Italian Hours | Page 3

race that lives by the aid of its imagination. The
way to enjoy Venice is to follow the example of these people and make
the most of simple pleasures. Almost all the pleasures of the place are
simple; this may be maintained even under the imputation of ingenious
paradox. There is no simpler pleasure than looking at a fine Titian,
unless it be looking at a fine Tintoret or strolling into St.
Mark's,--abominable the way one falls into the habit,--and resting one's
light-wearied eyes upon the windowless gloom; or than floating in a
gondola or than hanging over a balcony or than taking one's coffee at
Florian's. It is of such superficial pastimes that a Venetian day is
composed, and the pleasure of the matter is in the emotions to which
they minister. These are fortunately of the finest-- otherwise Venice
would be insufferably dull. Reading Ruskin is good; reading the old
records is perhaps better; but the best thing of all is simply staying on.
The only way to care for Venice as she deserves it is to give her a
chance to touch you often--to linger and remain and return.
II

The danger is that you will not linger enough--a danger of which the
author of these lines had known something. It is possible to dislike
Venice, and to entertain the sentiment in a responsible and intelligent
manner. There are travellers who think the place odious, and those who
are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others
were only more numerous. The sentimental tourist's sole quarrel with
his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be
alone; to be original; to have (to himself, at least) the air of making
discoveries. The Venice of to-day is a vast museum where the little
wicket that admits you is perpetually turning and creaking, and you
march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is
nothing left to discover or describe, and originality of attitude is
completely impossible. This is often very annoying; you can only turn
your back on your impertinent playfellow and curse his want of
delicacy. But this is not the fault of Venice; it is the fault of the rest of
the world. The fault of Venice is that, though she is easy to admire, she
is not so easy to live with as you count living in other places. After you
have stayed a week and the bloom of novelty has rubbed off you
wonder if you can accommodate yourself to the peculiar conditions.
Your old habits become impracticable and you find yourself obliged to
form new ones of an undesirable and unprofitable character. You are
tired of your gondola (or you think you are) and you have seen all the
principal pictures and heard the names of the palaces announced a
dozen times by your gondolier, who brings them out almost as
impressively as if he were an English butler bawling titles into a
drawing-room. You have walked several hundred times round the
Piazza and bought several bushels of photographs. You have visited the
antiquity mongers whose horrible sign-boards dishonour some of the
grandest vistas in the Grand Canal; you have tried the opera and found
it very bad; you have bathed at the Lido and found the water flat. You
have begun to have a shipboard-feeling--to regard the Piazza as an
enormous saloon and the Riva degli Schiavoni as a promenade-deck.
You are obstructed and encaged; your desire for space is unsatisfied;
you miss your usual exercise. You try to take a walk and you fail, and
meantime, as I say, you have come to regard your gondola as a sort of
magnified baby's cradle. You have no desire to be rocked to sleep,
though you are sufficiently kept awake by the irritation produced, as

you gaze across the shallow lagoon, by the attitude of the perpetual
gondolier, with his turned-out toes, his protruded chin, his absurdly
unscientific stroke. The canals have a horrible smell, and the
everlasting Piazza, where you have looked repeatedly at every article in
every shop-window and found them all rubbish, where the young
Venetians who sell bead bracelets and "panoramas" are perpetually
thrusting their wares at you, where the same tightly-buttoned officers
are for ever sucking the same black weeds, at the same empty tables, in
front of the same cafés--the Piazza, as I say, has resolved itself into a
magnificent tread-mill. This is the state of mind of those shallow
inquirers who find Venice all very well for a week; and if in such a
state of mind you take your departure you act with fatal rashness. The
loss is your own, moreover; it is not--with all deference to your
personal attractions--that of your companions who remain behind; for