The charm of Venice

by Unknown

Uncomforted in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise from it unfed!

Far other be the doom of my own friends—of pious bards and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian’s marble tables, or a perch in Quadri’s window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a bird’s-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the trattoria the view is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship’s cabin. Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion and the caffè. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. ‘Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?’ Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe’s nose it is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos’ jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. A little further we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where the black-capped little padrone and the gigantic white-capped chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild ducks, chickens, woodcock, etc., according to the season. We select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house; and the talk arising from the several little tables turns upon points of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the cuisine, or about the reasonable charges of this trattoria.... There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no ahurissement of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can sit a while over our cigarette and coffee until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a giro in the gondola.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

VENETIAN CAFFÈS

What is Florian’s? It is the principal, largest, and most fashionable caffè on the Piazza di San Marco. The caffè in itself is in many respects a speciality of Venetian life, and has been so since the days of Goldoni. The readers of his comedies, so abundantly rich in local colouring, will not have failed to observe that the caffè plays a larger part in the life of Venice than is the case in any other city. Probably no Venetian passes a single day without visiting once at least, if not oftener, his accustomed caffè. Men of business write their letters and arrange their meetings there. Men of pleasure know that they shall find their peers there. Mere loafers take their seats there, and gaze at the stream of life, as it flows past them, for hours together. And, most marked speciality of all, Venice is the only city in Italy where the native female aristocracy frequents the caffè. Indeed, I know no place in all the Peninsula where so large an amount of Italian beauty may be seen as among the fashionable crowd at Florian’s on a brilliant midsummer moonlight night.

Venice is of all the cities in the world the one which those who have never seen it know best. The peculiarities of it are so marked and so unlike anything else in the world, and the graphic representations of every part of the city are so numerous and so admirably accurate, that every traveller finds it to be exactly what he was prepared to see, and can hardly fancy that he sees the Queen of the Adriatic for the first time. I may therefore assume, perhaps, that my readers are acquainted with the appearance of that most matchless of city spaces, the Piazza di San Marco. They will readily call to mind the long series of arcades that form the two long sides of the parallelogram which has the gorgeous front of St. Mark’s Church occupying the entirety of one of the shorter sides. Well, about half-way up the length of the piazza six of the arches on the right hand of one facing St. Mark’s Church are occupied by the celebrated caffè. The six never-closed rooms, corresponding each with one of the arches of the arcade, are very small, and would not suffice to accommodate a twentieth part of the throng which finds itself at Florian’s, quite as a matter of course, every fine summer’s night. But nobody thinks of entering these smartly-furnished little cabinets save for breakfast or during the hours of the day.

Some take their evening ice or coffee on the seats under the arcade, either immediately in front of the cabinets or around the pillars which support the arches, and thus have an opportunity of observing the never-ceasing and ever-varying stream of life that flows by them under the arcade. But the vast majority of the crowd place themselves on chairs arranged around little tables set out on the flags of the piazza. A hundred or so of these little tables are placed in long rows extending far out into the piazza, and far on either side beyond the extent of the six arches which are occupied by the caffè itself. A London or New York policeman would have his very soul revolted, and conclude that there must be something very rotten indeed in the state of a city in which the public way could be thus encumbered and no cry of ‘move on’ ever heard. Assuredly, it is public ground which Florian, in the person of his nineteenth-century representative, thus occupies with his tables and chairs. Probably, if a Venetian were asked by what right he does so, the question would seem to him much as if one asked by what right the tide covers the shallows of the lagoon. It always has been so. It is in the natural order of things. And how could Venice live without Florian’s?...

I am tempted to endeavour to give the reader some picture of the scene on the piazza on a night when (as is the case almost every other evening) a military band is playing in the middle of the open space, and the cosmopolitan crowd is assembled in force—to describe the wonderful surroundings of the scene, the charm of the quietude broken by no sound of hoof or of wheel, the soft and tempered light, the gay clatter, athwart which comes every fifteen minutes the solemn mellow tone of the great clock of St. Mark, with importunate warning that another pleasant quarter of an hour has drifted away down the stream of time. It is a scene that tempts the pen. But the well-dressed portion of mankind is very similar in all countries and under all circumstances, and perhaps my readers may be more interested in a few traits of the popular life of Venice, which the magnificent Piazza of St. Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy, which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.

But if we wish for a good specimen of the truly popular life of Venice, it will not be necessary to wander far from the great centre of the piazza. Coming down the Piazzetta, or Little Piazza, which opens out of the great square at one end, and abuts on the open lagoon opposite the island of St. George at the other, and turning round the corner of the Ducal Palace, we cross the bridge over the canal, which above our head is spanned by the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ with its ‘palace and a prison on each hand,’ as Byron sings, and find ourselves on the ‘Riva degli Schiavoni’—the quay at which the Slavonic vessels arrived, and arrive still. The quay is a very broad one, by far the broadest in Venice, paved with flagstones, and teeming with every characteristic form of Venetian life from early morning till late into the night.

There are two or three hotels frequented by foreigners on the Riva, for the situation facing the open lagoon is an exceptionally good one; and there are three or four caffès at which the cosmopolitan and not too aristocratic visitor may get an excellent cup of coffee (for the Venetians, thanks to their long connection with the East, know what coffee is, and will not take chicory or other such detestable substitutes in lieu of it) for the modest charge of thirteen centimes—just over one penny—and study as he drinks it the moving and ever-amusing scenes enacted before his eyes. His neighbour, perhaps, will be an old gentleman, the very type of the old ‘pantaloon,’ whose mask was in the old comedy supposed to be the impersonation of Venice. There are the long, slender, and rather delicately cut features, terminating in a long, narrow, and somewhat protruding chin; the high cheek-bones, the lank and sunken cheeks, the high nose, the dark bright eye under its bushy brow. He is very thin, very seedy, and evidently very poor. But he salutes you, as you take your seat beside him, with the air of an ex-member of ‘The Ten’; his ancient hat and napless coat are carefully brushed; his outrageously high shirt-collar and voluminous unstarched neckcloth, after the fashion of a former generation, though as yellow as saffron, are clean; and his poor old boots as irreproachable as blacking—which can do much, but, alas! not all things—can make them. His expenditure of a penny will entitle him not only to a cup of coffee, as aforesaid, but also to a glass of fresh water, which has been turned to an opaline colour by the shaking into it of a few drops of something which the waiter drops from a bottle with some contrivance at its mouth, the effect of which is to cause only a drop or two of the liquor, whatever it may be, to come out at each shake. Our old friend is also entitled, in virtue of his expenditure, to occupy the chair he sits on for as many hours as he shall see fit to remain in it. And after the coffee, which must be drunk while hot, has been despatched, the sippings of the opaline mixture aforesaid may be protracted indefinitely while he enjoys the cool evening breezes from the lagoon, the perfection of dolce far niente, and the amusement the life of the Riva never fails to afford him....