Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843/Part 3/Letter 6
LETTER VI
Verona.—Journey to Venice.—Leone Bianco.—Hotel d’Italia.
I am again in Italy. The earth is teeming with the wealth of September, the richest month of the year. The harvest of the Indian corn has begun; the grapes are hanging in rich ripening clusters from the vines, festooned from tree to tree: a genial atmosphere mantles the earth, and quickens a sense of delight in our hearts. The road lies through a richly cultivated country: the immense plain around us is bounded to the north by the mountains of the Tyrol, amongst which we seemed to have lost ourselves for an age, so refreshing, so new, so enchanting, is the wide expanse of fertile Lombardy, opening before our eyes.
A sad disaster happened on our arrival at Verona. We had each our passport, and the whole was consigned to the pocket-book of one of the party; and when they were asked for at the gates of Verona, the pocket-book was not to be found. Except our passports, and Coutts’ lettre d'indication, it contained no papers of importance; but still, after all the annoyance the Austrians give about passports, it was rather appalling. Nothing could be done. It was remembered that when bathing, the pocket-book was safe; it must have been lost since. We were allowed to go on to the inn, and time would shew the result.
The Gran Parigi is one of the most comfortable hotels I was ever at; it has the air of a palace, as doubtless it once was. The same evening, by the light of the clear full moon, my companions rambled about the town and entered the amphitheatre, which is used as a circus, and horsemanship was going on, and music filled the air. There was something startling in finding the building of ancient days used for its original purpose—the seats occupied by numerous spectators; the partial moonlight veiled with some mystery what the garish sun had disclosed as below Roman dignity in the assemblage.
You know the charm of these Lombard cities. Built by a prosperous people, they have a princely and magnificent appearance: their grandeur is what grandeur ought to be—not gloomy and menacing, but cheerful and inspiriting. The cities look built by a happy people in which to be happy—by a noble and rich people, whose tastes were dignified, and whose habits of life were generous.
We were promised a paper that would give us free course to Venice—for our Consul was at that city—and we were to be transferred to him, and meanwhile, our loss was made known in the country about. But, though the paper was promised, one or another of my friends was employed the whole morning in getting it properly signed. These delays were vexatious, more from the uncertainty that hung about the whole transaction, which kept us in attendance and perplexity. There was no help. We rambled to the garden, or walled podere, in which there is an open fosse, and an old sort of sarcophagus, which they show as Juliet’s tomb. That Juliet lived and died, as Baldelli recounts, there can be little doubt; but it is not likely that this was “the tomb of the Capulets.” Still such a scene—a garden, with its high antique walls, its Italian vegetation, and the blue sky, cloudless above—was a scene familiar to Juliet; and her spirit might hover here, even if her fair form was sepulchred elsewhere. It was a long walk thence to the tombs of the Scaligers. The most fairy architecture—not dark and Gothic, nor immured within the walls of a church;—a small open court encloses these elegant sepulchres.
At length we obtained the paper, and set out. We had engaged a veturino for Venice. Some hope had we that the railroad might be open from Padua to Mestri; if not, we were to be taken to Fusina, sleeping at Vicenza in our way. The charm of autumnal vegetation, in a rich vine country, adorned the road, and a distant view of the Alps bounded the scene. We arrived at Vicenza at eleven o’clock, by a bright moonlight. I was sorry to see no more of these Palladian palaces than the glimpses we caught from our carriage-windows. Architecture shows to peculiar advantage by the silver radiance of a full moon: its partial white light throws portions into strong relief, and the polished marble reflects its, so to speak, icy radiance.
We found, on our arrival at Padua, that the railroad was not open; so we proceeded along the banks of the Brenta to Venice. Many a scene, which I have since visited and admired, has faded in my mind, as a painting in the Diorama melts away, and another struggles into the changing canvass; but this road was as distinct in my mind as if traversed yesterday. I will not here dwell on the sad circumstances that clouded my first visit to Venice. Death hovered over the scene. Gathered into myself, with my “mind’s eye” I saw those before me long departed; and I was agitated again by emotions—by passions—and those the deepest a woman’s heart can harbour—a dread to see her child even at that instant expire—which then occupied me. It is a strange, but to any person who has suffered, a familiar circumstance, that those who are enduring mental or corporeal agony are strangely alive to immediate external objects, and their imagination even exercises its wild power over them. Shakspeare knew this, and the passionate grief of Queen Constance thence is endued with fearful reality. Wordsworth, as many years ago I remember hearing Coleridge remark, illustrates the same fact, when he makes an insane and afflicted mother exclaim,—
"The breeze I see is in the tree;
It comes to cool my babe and me.”
Holcroft, who was a martyr to intense physical suffering, alludes to the notice the soul takes of the objects presented to the eye in its hour of agony, as a relief afforded by nature to permit the nerves to endure pain. In both states I have experienced it; and the particular shape of a room—the progress of shadows on a wall—the peculiar flickering of trees— the exact succession of objects on a journey—have been indelibly engraved in my memory, as marked in, and associated with, hours and minutes when the nerves were strung to their utmost tension by the endurance of pain, or the far severer infliction of mental anguish. Thus the banks of the Brenta presented to me a moving scene; not a palace, not a tree of which I did not recognise, as marked and recorded, at a moment when life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice.
And at Fusina, as then, I now beheld the domes and towers of the queen of Ocean arise from the waves with a majesty unrivalled upon earth. We were hailed by a storm of gondolieri; their vociferations were something indescribable, so loud, so vehement, so reiterated; till we had chosen our boat, and then all subsided into instant calm.
I confess that on this, my second entrance into Venice, the dilapidated appearance of the palaces, their weather-worn and neglected appearance, struck me forcibly, and diminished the beauty of the city in my eyes. We proceeded at once to the Leone Bianco, on the Canale Grande; they asked a very high price for their rooms, which rendered us eager, as we intended to remain here a month, to make immediate arrangements for removing elsewhere.
Our first act was to send our letters of introduction; the second, for two of us to go out to look for lodgings. The account brought back by our second dove from the ark was rather discouraging; but our first brought better things. Count and Signor loved and respected too sincerely the writer of our letters not to hasten on the instant to acknowledge them. Signor at once perceived and entered into our difficulty. I never saw such friendly zeal; nor was Count behind in kindness, though, as a younger man, and not so conversant with the perplexities of travellers, he could not be so efficient in his help. The thing was soon settled. Signor remarked that if we took lodgings we should want a cook, and that housekeeping in an unknown town, for a short space of time, was fraught with annoyance. There was a new hotel just established, which desired to be made known to the English, and which therefore would be moderate in its charges. We went to see the rooms. The Hotel d’Italia is situated in a canal, three oar-strokes from the Canale Grande; so far we lost what is most to be coveted at Venice— the view from our window of this ocean stream, with its bordering palaces—but we were within three minutes’ walk of the Place of Saint Mark. Our rooms were on the second floor, a bed-room a-piece, and a salon, spacious, turned to the sun, and being but just furnished, clean in the excess of newness. Many a palace had been spoiled of its marble architraves and ornaments to decorate this new hotel. We made our bargain; we calculated that, everything included, each of our party would pay nine pounds a month for lodging and board.
This done, we returned with our kind friends to the Leone Bianco, as we are not to remove till tomorrow. Evening has come, and the moon, so often friendly to me, now at its full, rises over the city. Often, when here before, I looked on this scene, at this hour, or later, for often I expected S.'s return from Palazzo Mocenigo, till two or three in the morning; I watched the glancing of the oars of the gondolas, and heard the far song, and saw the palaces sleeping in the light of the moon, which veils by its deep shadows all that grieved the eye and heart in the decaying palaces of Venice. Then I saw, as now I see, the bridge of the Rialto spanning the canal. All, all is the same; but as the Poet says—
“The difference to me!”