Venetian Life
Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920
English
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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 writers who have described it
in romances, poems, and hurried books of travel, nor help seeing from my
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