Penelope's Postscripts

“No te fidar de l’ albaro che piega,
Ne de la dona quando la te giura.
La te impromete, e po la te denega;
No te fidar de l’ albaro che piega.”

(“Trust not the mast that bends.
Trust not a woman’s oath;
She’ll swear to you, and there it ends,
Trust not the mast that bends.”)

Beppo, Salemina, and I were talking together one morning,—just a casual meeting in the street,—when Peppina passed us.  She had a market-basket in each hand, and was in her gayest attire, a fresh crimson rose between her teeth being the last and most fetching touch to her toilet.  She gave a dainty shrug of her shoulders as she glanced at Beppo’s hanging head and hungry eye, and then with a light laugh hummed, “Trust not the mast that bends,” the first line of the poem that Beppo had sent her.

“It is better to let her go,” I said to him consolingly.

“Si, madama; but”—with a profound sigh—“she is very pretty.”

So she is, and although my idea of the fitness of things is somewhat unsettled when Peppina serves our dinner wearing a yoke and sleeves of coarse lace with her blue cotton gown, and a bunch of scarlet poppies in her hair, I can do nothing in the way of discipline because Salemina approves of her as part of the picture.  Instead of trying to develop some moral sense in the little creature, Salemina asked her to alternate roses and oleanders with poppies in her hair, and gave her a coral comb and ear-rings on her birthday.  Thus does a warm climate undermine the strict virtue engendered by Boston east winds.

Francesco—Cecco for short—is general assistant in the kitchen, and a good gondolier to boot.  When our little family is increased by more than three guests at dinner, Cecco is pressed into dining-room service, and becomes under-butler to Peppina.  Here he is not at ease.  He scrubs his tanned face until it shines like San Domingo mahogany, brushes his black hair until the gloss resembles a varnish, and dons coarse white cotton gloves to conceal his work-stained hands and give an air of fashion and elegance to the banquet.  His embarrassment is equalled only by his earnestness and devotion to the dreaded task.  Our American guests do not care what we have upon our bill of fare when they can steal a glance at the intensely dramatic and impassioned Cecco taking Pina into a corner of the dining-room and, seizing her hand, despairingly endeavour to find out his next duty.  Then, with incredibly stiff back, he extends his right hand to the guest, as if the proffered plate held a scorpion instead of a tidbit.  There is an extra butler to be obtained when the function is a sufficiently grand one to warrant the expense, but as he wears carpet slippers and Pina flirts with him from soup to fruit, we find ourselves no better served on the whole, and prefer Cecco, since he transforms an ordinary meal into a beguiling comedy.

“What does it matter, after all?” asks Salemina.  “It is not life we are living, for the moment, but an act of light opera, with the scenes all beautifully painted, the music charming and melodious, the costumes gay and picturesque.  We are occupying exceptionally good seats, and we have no responsibility whatever: we left it in Boston, where it is probably rolling itself larger and larger, like a snowball; but who cares?”

“Who cares, indeed?” I echo.  We are here not to form our characters or to improve our minds, but to let them relax; and when we see anything which opposses the Byronic ideal of Venice (the use of the concertina as the national instrument having this tendency), we deliberately close our eyes to it.  I have a proper regard for truth in matters of fact like statistics.  I want to know the exact population of a town, the precise total of children of school age, the number of acres in the Yellowstone Park, and the amount of wheat exported in 1862; but when it comes to things touching my imagination I resent the intrusion of some laboriously excavated truth, after my point of view is all nicely settled, and my saints, heroes, and martyrs are all comfortably and picturesquely arranged in their respective niches or on their proper pedestals.

When the Man of Fact demolishes some pretty fallacy like William Tell and the apple, he should be required to substitute something equally delightful and more authentic.  But he never does.  He is a useful but uninteresting creature, the Man of Fact, and for a travelling companion or a neighbour at dinner give me the Man of Fancy, even if he has not a grain of exact knowledge concealed about his person.  It seems to me highly important that the foundations of Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, or Spokane Falls should be rooted in certainty; but Verona, Padua, and Venice—well, in my opinion, they should be rooted in Byron and Ruskin and Shakespeare.

III

    Casa Rosa, May 18.

Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our first awakening in Casa Rosa!

“Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!” I said.  “Either an heir has been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has come to visit Venice, or perhaps a Papal Bull is loose in the Piazza San Marco.  Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am keeping a diary.”

But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us that there were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our comfortable little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling.

One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that they can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-length on the flat of one’s honourable back (as they might say in Japan), a position not suitable in a public building.

The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by a wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads, wings and legs, on a background of clouds; the mystery being that the number of cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of extremities, one or two cherubs being a wing or a leg short.  Whatever may be their limitations in this respect, the old painters never denied their cherubs cheek, the amount of adipose tissue uniformly provided in that quarter being calculated to awake envy and jealousy on the part of the predigested-food-babies pictured in the American magazine advertisements.

Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings of Casa Rosa; and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four pretty American girls, they asked and obtained our permission to lie upon the marble floor and compete for a prize to be given to the person who should offer the cleverest interpretation of the symbolisms in the frescoes.  It may be stated that the entire difference of opinion proved that mythologic art is apt to be misunderstood.  After deciding in the early morning what our bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and unmade every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a leisurely toilet and then seat ourselves at one of the open windows for breakfast.

The window itself looks on the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile, St. Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark’s being visible through a maze of fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in white and yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others of grey have smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.

Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is busy with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching, ’longshoremen, and facchini.  This is when ships are loading or unloading, but at other times we look upon a tranquil scene.

Peppina brings in dell’ acqua bollente, and I make the coffee in the little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina heats the milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious treasure in her possession.

The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of solidified cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the comb.  The cows are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is brought into Venice in large cans.  In the early morning, when the light is beginning to steal through the shutters, one hears the tinkling of a mule’s bell and the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one runs to the window, may see the contadini, looking, in their sheepskin trousers, like brethren of John the Baptist, driving through the streets and delivering the milk at the vaccari.  It is then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the pats of butter, daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a seven-o’clock breakfast.

Finally la colazione is spread on our table by the window.  A neat white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of delicate china.  There is a pot of honey, an egg à la coque for each, a plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of scarlet cherries on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious berries in their frills; sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny wild strawberries that seem to have grown with their faces close pressed to the flowers, so sweet and fragrant are they.

This al fresco morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our comfortable déjeuner à la fourchette at one o’clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to the repast.  Her own breakfast, she explains, is a déjeuner à la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who carves a bit of bread and cheese in his hand, and she promises us a sight, some leisure day, of a certain déjeuner à la toothpick celebrated for the moment among the artists.  A mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain elegance and distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a well-known restaurant.  He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the waiter who serves him.  These preparations made, he breaks the roll in small bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden toothpick, he dips them in wine before eating them.

“This may be a frugal repast,” he has an air of saying, “but it is at least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me whether or not I leave the table satisfied.”

IV

    Casa Rosa, May 20.

One of the pleasantest sights to be noted from our windows at breakfast time is Angelo making ready our private gondola for the day.  Angelo himself is not attractive to the eye by reason of the silliest possible hat for a man of forty-five whose hair is slightly grey.  It is a white straw sailor, with a turned-up brim, a blue ribbon encircling the crown, and a white elastic under the chin; such a hat as you would expect to see crowning the flaxen curls of mother’s darling boy of four.

I love to look at the gondola, with its solemn caracoling like that of a possible water-horse, of which the arched neck is the graceful ferro.  This is a strange, weird, beautiful thing when the black gondola sways a little from side to side in the moonlight.  Angelo keeps ours polished so that it shines like silver in the morning sun, and he has an exquisite conscientiousness in rubbing every trace of brass about his precious craft.  He has a little box under the prow full of bottles and brushes and rags.  The cushions are laid on the bank of the canal; the pieces of carpet are taken out, shaken, and brushed, and the narrow strips are laid over the curved wood ends of the gondola to keep the sun from cracking them.  The felze, or cabin, is freed of all dust, the tiny four-legged stools and the carved chair are wiped off, and occasionally a thin coat of black paint is needed here and there, and a touching-up of the gold lines which relieve the sombreness.  The last thing to be done is to polish the vases and run back into the garden for nosegays, and when these are disposed in their niches on each side of the felze, Angelo waves his infantile hat gaily to us at the window, and smiles his readiness to be off.

On other mornings we watch the loading and unloading of grain.  There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a still deeper colour, and day before yesterday a large ship appeared at our windows and attached itself to our very doorsteps, much to the wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of existence much disturbed under the new conditions.  All is life and motion now.  The men are stripped naked to the waist, with bright handkerchiefs on their heads, and, in many cases, others tied over their mouths.  Each has a thick wisp of short twine strings tucked into his waistband.  The bags are weighed by one, who takes out or puts in a shovelful of grain, as the case may be.  Then the carrier ties up his bag with one of the twine strings, two other men lift it to his shoulder, while a boy removes a pierced piece of copper from a long wire and gives it to him, this copper being handed in turn to still another man, who apparently keeps the account.  This not uninteresting, indeed, but sordid and monotonous operation began before eight yesterday morning and even earlier to-day, obliging Salemina to decline strawberries and eat her breakfast with her back to the window.

This afternoon at four the injured lady departed on a tour in Miss Palett’s gondola.  Miss Palett is a water-colourist who has lived in Venice for five years and speaks the language “like a native.”  (You are familiar with the phrase, and perhaps familiar, too, with the native like whom they speak.)

Returning after tea, Salemina was observed to radiate a kind of subdued triumph, which proved on investigation to be due to the fact that she had met the comandante of the offending ship and that he had gallantly promised to remove it without delay.  I cannot help feeling that the proper time for departure had come; but this destroys the story and robs the comandante of his reputation for chivalry.

As Miss Palett’s gondola neared the grain-ship, Salemina, it seems, spied the commanding officer pacing the deck.

“See,” she said to her companion, “there is a gang-plank from the side of the ship to that small flat-boat.  We could perfectly well step from our gondola to the flat-boat and then go up and ask politely if we may be allowed to examine the interesting grain-ship.  While you are interviewing the first officer about the foreign countries he has seen, I will ask the comandante if he will kindly tie his boat a little farther down on the island.  No, that won’t do, for he may not speak English; we should have an awkward scene, and I should defeat my own purposes.  You are so fluent in Italian, suppose you call upon him with my card and let me stay in the gondola.”

“What shall I say to the man?” objected Miss Palett.

“Oh, there’s plenty to say,” returned Salemina.  “Tell him that Penelope and I came over from the hotel on the Grand Canal only that we might have perfect quiet.  Tell him that if I had not unpacked my largest trunk, I should not stay an instant longer.  Tell him that his great, bulky ship ruins the view; that it hides the most beautiful church and part of the Doge’s Palace.  Tell him that I might as well have stayed at home and built a cottage on the dock in Boston Harbour.  Tell him that his steam-whistles, his anchor-droppings, and his constant loadings or unloadings give us headache.  Tell him that seven or eight of his sailormen brought clean garments and scrubbing brushes and took their bath at our front entrance.  Tell him that one of them, almost absolutely nude, instead of running away to put on more clothing, offered me his arm to assist me into the gondola.”

Miss Palett demurred at the subject-matter of some of these remarks, and affirmed that she could not translate others into proper Italian.  She therefore proposed that Salemina should write a few dignified protests on her visiting-card, and her own part would be to instruct the man in the flat-boat to deliver it at once to his superior officer.  The comandante spoke no English,—of that fact the sailorman in the flat-boat was certain,—but as the gondola moved away, the ladies could see the great man pondering over the little piece of pasteboard, and it was plain that he was impressed.  Herein lies perhaps a seed of truth.  The really great thing triumphs over all obstacles, and reaches the common mind and heart in some way, delivering its message we know not how.

Salemina’s card teemed with interesting information, at least to the initiated.  Her surname was in itself a passport into the best society.  To be an X— was enough of itself, but her Christian name was one peculiar to the most aristocratic and influential branch of the X—s.  Her mother’s maiden name, engraved at full length in the middle, established the fact that Mr. X— had not married beneath him, but that she was the child of unblemished lineage on both sides.  Her place of residence was the only one possible to the possessor of three such names, and as if these advantages were not enough, the street and number proved that Salemina’s family undoubtedly possessed wealth; for the small numbers, and especially the odd numbers, on that particular street, could be flaunted only by people of fortune.

You have now all the facts in your possession, and I can only add that the ship weighed anchor at twilight, so Salemina again gazed upon the Doge’s Palace and slept tranquilly.

V

    Casa Rosa, May 22

I am like the schoolgirl who wrote home from Venice: “I am sitting on the edge of the Grand Canal drinking it all in, and life never seemed half so full before.”  Was ever the city so beautiful as last night on the arrival of foreign royalty?  It was a memorable display and unique in its peculiar beauty.  The palaces that line the canal were bright with flags; windows and water-steps were thronged, the broad centre of the stream was left empty.  Presently, round the bend below the Rialto, swept into view a double line of gondolas—long, low, gleaming with every hue of brilliant colour, most of them with ten, some with twelve, gondoliers in resplendent liveries, red, blue, green, white, orange, all bending over their oars with the precision of machinery and the grace of absolute mastery of their craft.  In the middle, between two lines, came one small and beautifully modelled gondola, rowed by four men in red and black, while on the white silk cushions in the stern sat the Prince and Princess.  There was no splash of oar or rattle of rowlock; swiftly, silently, with an air of stately power and pride, the lovely pageant came, passed, and disappeared under the shining evening sky and the gathering shadows of “the dim, rich city.”  I never saw, or expect to see, anything of its kind so beautiful.

I stay for hours in the gondola, writing my letters or watching the thousand and one sights of the streets, for I often allow Salemina and the Little Genius to tread their way through the highways and byways of Venice while I stay behind and observe life from beneath the grateful shade of the black felze.

The women crossing the many little bridges look like the characters in light opera; the young girls, with their hair bobbed in a round coil, are sometimes bareheaded and sometimes have a lace scarf over their dark, curly locks.  A little fan is often in their hands, and one remarks the graceful way in which the crepe shawl rests upon the women’s shoulders, remembering that it is supposed to take generations to learn to wear a shawl or wield a fan.

My favourite waiting-place is near the Via del Paradiso, just where some scarlet pomegranate blossoms hang out over the old brick walls by the canal-side, and where one splendid acanthus reminds me that its leaves inspired some of the most beautiful architecture in the world; where, too, the ceaseless chatter of the small boys cleaning crabs with scrubbing-brushes gives my ear a much-needed familiarity with the language.

Now a girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso, making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky.  She stops to prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the little calle.  There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses at the base; another has a top like a Doge’s cap, while the body of another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been thrown over it.

Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists.  If there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my conscience and give them something.  If one gets a lira put into small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece without feeling that one is pauperizing them, but that one is fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin to face.