Venice

by Dorothy Menpes

Venice is divided up into campi or squares. Each campo has a church, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker, and everything else that is necessary to life, including a café and a market.

Venetian children, as a rule, are very badly reared, and many of them die at an early age. It is a belief and a consolation that the little ones go straight to heaven, there to plead their parents' cause and to arrange for their reception.

May is the best month in which to see the streets. The intoxication of spring is in the air, and in the bright sunlight the colours burn and glow. Although you cannot see them, you are constantly reminded that there are gardens in Venice. Suddenly over the red brickwork of a high wall you will see clumps of tamarisk, hanging mauve wisteria, or the scarlet buds of a pomegranate, while the scent of syringa and banksia roses fills the air, the birds sing in the enclosure, and the perfume of honeysuckle trails over the wall of a garden of a foreign prince. Few crowds are more cheerful or better ordered than a Venetian crowd. There is a light-heartedness about these people that is very engaging; they have a marvellous frankness of manner, a sublime indifference to truth. The smallest Venetian child is a born flatterer, and will tell you, not what he thinks, but what he imagines you wish to hear. The people are the most engaging in the world, free from care or doubt as to right or wrong. This carelessness is characteristic of the whole Italian race. Venetians give the impression of being always determined to enjoy life to the full. They are continually coming together, for the purpose of pleasure, on one pretence or another, and the flashes of wit in the street are sometimes very amusing. The Venetians have always been, and still are, a great festa-loving people. When the Republic fell, the brave ceremonies came to an end; but the original passion is still kept alive. The festa in Venice are chiefly of religious character. For example, once a year each parish church honours the feast of its patron saint by processions to all shrines within that particular parish. Very picturesque are the streams of priests and people crossing the bridges and passing along the fondanta of some small canal,—a brilliant ribbon of vermilion and gold winding through the grey-toned city: porters of the church (in blouses of white, red, and blue) bearing candles, pictures, and banners; bands playing the gayest operatic tunes; priests and the parocco carrying the Host under a canopy of cloth of gold; long files of the devout holding candles; and boys with crackers and guns. At night there is dancing in the largest campo of the parish. On Good Friday the streets resemble a feast rather than a fast. The people are in their best and gaudiest clothes; children are rushing and romping and turning somersaults, whirling their rattles, fitting up shrines and then appealing to the crowd for coppers,—human mites of six or seven constructing "Santo Sepolcro," or Holy Graves, from old bottles, sprigs of bay stuck in, and odd candle-ends. One may witness touches of sentiment in a Venetian crowd; but the depths are seldom stirred. Sometimes sentiment finds expression in the rilotti—popular Venetian songs.

CHIOGGIA FISH MARKET

THE ISLANDS OF THE LAGOON

There is no piece of water more extraordinary than the lagoons of Venice. They cover an area of 184 square miles of water, shut off from the sea by a narrow strip of sandy islands, which are called the Lidi. The form of the lagoons is, roughly, that of a bent bow. How did they happen to be formed thus? That is a difficult question, and there are various opinions. Certainly the lagoons are a great feature of the city. They gave shelter to the founders flying from the Huns on the mainland, and the health of the community depends on their regular ebb and flow. A lagoon is not a lake; neither is it a swamp, nor open sea. It is a strange piece of natural engineering. There are really, although we cannot see them at high tide, four distinct water systems, with separate watersheds and confluent streams. The sea comes in once a day as from a great heart, pulsing in through the four breaks in the Lido barrier, cleaning and purifying the lagoon, and afterwards bearing away the refuse of the city. At low tide one can see these channels distinctly winding in and out of the mud-banks. In the spring they are bare, with long trails of sea-grass. In autumn they are brown and bare, and at high tide the whole surface is flooded. On the mainland shore of the lagoon there is a certain territory, called Laguna Morta, where the sea and the land fight a continual battle. It is the home of the wildfowl. Here salt sea-grasses grow, tamarisk, samphire, and, in the autumn, sea lavender. Farther, the ground becomes solid, and the Venetian plain begins, with its villas, poplars, vineyards, and mulberry groves.

Nothing is more delightful than to spend a whole long day upon the lagoon when the air is sweet and the breeze is fresh from the Lido. There are fishing-boats coming in from their long night, with spoil for the Rialto market, crossing and recrossing one another as they tack. The bows are painted, and the nets are hung mast-high to be mended and dried in the sun. Their sails are folded close together, like the wings of great vermilion moths. These sails, which are picturesque in the Venetian landscape, are of the deepest oranges and reds, rich red browns, orange yellows, and burnt siennas, contrasting strangely with the cool grey waters of the lagoon upon which they float.

One can wander for miles along the Lido on the Adriatic side. The lizards bask in the hot sand; the delicate, pale sea-holly mingles with the yellow of the evening primrose. From the Lido you can see right away to the south-east, and in the horizon can discern the faint blue hills above Trieste and the top of Monte Maggiore. From there the city looks well: one sees the Ducal Palace, faintly pink, the green woods of the public gardens, and the vast blue Venetian sky. The true native seems to have a strange affection for the Lido. One cannot tell why or wherefore; but it is so—"Lido" has ever been a name to conjure with. One cannot tell what associations and sensations of pleasure and charm are connected with it. At the present day it is a flat piece of somewhat marshy ground, with large gardens intersected by canals.