THE SEA-CHARM OF VENICE

THE SEA-CHARM OF VENICE

BY

STOPFORD A. BROOKE

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND CO. 1907

All rights reserved.

THE SEA-CHARM OF VENICE

When Attila came storming into Europe, his conquests may be said to have given rise to two great sea-powers. His rush on the north along the Baltic shores probably caused so much pressure on the continental English, that many of them, all the Engle especially, left their lands, found another country in Britain, and gave it the name of England. It is now, and has been for some centuries, the mistress of the seas, both in commerce and in war. But when Attila drove his war-plough southward, he crossed the Alps, and descended on the cities of the plain between Trieste and the Po. When he reached Altinum, Aquileia, and the other towns bordering on the lagoon, the Roman nobles, many of whom might be called merchant princes, and their dependants fled to Torcello, to Rialto, and to other islands where, before the conqueror came, they had established depôts for their trading, where the fishermen and boatmen were already in their pay. When the Goths followed the invading track of Attila, the emigration of the Roman inhabitants of the mainland to the lagoon continued year after year; and out of this emigrant flight grew Venice, the Queen of the Sea.

England was Teutonic, Venice was Roman; and as in England the Teuton destroyed the influence of Rome, so the Teutonic invasion of Italy, with all its new elements, never touched Venice. The Gothic influence left her uninfluenced. She alone in Italy was pure Roman. The English race was mixed with the Celtic race, but the Teutonic elements prevailed. But Venice was unmixed. She was always singularly Roman right down to the dreadful days of her final conquest, so that it may well be said that Manin was ultimus Romanorum. In constitution, in laws, in traditions, in the temper of her citizens, in manners, in her greatness, her splendour, even in her unbridled luxury and her decay, she was Roman to the end. Italy was transmuted by the Goth, but not Venice.

But owing to her origin she was Rome at Sea; and being on the edge of a sea which naturally carried her war and trade to the East, she was more of eastern than of western Rome. Byzantium, not the Italian Rome, was her nursing mother, and poured into her the milk of her art, her commerce, and her customs. By this, also, she remained outside of Italy, and her position, anchored in the sea off the Italian coast, is, as it were, a symbol of her double relation to Western and Eastern Rome. Whatever change took place in her Roman nature was made by the spirit of the sea on which she had made her home. Commerce was forced upon her, and it was not difficult for her to take it up, for the Roman senators and patricians of Altinum, Padua, Concordia, and Aquileia who took refuge on the islands, had been traders before they founded Venice, and only developed more fully in Venice that commerce which they had practised on the mainland. Aquileia had been for years before the barbaric invasion the emporium of a trade with Byzantium and the Danube. The trade was transferred to Venice. It did not, then, arise in Venice, but it was so greatly increased during the centuries that the new city held the east in fee. From every port on the Mediterranean, and from lands and seas beyond that inland lake, the trade of east and west poured into Venice. To protect her commerce she became a sea-power. Her struggle for centuries with the pirates formed her navy and her seamen, both Venetians and mercenaries, into the mighty instrument of naval war they became when the strife with the pirates closed in victory. But her captains, her senators, the great dukes who led the navy into battle, led it for the sake of her commerce, and were themselves, as Shakespeare made Antonio, “royal merchants,” such as they had been of old in Padua, Altinum, and Aquileia; and always Romans. Wherever then we touch Venice we touch the sea out of which she was born, by which she was nursed, and which when she reached her full age, she wedded and commanded.

To realize the origins of the city, and this sea-spirit in her history and her life, to recall in memory the centuries she lasted, and to feel the sentiment of the splendid sorrow, strife and glory of the tale, it is well to row to Torcello, to climb to the top of the cathedral tower, and to look out from the low-arched windows, north and south, east and west. The door used always to be open, and it was easy to reach the upper chamber among the bells. Thence, as the voyager gazes to the north and west, he sees the high dim peaks of the Alpine chain from whose passes the Hun and the Goth descended. Below him stretches to the sea the misty plain where the cities of the old Venetia lay, which Attila advancing from the east gave up to fire and to slaughter, which Theodoric and Alboin afterwards ruined more completely. From these and from all the villages of the plain, the Roman nobles with their dependants fled to the islands of the lagoon which our voyager sees spreading north and south at his feet for many miles of blue and silver water. Below the tower are the deep-grassed meadows and dreary shores of Torcello which the people of Altinum, a third part of whom took flight from Attila, covered as the years went on with noble palaces, streets, bridges, and gardens. The cathedral they built was built with the very marbles which had adorned, and the stones which had raised, the churches and houses of Altinum. Pillars, capitals, the pulpits, the chair of the bishop, the marble screen of the choir, the font, the pavement, belonged to their church on the land. They were still Venetians. As they increased, and as the emigration from other cities continued, the dwellers in the older Venetia colonized Mazzorbo, Burano, Murano, and Malamocco. The islands lie before our eyes as we look from the southern windows of the tower. And noblest of all, at the end of the long slow curving line of the deep channel among the marshes, is Rivo Alto on whose islands the Venetians fixed their capital at last.

There, tremulous in the sea-mist is the shining expanse of water before the Ducal Palace, and the towers of the great city, in whose splendour and power ended the misery and the struggle of the flight. No view makes a deeper impression on the historian. But when that impression has been realized, there will steal into his mind, if he have with him the spirit of imagination, another impression; one of curious charm, a charm half of nature and half of humanity, a charm not of the land, but of the sea. In that charm there is the breath of the salt winds and the life of the dark blue waves which beyond Venice he sees from Torcello breaking in flashing foam on the Lido which defends the lagoon and shelters the city. It is a charm that rises to his heart, not only from the gay tossing of the Adriatic, but from the quiet, glittering, silver-gray expanse of the tidal lagoon in which the islands sleep like cattle on the meadows of the land. And of this charm and all it means and has made Venice, I shall attempt to write.

To write on Venice when many have written so well on her; to describe her, when she has been described from the Angel that, so short a time ago, watched over her on the Campanile to the islands on the far lagoon, seems almost an impertinence. But I have loved Venice for many years, and the record of any individual impressions received from her may have the interest which belongs to personal feeling. Moreover, in this little essay I shall limit myself to one subject—to the charm and the life which are added to Venice by the presence of the sea, to the influence which the sea has had on her beauty, on the character of her art, and on the imagination of those who visit her. What influence the sea had on her history—that immense subject—does not come within the scope of this essay. It is only concerned with her beauty, her charm, as they are bound up with the sea; it is not, save incidentally, concerned with her history.

In her constitution, in her history, in her people, in her position, in her art, and in her sea-power and commerce, Venice, among Italian towns, stands alone. She only is built, not by the sea, but in the sea, born not on the beach of ocean, but like Aphrodité, from beneath her heart. It is this difference which, entering into all her lesser charms, gives them their distinction, their wild, remote, and natural grace. Other great towns belong to humanity and art; even when they are sea-ports they are of the land, and are the creation of the land. But Venice, full of her own humanity, wrought into beauty by the art of her children, raised from the waves by the labour of those who loved her, belongs only to the sea, and seems to be the creation, not only of man, but of great Nature herself. Her streets are streams of the sea, and were planned by the will of the sea. The great path which, curling like a serpent, divides her city; by which her palaces of business, pleasure, and government were built; on which her history displayed itself for centuries in thanksgiving or sorrow, in pomp or in decay; is a sea-river ebbing and flowing, and brings day by day, into her midst, the winds of ocean for her life, the fruits of ocean for her food, the mystery of ocean for her beauty. This presence and power of the living sea, running through Venice like blood through a man, makes her distinctive charm. It is the charm of the life of Nature herself, added to the life of her art and the life of her humanity.

There are times when this impression is profound. To stand in the dawn, before the city is awake, on the quay of the Schiavoni, when the East beyond the Lido is flushing like a bride, and the morning star grows dim above the sea, is to forget that the stones on which we stand, the palaces and churches, bridges and towers, were built by man’s wit or set up for his business and his pleasure. They rose, we think, out of the will and creative passion of the Sea. The sky and the clouds descended to bestow on them other light and colour than those of the sea; the winds, in their playing, flung the bridges over the channels of the tide and the sunlight knit them into strength; but these were only the artists that adorned, it was the sea that built, the city.

Lest we should lose the power of this dream, we will not watch the buildings grow solid in the growing light, but keep our eyes on the broad expanse of the lagoon, shimmering in silver-gray out to the Port of Lido, where the silver meets the leaping blue of the Adriatic. The whole water-surface is alive, though it seem asleep, with the swift rushing of the tide. Around the angles of the quay, over the marble steps, all along the smooth stones of the wall, up the narrow canals, looping past the piles, swirling against the boats, the musical water ripples; and in every motion, change, and whirl, as in the main movement of the whole lagoon, the life of Nature in this her kingdom of the sea, full of force, pleasure, and joy in her own loveliness, is overwhelming. It masters the spirit of the gazer, and he becomes himself part of her sea-passion, living in the stream of her sea-being. There is silence everywhere. The quay is deserted, and if a belated sailor pass by, the sound of his footstep seems to mingle with the crying of the sea birds and the plash of the water. And in the silence, the impression that Nature alone exists, that the city is her work and that man is nothing, is deepened for the moment into an unforgettable reality.

A similar impression is made on the voyager who rows at the dead of night, when the sky is full of stars, out into the lagoon half way between Venice and the Lido. The city, with its scattered lights, has no clear outlines; it rises like an exhalation from the sea. The campaniles are white ghosts that appeal to the dark blue heavens. Below them, the crowd of buildings wavers in the sea-mist like a shaken curtain. The city, seen thus in the tremulous starlight, is, we think, a dream-conception which, in high imagination, the God of the sea, resting far below on his couch of pearl, has thrown into such form as his wandering will desires. No human art has made its wonder.

Nearer to our eyes the islands lie outstretched like sea-creatures, risen from the depths to behold the stars and to rest from their labours. The boats which lie at anchor against the tide do not belong to man, but are the chariots of Amphitrite and her crew. And in the profound silence we hear the deep breathing of the sea, a marvellous, soft, universal sound; and perceive, half awed and half delighted, the rise and fall of her restless and pregnant breast. And then man and his work no longer fill the voyager’s imagination. He is absorbed into Nature. The starry sky above, the living sea below, are all he knows; and the sea is the greatest, for it takes into its depths the trembling of every star, and the white wavering of palace and tower, church and bridge, and marble quay.

This impression, received in twilight or at night, rules the thousand impressions made in daylight by the art and life of Venice. The “mighty Being” of the sea, with its eternal mystery, penetrates and pervades, and is mistress of the humanity of the city. The ancient life of Venice was in harmony with this, and what remains of that life is still lovely and inspiring. The modern life of Venice tends day by day to be out of tune with this, and has violated its beauty with amazing recklessness. No reverence, no tenderness for the spirit of the place has prevented a hundred desecrations, which might have been avoided if men had cared for beauty as well as for commerce, if the men had even known what beauty was, if they had even for an hour realized the spirit of the place or the spirit of the sea.

In days before the railway and its bridge had done away with the island apartness of Venice, it seemed like a dream of Young Romance to drop through the narrow canal from Mestre on the mainland and come upon the far-spread shimmer of the silvery lagoon; and, rowing slowly, see, through veils of morning mist, the distant towers, walls, churches, palaces, rise slowly one after another, out of the breast of the waters—silver and rose and gold out of sapphire, azure, and pale gray—a jewelled crown of architecture on the head of slumbering ocean. We forgot that fairyland had been driven from the earth, and saw, or dreamed we saw, the city of Morgan le Fay, or the palaces of the Happy Isles where the Ever-young found refuge in the sea—so lovely and so dim the city climbed out of the deep.

That vision is gone, but even now there are few visions more startling in their charm than that which befalls the weary traveller when coming out of the dark station he finds himself suddenly upon the marble quay, with a river of glittering water before his eyes, fringed with churches, palaces, and gardens; the broad stream alive with black gondolas, shouts in his ears like the shouting of seamen; and, lower in note and cry, but heard more distinctly than all other sounds, the lapping of the water on the steps of stone, the rushing of the tide against the boats. Midst all the wonders of the city, this it is which first seizes on his heart. It is the first note of the full melody of charm which the sea in Venice will play upon his imagination for many a happy day.

The waters that make her unique are in themselves beautiful. Were they like those of many lagoons, they might be stagnant, and lose the loveliness of vital movement. But they are tidal waters, and though the ordinary tide does not rise much more than a foot or two, yet its living rush is great, and passes twice a day through the lagoons and streets of Venice. It streams in at the openings in the lidi, at the ports of Malamocco, Chioggia, Lido and Tre Porti, with the force and swiftness of an impetuous river, and these four water-systems, in their meetings and retreats, fill the lagoon with incessant movement, with clashing, swirling, and sweeping currents. Then, the tide does not always keep at this low level. When the attractions of the sun and moon combine, it rises higher and floods and washes out the canals, and when the angry south, blowing fiercely up Adria, has piled up the waters at the head of the gulf, they block in the falling tide. It cannot escape from the lagoon, and it races from the Public Gardens to the Dogana. There it divides to fill the Giudecca and the Grand Canal to the height of seven or eight feet. The canals rise, the calli are flooded and the squares, and the Piazza is a lake, and the Piazzetta. Gondolas ply up to the doors of Saint Mark’s and to the Ducal Palace. The water falls as swiftly as it rises. There is no lack of life in the Venetian lagoon. Freshness, incessant change and joy minister to the beauty of these waters.

They are of the sea, but the temper of the sea in them is distinctive. The sea, uncircumscribed, at the mercy of its own wild nature, is beautiful or terrible, but it is too vast, too noisy, too desirous of destruction, even in calm too suggestive of anger, to awaken that peculiar charm in which temperance, quietude, a certain obedience or sacrifice for use, are always elements. But Venice lies in a gentle sea which loves to give itself away. Her sea is guarded by long banks of sand, pierced here and there by those openings through which the tide arrives. Within these is the wide lagoon, lying in a sheltered place, dotted with islands sleeping on silver sheets of shining water. And in the midst is the city with all its towers. It is thus penetrated and encompassed by the life and beauty of the sea; but it is the sea tamed to a love of rest; made temperate, even in furious wind, by the barriers its own force has built to shield its favoured daughter; keeping its natural freedom and love of movement, but obedient to the laws of help, and sacrificing its reckless and destroying will in order to do the work that rivers do for men; preserving thus, along with its own wild charm, the charm also of the great streams that bless the earth. The sea, then which makes Venice unique, has lost its recklessness and terror. But it has not lost its beauty. And its beauty has become as it were spiritual, for it has subdued itself to be more beautiful through service. It was then not only in pride, but also in gratitude and love, that the Doge wedded the sea, and cast into her breast his ring, and cried, “We espouse thee, sea, in token of true and perpetual dominion.”

This gentle manner of the sea, in its service through the narrow streets of the city, in the narrow lanes of the lagoon, and over its shallow banks, forced the boat the Venetians built up into the shape of the gondola, and compelled the mode of rowing it. And both these, being the work of Nature as well as of man, are beautiful. This long, subtly-curved boat, with its uptossed stem and stern, rigid in reality, but seeming to be (so swift it is to answer the slightest touch of the oar) as lithe and undulating as a serpent, leaning somewhat to one side, so that it wavers a little as it moves as if it were a wave of the sea, and gliding on its flattened bottom over shallow waters in silent speed, seems like some creature of the sea herself. Coloured black, it is brightened with polished brass and steel. The ferro da prova is the beak of polished steel which looks out from the bows of the boat, with a blade at the top like a hatchet, and below it six teeth, like those of the bone of the saw-fish. It flashes over the water and flashes in the water. It is a sea-ornament, descended from the rostrum of a Roman warship. Then the brass ornaments of the arm-rests are most frequently sea-beasts—dolphins, and the sea-horses of Venice. Everywhere the boat has been the child of the sea.

Yet it is human; it grew like a child, a youth, modified from year to year into its shape, its character, till it reached its manhood; absolutely fitted for the work it had to do, for the circumstances of the city through the narrow water-ways of which it had to move, and for the wants of all classes of its citizens. The circumstances were peculiar; the needs of the citizens were most various. It fits them all. The natural, therefore, and the human mingle in it more harmoniously than in any other boat. It is distinctive as Venice is distinctive; it has its own sentiment, its own charm; but it seems also to share in the sentiment and beauty of the sea. The cries of its rowers are like the cries of seamen. In its movement is the softness, ease, and grace of the subdued obedient waters over which it glides.

Then there is the way of rowing it, on one side, by a single rower. When there are two rowers half the charm is lost. The second rower labouring at his oar in front of the sitter removes the pleasant, psychical illusion that the boat moves by its own will. There is almost an intellectual pleasure in the rowing and steering of a gondola by the single oar behind. If the gondolier be a master of his craft, he will make his boat move through a crowded canal, or glide round the angles of a narrow water lane, as swiftly, as softly as a serpent through the branches of a tree. He will pass within an inch of a corner without touching it, as he turns the boat round within its own length. He will stop it at full speed in a few seconds. It obeys him so magically that the voyager in it, who does not see the rower, often dreams that the boat moves of itself according to a spirit in it, like the bark which bore Ogier the Dane, flying over the sea by its own desire, to Morgana. This beauty of the boat, its ways and manners, are the result of the sea-situation, and have the charm of the sea.

Then, again, this strange, soft sea, so tempered into gentlehood, brings through its quietude another element of charm into Venice. It reflects all things with a wonderful perfection. Whatever loveliness is by its side it makes more lovely. Shallow itself, it seems deep; and the towers and palaces of Venice in all their colours descend and shine among other clouds and in another sky below. All outlines of sculpture and architecture, of embossment, in wall and window; all play of sunshine and shade; all the human life in balcony, bridge or quay, on barge or boat, are in the waters as in a silent dream—revealed in every line and colour, but with an exquisite difference in softness and purity. All Nature’s doings in the sky are also repeated with a tender fidelity in the mirror of the lagoon—morning light, noonday silver, purple thunder cloud in the afternoon, sunset vapours, the moon and stars of night—and not only on the surface, but also, it seems, in an immeasurable depth. To look over the side of the boat into the water is to cry, “I see infinite space.”

That is part of this charm of the reflecting water. But this only belongs to Nature and the feeling her beauty awakens. There is another charm in this work of the water. Whatever pleasure the living and varied movement of a great town, whatever interest its activities, bring to men, is doubled, so far as charm is concerned, in Venice. For they are exercised on water as well as on land, and their movements and methods are different on each. The sights of life are doubly varied. The land has its own way with them; the water has another way with them.

Moreover, the water itself, being always in motion, always reflecting or taking shadows, always harmonizing itself with its comrades in land or sky, always making a subtle music in answer to human action upon it—adds these romantic and lovely elements to the business and pleasure of the town. Below, in the water, the clumsiest barge is accompanied by its soft ideal; and the lovers, leaning over the balcony, see their happiness smile on them from the water.

The same thing, some aver, may be said of a Dutch town full of canals. Partly, that is true; but the canals only carry the heavy business of these towns, and in Venice all human life, in its gaiety and beauty as well as its work, is on the water. Moreover, the water itself, not half stagnant like the canals of Holland, is always thrilling with its own ebbing and flowing, has its own fine spirit, and takes, as I have often thought, its own share and pleasure in all that is done upon it. Life answers there to life—living Nature to living man.