A Wanderer in Venice Part 14

When the ride was over and the two poets were returning in Byron's (or Count Maddalo's) gondola, there was such an evening view as one often has, over Venice, and beyond, to the mountains. Sh.e.l.ley describes it:--

Paved with the image of the sky ... the h.o.a.r And aery Alps towards the North appeared Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills: they were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peaked isles-- And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering as from waves of flame Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent.

Browning never tired, says Mrs. Bronson, of this evening view from the Lido, and always held that these lines by Sh.e.l.ley were the best description of it.

The poem goes on to describe a visit to the madhouse of S. Clemente and the reflections that arose from it. Towards the close Sh.e.l.ley says:--

If I had been an unconnected man I, from this moment, should have formed some plan Never to leave sweet Venice,--for to me It was delight to ride by the lone sea; And then, the town is silent--one may write Or read in gondolas by day or night, Having the little brazen lamp alight, Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there.

Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair Which were twin-born with poetry, and all We seek in towns, with little to recall Regrets for the green country.

Later in 1818 Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley joined her daughter in Venice, but it was a tragic visit, for their daughter Clara died almost immediately after they arrived. She is buried on the Lido.

In a letter to Peac.o.c.k, Sh.e.l.ley thus describes the city: "Venice is a wonderfully fine city. The approach to it over the laguna, with its domes and turrets glittering in a long line over the blue waves, is one of the finest architectural delusions in the world. It seems to have--and literally it has--its foundations in the sea. The silent streets are paved with water, and you hear nothing but the dashing of the oars, and the occasional cries of the gondolieri. I heard nothing at Ta.s.so. The gondolas themselves are things of a most romantic and picturesque appearance; I can only compare them to moths of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis. They are hung with black, and painted black, and carpeted with grey; they curl at the prow and stern, and at the former there is a nondescript beak of shining steel, which glitters at the end of its long black ma.s.s.

"The Doge's Palace, with its library, is a fine monument of aristocratic power. I saw the dungeons, where these scoundrels used to torment their victims. They are of three kinds--one adjoining the place of trial, where the prisoners destined to immediate execution were kept. I could not descend into them, because the day on which I visited it was festa.

Another under the leads of the palace, where the sufferers were roasted to death or madness by the ardours of an Italian sun: and others called the Pozzi--or wells, deep underneath, and communicating with those on the roof by secret pa.s.sages--where the prisoners were confined sometimes half-up to their middles in stinking water. When the French came here, they found only one old man in the dungeons, and he could not speak."

CHAPTER XIII

THE GRAND Ca.n.a.l. VI: FROM THE MOCENIGO PALACE TO THE MOLO, LOOKING TO THE LEFT

Mr. W.D. Howells--A gondoliers' quarrel--Mr. Sargent's Diploma picture--The Barbarigo family--Ruskin's sherry--Palace hotels--The Venetian balcony.

The next palace, with dark-blue posts, gold-topped, and mural inscriptions, also belonged to the Mocenigo, and here Giordano Bruno was staying as a guest when he was betrayed by his host and burned as a heretic. Then comes the dark and narrow Calle Mocenigo Casa Vecchia.

Next is the great ma.s.sive palace, with the square and round porphyry medallions, of the Contarini dalle Figure; the next, with the little inquisitive lions, is the Lezze. After three more, one of which is in a superb position at the corner, opposite the Foscari, and the third has a fondamenta and arcade, we come to the great Moro-Lin, now an antiquity store. Another little modest place between narrow calli, and the plain eighteenth-century Gra.s.si confronts us. The Campo of S. Samuele, with its traghetto, church, and charming campanile, now opens out. The church has had an ugly brown house built against it. Then the Malipiero, with its tropical garden, pretty marble rail and brown posts, and then two more antiquity stores with hideous facades, the unfinished stonework on the side of the second of which, with the steps and sottoportico, was to have been a palace for the Duke of Milan, but was discontinued.

Next the Rio del Duca is the pretty little Palazzo Falier, from one of whose windows Mr. Howells used to look when he was gathering material for his _Venetian Life_. Mr. Howells lived there in the early eighteen-sixties, when a member of the American Consulate in Venice. As to how he performed his consular duties, such as they were, I have no notion; but we cannot be too grateful to his country for appointing him to the post, since it provided him with the experiences which make the most attractive Anglo-Saxon book on Venice that has yet been written. It is now almost half a century since _Venetian Life_ was published, and the author is happily still hale.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHILD FROM THE PAINTING BY GIOVANNI BELLINI _In the Accademia_]

It was not at the Palazzo Falier that Mr. Howells enjoyed the ministrations of that most entertaining hand-maiden Giovanna; but it was from here that he heard that quarrel between two gondoliers which he describes so vividly and which stands for every quarrel of every gondolier for all time. I take the liberty of quoting it here, because one gondolier's quarrel is essential to every book that hopes to suggest Venice to its readers, and I have none of my own worth recording. "Two large boats, attempting to enter the small ca.n.a.l opposite at the same time, had struck together with a violence that shook the boatmen to their inmost souls. One barge was laden with lime, and belonged to a plasterer of the city; the other was full of fuel, and commanded by a virulent rustic. These rival captains advanced toward the bows of their boats, with murderous looks,

Con la test'alta e con rabbiosa fame.

S che parea che l'aer ne temesse,

and there stamped furiously, and beat the wind with hands of deathful challenge, while I looked on with that n.o.ble interest which the enlightened mind always feels in people about to punch each others'

heads.

"But the storm burst in words.

"'Figure of a pig!' shrieked the Venetian, 'you have ruined my boat for ever!'

"'Thou liest, son of an ugly old dog!' returned the countryman, 'and it was my right to enter the ca.n.a.l first.'

"They then, after this exchange of insult, abandoned the main subject of dispute, and took up the quarrel laterally and in detail. Reciprocally questioning the reputation of all their female relatives to the third and fourth cousins, they defied each other as the offspring of a.s.sa.s.sins and prost.i.tutes. As the peace-making tide gradually drifted their boats asunder, their anger rose, and they danced back and forth and hurled opprobrium with a foamy volubility that quite left my powers of comprehension behind. At last the townsman, executing a _pas seul_ of uncommon violence, stooped and picked up a bit of stone lime, while the countryman, taking shelter at the stern of his boat, there attended the shot. To my infinite disappointment it was not fired. The Venetian seemed to have touched the climax of his pa.s.sion in the mere demonstration of hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the countryman the right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the strange danger pa.s.sed, and as far as he could be heard, he continued to exult in the wildest excesses of insult: 'Ah-heigh! brutal executioner!

Ah, hideous headsman!' Da capo. I now know that these people never intended to do more than quarrel, and no doubt they parted as well pleased as if they had actually carried broken heads from the encounter. But at the time I felt affronted and trifled with by the result, for my disappointments arising out of the dramatic manner of the Italians had not yet been frequent enough to teach me to expect nothing from it."

I too have seen the beginning of many quarrels, chiefly on the water.

But I have seen only two Venetians use their fists--and they were infants in arms. For the rest, except at traghetti and at the corners of ca.n.a.ls, the Venetians are good-humoured and blessed with an easy smiling tolerance. Venice is the best place in the world, and they are in Venice, and there you are! Why lose one's temper?

Next the Casa Falier is a calle, and then the great Giustinian Lolin Palace with brown and yellow posts. Taglioni lived here for a while too.

Another calle, the Giustinian, a dull house with a garden and red and white striped posts, and we are at the Iron Bridge and the Campo S.

Vitale, a small poor-people's church, with a Venetian-red house against it, and inside, but difficult to see, yet worth seeing, a fine picture by Carpaccio of a saint on horseback.

The magnificent palace in good repair that comes next is the Cavalli, with a row of bronze dragons on the facade. This is the home of the Franchetti family, who have done so much for modern Venice, conspicuously, as we have seen, at the Ca d'Oro. Then the Rio dell'Orso o Cavana, and the Palazzo Barbaro with its orange and red striped posts, a beautiful room in which will be familiar to all visitors to the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, for it is the subject of one of Mr.

Sargent's most astounding feats of dexterity. It is now the Venetian home of an American; and once no less a personage than Isabella d'Este lived in it very shortly after America was discovered. The older of the two Barbaro palaces is fourteenth century, the other, sixteenth. They will have peculiar interest to anyone who has read _La Vie d'un Patricien de Venise au XVI Siecle_, by Yriarte, for that fascinating work deals with Marcantonio Barbaro, who married one of the Giustiniani and lived here.

Nothing of importance--a palace with red and gold posts and an antiquity store--before the next rio, the beautiful Rio del Santissimo o di Stefano; nor after this, until the calle and traghetto: merely two neglected houses, one with a fondamenta. And then a pension arises, next to which is one of the most coveted abodes in the whole ca.n.a.l--the little alluring house and garden that belong to Prince Hohenlohe. The majestic palace now before us is one of Sansovino's buildings, the Palazzo Corner della Ca Grande, now the prefecture of Venice. Opposite it is the beautiful Dario palace and the Venier garden. Next is the Rio S. Maurizio and then two dingy Barbarigo palaces, with shabby brown posts, once the home of a family very famous in Venetian annals. Marco Barbarigo was the first Doge to be crowned at the head of the Giants'

Stairs; it was while his brother Agostino was Doge (1486-1501) that Venice acquired Cyprus, and its queen, Caterina Corner, visited this city to abdicate her throne. Cardinal Barbarigo, famous not only for his piety but for refusing to become Pope, was born in this house.

Then the Rio S. Maria Zobenigo o dei Furlani and a palace, opposite the steamboat station. Another palace, and then a busy traghetto, with vine leaves over its shelter, and looking up the campo we see the church of S. Maria del Giglio with all its holy statues. Ruskin (who later moved to the Zattre) did most of his work on _The Stones of Venice_ in the house which is now the Palazzo Swift, an annexe of the Grand Hotel, a little way up this campo. Here he lived happily with his young wife and toiled at the minutiae of his great book; here too he entertained David Roberts and other artists with his father's excellent sherry, which they described as "like the best painting, at once tender and expressive".

And now the hotels begin, almost all of them in houses built centuries ago for n.o.ble families. Thus the first Grand Hotel block is fourteenth century--the Palazzo Gritti. The next Grand Hotel block is the Palazzo Fini and is seventeenth century, and the third is the Manolesso-Ferro, built in the fourteenth century and restored in the nineteenth. Then comes the charming fourteenth-century Contarini-Fasan Palace, known as the house of Desdemona, which requires more attention. The upper part seems to be as it was: the water floor, or sea storey, has evidently been badly botched. Its glorious possession is, however, its balconies, particularly the lower.

Of the Grand Ca.n.a.l balconies, the most beautiful of which is, I think, that which belongs to this little palace, no one has written more prettily than that early commentator, Coryat. "Again," he says, "I noted another thing in these Venetian Palaces that I have very seldome seen in England, and it is very little used in any other country that I could perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian cities.

Somewhere above the middle of the front of the building, or (as I have observed in many of their Palaces) a little beneath the toppe of the front they have right opposite to their windows, a very pleasant little tarra.s.se, that jutteth or b.u.t.teth out from the maine building, the edge whereof is decked with many pretty little turned pillers, either of marble or free stone to leane over. These kinds of tarra.s.ses or little galleries of pleasure Suetonius calleth Meniana. They give great grace to the whole edifice, and serve only for this purpose, that people may from that place as from a most delectable prospect contemplate and view the parts of the City round about them in the coole evening."--No modern description could improve on the thoroughness of that.

Next is the pretty Barozzi Wedmann Palace, with its pointed windows, said to be designed by Longhena, who built the great Salute church opposite, and then the Hotel Alexandra, once the Palazzo Michiel. For the rest, I may say that the Britannia was the Palazzo Tiepolo; the Grand Hotel de l'Europe was yet another Giustiniani palace; while the Grand Ca.n.a.l Hotel was the Vallaresso. The last house of all before the gardens is the office of the Harbour Master; the little pavilion at the corner of the gardens belongs to the yacht club called the Bucintoro, whose boats are to be seen moored between here and the Molo, and whose members are, with those of sculling clubs on the Zattere and elsewhere, the only adult Venetians to use their waters for pleasure. As for the Royal Palace, it is quite unworthy and a blot on the Venetian panorama as seen from the Customs House or S. Giorgio Maggiore, or as one sees it from the little Zattere steamboat as the Riva opens up on rounding the Punta di Dogana. Amid architecture that is almost or quite magical it is just a common utilitarian facade. But that it was once better can be seen in one of the Guardis at the National Gallery, No. 2099.

Finally we have Sansovino's mint, now S. Mark's Library, with the steamboat bridge for pa.s.sengers for the Giudecca and the Zattere in front of it, and then the corner of the matchless Old Library, and the Molo with all its life beneath the columns.

And now that we have completed the voyage of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, each way, let me remind the reader that although the largest palaces were situated there, they are not always the best. All over Venice are others as well worth study.

CHAPTER XIV

ISLAND AFTERNOONS' ENTERTAINMENTS. I: MURANO, BURANO AND TORCELLO

The Campo Santo--The Vivarini--The gla.s.s-blowers--An artist at work--S.

Pietro--A good Bellini--A keen sacristan--S. Donato--A foreign church--An enthusiast--Signor "Rooskin"--The blue Madonna--The voyage to Burano--The importunate boatman--A squalid town--The pretty lace workers--Torcello--A Christian exodus--Deserted temples--The bishop's throne--The Last Judgment--The stone shutters--The Porto di Lido.

The cheap way to Murano is by the little penny steamer from the Fondamenta Nuova. This side of Venice is poor and squalid, but there is more fun here than anywhere else, for on Sundays the boys borrow any kind of craft that can be obtained and hold merry little regattas, which even those sardonic officials, the captains of the steamboats, respect: stopping or easing down so as to interfere with no event. But one should go to Murano by gondola, and go in the afternoon.

Starting anywhere near the Molo, this means that the route will be by the Rio del Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs, between the Doges' Palace and the prison; up the winding Rio di S. Maria Formosa, and then into the Rio dei Mendicanti with a glimpse of the superb Colleoni statue and SS. Giovanni e Paoli and the lions on the Scuola of S. Mark; under the bridge with a pretty Madonna on it; and so up the Rio dei Mendicanti, pa.s.sing on the left a wineyard with two graceful round arches in it and then a pleasant garden with a pergola, and then a busy squero with men always at work on gondolas new or old.

And so beneath a high bridge to the open lagoon, with the gay walls and sombre cypresses of the cemetery immediately in front and the island of Murano beyond.

Many persons stop at the Campo Santo, but there is not much profit in so doing unless one is a Blair or an Ashton. Its cypresses are more beautiful from the water than close at hand, and the Venetian tombstones dazzle. Moreover, there are no seats, and the custodian insists upon abstracting one's walking-stick. I made fruitless efforts to be directed to the English section, where among many graves of our countrymen is that of the historical novelist, G.P.R. James.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RIO TORRESELLE AND BACK OF THE PALAZZO DARIO]