Last of all are the boys; of no particular size, age, nationality, or condition,—just boys; little rascally, hatless, shoeless, shirtless, trouser—everything-less, except noise and activity. They yell like Comanches; they crawl between the legs of your easel and look up between your knees into your face; they steal your brushes and paints; they cry “Soldi, soldi, Signore,” until life becomes a burden; they spend their days in one prolonged whoop of hilarity, their nights in concocting fresh deviltry, which they put into practice the moment you appear in the morning. When you throw one of them into the canal, in the vain hope that his head will stick in the mud and so he be drowned dead, half a dozen jump in after him in a delirium of enjoyment. When you turn one upside down and shake your own color-tubes out of his rags, he calls upon all the saints to witness that the other fellow, the boy Beppo or Carlo, or some other “o” or “i,” put them there, and that up to this very moment he was unconscious of their existence; when you belabor the largest portion of his surface with your folding stool or T-square, he is either in a state of collapse from excessive laughter or screaming with assumed agony, which lasts until he squirms himself into freedom; then he goes wild, turning hand-springs and describing no end of geometrical figures in the air, using his stubby little nose for a centre and his grimy thumbs and outspread fingers for compasses.
All these side scenes, however, constitute only part of the family life of the Venetian fishermen. If you are up early in the morning you will see their boats moving through the narrow canals to the fish market on the Grand Canal above the Rialto, loaded to the water’s edge with hundreds of bushels of crawling green crabs stowed away in the great baskets; or piles of opalescent fish heaped upon the deck, covered with bits of sailcloth, or glistening in the morning sun. Earlier, out on the lagoon, in the gray dawn, you will see clusters of boats with the seines widespread, the smaller dories scattered here and there, hauling or lowering the spider-skein nets.
But there is still another and a larger fishing trade, a trade not exactly Venetian, although Venice is its best market. To this belong the fishermen of Chioggia and the islands farther down the coast. These men own and man the heavier seagoing craft with the red and orange sails that make the water life of Venice unique.
Every Saturday a flock of these boats will light off the wall of the Public Garden, their beaks touching the marble rail. These are Ziem’s boats—his for half a century; nobody has painted them in the afternoon light so charmingly or so truthfully. Sunday morning, after mass, they are off again, spreading their gay wings toward Chioggia. On other days one or two of these gay-plumed birds will hook a line over the cluster of spiles near the wall of the Riva, below the arsenal bridge, their sails swaying in the soft air, while their captains are buying supplies to take to the fleet twenty miles or more out at sea.
Again, sometimes in the early dawn or in the late twilight, you will see, away out in still another fishing quarter, a single figure walking slowly in the water, one arm towing his boat, the other carrying a bag. Every now and then the figure bends over, feels about with his toes, and then drops something into the bag. This is the mussel-gatherer of the lagoon. In the hot summer nights these humble toilers of the sea, with only straw mats for covering, often sleep in their boats, tethered to poles driven into the yielding mud. They can wade waist-deep over many square miles of water-space about Venice, although to one in a gondola, skimming over the same glassy surfaces, there seems water enough to float a ship.
These several grades of fishermen have changed but little, either in habits, costume, or the handling of their craft, since the early days of the republic. The boats, too, are almost the same in construction and equipment, as can be seen in any of the pictures of Canaletto and the painters of his time. The bows of the larger sea-craft are still broad and heavily built, the rudders big and cumbersome, with the long sweep reaching over the after-deck; the sails are loosely hung with easily adjusted booms, to make room for the great seines which are swung to the cross-trees of the foremast. The only boat of really modern design, and this is rarely used as a fishing-boat, is the sandolo, a shallow skiff drawing but a few inches of water, and with both bow and stern sharp and very low, modeled originally for greater speed in racing.
Whatever changes have taken place in the political and social economy of Venice, they have affected but little these lovers of the lagoons. What mattered it to whom they paid taxes,—whether to doge, Corsican, Austrian, or king,—there were as good fish in the sea as had ever been caught, and as long as their religion lasted, so long would people eat fish and Friday come round every week in the year.
A GONDOLA RACE
TO-DAY I am interested in watching a gondolier make his toilet in a gondola lying at my feet, for the little table holding my coffee stands on a half-round balcony that juts quite over the water-wall, almost touching the white tenda of the boat. From this point of vantage I look down upon his craft, tethered to a huge spile bearing the crown and monogram of the owner of the hotel. One is nobody if not noble, in Venice.