Venetian Life | Page 4

city, doomed
four hundred years ago to commercial decay, and chiefly (the
Venetians would be apt to tell you wholly) in the implacable anger, the
inconsolable discontent, with which the people regard their present
political condition.
If there be more than one opinion among men elsewhere concerning the

means by which Austria acquired Venetia and the tenure by which she
holds the province, there would certainly seem to be no division on the
question in Venice. To the stranger first inquiring into public feeling,
there is something almost sublime in the unanimity with which the
Venetians appear to believe that these means were iniquitous, and that
this tenure is abominable; and though shrewder study and carefuler
observation will develop some interested attachment to the present
government, and some interested opposition of it; though
after-knowledge will discover, in the hatred of Austria, enough
meanness, lukewarmness, and selfish ignorance to take off its sublimity,
the hatred is still found marvelously unanimous and bitter. I speak
advisedly, and with no disposition to discuss the question or exaggerate
the fact. Exercising at Venice official functions by permission and trust
of the Austrian government, I cannot regard the cessation of those
functions as release from obligations both to that government and my
own, which render it improper for me, so long as the Austrians remain
in Venice, to criticize their rule, or contribute, by comment on existing
things, to embitter the feeling against them elsewhere. I may,
nevertheless, speak dispassionately of facts of the abnormal social and
political state of the place; and I can certainly do this, for the present
situation is so disagreeable in many ways to the stranger forced to live
there,--the inappeasable hatred of the Austrians by the Italians is so
illiberal in application to those in any wise consorting with them, and
so stupid and puerile in many respects, that I think the annoyance
which it gives the foreigner might well damp any passion with which
he was disposed to speak of its cause.
This hatred of the Austrians dates in its intensity from the defeat of
patriotic hopes of union with Italy in 1859, when Napoleon found the
Adriatic at Peschiera, and the peace of Villafranca was concluded. But
it is not to be supposed that a feeling so general, and so thoroughly
interwoven with Venetian character, is altogether recent. Consigned to
the Austrians by Napoleon I., confirmed in the subjection into which
she fell a second time after Napoleon's ruin, by the treaties of the Holy
Alliance, defeated in several attempts to throw off her yoke, and loaded
with heavier servitude after the fall of the short-lived Republic of
1849,-- Venice has always hated her masters with an exasperation

deepened by each remove from the hope of independence, and she now
detests them with a rancor which no concession short of absolute
relinquishment of dominion would appease.
Instead, therefore, of finding that public gayety and private hospitality
in Venice for which the city was once famous, the stranger finds
himself planted between two hostile camps, with merely the choice of
sides open to him. Neutrality is solitude and friendship with neither
party; society is exclusive association with the Austrians or with the
Italians. The latter do not spare one of their own number if he consorts
with their masters, and though a foreigner might expect greater
allowance, it is seldom shown to him. To be seen in the company of
officers is enmity to Venetian freedom, and in the case of Italians it is
treason to country and to race. Of course, in a city where there is a large
garrison and a great many officers who have nothing else to do, there is
inevitably some international love-making, although the Austrian
officers are rigidly excluded from association with the citizens. But the
Italian who marries an Austrian severs the dearest ties that bind her to
life, and remains an exile in the heart of her country. Her friends
mercilessly cast her off, as they cast off every body who associates with
the dominant race. In rare cases I have known Italians to receive
foreigners who had Austrian friends, but this with the explicit
understanding that there was to be no sign of recognition if they met
them in the company of these detested acquaintance.
There are all degrees of intensity in Venetian hatred, and after hearing
certain persons pour out the gall of bitterness upon the Austrians, you
may chance to hear these persons spoken of as tepid in their patriotism
by yet more fiery haters. Yet it must not be supposed that the Italians
hate the Austrians as individuals. On the contrary, they have rather a
liking for them--rather a contemptuous liking, for they think them
somewhat slow and dull-witted--and individually the Austrians are
amiable people, and try not