Venice

by Dorothy Menpes

There are two things about which the gondolier is particular. One is his bread, and the other is his wine. One seldom finds good wine in Venice. It is only when the red wine arrives fresh from Padua and Verona that it is good. Then everyone rushes to the wine-shops; for nothing spreads quicker than the reputation of a good wine, and everyone clamours for it. Very soon it becomes watery and sour. The white wine the gondoliers do not like at all. Of bread there are all kinds. One is expected to have a preference for a certain make, and there are many different makes. There are the Chioggian bread, the "pane Commune," the "pane col agid," and many others.

BAMBINO

Men of the gondolier class do not think a great deal of religion. That is reserved for women. Church-going is no longer a habit with the men. Still, whenever matters of ancient custom step in they invariably do their duty—as in events of domestic life, such as confirmations,—and the little chapel to the Madonna at each traghetto has always its flowers and its few candles placed there by the reverent hands of the gondoliers.

Times were good for the gondoliers when Venice was rich and prosperous. Nowadays their gains are meagre, and they number hundreds where they numbered thousands in the old days. Noblemen kept six or seven gondolas, with attendant gondoliers, and, besides paying them an ample salary, on festa days allowed them to exact any payment they chose.

If you are staying in Venice for any length of time, it is better to hire a gondola and gondolier by the month than by the day. One only pays five francs a day, and when off duty the youth makes an excellent servant in the house. He comes and knocks at your water-gate at a certain time every day; also he will wait at table, act as footman, take care of the children; in fact, he will do everything one wishes; and he pays the proprietor of the gondola, out of his own pocket, one franc a day. It is the ambition of every gondolier to serve an "Inglese."

They say that Venice is always silent; but I can vouch that it is not so. At night, if your lodgings are anywhere near a landing-place, you will find that it is very noisy indeed. The gondoliers sleep at their posts on the pedestals of the two columns as they sit waiting for a job, and they love their repose in the sunshine; but at night they become extremely lively, and keep up a perpetual disturbance of laughter, shouts, and songs until two o'clock in the morning. They sit on the marble steps, or on the ends of their gondolas; or they eat shell-fish and drink wine under the light of the lamps in the niches of the Madonnas at street corners; vagabonds from their beds in the street arise and join them.

One sees on the lagoons gondolas of all kinds, carrying passengers of all kinds, and it is sometimes interesting to peep inside as they pass. There are official gondolas, with the Italian banner floating at their sterns, carrying some cold, stiff functionary in full-dress uniform, his breast covered with decorations. Another carries English people, phlegmatic tourists, to Chioggia; another, with lowered felce, hides lovers who are going to breakfast somewhere on the lagoon; yet another, a larger gondola, takes a family to the sea baths at the Lido. There is a red craft waiting at the foot of some steps; a red bier is brought out of a church by a red cortege,—it is a corpse, to be buried in a cemetery on an island on the way to Murano. (When anyone dies in Venice a notice is posted up on his house, and on the houses round about, stating the age, place of birth, and the illness of which he died; also saying that he has received the Sacrament and died a good Christian; prayers are asked for his soul.) There are gondolas in which are musical instruments of all kinds—violins of Cremona, cornets, mandolines, tambourines,—a complete orchestra. Quite a large flotilla of gondolas follow in its wake. One has fastened to the side a bluish monster splashing and making the water foam. That is a dolphin, a marine curiosity which is displayed by the proud possessors under all the balconies as they pass, collecting money in a hat. In order that it may be seen to advantage, the animal is kept half in the water and half out.

If one is at all interested in gondolas—that is to say, in the making of them,—nothing could be more fascinating than to spend a few hours in a squero (building yard). Any gondolier will be pleased to take you there, for he is inordinately proud of his craft. The squeri are picturesque; but somehow one always associates them with pitch. The place reeks with it. Always in one corner there stands the pitch-pot, sending a stream of thick black smoke up into the air. Small boys prance around, looking like young imps among the smoke and blaze, and wave smearing brushes in their hands. Long lines of boats, like some strange fish out of water, are drawn up, waiting to be cleaned or mended. The bottom of a gondola has to be dried thoroughly and quickly before receiving its coat of melted tallow. This is done by lighting a blazing fire of reeds under the boat, the flames leaping high into the air. Volumes of smoke arise, roll up over the house-tops, and are swept away by the breeze. Boys dance a kind of war-dance round the flames. The art of gondola-building is exacting. Three qualities are absolutely necessary to the formation of a perfect craft. It must draw but little water; it must turn easily; and it must be rowable by one oarsman only. To secure this, the hull is built of light thin boards, and only a portion of the flat bottom rests upon the water. Thus the boat swings as on a pivot. Then, the gondola is not equally divided by a line drawn from stern to bow: in order that the rower may be balanced, there is more bottom on one side than on the other. The various woods of which a gondola is made must be chosen with great care. They must be well seasoned and without knots, for the planks are liable to warp and the knots to start. Once every twenty days in summer the gondolier forfeits his four lire and takes his gondola to the squero to be cleaned and scraped. Weeds rapidly collect at the bottom when the water is warm, and the deadly toredo bores holes through the planking. The gondola is hauled up high and dry, and a fire burnt underneath it. A whole day's earnings in the summer season is a great loss to the gondolier; but if he keeps his gondola in good condition it will last him for a considerable time, perhaps for five years, and, besides, when the bottom of the boat is kept clear of weeds and well greased the speed is greater. When a gondolier sells his craft it becomes a ferry-boat for five years, the woodwork slowly bowing and bending until it becomes a gobbo half buried in the water. Later it is sold for five lire, broken up, and burnt in the glass manufactories of Murano.