Old Continental Towns

by Walter M. Gallichan

The student of life and the philosopher will find here matter for cogitation, tinged maybe with seriousness, even sadness. Venetian history is not all glorious, and the city to-day has its social evils, like every other populous place on the globe. There are beggars, many of them, artistic beggars, no doubt; but they are often diseased and always unclean. Yet even the dirty faces of the alleys, in this city of loveliness, have, according to artists, a value and a harmony. There is the same obvious, sordid poverty here as in London or Manchester. But the dress of the people, even if ragged, is bright, and the faces, even though wrinkled and haggard, fit the scene and the setting in the estimate of the painter.

If your habit is analytic and critical, you will find defects in the modern life of Venice that cannot be hidden. The city is not prosperous in our British sense of the word. There is an air of decayed grandeur, an impression that existence in this town of exquisite art is not happiness for the swarm of indigents that live in the historic purlieus.

On the other hand, there is the climate, a soft, sleepy climate, not very healthy perhaps, but usually kindly. The sun is generous, the sky rarely frowns. Life passes lazily, dreamily, on the oily waters of the canals, in the piazza, and in those tall tumble-down houses built on piles. No one appears to hurry about the business of money-getting; no one apparently is eager to work, except perhaps the unfortunate mendicants and the persuasive hawkers, who do indeed toil hard at their occupations.

When the evening breeze bears the interesting malodours of the canals, with other indescribable and characteristic smells, and the sun sinks in crimson in a flaming sky, and music sounds from the piazza and the water, and the gondolas glide and pass, and beautiful women smile and stroll in streets bathed in gold, you will think only of the loveliness of Venice, and forget the terrors of its history and the misery of to-day. And it is well, for one cannot always grapple with the problems of life; there must be hours of sensuous pleasure. Sensuous seems to me the right word to convey the influence of Venice upon a summer evening, when, a little wearied by the heat of the day, you loll upon a bridge, smoking a cigar, and drinking in languidly the beauty of the scene, while a grateful breeze comes from the darkening sea.

Go to the Via Garibaldi, if you wish to lounge and to study the Venetians of “the people.” Here the natives come and go and saunter. The women are small, like the women of Spain, dark in complexion, and in manner animated. They are very feminine; often they are lovely.

You will be struck with the gaiety of the people, a sheer lightheartedness more evident and exuberant than the gaiety of Spanish folk. Perhaps the struggle for existence is less keen than it seems among the inhabitants of the more lowly quarters of the city. At anyrate, the Venetians are lovers of song and laughter. A flower delights a woman, a cigarette is a gift for a man. They are able to divert themselves in Venice without sport, and with very few places of amusement.

“The place is as changeable as a nervous woman,” writes Mr Henry James, “and you know it only when you know all the aspects of its beauty. It has high spirits or low, it is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour.”

Having given a faint presentment of the beauties of Venice, I will refer to some of the chief episodes of its great history. In the earliest years of its making, we are upon insecure ground in attempting to write accurately upon Venetia. The city probably existed when the Goths swept down upon Italy, about 420, and it fell a century later into the hands of the fierce Lombards. Under the Doges (dukes) the land was wrested here and there from the waves, the mudbanks protected with piles and fences, and the great buildings began to arise from a foundation of apparent instability.

The ingenuity of the architect and the builder in constructing this city is nothing short of marvellous. In the sixth century the town was no doubt a collection of huts on sandbanks, intersected by tidal streams. There were meadows and gardens by the verge of the sea, and the inhabitants made the most of every yard of firm soil. St Mark’s Cathedral was built in the tenth century, to serve as a resting-place for the bones of the saint.

Under the wise rule of Pietro Tribuno, Venice withstood the attack of a Hungarian horde. The city was walled in and fortified, and the natives gathered at Rialto. The resistance was successful. The Doge who saved the city was one of the most honoured of all the rulers of Venice as a brave general and a man of scholarly parts.