HORACE ST. JOHN.
[Venice is not all made up of palaces and patricians, not all bronze and marble, pictures and statuary. Out of the range of all this, unseen by the ordinary traveller, lies another and humbler Venice, where the poor pass their straitened lives, but which has a character and attraction of its own, worthy of being seen and described. We give St. John’s story of discovery in this realm of what he calls “vulgar Venice.”]
It may not be a discovery, but it is a fact not often noticed, that there is an every-day Venice which is decidedly vulgar,—which means that it is not all Rialto, Bridge of Sighs, Grand Canal, or Doge’s Palace. But, to judge from poems, pictures, and tourists, the city is one beautiful dream, of marble and bronze, of jasper and vermilion, of pictures and the sculptor’s breathing models. The temptation is, no doubt, seducing to pass all your time where the great columns stand, where the bronze horses, near St. Mark’s, glow with all the colors of the sunset, and where that strangely composed young girl shows you through the horrible labyrinths of the state prison.
Yet there is another Venice which artists rarely touch, as if all low life were confined to the Low Countries, where they are eager enough to sketch fish-stalls and kitchens by the light of “single candle” Schendel. And this Venice has not a solitary element of romance or beauty about it. Step into the “omnibus gondola”—the very thought is enough to obliterate an epic of enthusiasm—and it will land you where the Venetians lead their common lives, without any Byron to bewail them. The songless gondoliers of these public boats are a miserable set of folk. They never save anything; their fathers never saved anything before them; but they keep up their spirits notwithstanding. Thus, between Giacomo passing Beppo, “Good luck to you!” “Thanks!” “Be hanged, you and your thanks!” Or, “Many patrons?” “Many.” “You and your patrons be hanged!” These affectionate greetings are universal.
But the grimy gondola has stopped, and the buying and selling quarter has been reached. No stately ladies, or very few, here “serpentining,” as Balzac says, whatever he may mean, along the pavement, and not too many of the white-bodiced damsels, who look so graceful on canvas, as if they were always clean and dark Madonnas into the bargain; because, to tell the truth, these ladies are accustomed, in warm weather, to lay aside those pretty bodices, and work in an attire at once more light and more loose. They are exceedingly busy, and the scene is wonderfully animated.
Venice, providing its dinner, has been compared with a huge ship in port, taking in provisions. Padua and Vicenza have brought their corn and oil; the islands have sent their indescribably superb fruit; Friuli, Istria, Illyria, and the Turkish Archipelago contribute grain, meat, game, conserves, and pickles; Austria, Hungary, and Dalmatia supply wine, which is diluted, by the humbler sort of consumers, with sea water, which the “stick girls,” so called from the yokes they carry on their shoulders, bring about. They are from Friuli, whose snow-white summits are just visible from here,—and striking enough they are in their bright bodices, short blue or green skirts, with red borders, and white Calabrian hats, daintily tipped on one side, in order that the massive gold hair ornaments or polished steel pins may be admired. But these charming water-carriers are despised; they live apart from the other inhabitants; and not a Venetian will ever marry one of them. Still, they often return to their mountains, tolerably rich, and their Titian faces are quite as proud with scorn of the Venetians as those of Venetians are for them.
However, it is market-time, which must not be wasted upon international antipathies. Nearly everything in Venice is sold, and nearly everything eatable is eaten, among the inferior classes, in the open air,—polenta, beef, mutton, fish, frying, grilling, roasting, and perpetually passing hot into the hands of the al fresco customers. It is generally very good; but best of all is the bread made “on the Continent” expressly for Venice, in the incomparable little district of Piava. Armed with a “tasting order,” which a few of the smallest coins imaginable will command, you pass through the hungry throng. This is soup, by no means bad, at two-thirds of a half-penny the basin. That is calves’-head; these are lamb- and pork-chops, with heart and tripe, the savor whereof is suggestive of ancient sacrifices.
Some of the people keep stalls; others shops, without doors or windows. It appears odd to a stranger, upon entering a wine-hall, to be offered a plateful of highly-salted mutton, a comestible which everybody appears to be devouring. After it a service of fish, the entire flavor of which has been absorbed in brine. Then you are ready to drink; but the wine is salted also! There are two delicacies, however, in which persons of every degree delight, and which induce the denizens of the opulent quarter to bring their nobility here. The first is a small white biscuit, made of the most exquisite flour and fresh butter, so speckless, light, and fragile that they crumble at a rough touch, and will not keep longer than twelve hours. Who wants to feast upon them, then, must come to the oven, and, tenderly handling the bianchetti, dip them in the wine of Cyprus, and believe in solid ambrosia. The second rarity—uniqueness I would say, if there were such a word—is a little fish, fried in oil, which is sold from morning till night, all through the season. You shall see a maiden of Venice, gloved like a Parisian, “well knotted,” elegant of costume, and in air patrician, buy two pennyworth of these dainties,—the whitebait of Italy,—smelling of oil, fire, and the frying-pan, wrap them in paper, take them to a cabaret, sit down, and relish them unmistakably over a flask of Cyprus. She is never alone, however, but accompanied by an escort, who is stamped a gentleman by that sign infallible in Venice, whether or not it be so elsewhere,—his dress. At the same table may be seated, possibly, the very fisherman who provided the banquet.
But what is the meaning of the phrase just used, “well knotted”? Let her wear the richest silk ever spun in Italy, and the haughtiest Hungarian hat, with its aigrette of a dove’s wing, your Venetian lady of blue blood is not distinguishable, except by what she has upon her neck. And this is a gold chain, of apparently countless links, beautifully brilliant, with that reddish tinge which has so often been the perplexity of painters, though Titian mastered it, as he did everything else; and falling from the throat is gathered in a coil at the waist, where, the larger and heavier the knot, the higher the patent of social splendor.
Though I am not concerned at present with the aristocracy of the sea-born city, still, if lofty dames will eat little fishes in a market-place, they cannot complain of personalities, should the remark be made that some are dark as ever Giorgione or Carpaccio painted; while others, to borrow the ejaculation of a rapturous wanderer from Paris, who was not really in a rapture, and who, of course, did not mean what he was saying, might be mistaken for the daughters of Aurora, a contrast reminding you of Adam’s two wives in the Talmud.
But madame has finished her gouter, and, once more taking a liberty with my Frenchman, I remark that she “undulates always with an appearance of perfect satisfaction.” She will not be seen here again until the same freak of appetite seizes her. For, as a rule, the lower classes—as, indeed, they do everywhere—have their own neighborhoods to themselves, though in Venice, naturally, owing to the peculiarity of its position, there are subdivisions. The workmen and artificers and traders are quite distinct from the boatmen and fishermen, upon whom they look with contempt, and with whom they were formerly in a state of incessant feud. The former wear red caps and belts; the belts and caps of the latter are entirely either black or blue, the capes having tassels of the same color, which give an Oriental character to a Venetian crowd.
THE CHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICE
And here a curious point occurs. Your great lady prides herself upon the knot in her gold chain; your fisherman or ferryman wears a scarf round his neck, and the bigger the knot he can tie the prouder he is of himself. Again, the gondoliers have their grades of rank. The lords of the black “water broughams,” as some one very much in want of a smart saying termed them, are in the service of private families, and hold themselves ready for orders like coachmen. The second degree is composed—to carry on the analogy—of the canal cabmen, who live upon chance, upon travellers, and upon Romeos and Juliets, whenever these young persons are engaged in adventure. Lastly, there are the gondoliers with fixed stations and fixed destinations, ferrymen who float to and fro. But they are all very important to Venice. They are the links of its life; for, singularly enough, it has not bridges enough, and in this respect is utterly unlike Amsterdam, with which it is so often and so absurdly compared. If, however, they swear at one another, they swear at the railway in a chorus. It is rarely, in these days, that any good luck befalls them. Now and then, to be sure, a music and singing party, dizzy with the juice of the Dalmatian grape, attempt to wake the echoes of Tasso among the lagoons, or two fond fools, fresh from their nuptials in the north, glide over the moonlit sea, regardless of expense, and look at life through the stars; yet such Jessica evenings are few and far between, and the Venetian gondoliers, seen by daylight, look like anything rather than Fenimore Cooper’s hero, or even a daub in a Canaletti canvas. Still, his ancient art has not deserted him, and he can push his craft along at a wonderful speed.
There is one peculiarity about them which the stranger does not readily understand. They speak as though their language was as limpid as the water on which they live, and made up almost entirely of vowels. You wish to be set ashore at the steps of the “Luna” hotel? Certainly; your gondolier knows the “Una” hotel perfectly well. He has another characteristic, not quite so uncommon: he is an unblushing cheat. His Venetian customers pay him tenpence, when you, being a stranger, must pay him half a crown, which is an Italian method of expressing patriotism, I suppose. Yet he is continually to be found upon his knees before the altar, and has a patron of his own, whom he invokes upon every necessary or unnecessary occasion.
From him I turn for a moment to another type,—the ciceroni,—only, however, to mention a single example. She was a young girl who undertook to show the visitor, fresh from the glories of the ducal palace, through the black labyrinths of the ducal prison. She took two wax tapers, lighted them, gave him one, keeping the other herself, and jingled a great bunch of keys. Then the really pretty and graceful maiden led the way down a worn, slippery, dark staircase, up another across the Bridge of Sighs, down again, telling all the way fearful legends of the place, and plunged deeper into the shadowy recesses at every step.
“Are you not afraid?” she is asked.
“A Venetian girl feels no fear,” is her answer.
That is a terrible interior, however, with its range upon range of hideous cells; but worst of all is a vault, without a spark of natural light in it, which seems as if dug in the rock. Its roof is stained by lampblack; its walls bear traces of clamps and chains. “Here the secret executions took place; here the son of a doge was beheaded for daring to love a foreign lady. Only great criminals—that is, great lords—were put to death here.” I wonder whether this tender turnkey, if she had prisoners under her charge, would be pitiless to them. There is something painful in the contrast between such a gaol and such a gaoler.
Leaving her, you pass across the square with its corner group of beggars, its swarm of bare-headed children, its clusters of boys with their hair flowing wild, and their brown necks and chests exposed, who give you an idea that they are expecting their photographs to be taken, but who, nevertheless, bake themselves in the sun languidly enough, and act upon the national maxim, “bisogna stare allegro.” There is but a solitary influence which can rouse your true Venetian to a state of excitement, and that is the presence of death. Rich or poor, he hates it; rich, he rides or rows away to the farthest possible distance; poor, he hides, if he can, until the object of his abhorrence is removed. Somehow these vagrants of the island city never starve. They earn, by one means or another, sufficient for the day, which signifies sufficient for dinner,—two pennyworth of fish, ready cooked, as already described; one pennyworth of soup, and one of bread; and it may be suspected that women and girls do a principal part of whatever work is done in Venice at all.
You turn into a sequestered nook, resembling one of the smaller courts opening upon Fleet Street, and a number of damsels, without dulcimers, are chattering or singing. These are the pearl-threaders, for pearl-threading is a universal occupation, just as embroidery was at one time in England. The wealthy do it for amusement, the humbler classes for gain, of which, as I have said, a very little goes a long way. It is a popular saying, “You may die of love or hatred in Venice, but not of hunger;” still, you see many ragged, hollow-eyed, and pallid wretches, who, in former days, might have been mistaken for lottery-hunters; but those times, happily, have passed away, though they presented a spectacle sufficiently interesting four or five years ago....
Some one has compared Venice to a page of music, with its curious streets, palaces, museums, canals, and bridges; resembling lines, notes, double notes, points, crotchets, pauses; its long and straight, its short, narrow and crooked ways; its open spaces scattered up and down; its mounting and descending of bridges. I cannot myself see the truth of the comparison; but so much may be readily admitted,—that the stranger can easily lose his way, and not easily find it again, in this maze of land and water, worse than Amsterdam. Unless, however, the wanderer has some business on hand, the very best way to see Venice is to be lost in it; because then, instead of the regulation round of sights, a thousand unexpected novelties strike the eye, in the narrow, ill-paved, and generally noiseless streets that intersect the islands, though the hoof of a horse or rumbling of a wheel is never heard in them.
Opening upon these dingy and tortuous thoroughfares are many of those back entrances to the mansions of the opulent, which play so prominent a part in romance and drama, though, as a rule, they are inhabited by the poorest of the poor to whom an abode is a retreat, not a home,—since their lives are habitually passed out of doors. As for furniture, a bedstead and a huge chest or coffer, with a stool or two, and a small but solid table, constitute the inventory,—if exception be made of the bowls, and spoons, and bread-knives which the inmates carry abroad when they intend to banquet beneath that sky in which Tintoretto and Veronese exulted.
Nothing of marble or mosaic here; nothing of gold or purple; only squalor, such as is never seen in a town of Holland; such as is seldom met with, indeed, anywhere out of Ireland or Italy. The water, however, mingles so intricately with the land that it is impossible to go many steps without coming upon a bridge and a canal,—not the canal of the artist, all blue except where richer tints are reflected by the architecture on either side, but narrow, crooked, overhung by ugly houses, and rather less sweet to the nostrils than becomes a city famous for its love of violets. Hither come the itinerants of the public places when the last loiterers have left the square of St. Mark’s and there is no longer a chance of selling fried cakes or fish, salt mutton or salt tripe, mock pearls or gold thread to string them upon; and here my glimpse closes upon Venice, a thousand times described, yet rarely, I think, from this particular point of view.