AMONG THE FISHERMEN
I
IKNOW best the fishing quarter of Ponte Lungo and the district near by, from the wooden bridge to the lagoon, with the side canal running along theFondamenta della Pallada. This to me is not only the most picturesque quarter of Venice, but quite the most picturesque spot I know in Europe, except, perhaps, Scutari on the Golden Horn.
This quality of the picturesque saturates Venice. You find it in her stately structures; in her spacious Piazza, with its noble Campanile, clock tower, and façade of San Marco; in her tapering towers, deep-wrought bronze, and creamy marble; in her cluster of butterfly sails on far-off, wide horizons; in her opalescent dawns, flaming sunsets, and star-lit summer nights. You find it in the gatherings about her countless bridges spanning dark water-ways; in the ever-changing color of crowded markets; in lazy gardens lolling over broken walls; in twisted canals, quaint doorways, and soggy, ooze-covered landing-steps. You find it, too, in many a dingy palace—many a lop-sided oldpalace—with door-jambs and windows askew, with lintels craning their heads over the edge, ready to plunge headlong into the canal below.
The little devils of rot and decay, deep down in the water, are at the bottom of all this settling and toppling of jamb and lintel. They are really the guardians of the picturesque.
Search any façade in Venice, from flowline to cornice, and you cannot find two lines plumb or parallel. This is because these imps of destruction have helped the teredo to munch and gnaw and bore, undermining foundation pile, grillage, and bed-stone. If you listen some day over the side of your gondola, you will hear one of these old piles creak and groan as he sags and settles, and then up comes a bubble, as if all the fiends below had broken into a laugh at their triumph.
This change goes on everywhere. No sooner does some inhabitant of the earth build a monstrosity of right-angle triangles, than the little imps set to work. They know that Mother Nature detests a straight line, and so they summon all the fairy forces of sun, wind, and frost, to break and bend and twist, while they scuttle and bore and dig,until some fine morning after a siege of many years, you stumble upon their victim. The doge who built it would shake his head in despair, but you forgive the tireless little devils—they have made it so delightfully picturesque.
To be exact, there are really fewer straight lines in Venice than in any place in Europe. This is because all the islands are spiked full of rotting piles, holding up every structure within their limits. The constant settling of these wooden supports has dropped the Campanile nearly a foot out of plumb on the eastern façade, threatened the destruction of the southwest corner of the Doges’ Palace, rolled the exquisite mosaic pavement of San Marco into waves of stone, and almost toppled into the canal many a church tower and garden wall.
Then again there are localities about Venice where it seems that every other quality except that of the picturesque has long since been annihilated. You feel it especially in the narrow side canal of the Public Garden, in the region back of the Rialto, through the Fruit Market, and in the narrow streets beyond—so narrow that you can touch both sides in passing, the very houses leaning over like gossiping old crones, their foreheads almosttouching. You feel it too in the gardens along the Giudecca, with their long arbors and tangled masses of climbing roses; in the interiors of many courtyards along the Grand Canal, withpozzoand surrounding pillars supporting the rooms above; in the ship and gondola repair-yards of the lagoons and San Trovaso, and more than all in the fishing quarters, the one beyond Ponte Lungo and those near the Arsenal, out towardsSan Pietro di Castello.
This district of Ponte Lungo—the one I love most—lies across the Giudecca, on the “Island of the Giudecca,†as it is called, and is really an outskirt, or rather a suburb of the Great City. There are no grand palaces here. Sometimes, tucked away in a garden, you will find an old château, such as the Contessa occupied, and between the bridge and thefondamentathere is a row of great buildings, bristling with giant chimneys, that might once have been warehouses loaded with the wealth of the East, but which are now stuffed full of old sails, snarled seines, great fish-baskets, oars, fishermen, fisher-wives, fisher-children, rags, old clothes, bits of carpet, and gay, blossoming plants in nondescript pots. I may be wrong about these old houses beingstuffed fullof these several different kinds ofmaterial, from their damp basement floors to the fourth story garrets under baking red tiles; but they certainly look so, for all these things, including the fisher-folk themselves, are either hanging out or thrust out of window, balcony, or doorway, thus proving conclusively the absurdity of there being even standing room inside.
Fronting the doors of these buildings are little rickety platforms of soggy planks, and running out from them foot-walks of a single board, propped up out of the wet on poles, leading to fishing-smacks with sails of orange and red, the decks lumbered with a miscellaneous lot of fishing-gear and unassorted sea-truck—buckets, seines, booms, dip-nets, and the like.
Aboard these boats the fishermen are busily engaged in scrubbing the sides and rails, and emptying the catch of the morning into their great wicker baskets, which either float in the water or are held up on poles by long strings of stout twine.
All about are more boats, big and little; row-boats; storage-boats piled high with empty crab baskets, or surrounded with a circle of other baskets moored to cords and supported by a frame of hop-poles, filled with fish or crabs;barcosfrom across the lagoon,laden with green melons; or lighters on their way to the Dogana from the steamers anchored behind the Giudecca.
Beyond and under the little bridge that leads up the Pallada, the houses are smaller and only flank one side of the narrow canal. On the other side, once an old garden, there is now a long, rambling wall, with here and there an opening through which, to your surprise, you catch the drooping figure of a poor, forlorn mule, condemned for some crime of his ancestors to go round and round in a treadmill, grinding refuse brick. Along the quay orfondamentaof this narrow canal, always shady after ten o’clock, lie sprawled the younger members of these tenements—the children, bareheaded, barefooted, and most of them barebacked; while their mothers and sisters choke up the doorways, stringing beads, making lace, sitting in bunches listening to a story by some old crone, or breaking out into song, the whole neighborhood joining in the chorus.
THE CATCH OF THE MORNINGTHE CATCH OF THE MORNING
THE CATCH OF THE MORNING
THE CATCH OF THE MORNING
Up at the farther end of the Pallada and under another wooden bridge, where two slips of canals meet, there is a corner that has added more sketches to my portfolio than any single spot in Venice. An old fisherman lives here, perhaps a dozen old fishermen;they come and go all the time. There is a gate with a broken door, and a neglected garden trampled down by many feet, a half-ruined wall with fig-trees and oleanders peeping over from the garden next door, a row of ragged, straggling trees lining the water’s edge, and more big fish and crab baskets scattered all about,—baskets big as feather-beds,—and festoons of nets hung to the branches of the trees or thrown over the patched-up fences,—every conceivable and inconceivable kind of fishing plunder that could litter up the premises of apescatoreof the lagoon. In and out of all this débris swarm the children, playing baby-house in the big baskets, asleep under the overturned boat with the new patch on her bottom, or leaning over the wall catching little crabs that go nibbling along a few inches below the water-line.
In this picturesque spot, within biscuit-throw of this very corner, I have some very intimate and charming friends—little Amelia, the child model, and young Antonio, who is determined to be a gondolier when he grows up, and who, perhaps, could earn a better living by posing for some sculptor as a Greek god. Then, too, there is his mother, the Signora Marcelli, who sometimes reminds me of my other old friend, the “GrandDuchess of the Riva,†who keeps the caffè near thePonte Veneta Marina.
The Signora Marcelli, however, lacks most of the endearing qualities of the Duchess; one in particular—a soft, musical voice. If the Signora is in temporary want of the services of one of her brood of children, it never occurs to her, no matter where she may be, to send another member of the household in search of the missing child; she simply throws back her head, fills her lungs, and begins acrescendowhich terminates in afortissimo, so shrill and far-reaching that it could call her offspring back from the dead. Should her husband, the Signor Marcelli, come in some wet morning late from the lagoon,—say at nine o’clock, instead of an hour after daylight,—the Signora begins on hercrescendowhen she first catches sight of his boat slowly poled along the canal. Thereupon the Signora fills the surrounding air with certain details of her family life, including her present attitude of mind toward the Signore, and with such volume and vim that you think she fully intends breaking every bone under his tarpaulins when he lands,—and she is quite able physically to do it,—until you further notice that it makes about as much impression upon the Signore as the rain upon his oilskins. Itmakes still less on his neighbors, who have listened to similar outbursts for years, and have come to regard them quite as they would the announcement by one of the Signora’s hens that she had just laid an egg—an event of too much importance to be passed over in silence.
When the Signor Marcelli arrives off the little wooden landing-ladder facing his house, and, putting things shipshape about the boat, enters his doorway, thrashing the water from his tarpaulin hat as he walks, the Signora, from sheer loss of breath, subsides long enough to overhaul a unique collection of dry clothing hanging to the rafters, from which she selects a coat patched like Joseph’s of old, with trousers to match. These she carries to the Signore, who puts them on in dead silence, reappearing in a few moments barefooted but dry, a red worsted cap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth. Then he drags up a chair, and, still silent as a graven image,—he has not yet spoken a word,—continues smoking, looking furtively up at the sky, or leaning over listlessly and watching the chickens that gather about his feet. Now and again he picks up a rooster or strokes a hen as he would a kitten. Nothing more.
Only then does the Signora subside, bringingout a fragment ofpolentaand a pot of coffee, which the fisherman divides with his chickens, the greedy ones jumping on his knees. I feel assured that it is neither discretion nor domestic tact, nor even uncommon sense, that forbids a word of protest to drop from the Signore’s lips. It is rather a certain philosophy, born of many dull days spent on the lagoon, and many lively hours passed with the Signora Marcelli, resulting in some such apothegm as, “Gulls scream and women scold, but fishing and life go on just the same.â€
There is, too, the other old fisherman, whose name I forget, who lives in the little shed of a house next to the long wall, and who is forever scrubbing his crab baskets, or lifting them up and down, and otherwise disporting himself in an idiotic and most aggravating way. He happens to own an old water-logged boat that has the most delicious assortment of barnacles and seaweed clinging to its sides. It is generally piled high with great baskets, patched and mended, with red splotches all over them, and bits of broken string dangling to their sides or banging from their open throats. There are also a lot of rheumatic, palsied old poles that reach over this ruin of a craft, to which are tied still more baskets ofstill more delicious qualities of burnt umber and Hooker’s-green moss. Behind this boat is a sun-scorched wall of broken brick, caressed all day by a tender old mother of a vine, who winds her arms about it and splashes its hot cheeks with sprays of cool shadows.
When, some years ago, I discovered this combination of boat, basket, and shadow-flecked wall, and in an unguarded moment begged the fisherman to cease work for the morning at my expense, and smoke a pipe of peace in his doorway, until I could transfer its harmonies to my canvas, I spoke hurriedly and without due consideration; for since that time, whenever this contemporary of the originalBucentorogets into one of my compositions,—these old fish-boats last forever and are too picturesque for even the little devils to worry over,—this same fisherman immediately dries his sponge, secures his baskets, and goes ashore, and as regularly demands backsheesh ofsoldiand fine-cut. Next summer I shall buy the boat and hire him to watch; it will be much cheaper.
Then there are the two girls who live with their grandmother, in one end of an old tumble-down, next to the little wooden bridge that the boats lie under. She keeps a small cook-shop, where she boils and then toasts,in thin strips, slices of green-skinned pumpkin, which the girls sell to the fishermen on the boats, or hawk about thefondamenta. As the whole pumpkin can be bought for alira, you can imagine what a wee bit of a copper coin it must be that pays for a fragment of its golden interior, even when the skilled labor of the old woman is added to the cost of the raw material.
Last of all are the boys; of no particular size, age, nationality, or condition,—just boys; little rascally, hatless, shoeless, shirtless, trouser—everything-less, except noise and activity. They yell like Comanches; they crawl between the legs of your easel and look up between your knees into your face; they steal your brushes and paints; they cry “Soldi, soldi, Signore,†until life becomes a burden; they spend their days in one prolonged whoop of hilarity, their nights in concocting fresh deviltry, which they put into practice the moment you appear in the morning. When you throw one of them into the canal, in the vain hope that his head will stick in the mud and so he be drowned dead, half a dozen jump in after him in a delirium of enjoyment. When you turn one upside down and shake your own color-tubes out of his rags, he calls upon all the saints to witnessthat the other fellow, the boy Beppo or Carlo, or some other “o†or “i,†put them there, and that up to this very moment he was unconscious of their existence; when you belabor the largest portion of his surface with your folding stool or T-square, he is either in a state of collapse from excessive laughter or screaming with assumed agony, which lasts until he squirms himself into freedom; then he goes wild, turning hand-springs and describing no end of geometrical figures in the air, using his stubby little nose for a centre and his grimy thumbs and outspread fingers for compasses.
All these side scenes, however, constitute only part of the family life of the Venetian fishermen. If you are up early in the morning you will see their boats moving through the narrow canals to the fish market on the Grand Canal above the Rialto, loaded to the water’s edge with hundreds of bushels of crawling green crabs stowed away in the great baskets; or piles of opalescent fish heaped upon the deck, covered with bits of sailcloth, or glistening in the morning sun. Earlier, out on the lagoon, in the gray dawn, you will see clusters of boats with the seines widespread, the smaller dories scattered here and there, hauling or lowering the spider-skein nets.
But there is still another and a larger fishing trade, a trade not exactly Venetian, although Venice is its best market. To this belong the fishermen of Chioggia and the islands farther down the coast. These men own and man the heavier seagoing craft with the red and orange sails that make the water life of Venice unique.
Every Saturday a flock of these boats will light off the wall of the Public Garden, their beaks touching the marble rail. These are Ziem’s boats—his for half a century; nobody has painted them in the afternoon light so charmingly or so truthfully. Sunday morning, after mass, they are off again, spreading their gay wings toward Chioggia. On other days one or two of these gay-plumed birds will hook a line over the cluster of spiles near the wall of the Riva, below the arsenal bridge, their sails swaying in the soft air, while their captains are buying supplies to take to the fleet twenty miles or more out at sea.
Again, sometimes in the early dawn or in the late twilight, you will see, away out in still another fishing quarter, a single figure walking slowly in the water, one arm towing his boat, the other carrying a bag. Every now and then the figure bends over, feelsabout with his toes, and then drops something into the bag. This is the mussel-gatherer of the lagoon. In the hot summer nights these humble toilers of the sea, with only straw mats for covering, often sleep in their boats, tethered to poles driven into the yielding mud. They can wade waist-deep over many square miles of water-space about Venice, although to one in a gondola, skimming over the same glassy surfaces, there seems water enough to float a ship.
These several grades of fishermen have changed but little, either in habits, costume, or the handling of their craft, since the early days of the republic. The boats, too, are almost the same in construction and equipment, as can be seen in any of the pictures of Canaletto and the painters of his time. The bows of the larger sea-craft are still broad and heavily built, the rudders big and cumbersome, with the long sweep reaching over the after-deck; the sails are loosely hung with easily adjusted booms, to make room for the great seines which are swung to the cross-trees of the foremast. The only boat of really modern design, and this is rarely used as a fishing-boat, is thesandolo, a shallow skiff drawing but a few inches of water, and with both bow and stern sharp and verylow, modeled originally for greater speed in racing.
Whatever changes have taken place in the political and social economy of Venice, they have affected but little these lovers of the lagoons. What mattered it to whom they paid taxes,—whether to doge, Corsican, Austrian, or king,—there were as good fish in the sea as had ever been caught, and as long as their religion lasted, so long would people eat fish and Friday come round every week in the year.