Venetian Life

Venetian Life

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Title: Venetian Life
Author: W. D. Howells
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7083] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 8,
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VENETIAN LIFE
by
W. D. HOWELLS
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In correcting this book for a second edition, I have sought to complete
it without altering its original plan: I have given a new chapter
sketching the history of Venetian Commerce and noticing the present
trade and industry of Venice; I have amplified somewhat the chapter on
the national holidays, and have affixed an index to the chief historical
persons, incidents, and places mentioned.
Believing that such value as my book may have is in fidelity to what I
actually saw and knew of Venice, I have not attempted to follow
speculatively the grand and happy events of last summer in their effects
upon her life. Indeed, I fancy that in the traits at which I loved most to
look, the life of Venice is not so much changed as her fortunes; but at
any rate I am content to remain true to what was fact one year ago.
W. D. H.
Cambridge, January 1, 1867.

CONTENTS.
I. Venice in Venice II. Arrival and first Days in Venice III. The Winter
in Venice IV. Comincia far Caldo V. Opera and Theatres VI. Venetian
Dinners and Diners VII. Housekeeping in Venice VIII. The Balcony on
the Grand Canal IX. A Day-Break Ramble X. The Mouse XI. Churches
and Pictures XII. Some Islands of the Lagoons XIII. The Armenians
XIV. The Ghetto and the Jews of Venice XV. Some Memorable Places

XVI. Commerce XVII. Venetian Holidays XVIII. Christmas Holidays
XIX. Love-making and Marrying; Baptisms and Burials XX. Venetian
Traits and Characters XXI. Society XXII. Our Last Year in Venice
Index

CHAPTER I.
VENICE IN VENICE.
One night at the little theatre in Padua, the ticket-seller gave us the
stage-box (of which he made a great merit), and so we saw the play and
the byplay. The prompter, as noted from our point of view, bore a chief
part in the drama (as indeed the prompter always does in the Italian
theatre), and the scene-shifters appeared as prominent characters. We
could not help seeing the virtuous wife, when hotly pursued by the
villain of the piece, pause calmly in the wings, before rushing, all tears
and desperation, upon the stage; and we were dismayed to behold the
injured husband and his abandoned foe playfully scuffling behind the
scenes. All the shabbiness of the theatre was perfectly apparent to us;
we saw the grossness of the painting and the unreality of the properties.
And yet I cannot say that the play lost one whit of its charm for me, or
that the working of the machinery and its inevitable clumsiness
disturbed my enjoyment in the least. There was so much truth and
beauty in the playing, that I did not care for the sham of the ropes and
gilding, and presently ceased to take any note of them. The illusion
which I had thought an essential in the dramatic spectacle, turned out to
be a condition of small importance.
It has sometimes seemed to me as if fortune had given me a stage-box
at another and grander spectacle, and I had been suffered to see this
VENICE, which is to other cities like the pleasant improbability of the
theatre to every-day, commonplace life, to much the same effect as that
melodrama in Padua. I could not, indeed, dwell three years in the place
without learning to know it differently from those