Italian Hours | Page 8

can be finer than the large,
firm way in which, from their point of vantage, they throw themselves
over their tremendous oar. It has the boldness of a plunging bird and
the regularity of a pendulum. Sometimes, as you see this movement in
profile, in a gondola that passes you--see, as you recline on your own
low cushions, the arching body of the gondolier lifted up against the
sky--it has a kind of nobleness which suggests an image on a Greek
frieze. The gondolier at Venice is your very good friend--if you choose
him happily--and on the quality of the personage depends a good deal

that of your impressions. He is a part of your daily life, your double,
your shadow, your complement. Most people, I think, either like their
gondolier or hate him; and if they like him, like him very much. In this
case they take an interest in him after his departure; wish him to be sure
of employment, speak of him as the gem of gondoliers and tell their
friends to be certain to "secure" him. There is usually no difficulty in
securing him; there is nothing elusive or reluctant about a gondolier.
Nothing would induce me not to believe them for the most part
excellent fellows, and the sentimental tourist must always have a
kindness for them. More than the rest of the population, of course, they
are the children of Venice; they are associated with its idiosyncrasy,
with its essence, with its silence, with its melancholy.
When I say they are associated with its silence I should immediately
add that they are associated also with its sound. Among themselves
they are an extraordinarily talkative company. They chatter at the
traghetti, where they always have some sharp point under
discussion; they bawl across the canals; they bespeak your commands
as you approach; they defy each other from afar. If you happen to have
a traghetto under your window, you are well aware that they are
a vocal race. I should go even further than I went just now, and say that
the voice of the gondolier is in fact for audibility the dominant or rather
the only note of Venice. There is scarcely another heard sound, and that
indeed is part of the interest of the place. There is no noise there save
distinctly human noise; no rumbling, no vague uproar, nor rattle of
wheels and hoofs. It is all articulate and vocal and personal. One may
say indeed that Venice is emphatically the city of conversation; people
talk all over the place because there is nothing to interfere with its
being caught by the ear. Among the populace it is a general family
party. The still water carries the voice, and good Venetians exchange
confidences at a distance of half a mile. It saves a world of trouble, and
they don't like trouble. Their delightful garrulous language helps them
to make Venetian life a long conversazione. This language,
with its soft elisions, its odd transpositions, its kindly contempt for
consonants and other disagreeables, has in it something peculiarly
human and accommodating. If your gondolier had no other merit he
would have the merit that he speaks Venetian. This may rank as a merit

even- -some people perhaps would say especially--when you don't
understand what he says. But he adds to it other graces which make
him an agreeable feature in your life. The price he sets on his services
is touchingly small, and he has a happy art of being obsequious without
being, or at least without seeming, abject. For occasional liberalities he
evinces an almost lyrical gratitude. In short he has delightfully good
manners, a merit which he shares for the most part with the Venetians
at large. One grows very fond of these people, and the reason of one's
fondness is the frankness and sweetness of their address. That of the
Italian family at large has much to recommend it; but in the Venetian
manner there is something peculiarly ingratiating. One feels that the
race is old, that it has a long and rich civilisation in its blood, and that if
it hasn't been blessed by fortune it has at least been polished by time. It
hasn't a genius for stiff morality, and indeed makes few pretensions in
that direction. It scruples but scantly to represent the false as the true,
and has been accused of cultivating the occasion to grasp and to
overreach, and of steering a crooked course--not to your and my
advantage--amid the sanctities of property. It has been accused further
of loving if not too well at least too often, of being in fine as little
austere as possible. I am not sure it is very brave, nor struck with its
being very industrious. But it has an unfailing sense