GONDOLA DAYS
T
THAT first morning in Venice! It is the summer, of course—never the winter. This beautiful bride of the sea is loveliest when bright skies bend tenderly over her, when white mists fall softly around her, and the lagoons about her feet are sheets of burnished silver: when the red oleanders thrust their blossoms exultingly above the low, crumbling walls: when the black hoods of winterfelsiare laid by at thetraghetti, and gondolas flaunt their white awnings: when the melon-boats, with lifeless sails, drift lazily by, and the shrill cry of the fruit vender floats over the water: when the air is steeped, permeated, soaked through and through with floods of sunlight—quivering, brilliant, radiant; sunlight that blazes from out a sky of pearl and opal and sapphire; sunlight that drenches every old palace with liquid amber, kissing every moulding awake, and soothing every shadow to sleep; sunlight that caresses and does not scorch, that dazzles and does not blind, that illumines, irradiates, makes glorious, every sail and tower and dome, from the instant thegreat god of the east shakes the dripping waters of the Adriatic from his face until he sinks behind the purple hills of Padua.
These mornings, then! How your heart warms and your blood tingles when you remember that first one in Venice—your first day in a gondola!
You recall that you were leaning upon your balcony overlooking the garden when you caught sight of your gondolier; the gondolier whom Joseph, prince among porters, had engaged for you the night of your arrival.
On that first morning you were just out of your bed. In fact, you had hardly been in it all night. You had fallen asleep in a whirl of contending emotions. Half a dozen times you had been up and out on this balcony, suddenly aroused by the passing of some music-boat filling the night with a melody that seemed a thousand fold more enchanting because of your sudden awakening,—the radiant moon, and the glistening water beneath. I say you were out again upon this same balcony overlooking the oleanders, the magnolias, and the palms. You heard the tinkling of spoons in the cups below, and knew that some earlier riser was taking his coffee in the dense shrubbery; but it madeno impression upon you. Your eye was fixed on the beautiful dome of the Salute opposite; on the bronze goddess of the Dogana waving her veil in the soft air; on the group of lighters moored to the quay, their red and yellow sails aglow; on the noble tower of San Giorgio, sharp-cut against the glory of the east.
Now you catch a waving hand and the lifting of a cap on the gravel walk below. “At what hour will the Signore want the gondola?”
You remember the face, brown and sunny, the eyes laughing, the curve of the black mustache, and how the wavy short hair curled about his neck and struggled out from under his cap. He has on another suit, newly starched and snow-white; a loose shirt, a wide collar trimmed with blue, and duck trousers. Around his waist is a wide blue sash, the ends hanging to his knees. About his throat is a loose silk scarf—so loose that you note the broad, manly chest, the muscles of the neck half concealed by the cross-barred boating-shirt covering the brown skin.
There is a cheeriness, a breeziness, a spring about this young fellow that inspires you. As you look down into his face you feel thathe is part of the air, of the sunshine, of the perfume of the oleanders. He belongs to everything about him, and everything belongs to him. His costume, his manner, the very way he holds his hat, show you at a glance that while for the time being he is your servant, he is, in many things deeply coveted by you, greatly your master. If you had his chest and his forearm, his sunny temper, his perfect digestion and contentment, you could easily spare one half of your world’s belongings in payment. When you have lived a month with him and have caught the spirit of the man, you will forget all about these several relations of servant and master. The six francs a day that you pay him will seem only your own contribution to the support of the gondola; his share being his services. When you have spent half the night at the Lido, he swimming at your side, or have rowed all the way to Torcello, or have heard early mass at San Rosario, away up the Giudecca, he kneeling before you, his hat on the cool pavement next your own, you will begin to lose sight even of the francs, and want to own gondola and all yourself, that you may makehimguest and thus discharge somewhat the ever-increasing obligation of hospitality under which he places you.Soon you will begin to realize that despite your belongings—wealth to this gondolier beyond his wildest dreams—he in reality is the richer of the two. He has inherited all this glory of palace, sea, and sky, from the day of his birth, and can live in it every hour in the year, with no fast-ebbing letter-of-credit nor near-approaching sailing day to sadden his soul or poison the cup of his pleasure. When your fatal day comes and your trunk is packed, he will stand at the water-stairs of the station, hat in hand, the tears in his eyes, and when one of the demons of the master-spirit of the age—Hurry—has tightened its grip upon you and you are whirled out and across the great iron bridge, and you begin once more the life that now you loathe, even before you have reached Mestre—if your gondolier is like my own gondolier, Espero—my Espero Gorgoni, whom I love—you would find him on his knees in the church next the station, whispering a prayer for your safe journey across the sea, and spending one of your miserable francs for some blessed candles to burn until you reached home.
But you have not answered your gondolier, who stands with upturned eyes on the graveled walk below.
“At what hour will the Signore want the gondola?”
You awake from your reverie. Now! as soon as you swallow your coffee. Ten minutes later you bear your weight on Giorgio’s bent elbow and step into his boat.
It is like nothing else of its kind your feet have ever touched—so yielding and yet so firm; so shallow and yet so stanch; so light, so buoyant, and so welcoming to peace and rest and comfort.
How daintily it sits the water! How like a knowing swan it bends its head, the iron blade of the bow, and glides out upon the bosom of the Grand Canal! You stop for a moment, noting the long, narrow body, blue-black and silver in the morning light, as graceful in its curves as a bird; the white awning amidships draped at sides and back, the softly-yielding, morocco-covered seat, all cushions and silk fringes, and the silken cords curbing quaint lions of polished brass. Beyond and aft stands your gondolier, with easy, graceful swing bending to his oar. You stoop down, part the curtains, and sink into the cushions. Suddenly an air of dignified importance steals over you. Never in your whole life have you been so magnificently carried about. Four-in-hands, commodores’gigs, landaus in triumphant processions with white horses and plumes, seem tame and commonplace. Here is a whole barge, galleon, Bucentaur, all to yourself; noiseless, alert, subservient to your airiest whim, obedient to the lightest touch. You float between earth and sky. You feel like a potentate out for an airing, housed like a Rajah, served like Cleopatra, and rowed like a Doge. You command space and dominate the elements.
THE GATELESS POSTS OF THE PIAZZETTATHE GATELESS POSTS OF THE PIAZZETTA
THE GATELESS POSTS OF THE PIAZZETTA
THE GATELESS POSTS OF THE PIAZZETTA
But Giorgio is leaning on his oar, millions of diamonds dripping from its blade.
“Where now, Signore?”
Anywhere, so he keeps in the sunlight. To the Piazza, perhaps, and then around San Giorgio with its red tower and noble façade, and later, when the shadows lengthen, away down to the Public Garden, and home again in the twilight by way of the Giudecca.
This gondola-landing of the Piazza, the most important of the cab-stands in Venice, is the stepping-stone—a wet and ooze-covered stone—to the heart of the city. Really the heart, for the very life of every canal,campo, and street, courses through it in unending flow all the livelong day and night, from the earliest blush of dawn to the earliest blush of dawn again; no one ever seems to go to bed in Venice. Along and near theedge of this landing stand the richest examples of Venetian architecture. First, the Royal Gardens of the king’s palace, with its balustrade of marble and broad flight of water-steps; then the Library, with its cresting of statues, white against the sky; then the two noble columns, the gateless posts of the Piazzetta, bearing Saint Theodore and the Lion of Venice; and beyond, past the edge of San Marco, the clock tower and the three great flag-staffs; then the Palace of the Doges, that masterwork of the fifteenth century; then the Prison, with a glimpse of the Bridge of Sighs, caught in mid-air; then the great cimeter-sweep of the Riva, its point lost in the fringe of trees shading the Public Garden; and then, over all, as you look up, the noble Campanile, the wonderful bell-tower of San Marco, unadorned, simple, majestic—up, up, into the still air, its gilded angel, life-size, with outstretched wings flashing in the morning sun, a mere dot of gold against the blue.
Before you touch the lower steps of the water-stairs, your eye falls upon an old man with bared head. He holds a long staff studded with bad coins, having a hook at one end. With this in one hand he steadies your gondola, with the other he holds out his hat.He is an aged gondolier, too old now to row. He knows you, the poor fellow, and he knows your kind. How many such enthusiasts has he helped to alight! And he knows Giorgio too, and remembers when, like him, he bent his oar with the best. You drop a penny into his wrinkled hand, catch his grateful thanks, and join the throng. The arcades under the Library are full of people smoking and sipping coffee. How delicious the aroma and the pungent smell of tobacco! In the shadow of the Doges’ Palace groups idle and talk—a little denser in spots where some artist has his easel up, or some pretty, dainty child is feeding the pigeons.
A moment more and you are in the Piazza of San Marco; the grand piazza of the doges, with its thousands of square feet of white pavement blazing in the sun, framed on three sides by marble palaces, dominated by the noblest campanile on the globe, and enriched, glorified, made inexpressibly precious and unique by that jewel in marble, in porphyry, in verd antique and bronze, that despair of architects of to-day, that delight of the artists of all time—the most sacred, the Church of San Marco.
In and out this great quadrangle whirl the pigeons, the pigeons of Dandolo, up into thesoft clouds, the light flashing from their throats; sifting down in showers on gilded cross and rounded dome; clinging to intricate carvings, over and under the gold-crowned heads of saints in stone and bronze; across the baking plaza in flurries of gray and black; resting like a swarm of flies, only to startle, mass, and swirl again. Pets of the state, these birds, since the siege of Candia, when the great Admiral Dandolo’s chief bearer of dispatches, the ancestor of one of these same white-throated doves, brought the good news to Venice the day the admiral’s victorious banner was thrown to the breeze, and the Grand Council, sitting in state, first learned the tidings from the soft plumage of its wings.
At one end, fronting the church, stand the three great flag-poles, the same you saw at the landing, socketed in bronze, exquisitely modeled and chased, bearing the banners of Candia, Cyprus, and the Morea—kingdoms conquered by the state—all three in a row, presenting arms to the power that overthrew them, and forever dipping their colors to the glory of its past.
Here, too, in this noble square, under your very feet, what solemnities, what historic fêtes, what conspiracies! Here for centurieshas been held the priestly pageant of Corpus Christi, aflame with lanterns and flambeaux. Here eleven centuries ago blind old Dandolo received the Crusader chiefs of France. Here the splendid nuptials of Francesco Foscari were celebrated by a tournament, witnessed by thirty thousand people, and lasting ten days. Here the conspiracies of Tiepolo and Faliero were crushed—Venetian against Venetian the only time in a thousand years. And here Italy suffered her crowning indignity, the occupation by the French under the newly-fledged warrior who unlimbered his cannon at the door of the holy church, pushed the four bronze horses from their pedestals over the sacred entrance—the horses of Constantine, wrought by Lysippus the Greek,—despoiled the noble church of its silver lamps, robbed the ancient column of its winged lion, and then, after a campaign unprecedented in its brilliancy, unexampled in the humiliation and degradation it entailed upon a people who for ten centuries had known no power outside of Venice, planted in the centre of this same noble square, with an irony as bitter as it was cruel, the “Tree of Liberty,” at which was burned, on the 4th of June, 1797, the insignia of the ancient republic.
And yet, notwithstanding all her vicissitudes, the Venice of to-day is still the Venice of her glorious past, the Venice of Dandolo, Foscari, and Faliero. The actors are long since dead, but the stage-setting is the same; the same sun, the same air, the same sky over all. The beautiful dome of the Salute still dominates the Grand Canal. The great plaza is still perfect in all its proportions and in all that made up its beauty and splendor. The Campanile still raises its head, glistening in the morning light. High over all still flash and swoop the pigeons of Venice—the pigeons of Dandolo—now black as cinders, now flakes of gold in the yellow light. The doors of the sacred church are still open; the people pass in and out. Under the marble arcades, where the soldiers of the army of France stacked their arms, to-day sit hundreds of free Venetians, with their wives and sweethearts, sipping their ices and coffee; the great orchestra, the king’s band, filling the air with its music.
When you ask what magician has wrought this change, let the old guide answer as once he answered me when, crossing the Piazza and uncovering his head, he pointed to a stone and said, in his soft Italian:—
“Here, Signore,—just here, where the greatNapoleon burnt our flag,—the noble republic of our fathers, under our good King and his royal spouse, was born anew.”
But you cannot stay. You will return and study the Piazza to-morrow; not now. The air intoxicates you. The sunlight is in your blood; your cheeks burn; you look out and over the Grand Canal—molten silver in the shimmer of the morning. Below, near the Public Garden, beyond San Giorgio, like a cluster of butterflies, hovers a fleet of Chioggia fishing-boats, becalmed in the channel. Off the Riva, near Danieli’s, lies the Trieste steamer, just arrived, a swarm of gondolas andbarcosabout her landing-ladders; the yellow smoke of her funnel drifting lazily. Farther away, on the golden ball of the Dogana, the bronze Goddess of the Wind poises light as air, her face aflame, her whirling sail bent with the passing breeze.
You resolve to stop no more; only to float, loll on your cushions, watch the gulls circle, and the slow sweep of the oars of the luggers. You would throw open—wide open—the great swinging gates of your soul. You not only would enjoy, you would absorb, drink in, fill yourself to the brim.
For hours you drift about. There is plenty of time to-morrow for the churches and palacesand caffès. To-day you want only the salt air in your face, the splash and gurgle of the water at the bow, and the low song that Giorgio sings to himself as he bends to his blade.
Soon you dart into a cool canal, skirt along an old wall, water stained and worn, and rest at a low step. Giorgio springs out, twists a cord around an iron ring, and disappears through an archway framing a garden abloom with flowering vines.
It is high noon. Now for your midday luncheon!
You have had all sorts of breakfasts offered you in your wanderings: On white-winged yachts, with the decks scoured clean, the brass glistening, the awning overhead. In the wilderness, lying on balsam boughs, the smell of the bacon and crisping trout filling the bark slant, the blue smoke wreathing the tall pines. In the gardens of Sunny Spain—one you remember at Granada, hugging the great wall of the Alhambra—you see the table now with its heap of fruit and flowers, and can hear the guitar of the gypsy behind the pomegranate. Along the shore of the beautiful bay of Matanzas, where the hidalgo who had watched you paint swept down in hisvolanteand carried you off to hisoranges and omelette. At St. Cloud, along the Seine, with the noiseless waiter in the seedy dress suit and necktie of the night before. But thefiletand melon! Yes, you would go again. I say you have had all sorts of breakfasts out of doors in your time, but never yet in a gondola.
A few minutes later Giorgio pushes aside the vines. He carries a basket covered with a white cloth. This he lays at your feet on the floor of the boat. You catch sight of the top of a siphon and a flagon of wine: do not hurry, wait till he serves it. But not here, where anybody might come; farther down, where the oleanders hang over the wall, their blossoms in the water, and where the air blows cool between the overhanging palaces.
Later Giorgio draws all the curtains except the side next the oleanders, steps aft and fetches a board, which he rests on the little side seats in front of your lounging-cushions. On this board he spreads the cloth, and then the seltzer and Chianti, the big glass of powdered ice and the little hard Venetian rolls. (By the bye, do you know that there is only one form of primitive roll, the world over?) Then come the cheese, the Gorgonzola—active, alert Gorgonzola, all green spots—wrappedin a leaf; a rough-jacketed melon, with some figs and peaches. Last of all, away down in the bottom of the basket, there is a dish of macaroni garnished with peppers. You do not want any meat. If you did you would not get it. Some time when you are out on the canal, or up the Giudecca, you might get a fish freshly broiled from a passing cook-boat serving the watermen—a sort of floating kitchen for those who are too poor for a fire of their own—but never meat.
Giorgio serves you as daintily as would a woman; unfolding the cheese, splitting the rolls, parting the melon into crescents, flecking off each seed with his knife: and last, the coffee from the little copper coffee-pot, and the thin cakes of sugar, in the thick, unbreakable, dumpy little cups.
There are no courses in this repast. You light a cigarette with your first mouthful and smoke straight through: it is that kind of a breakfast.
Then you spread yourself over space, flat on your back, the smoke curling out through the half-drawn curtains. Soon your gondolier gathers up the fragments, half a melon and the rest,—there is always enough for two,—moves aft, and you hear the clink ofthe glass and the swish of the siphon. Later you note the closely-eaten crescents floating by, and the empty leaf. Giorgio was hungry too.
But the garden!—there is time for that. You soon discover that it is unlike any other you know. There are no flower-beds and gravel walks, and no brick fountains with the scantily dressed cast-iron boy struggling with the green-painted dolphin, the water spurting from its open mouth. There is water, of course, but it is down a deep well with a great coping of marble, encircled by exquisite carvings and mellow with mould; and there are low trellises of grapes, and a tangle of climbing roses half concealing a weather-stained Cupid with a broken arm. And there is an old-fashioned sun-dial, and sweet smelling box cut into fantastic shapes, and a nest of an arbor so thickly matted with leaves and interlaced branches that you think of your Dulcinea at once. And there are marble benches and stone steps, and at the farther end an old rusty gate through which Giorgio brought the luncheon.
It is all so new to you, and so cool and restful! For the first time you begin to realize that you are breathing the air of a City of Silence. No hum of busy loom, notramp of horse or rumble of wheel, no jar or shock; only the voices that come over the water, and the plash of the ripples as you pass. But the day is waning; into the sunlight once more.
Giorgio is fast asleep; his arm across his face, his great broad chest bared to the sky.
“Si, Signore!”
He is up in an instant, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, catching his oar as he springs.
You glide in and out again, under marble bridges thronged with people; along quays lined with boats; by caffè, church, and palace, and so on to the broad water of the Public Garden.
But you do not land; some other day for that. You want the row back up the canal, with the glory of the setting sun in your face. Suddenly, as you turn, the sun is shut out: it is the great warship Stromboli, lying at anchor off the garden wall; huge, solid as a fort, fine-lined as a yacht, with exquisite detail of rail, mast, yard-arms, and gun mountings, the light flashing from her polished brasses.
In a moment you are under her stern, and beyond, skirting the old shipyard with the curious arch,—the one Whistler etched,—sheering to avoid the little steamers puffingwith modern pride, their noses high in air at the gondolas; past the long quay of the Riva, where the torpedo-boats lie tethered in a row, like swift horses eager for a dash; past the fruit-boats dropping their sails for a short cut to the market next the Rialto; past the long, low, ugly bath-house anchored off the Dogana; past the wonderful, the matchless, the never-to-be-unloved or forgotten, the most blessed, theSanta Maria della Salute.
THE ONE WHISTLER ETCHEDTHE ONE WHISTLER ETCHED
THE ONE WHISTLER ETCHED
THE ONE WHISTLER ETCHED
Oh! this drift back, square in the face of the royal sun, attended by all the pomp and glory of a departing day! What shall be said of this reveling, rioting, dominant god of the west, clothed in purple and fine gold; strewing his path with rose-leaves thrown broadcast on azure fields; rolling on beds of violet; saturated, steeped, drunken with color; every steeple, tower, and dome ablaze; the whole world on tip-toe, kissing its hands good-night!
Giorgio loves it, too. His cap is off, lying on the narrow deck; his cravat loosened, his white shirt, as he turns up the Giudecca, flashing like burning gold.
Somehow you cannot sit and take your ease in the fullness of all this beauty and grandeur. You spring to your feet. You must see behind and on both sides, your eyeroving eagerly away out to the lagoon beyond the great flour-mill and the gardens.
Suddenly a delicate violet light falls about you; the lines of palaces grow purple; the water is dulled to a soft gray, broken by long, undulating waves of blue; the hulls of the fishing-boats become inky black, their listless sails deepening in the falling shadows. Only the little cupola high up on the dome of the Redentore still burns pink and gold. Then it fades and is gone. The day is done!