At a caffé in the evening we were accosted by a smart-looking Vetturino, who offered us seats for Padua, to start at one the next afternoon, staying a night at Ferrara. He had already arranged with two other travellers, and finding his terms sufficiently moderate, we closed with his offer. The next morning was spent in the Accademia, and punctual to his appointment, Gioachino picked us up at the “Pension Suisse.” We found our travelling companions to be two of our own countrymen; one of them a Captain ——, returning from India, who was bringing home, among other curiosities, a valuable parrot, whose talking-qualifications caused us considerable amusement. We found Ferrara so crowded with travellers, that one room at the hotel was all our Vetturino could procure for us, and the honest fellow seemed quite mortified at the want of accommodation. The landlord, however, did all he could to serve us, and as we were disposed to make the best of everything, we did ample justice to his cheer, and drawing lots to see who should get the beds, and who the shake-downs, passed an undisturbed night, and were called by the parrot in the morning.
Soon after leaving Ferrara, we crossed the river Po on a flying bridge, propelled from side to side by the current, and entering the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, were pulled up at the Emperor’s dogana, by the fierce whiskerando on duty. It was still early in the morning, and the head officer was in no very good humour at being knocked up at so unconstitutional an hour, and kept us a long time kicking our heels under the covered douane. We tried hard to conceal the parrot, which was a contraband article, and, enclosed as it was in a small cage, covered with a handkerchief, and on the top of the vehicle, I think it possible it might have escaped detection, had it not, on hearing its master’s voice, croaked out lustily in sound English, a desire for some hot brandy and water, bestowing at the same time some hearty curses upon an imaginary waiter. We exploded with laughter, whilst the chef de douane, who was ignorant from whence the strange voice proceeded, glanced around from under his shaggy eye-brows, and soon detected the hitherto unnoticed package. To hand it down was but the work of a moment, but the officer who untied the wrapper, received a bite that he would long remember. Poll’s vocal powers expanded with the restoration of daylight, and no sooner did she see her master, than she treated us with a variation from “Merrily danced,” in so shrill and amusing a key, that good humour was restored on all hands saving that of the bitten searcher. Captain —— having paid the necessary tax, and reconsigned his loquacious bird to the roof, we again resumed our journey, reaching Padua at five in the afternoon. We drove to the “Principe Carlo,” a hotel overlooking the Prato della Valle, where the accommodation is excellent. It is, however, at rather an inconvenient distance from the omnibus station, and busy portion of the city, for alas! the learned repose of “Fair Padua, nursery of Arts,” is now disturbed by the shriek of the locomotive, and the rumbling of railway traffic.
By the time our dinner was over it was quite dark, and we could therefore see little of this venerable city. We walked to the Caffé Pedrocchi, unquestionably the finest in Europe: no expense seems to have been spared in its decorations, which are of a style more suited to a regal dwelling than a place of public resort. It is one glare of mirrors, gilding, and polished marbles. Many are the stories current respecting the origin of the wealth which enabled the Signor Pedrocchi to raise so gorgeous a palace. Certain it is, that from a state of comparative poverty, he all at once leapt into possession of a large sum of money, and commenced the erection of the new Caffé, paying his workmen in good old Venetian sequins, a fact which led his friends to infer, that in demolishing the old establishment, he had stumbled upon one of those fabulous monsters, a crock of real gold. This is possibly the fact, but it is to be regretted that he placed this monument of his good luck in so mean a situation, where its architectural merits, (if it possess any!) are very much in the shade.
We took the first train the next morning to Maestre, from whence we embarked in a gondola-omnibus for the Venetian custom-house. The transition from the main land to the marshy Lagune, is almost imperceptible, and in the space of a few short months we shall be fizzed all the way into Venice, and this most beautiful of cities, this “Sea Cybele” will then have lost half its romance. It is to be hoped that this useful, but unpicturesque innovation will never be suffered to encroach beyond the outermost limits of the city, and that Venice may lose none of its originality by the somewhat unnecessary extension of the railway across the lagune. After passing through the Dogana, and bidding “a rividerci,” to our companions of the vettura, my friend and I hired a gondola to convey us to the “Leone Bianco,” a hotel at which I had passed a few pleasant days some eight years before.
In the evening we walked to the Piazza di San Marco, as the surest spot to meet with such of our acquaintance as might have arrived from Rome. It was unnecessary to make an elaborate search,—a white hat, whose capacious leaf might have roused envy in the breast of a West India planter, shone out conspicuously from among the thickly occupied benches of the “Florian,” and revealed to us the presence of our friend Mack, who had quitted Rome some weeks before us, on a summer-tour. This gentleman informed us where we should at once find apartments, and introduced us to his landlord, the Signor Raffaelli, living in a commodious house, at the Campo San Vio, about a stone’s-throw from the Accademia, on the Grand Canal. We rowed thither the next day, and taking possession of our rooms, had time to look about us. Not only is Venice unlike any other city in the world, in respect of its peculiar position; but every thing Venetian seems to possess a distinct and particular charm, that indefinable non so che, belonging to it only, even to the most ordinary common-places of life. No description could arouse in the mind of one who has not visited Venice, any adequate idea of the feelings of delight and enthusiasm excited by all around. These feelings are increased rather than diminished by a lengthened stay. Moore must have viewed Venice through a pair of very dull spectacles indeed when he wrote about—
“—— her true, real, dismal state,
Her mansions closed and desolate,
Her foul canals, exhaling wide
Such fetid airs as— * *
* * * * *
Seem like a city where the pest
Is holding her last visitation.”
An occasional bad odour may certainly be detected in some of the more obscure canals during hot weather, but there can be no reason for supposing that this was not always the case, even in the palmiest days of the Republic.[37] If we pitch poetry aside, and come to plain matter of fact, we shall find, that whatever Venice may once have been, it is still a port of very considerable importance. Merchant vessels from all parts of the world are to be found at the quays of San Giorgio and the Giudecca, whilst a brisk trade is kept up between it and the other ports of the Mediterranean. Nor are its manufactures to be forgotten; the busy furnaces of Murano supply the whole world with glass beads and dolls’ eyes; the region of the Rialto furnishes half Italy with jewellery, and the glittering Merceria dazzles the eye with its costly wares, and reeks with all the varied odours of extravagant perfumery.
It was on the second-floor of the Casa Raffaelli, that Luish and I were domiciled. A large saloon with a spacious balcony overhanging the Grand Canal, into which room all the other apartments opened, served as the sala commune for ourselves and the family of our landlord. This, as well as our bed-rooms, was paved with a plum-pudding-like scaliguola, which ensured a far cooler and cleaner floor than the dusty carpets of Rome, which usually have an underlayer of straw or hay to preserve them from wear against the hard brick or concrete. The room which fell to my lot, had a side view over the Campo or Square of San Vio, and the window commanded a good stretch of the Grand Canal, in the direction of the Rialto. My first care was to inquire for Herr T——g, the doctor to whom I had a letter of introduction, and I was agreeably surprised to find that he lived exactly opposite to us, on the other side the Canal, and that there was a traghetto or ferry, between the two houses. I paid him an early visit during a paroxysm of rheumatic pain, and though he did not recommend me to have recourse to mud-baths, he gave me some hope of relief.
The next preliminary was the procuring of a carta di sicurezza, without which the stranger in an Italian town would soon find himself in difficulty. It serves as a local passport, (the original document remaining in the care of the police authorities,) and requires a renewal every month. In order to obtain this, it was necessary that Luish and myself should possess a recommendation from some resident in the city, an obligation which was very kindly rendered by Mr. H., the American Consul.
As the Herr T——g’s treatment prohibited the use of more exercise than was necessary, I hired a gondola and barcaruolo, paying a Napoleon a-week for the boat and the man’s time. I was fortunate in my selection, inasmuch as I found Antonio steady, honest and skilful, and his gondola one of the very best description. It is only those who have tried it that can imagine the luxury of skimming the smooth water in a well-managed gondola. No other species of locomotion is to be compared to it. I almost lived in one, and during the course of my stay in Venice, there were very few of its canals that I did not thoroughly explore. Securely moored to one or other of the quaint-looking posts, which form so prominent a feature in the foregrounds of Prout and Canaletti, I passed the mornings in sketching. And what spot can furnish more beautiful and diversified subjects than Venice, where every turn reveals some fresh scene, and every canal abounds with palaces and churches, or picturesque masses of building. The chimney-pots alone are a study, and the genius of John of Bologna is apparent, even in the knockers and scrapers at the street doors. The former were the peculiar delight of my companion Luish, who passed all his mornings on the roofs of the Venetian palaces, perched astride on the leads, or half concealed in an eave-gutter from his fellow-mortals, himself exposed to all the fierceness of a vertical sun. The “piombi” of Silvio Pellico were nothing to the voluntary martyrdom of my friend, who daguerreotyped all the chimney-pots in “New Tyre,” and took portraits of all such knockers as had escaped the wrench of his countrymen, for, in shame be it spoken, the mania for midnight fooleries has extended even to the shores of the Adriatic.