I
VENICE, _May_ 12 HOTEL PAOLO ANAFESTO.
I HAVE always wished that I might have discovered Venice for myself. Inthe midst of our mad acquisition and frenzied dissemination of knowledge,these latter days, we miss how many fresh and exquisite sensations! HadI a daughter, I should like to inform her mind on every other possiblepoint and keep her in absolute ignorance of Venice. Well do I realizethat it would be impracticable, although no more so, after all, thanRousseau’s plan of educating Émile, which certainly obtained a widehearing and considerable support in its time. No, tempting as it wouldbe, it would be difficult to carry out such a theory in these days oflogic and common sense, and in some moment of weakness I might possiblysuccumb and tell her all about it, for fear that some stranger, whom shemight meet at a ball, would have the pleasure of doing it first.
The next best woman-person in the world with whom to see Venice, barringthe lovely non-existent daughter, is Salemina.
It is our first visit, but, alas! we are, nevertheless, much betterinformed than I could wish. Salemina’s mind is particularly wellfurnished, but, luckily she cannot always remember the point wished forat the precise moment of need; so that, taking her all in all, she isnearly as agreeable as if she were ignorant. Her knowledge never bulksheavily and insistently in the foreground or middle-distance, like thatof Miss Celia Van Tyck, but remains as it should, in the haze of amelting and delicious perspective. She has plenty of enthusiasms, too,and Miss Van Tyck has none. Imagine our plight at being accidentallylinked to that encyclopædic lady in Italy! She is an old acquaintance ofSalemina’s and joined us in Florence, where she had been staying for amonth, waiting for her niece Kitty Schuyler,—Kitty Copley now,—who is inSpain with her husband.
Miss Van Tyck would be endurable in Sheffield, Glasgow, Lyons, Genoa,Kansas City, Pompeii, or Pittsburg, but she should never have blightedVenice with her presence. She insisted, however, on accompanying us, andI can only hope that the climate and associations will have a relaxingeffect on her habits of thought and speech. When she was in Florence,she was so busy in “reading up” Verona and Padua that she had no time forthe Uffizi Gallery. In Verona and Padua she was absorbed in Hare’s“Venice,” vaccinating herself, so to speak, with information, that itmight not steal upon, and infect her, unawares. If there is anythingthat Miss Van abhors, it is knowing a thing without knowing that sheknows it; while for me, the most charming knowledge is the sort thatcomes by unconscious absorption, like the free grace of God.
We intended to enter Venice in orthodox fashion, by moonlight, and beganto consult about trains when we were in Milan. The porter said thatthere was only one train between the eight and the twelve, and gave me apamphlet on the subject, but Salemina objects to an early start, and MissVan refuses to arrive anywhere after dusk, so it is fortunate that thedistances are not great.
They have a curious way of reckoning time in Italy, for I found that thetrain leaving Milan at eight-thirty was scheduled to arrive at tenminutes past eighteen.
“You could never sit up until then, Miss Van,” I said; “but, on the otherhand, if we leave later, to please Salemina, say at ten in the morning,we do not arrive until eight minutes before twenty-one! I haven’t thefaintest idea what time that will really be, but it sounds too late forthree defenceless women—all of them unmarried—to be prowling about in astrange city.”
It proved on investigation, however, that twenty-one o’clock is only ninein Christian language (that is, one’s mother tongue), so we united inchoosing that hour as being the most romantic possible, and there was afull yellow moon as we arrived in the railway station. My heart beathigh with joy and excitement, for I succeeded in establishing Miss Vanwith Salemina in one gondola, while I took all the luggage in another,ridding myself thus cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van’scompany.
“Do come with us, Penelope,” she said, as we issued from the portico ofthe station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers’ pandemonium,only the soft lapping of waves against the marble steps—“Do come with us,Penelope, and let us enter ‘dangerous and sweet-charmed Venice’ together.It does, indeed, look a ‘veritable sea-bird’s nest.’”
She had informed me before, in Milan, that Cassiodorus, Theodoric’ssecretary, had thus styled Venice, but somehow her slightest remark isout of key. I can always see it printed in small type in a footnote atthe bottom of the page, and I always wish to skip it, as I do otherfootnotes, and annotations, and marginal notes and addenda. If MissVan’s mother had only thought of it, Addenda would have been a delightfulChristian name for her, and much more appropriate than Celia.
If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that everyintelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh eyes to thestudy of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that the new note is aslikely to be struck by the ’prentice as by the master hand, if I shouldbe assured that my diary would never be read, I should still refuse towrite my first impressions of Venice. My best successes in life havebeen achieved by knowing what not to do, and I consider it the finestcommon sense to step modestly along in beaten paths, not stirring up,even there, any more dust than is necessary. If my friends andacquaintances ever go to Venice, let them read their Ruskin, theirGoethe, their Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, their Rogers, Gautier,Michelet, their Symonds and Howells, not forgetting old “Coryat’sCrudities,” and be thankful I spared them mine.
It was the eve of Ascension Day, and a yellow May moon was hanging in theblue. I wished with all my heart that it were a little matter of sevenor eight hundred years earlier in the world’s history, for then thepeople would have been keeping vigil and making ready for that nuptialceremony of Ascension-tide when the Doge married Venice to the sea. Whycan we not make pictures nowadays, as well as paint them? We arebanishing colour as fast as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships,ourselves, in black and white and sober hues, and if it were not fordear, gaudy Mother Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes onpainting her reds and greens and blues and yellows with the same lavishhand, we should have a sad and discreet universe indeed.
But so long as we have more or less stopped making pictures, is it notfortunate that the great ones of the olden time have been eternally fixedon the pages of the world’s history, there to glow and charm and burn forever and a day? To be able to recall those scenes of marvellous beautyso vividly that one lives through them again in fancy, and reflect, thatsince we have stopped being picturesque and fascinating, we have learned,on the whole, to behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thoughtas I can imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of SanMarco in my gondola.
I could see the Doge descend the Giant’s Stairs, and issue from the gateof the Ducal Palace. I could picture the great Bucentaur as it reachedthe open beyond the line of the tide. I could see the white-mitredPatriarch walking from his convent on the now deserted isle of Sant’Elena to the shore where his barge lay waiting to join the glitteringprocession.
And then there floated before my entranced vision the princely figure ofthe Doge taking the Pope-blessed ring, and, advancing to the littlegallery behind his throne on the Bucentaur, raising it high, and droppingit into the sea. I could almost hear the faint splash as it sank in thegolden waves, and hear, too, the sonorous words of the old weddingceremony: “_Desponsamus te_, _Mare_, _in signum veri perpetuiquedominii_!”
Then when the shouts of mirth and music had died away and the Bucentaurand its train had drifted back into the lagoon, the blue sea, new-wedded,slept through the night with the May moon on her breast and the silentstars for sentinels.