city in which the public way could be thus encumbered and no cry of ‘move on’ ever heard. Assuredly, it is public ground which Florian, in the person of his nineteenth-century representative, thus occupies with his tables and chairs. Probably, if a Venetian were asked by what right he does so, the question would seem to him much as if one asked by what right the tide covers the shallows of the lagoon. It always has been so. It is in the natural order of things. And how could Venice live without Florian’s?...

I am tempted to endeavour to give the reader some picture of the scene on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space, and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force--to describe the wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow tone of the great clock of St. Mark, with importunate warning that another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few traits of the popular life of Venice, which the magnificent Piazza of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy, which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.

But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of Venice, it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre of the piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which opens out of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon opposite the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the corner of the Ducal Palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which above our head is spanned by the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ with its ‘palace and a prison on each hand,’ as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the ‘Riva degli Schiavoni’--the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived, and arrive still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in Venice, paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic form of Venetian life from early morning till late into the night.

There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva, for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good one; and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and not too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for the Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know what coffee is, and will not take chicory or other such detestable substitutes in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen centimes--just over one penny--and study as he drinks it the moving and ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbour, perhaps, will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old ‘pantaloon,’ whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender, and rather delicately cut features, terminating in a long, narrow, and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sunken cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently _very_ poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of ‘The Ten’; his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking--which can do much, but, alas! not all things--can make them. His expenditure of a penny will entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline colour by the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys the cool evening breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of _dolce far niente_, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford him....

Presently a middle-aged woman and a girl of some fourteen years station themselves in front of the audience seated outside the caffè. The elder woman has a guitar, and the girl a violin and some sheets of music in her hand. The woman has her wonderful wealth of black hair grandly dressed, and as shining as oil can make it. She has large gilt earrings in her ears, a heavy coral necklace, and a gaudy-coloured shawl in good condition. Whatever might be beneath and below this, is in dark shadow--_et sic melius situm_. She is not starved, however, for, as she prepares to finger her guitar, she shows a well-nourished and not ill-formed arm. The young girl has one of those pale delicate, oval faces so common in Venice; she also has a good shawl--an amber-coloured one--which so sets off the olive-coloured complexion of her face as to make her a perfect picture. This couple do not in any degree assume an attitude of appealing _ad misericordiam_. They pose themselves _en artistes_. The girl sets about arranging her music in a businesslike way, and then they play the well-known air of ‘La Stella Confidente’ the little violinist really playing remarkably well. Then the elder woman comes round with a little tin saucer for our contributions. No slightest word or look of disappointment or displeasure follows the refusal of those who give nothing. The saucer is presented to each in turn. I supposed that the application to Si’or Pantaleone was an empty form. But no. That retired gentleman could still find wherewithal to patronize the fine arts, and dropped a centime--the fifth part of a cent--into the dish with the air of a prince bestowing the grand cross of the Golden Fleece.

Then comes a dealer in ready-made trousers, which Pantaloon examines curiously and cheapens. Then a body of men singing part-songs, not badly, but to some disadvantage, as they utterly ignore the braying of half a dozen trumpets which are coming along the Riva in advance of a body of soldiers returning to some neighbouring barracks. Then there are fruit sellers and fish sellers and hot-chestnut dealers, and, most vociferous of all, the cryers of ‘Acqua! acqua! acqua fresca!’ There, making its way among the numerous small vessels from Dalmatia, Greece, etc., moored to the quay of the Schiavoni, comes a boat from the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, which arrived this morning from Alexandria, with four or five Orientals on board. They come on shore, and proceed to saunter along the Riva towards the Grand Piazza, while their dark faces and brightly coloured garments add an element to the motley scene which is perfectly in keeping with old Venetian reminiscences.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE

Amid these fragments of heroic days,
When thought met deed with mutual passions’ leap,
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap
What short-lived rumour of ourselves we raise;
They had far other estimate of praise
Who stamped the signet of their soul so deep
In art and action, and whose memories keep
Their height like stars above our misty ways;
In this grave presence to record my name,
Something within me hangs the head and shrinks;
Dull were the soul without some joy in Fame:
Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks,
Like him who in the desert’s awful frame,
Notches his cockney initials on the sphinx.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

A TOUR ROUND VENICE WITH GOLDONI

IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The genius of Goldoni, like his character and his life, was in perfect harmony with his allotted work.... Given the style, no individual could be imagined more supremely its master: he had the perfect facility of conception, the perfect ease of execution, the absolute facility of finish and detail, the immense fecundity of the providentially sent artist. He was never at a loss for a subject, and never at a standstill for its treatment; a moment at a window, a glance round a drawing-room, a word caught in the street, was sufficient material for a comedy. The sight of the dirty grey-beard Armenian goody-seller, snarling out ‘Baggigi, Abaggigi’ over his basket of lollipops near the clock-tower of St. Mark’s, produced the delightful little play, ‘I pettegolezzi delle donne....’

Goldoni was best pleased with the humblest, forming in this a strange contrast with the French comic writers; the shopkeepers, ridiculous gullible M. Jourdains and Sganarelles in the eyes of Molière, never ceased to be respectable for Goldoni.... This democratic, domestic Goldoni naturally refused to show us the effeminate, corrupt Venice of nobles, and spies, and courtezans, which shameful adventurers like Casanova, heaping up all the ordure of their town and times, have made some of us believe to have been the sole, the real Venice of the eighteenth century. But Goldoni has another Venice to show, a Venice undiscovered by gallant idlers like the Président de Brosses, or pedantic guide-book makers like La Lande. Let us follow Goldoni across the Square of St. Mark’s, heedless of the crowd in mask and cloak, of the nobles in their silk robes, of the loungers at the gilded coffee-houses, of the gamblers and painted women lolling out of windows; let us pass beneath the belfry where the bronze twins strike the hours in vain for the idlers and vagabonds who turn day into night and night into day; and let us thread the network of narrow little streets of the _Merceria_. There, in those tall dark houses, with their dingy look-out on to narrow canals floating wisps of straw, or on to dreary little treeless, grassless squares, in those houses is the real wealth, the real honour, the real good of Venice; there, and not in the palaces of the Grand Canal, still lingers something of the spirit and the habits of the early merchant princes. Merchant princes no longer, alas! only shopkeepers and brokers, but thrifty, frugal, patriarchal as in olden days, the descendants of the great Pantalone de’ Bisognosi, once clothed in scarlet-lined robe and pointed cap, now dressed austerely in black, without hair-powder, gold lace, swords, or scarlet cloaks; active, honest, gruff, and puritanical.... Let us follow Goldoni yet further from St. Mark’s to the distant wharves, to the remoter canals and _campieli_, to the further islands of the archipelago of Venice, and he will show us all that remains of the force of the city, of the savage simplicity and austerity of the boatmen, and fishers, and working classes. There are the gondoliers, forming a link between the artisans and the seamen--a strange, Janus-like class which Goldoni loved to depict: servants of the upper classes, devoted, faithful, and pliant; steering along with equal indifference, political conspiracy, household corruption ... beneath the black, tasselled roof of their boats; witnesses of all the most secret life of the nobles and merchants, and, while on their prow, mute and cynical; but, once on shore, independent, arrogant, despising the indoor servants, contemptuous towards their masters, whose secrets they possess, frugal and austere at home, jealous and revengeful among each other. Goldoni has shown us the gondoliers seated on the slimy steps by their moored boats, exchanging witticism on witticism, criticizing the performances at the theatre, discussing city life with ineffable arrogance: he has shown them coming along the Grand Canal, chanting the flight of Erminia through the ancient forest; he has shown them, again, quarrelling in the narrow twisting canals, each refusing to make way for another, yelling and cursing, forcing their passengers to alight in terror, and then pursuing each other with their oars and their short, sharp _tatare_ daggers. The gondoliers, besides being good comic stuff for Goldoni, were an influential part of his audience, and had to be propitiated by being shown on the stage in all their originality and waywardness. The gondoliers lived, when off their boats, among a savage population of ferrymen, bargees, and fishers; poor, violent, and austere, whose daughters had at once the freedom of speech and strength of action of amazons, and the purity--nay prudery--of nuns: large-limbed, sunburnt, barefoot creatures, with the golden tints of hair and cheek of Titian and Palma, with the dark, savage eyes of an animal, with the arms of an athlete and the language of a trooper, of whom Goldoni has painted a magnificent portrait, idealized but intensely real, in his Bettina....

Let us call Goldoni’s favourite gondolier, the rough and caustic Menego Cainello, and bid him steer us through the last canals, among the remotest Venetian islands, leaving the towers of Venice behind us; bid him row us across the shallow open lagoon, with its vast, snake-like rows of sea-corroded posts, its stunted marine reeds, and its tangled sea-grass waving lazily on the rippled water; row on till we get to that tiny other Venice, still perhaps like the greater Venice in the days of her earliest Doges, to the little fishing-town of Chiozza. There, in the port, Goldoni will show us the heavy fishing-boat, grimy and oozy, just returned from a week’s cruise in the Adriatic, with her yellow sail, emblazoned with the winged lion, leisurely flapping, and her briny nets over her sides; the master of the boat, Paron Fortunato, is shouting in unintelligible dialect, Venetian further insularized into Chiozzot, and Chiozzot rarefied on sea into some strange nautical lisping jargon; the rest of the fishermen, Tita-Nane, and Menegheto, and Tonì, are collecting the fish they have brought into baskets, reserving the finest for His Excellency the Governor of Chiozza. And, when the fish are disposed of, follow we the fishermen to the main street of the little town, where, facing the beach, their wives, daughters, and sisters sit making lace on their cushions, chattering like magpies; some eating, others holding disdainfully aloof from the baked pumpkin with which the gallant peasant Toffolo Marmottina regales them. Suddenly a tremendous gabble begins, gabble turning into shrieking and roaring, and upsetting of chairs and cushions; and a torrent of abuse streams forth in dialect, and all is lost in scuffling confusion; the men come up, seize sticks, daggers, and stones, and rush to the rescue of their female relatives, till the police hasten up and separate the combatants. Then let us watch the recriminations of the lovers, hear them accusing each other of perfidy, calling each other dog, assassin, beggar, ginger-bread, jewel, pig, all in turns; clinging and nudging, weeping and roaring, till at length the good-natured little Venetian magistrate of Chiozza, contemptuously called ‘Mr. Wig-of-Tow’ (_Sior paruca de stopa_), makes up all the quarrels, bids the innkeeper send wine and pumpkins and delicious fried things, and, after regaling the pacified Chiozzoti and Chiozzote, calls for fiddles and invites them all to dance some _furlane_. Is it reality? Has Menego rowed us over the lagoon? Have we seen the ship come in and the fish put in baskets? Have we seen the women at their lace cushions? Have we heard that storm of cries, and shrieks, and clatter, and scuffling feet? Have we really witnessed this incident of fishing life on the Adriatic? No; we have only laid down a little musty volume at the place marked ‘Le Baruffe Chiozzotte.’

VERNON LEE.

VENETIAN BELLES

Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore,--
And at the moment when I fix my story,
That sea-born city was in all her glory.

They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch’d brows, and sweet expressions still;
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick’d ill;
And like so many Venuses of Titian’s
(The best’s at Florence--see it, if ye will),
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepp’d from out a picture by Giorgione,

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini’s palace go,
The picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to _your_ zest,
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so:
’Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,
And self; but _such_ a woman! love in life!...

I said that, like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they _are_,
Particularly seen from a balcony
(For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar),
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,
They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar;
And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty,
And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!

LORD BYRON.

A VENETIAN CARNIVAL

Little golden cloudlets, like winged living creatures, were hanging up in the rosy glow above Santa Maria della Salute, and all along the Grand Canal the crowded gondolas were floating in a golden haze, and all the westward-facing palace windows flashed and shone with an illumination which the lamps and lanterns that were to be lighted after sundown could never equal, burnt they never so merrily. It was Shrove Tuesday in Venice, Carnival time. The sun had been shining on the city and on the lagoons all day long. It was one of those Shrove Tuesdays which recall the familiar proverb--

‘Sunshine at Carnival,
Fireside at Easter.’

But who cares about the chance of cold and gloom six weeks hence when to-day is fair and balmy? A hum of joyous, foolish voices echoed from those palace façades, and floated out seaward, and rang along the narrow calle, and drifted on the winding waterways, and resounded under the innumerable bridges; for everywhere in the City by the Sea men, women, and children were making merry, and had given themselves up to a wild and childish rapture of unreasoning mirth, ready to explode into loud laughter at the sorriest jokes. An old man tapped upon the shoulder by a swinging paper lantern--a boy whose hat had been knocked off--a woman calling to her husband or her lover across the gay flotilla--anything was food for mirth on this holiday evening, while the great gold orb sank in the silvery lagoon, and all the sky over yonder Chioggia was dyed with the crimson afterglow, and the Chioggian fishing-boats were moving westward in all the splendour of their painted sails.