“I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood.”
A reproduction of John Singer Sargent’s painting, “The Gypsy Dance,” bore the inscription, “To mon ami, Browning.” From the library is a niche, decorated in gold, with memorial entablatures to the memory of Mrs. Browning. On the outer wall of the palace is an inscription that runs:—
“Robert Browning died in this house 12th December, 1889.
“Open my heart and you will see
Graven inside it ‘Italy.’”
There is a sadness in the fact that this palace, consecrated to the memory of the immortal poets, husband and wife, has passed into the hands of strangers; but that is a part of the play in a world in which we have no continuing city. In the spring of 1905, Miss Sarianna Browning died in the home of her nephew, near Florence, and her body was buried in the new Protestant cemetery in that city; the old one, where all that was mortal of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was laid to rest, being now closed. Mr. Barrett Browning, in his Tuscan villa, is again dwelling near Florence, his native city, which must forever hold to him its atmosphere of consecrated beauty as the beloved home of his mother,—the noblest and greatest of all woman poets.
The centenary of Carlo Goldoni was celebrated in Venice in the spring of 1907 by the publication of all his works and a monograph on his life; an exhibition of personal relics; the presentation of one of his dramas set to music by Baldassare Galuppi, the great Venetian composer of his time, and by a procession to lay a wreath of laurel on his monument in the Campo San Bartolommeo. The drama given, entitled the “Buranello,” was the last work of the author, and it was presented in the theatre Goldoni. The Municipal Council of Venice voted the sum of fifty thousand lire for the édition de luxe, which consists of twenty volumes, in octavo. In each volume is a different portrait of Goldoni, facsimile of manuscripts, and the reproduction of literary curiosities.
The monograph of Goldoni was issued by the press of the Venetian Institute of Graphic Art in a limited number of copies.
It contains more than three hundred printed pages and a series of very interesting illustrations. Among these are the reproductions of ancient engravings which are most rare (such as the view of the Grimani Theatre at San Giovanni Crisostomo, a famous theatre existing in the days of the Venetian republic, but now demolished), frontispieces of destroyed editions, and other personal memorials. The revival of the splendid work of the famous artist was one of the attractions of the festa of celebration. The art exhibition of Venice in this spring of 1907 was very picturesque. One special salon was allotted to the artists of Great Britain, and there was a fine loan collection of the portraits of English noblemen painted by Mr. Sargent. This salon was decorated with panels by Frank Brangwyn.
Venice forever remains a dream, a mirage, an enchantment. Has it a recognized social life, with “seasons” that come and go? Has it trade, commerce, traffic? Has it any existence save on the artist’s canvas, in the poet’s vision? Has it a resident population to whom it is a home, and not the pilgrimage of passionate pilgrims?
There are those who find this Venice of all the year round a society of stately nobles whose ancestral claims are identified with the history of the city and who are at home in its palaces and gondolas, but of this resident life the visitor is less aware than of that in any other city in Italy. For him it remains forever in his memory as the crowning glory of June evenings when the full, golden moon hangs over towers and walls, when gondolas freighted with Venetian singers loom up out of the shadows and fill the air with melody that echoes as in dreams, and that vanishes—one knows not when or where. Mr. Howells, in his delightful “Venetian Days,” has interpreted much of that life that the tourist never recognizes, that eludes his sight; and the Dream City still, to the visitor who comes and goes, shrouds itself in myth and mystery. One of the poetic visions of Venice is that given in Robert Underwood Johnson’s “Browning at Asolo” (inscribed to Mrs. Arthur Bronson), of which the opening stanzas run:—