03.16. Venice

Chapter 16 Vencie.

Arrival at Venice -- The Gondola -- The Canal -- The Streets of Venice -- San Marco Square -- A Night Scene -- The Campanile -- St. Mark’s Cathedral -- The Healing Statue.

I always desired to approach Venice by sea, and in the evening. I had read in some book, the name of which I have forgotten, of some travelers rowing by gondola to Venice, and, as they approached the bespired and bedomed city near the hour of sunset, there came to them over the waves the sound of distant church bells. Then these words were clinging to me: "Tis sweet to hear At midnight, on the blue and moonlit deep, The song and oar of Adria’s gondolier, By distance mellowed, o’er the waters sweep."

But, instead of evening, I arrived at 5 o’clock in the morning; and instead of the approach to the city by boat, the cars now carry one over the lagoon that separates Venice from the mainland by means of a railroad bridge four or five miles in length. But this is the only change. The long, black railroad line that goes from Venice to the shore has not the arterial capacity to bring back continental life in sufficient force and quantity to change the city of the Doges. The cars only bring you to the border of the city, where Venice sits, birdlike, upon her one hundred and seventeen islands. The song which I heard as a boy-- "Beautiful Venice, Beautiful Venice, The Bride of the Sea"-- can be sung as truly now as then. In a few minutes I was in a gondola, gliding up the canals to the hotel. The bells were ringing in different directions, and their sound, floating up these channels or water was sweet and musical. The gondola soon enchains the eye. It is a long, narrow boat, twenty-five feet in length, and three or four in width. The high-peaked prow bears a broad battle-axe, which looks formidable, but is quite harmless. In the center rises a canopy of white or colored cloth, or a miniature cabin of wood painted black, latticed on either side to exclude the gaze and to receive the air. The stern, which ends sharply like the prow, is decked over from gunwale to gunwale for the distance of four feet. On this little platform the gondolier stands and propels the boat -- not by sculling or rowing, but by a method seen nowhere else than in Venice. An oarlock, one foot and a half high, rises from the right gunwale of the boat, and five feet from the stern. The gondolier, with his face to the bow of the boat, rests his oar in the lock, and pushes the handle from him, while, with a dexterous side movement of the paddle, he keeps the boat in line. There is no serpentine track made, but a swift and straight movement. T he motion delightful, and the sensation of gliding swiftly and noiselessly past doorways, up canals, down between endless lines of overhanging houses, under arches and bridges, is one delightful from the novelty and reality. The noiselessness is a striking feature in the gondola trip. The boat makes scarce a ripple, and the people in it keep silence. A luxury of stillness and dreaminess falls on the person indulging in the ride. Yonder is a young lady floating by, reading under her white canopy; yonder goes a gentleman smoking; others are silently looking out as they glide past. The only sound is the occasional dip of the oar, or the voice of the gondolier, calling out in warning to one another. Behold me, on this and two other occasions, shaded by a canopy, and resting on soft cushions, gliding up and down the canals of this wonderful city.

One of the great charms of Venice is its deliverance from many city noises. No deafening rattle and roar of cab, and wagon, and heavy dray. Here is a city whose streets are made of water, whose carriages are boats, and whose dust is the rippling waves. As you go about in the gondola, the first and last impression made upon you is that Venice is a submerged or overflowed city. The feeling, or rather the appearance, is that the water has rushed over the streets to a considerable depth, and everybody is now in boats from sheer necessity. As one goes up and down these canals there is scarcely a sign of the stone pathways and lanes that traverse Venice in every direction. All you see are arched bridges of stone over which you notice people occasionally flitting, coming from unseen depths on one side, and disappearing into unseen depths on the other. Then, again, you see very few people at their windows and doors. This gives an appearance of forsakenness to the city, and adds another peculiarity that helps to make it unlike all other communities in the world. Let it not be supposed that Venice is sparsely settled. On those house-covered islands swarms a population of one hundred and forty thousand people. Let it not be supposed, again, that Venice has no thoroughfares but her canals. Of these canals she has one hundred and fifty, crossed by as many bridges; and these water avenues go in every direction, with all the windings and twistings of a serpent. But in addition, Venice has a number of lanes (I cannot call them streets) that wind and wander through the city, in a manner equal to the canals. They do not run by the side of the canals, but cross them by the stone-arched bridges. They are paved with stone or asphalt, and are from six to twelve feet wide. Fancy these streets, with houses on each side six stories in height. The least excitement on these liliputian boulevards creates a perfect jam and blockade.

Merceria street is the main boulevard and business thoroughfare. It is twelve feet across, and its course is like a zigzag bolt of lightning in a cloud. But it is a fascinating street for all that. If the pedestrian will look up at the upper-story windows as he perambulates these little thoroughfares he will discover where a good many of the people are.

Venice has, perhaps, some eight or ten squares. They are quite diminutive, not at all attractive, but seemed to be placed here and there through the city in order that the inhabitants may come out occasionally, and turn round, and stretch their arms, and take one good, long breath. The great square of the city, famous and popular, is the San Marco Piazzo. This is located in the southeastern corner of Venice; is two hundred yards long and about one hundred wide. The east side is formed by St. Mark’s Cathedral and the Palace of the Doges, while the other three sides are shut in by great palatial blocks once occupied by the nobility, but whose arcades are now filled with stores and cafes. Fanned by the breezes of the Adriatic, whose waves roll in thirty or forty yards of the place, and visited four or five evenings in the week by the military band, which plays deep into the night, the San Marco Square is the most popular promenade and resort for the Venetians. In passing through the place on several evenings I was confident five or six thousand people were before me.

One night scene remains as a striking picture in my mind. The square was crowded with thousands. Dark-faced Italian men and black-eyed women of Venice, with bare head, and with mantilla and fan, were standing, sitting, or walking in every direction. Hundreds of people sat at little tables, that were encroaching far upon the square, eating ices and sipping wine. A high wind was blowing in from the sea, clouds were scurrying across the face of the sky; but it seemed only to add an impetus to the scene of life and gayety going on in the plazza. The military band, composed of sixty or seventy instruments, stood in a large circle in the center, playing a piece that for weirdness and melody and minor chord thrillings, I have no descriptive word. The faces of the musicians were almost entirely concealed by the heavy feather plumes that drooped forward, and moved and fluttered in the night wind. The shadowed face was in keeping somehow with the music. It was a strain made up of dirge-notes taken from winter winds, and cries of lost birds, and moans of long waves breaking on barren and uninhabited shores. It finally seemed to me to be a lament over Italy. Poor Italy! Poor priest-ridden, poverty-stricken Italy! Just as it seemed that all hope was gone, the music suddenly changed, and burst forth into new measures, and began to walk up an ascending stairway of joy and triumph. I saw in the strain that spring had succeeded to winter, that somebody had found the birds, and that a whole colony of people had settled on the uninhabited shore. I saw that the long night was over, that the sun was rising, that people had returned from long journeys, and everybody was shaking hands. As I walked back to my hotel I prayed in my heart that Christ might be the hope of Italy, and that He alone may be the cause of its joy and triumph, if triumph and joy it ever has.

Just in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral rises the Campanile, a tower of three hundred and twenty feet high. Napoleon Bonaparte rode on horseback up its peculiar plane-like steps to the top.

What a man he was for going up high, and then coming down again! What was true of the King of France in the select poems of Mother Goose, is true of its Emperor as well. Not being an emperor, I ascended the thirty-six inclined planes to the summit of the tower on foot. What a view! The Alps robed in purple in the west. In the north the railroad, like a black cord or cable, ties us to the European shore, to keep us from floating away. To the south swells the Adriatic Sea, over which the fleets of antiquity sailed, where Caesar came near drowning, and over which Paul was taken as a prisoner. To the east the Adriatic still. And Venice is at our feet. Yonder winds the Grand Canal, like an inverted letter S, through the city, dividing it in two parts. Midway its extent springs the white arch of the Rialto, a bridge made out of a single block of marble. The surface of the canal is covered with gondolas moving swiftly in every direction. As we notice the city, at a distance of five miles from the land, rising up, Venus-like, from the sea, we begin to see how impregnable it used to be in the Middle Ages from its situation, while its fleets swept, eagle-like, and like mother-birds around it in defense.

We paid a visit to St. Mark’s Cathedral. Poets and sculptors and painters and imitative Americans rave over the beauty of the building. It is, beyond question, lovely. Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice, may be consulted by the curious. The floor of the cathedral was thrown into undulations by an earthquake years ago. The solemn handwriting of God is allowed to remain. The church custodians claim to have under the altar the body of St. Mark. As they are certain about it, I did not investigate. In a corner of the church is a small black statue of the evangelist. I saw four men rub their hands over it, and then rub their bodies in various places. Each man had his afflicted spot. As they did this they dropped a copper coin into a box near the statue, in payment of the homeopathic cure. The fourth man rubbed the statue vigorously, and then as earnestly rubbed a portion of his body just beneath his chest, which convinced me that his misery was altogether abdominal. He next felt in his pocket for his centime, and behold! the penny was not there. He looked dismayed and a trifle foolish, and then slowly departed. Here comes up some interesting questions. Would the tutelary saint heal on credit? Would the statue part with its healing gratuitously, considering the circumstances? Or did the statue let out its pain-easing power, ignorant of the fact of the man’s impecuniosity? If we could have followed that man and found out how his pains were, doubtless these solemn and important mysteries might have been explained.

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