Around the clock in Europe

by Charles Fish Howell

VENICE

11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT

A July moon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting a barcarolle, thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venice a festa! From a near-by belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the Foscari Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay gondolas with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling, singing, and shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a tiara, the brilliant barca filled with orchestra and singers and ablaze in a myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion, the serenata ufficiale. The festa of the Redentore is near its close. Church portals hang with mulberry branches begged by the monks of St. Francis, and the people have feasted royally on the luscious black fruit bought at the little stands on the Giudecca quays. Last Sunday the priestly procession in full canonicals crossed the bridge of boats to the Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church of the Redentore. Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer of traditions; they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for an innocent man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the church of the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of the year, and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice suddenly gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and tumult of the “Official Serenade.”

This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their long oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird and frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize to protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the same time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as the barca struggles forward a few difficult yards to its next point of serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points, and at each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra provide the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the land! Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers and turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand years; and in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs a multitude that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward the barca; every handkerchief waves our way. An occasional searchlight darts impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in sudden brilliance and as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity. But in that brief flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends, and gondolas are started inching toward each other, and presently parties are joined and ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the apparently aimless movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a dark conspiracy in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our gondolier, and an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face and manners are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We could not understand why he did not get us nearer to the barca, the universal objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him and a raven-haired, flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and surprised the quick greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation and content. But who minds, with Venice a festa! And Venice is Paolo’s—not ours, alas!

Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy, spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window and sculptured capital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a dream-land of unearthly beauty!

In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens; the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St. Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.

The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintive sigh of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar, my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco! I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the vengeance of The Ten!

VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA

If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette. Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of colored marbles, the carven furniture and faded rich hangings, and the deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner, clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet pomegranates and snowy lilies.