The sea-charm of Venice

by Stopford A. Brooke

I will bring together, to illustrate this, what I saw in one day when I went to Torcello. We started early, on a lovely morning. As we rounded the angle of Murano we saw far away, and filling the line of the horizon, the rare vision of the peaks of the Dolomites. Snow lay on them, but snow transfigured by distance into ethereal light. Fine bars of vapour lay across them, floating free, as if they were the battlements of fairyland. Below, their buttresses and flanks fell into the plain, blue as the heaven above them. Seen thus, across the dazzling lagoon, they made that impression of farness and mystery, of a land of enchanting secrets, of ethereal hope taking ethereal form, which is part of the magic which rises like a wizard vapour from the lagoons. The mountain glory is transfigured into a spiritual glory, and the soul loses its conscious life in a drift of dreams.

Then, through the winding of the dark piles, through the shallows haunted by sea birds, we came to Torcello. Torcello has been described by a master hand, and I will not follow him; but when we had visited the well-known places we went down along the banks to the large arm of the sea beside the island. There was not a sound, save the cry of a scythe in the coarse reeds, as we sat on the flowery grass. The place was once full of human life, of wealth, and labour; it was now the very home of desolation. Deep sadness—the sense of all the might and splendour of the earth passing away into the elements, of nature only living, and living in regret—filled the heart. And the sensation was as different from that with which we had begun the day, as the glory of the mountains was from the wild sea-marsh where we sat, and the sorrowful salt water stealing by.

We left Torcello and went on to Burano, a small island about a mile from Torcello. The men are fishers, the women lace-makers. A few canals traverse it, and it has a large population. It belongs to itself alone, and the indwellers have kept their distinct type for centuries. For centuries they have been poor, rough, and helpful to one another. A British working man would think their life starvation. It is an austere struggle for existence; but on the day I went to see them they had a festa. Baldassare Galuppi, whom Browning celebrated, was a native of the island, and this was his centenary. To honour this half-genius all the inhabitants cheerfully struck work, and turned out in their best array. The canals, the streets, were crowded; the market-place was full of booths and rejoicing folk. In the church the preacher was improving the occasion. A local poet had written a sonnet on Galuppi, and it was hung up at the corner of every street. Illustrated broadsheets with Galuppi’s portrait and his life were sold on every stall; the men and women were singing snatches from his music. A cripple, on gigantic crutches, seized hold of me and carried me off to the Municipio to show me the musician’s bust, as excited as the rest of the crowd to celebrate the artist of their town. We forgot the mountains, we forgot Torcello, in the gaiety, brightness, good humour, and artistic excitement of humanity. Nothing can well be more wretchedly poor than the life of these hard-working people, and yet, to celebrate one dead for a hundred years, every memory of their misery perished in pleasant joy.

When we left Burano we rowed on another mile to visit the Island of St. Francis in the Desert. Ever since the fourteenth century, with a few intervals, it has been held by the Franciscans. A marble wall surrounds the tiny island, a marble pavement leads up to the small convent with its church and garden. Cypresses and tall poplars stand in the garden, and one stone pine looks out from the corner of the wall over the waste lagoon. It is a solitary and lovely place, like an island in the sea of the world.

We found service going on; the little bell was ringing, and we knelt among the monks. All the spirit of the silence, of the peace of obedience, chastity, and poverty, of the love that ruled St. Francis, fell upon us. The depth of the religious life was here. I looked up as I knelt, and saw, rudely painted on the wall, the charming legend of the place—how St. Francis, returning from the East, took boat at Venice to reach the mainland, and as night fell was drifted to this island, slept, and woke in the morning among the low bushes which clothed its shore. And as the sun rose he began to chant the Matins. But who, said he, will sing the responses? At which all the little birds came flocking into the bushes, and when he paused sang the responses for him.[2] And Francis, rejoicing, struck his staff into the ground, and it became a tree where the birds had plenteous shelter. Part of the trunk of that tree is still kept in the cloister—small and poor, paved with brick, and a deep well in the centre. Vervain and roses and balsams grew round its low pillars in pots of red earthenware, and the scent of them was sweet and solitary. And we forgot the noise and excitement of Burano, and remembered only the peaceful sainthood of the world, and the secret of obedience, and the love of God to poverty.

When we left the island the sun had set over the Euganean Hills, and again, as in the morning, but of how different a note, a new impression out of the life of Nature was made upon us. We rowed in silence through the teaching of evening. And when night came and the only light was the light of stars, the silence deepened into mystery. There is a sense of the infinite on the lagoon at night, and speech seems to break its spell. It is half awe, half pleasure; the excitement it brings is not for words; it is translated within into the language of the personal soul, the tongue which no one knows but one’s self alone.

This was our day. There is no other place I know of where so many varied impressions may be awakened in the imagination. They are bound up with the sea and their charm is from the sea.

This perfect evening slowly falls

Without a stain, without a cloud;

The sun has set—and all the bells