The Complete Travel Books of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition). William Dean Howells
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“Oh! in regard to that, then, I don’t know. Some Englishman.”
“Shakespeare?”
“I don’t know, Signori. But if you doubt what I tell you, go to any bookseller, and say, ‘Favor me with the tragedy of “Othello.”’ He will give it you, and there you will find it all written out just as I tell it.”
This gondolier confirmed the authenticity of his story, by showing us the house of Cassio near the Rialto Bridge, and I have no doubt he would also have pointed out that of Iago if we had wished it.
But as a general thing, the lore of the gondoliers is not rich nor very great. They are a loquacious and a gossiping race, but they love better to have a quiet chat at the tops of their voices, as they loaf idly at the ferries, or to scream repartees across the Grand Canal, than to tell stories. In all history that relates to localities they are sufficiently versed to find the notable places for strangers, but beyond this they trouble themselves as little with the past as with the future. Three tragic legends, however, they know, and will tell with the most amusing effect, namely: Biasio, luganegher; the Innocent Baker-Boy, and Veneranda Porta.
The first of these legends is that of a sausage-maker who flourished in Venice some centuries ago, and who improved the quality of the broth which the luganegheri make of their scraps and sell to the gondoliers, by cutting up into it now and then a child of some neighbor. He was finally detected by a gondolier who discovered a little finger in his broth, and being brought to justice, was dragged through the city at the heels of a wild horse. This most uncomfortable character appears to be the first hero in the romance of the gondoliers, and he certainly deserves to rank with that long line of imaginary personages who have made childhood so wretched and tractable. The second is the Innocent Baker-Boy already named, who was put to death on suspicion of having murdered a noble, because in the dead man’s heart was found a dagger fitting a sheath which the baker had picked up in the street, on the morning of the murder, and kept in his possession. Many years afterwards, a malefactor who died in Padua confessed the murder, and thereupon two lamps were lighted before a shrine in the southern façade of St. Mark’s Church,—one for the murdered nobleman’s soul, and the other for that of the innocent boy. Such is the gondoliers’ story, and the lamps still burn every night before the shrine from dark till dawn, in witness of its truth. The fact of the murder and its guiltless expiation is an incident of Venetian history, and it is said that the Council of the Ten never pronounced a sentence of death thereafter, till they had been solemnly warned by one of their number with “Ricordatevi del povero Fornaretto!” (Remember the poor Baker-Boy!) The poet Dall ‘Ongaro has woven the story into a beautiful and touching tragedy; but I believe the poet is still to be born who shall take from the gondoliers their Veneranda Porta, and place her historic figure in dramatic literature. Veneranda Porta was a lady of the days of the Republic, between whom and her husband existed an incompatibility. This was increased by the course of Signora Porta in taking a lover, and it at last led to the assassination of the husband by the paramours. The head of the murdered man was found in one of the canals, and being exposed, as the old custom was, upon the granite pedestal at the corner of St. Mark’s Church, it was recognized by his brother who found among the papers on which the long hair was curled fragments of a letter he had written to the deceased. The crime was traced to the paramours, and being brought before the Ten, they were both condemned to be hanged between the columns of the Piazzetta. The gondoliers relate that when the sentence was pronounced, Veneranda said to the Chief of the Ten, “But as for me this sentence will never be carried out. You cannot hang a woman. Consider the impropriety!” The Venetian rulers were wise men in their generation, and far from being balked by this question of delicacy, the Chief replied, solving it, “My dear, you shall be hanged in my breeches.”
It is very coarse salt which keeps one of these stories; another is remembered because it concerns one of the people; and another for its abomination and horror. The incidents of Venetian history which take the fancy and touch the sensibility of the world seem hardly known to the gondoliers, the most intelligent and quick-witted of the populace, and themselves the very stuff that some romantic dreams of Venice are made of. However sad the fact, it is undeniable that the stories of the sausage-maker whose broth was flavored with murder, and the baker-boy who suffered guiltlessly, and that savage jest at the expense of the murderess, interest these people more than the high-well-born sorrows of the Foscari, the tragic fate of Carmagnola, or the story of Falier,—which last they know partly, however, because of the scandal about Falier’s wife. Yet after all, though the gondoliers are not the gondoliers of imaginative literature, they have qualities which recommended them to my liking, and I look back upon my acquaintance with two or three of them in a very friendly spirit. Compared with the truculent hackmen, who prey upon the traveling public in all other cities of the civilized world, they are eminently intelligent and amiable. Rogues they are, of course, for small dishonesties are the breath in the nostrils of common carriers by land or water, everywhere; but the trickery of the gondoliers is so good-natured and simple that it can hardly offend. A very ordinary jocular sagacity defeats their profoundest purposes of swindling, and no one enjoys their exposure half so much as themselves, while a faint prospect of future employment purifies them of every trait of dishonesty. I had only one troublesome experience with them, and that was in the case of the old gondolier who taught me to row. He, when I had no longer need of his services, plunged into drunkenness, and came and dismissed me one day with every mark of ignominy. But he afterwards forgave me, and saluted me kindly when we met.
The immediate goal of every gondolier’s ambition is to serve, no matter for how short a time, an Inglese, by which generic title nearly all foreigners except Germans are known to him. The Inglese, whether he be English or American, is apt to make the tour of the whole city in a gondola, and to give handsome drink money at the end, whereas your Tedesco frugally walks to every place accessible by land, or when, in a party of six or eight, he takes a gondola, plants himself upon the letter of the tariff, and will give no more than the rate fixed by law. The gondolier is therefore flowingly polite to the Inglese, and he is even civil to the Tedesco; but he is not at all bound in courtesy to that provincial Italian who comes from the country to Venice, bargains furiously for his boat, and commonly pays under the tariff. The Venetian who does not himself keep a gondola seldom hires one, and even on this rare occasion makes no lavish demand such as “How much do you want for taking me to the rail-way station?” Lest the fervid imagination of the gondolier rise to zwanzigers and florins, and a tedious dispute ensue, he asks: “How many centissimi do you want?” and the contract is made, for a number of soldi.
The number of private gondolas owned in Venice is not very great. The custom is rather to hire a gondolier with his boat. The exclusive use of the gondola is thus secured, and the gondolier gives his services as a domestic when off his special duty. He waits at table, goes marketing, takes the children to school, and serves the ladies as footman, for five francs a day, himself paying the proprietor of the gondola about a franc daily for the boat. In former times, when Venice was rich and prosperous, many noble families kept six or seven gondolas; and what with this service, and the numerous gala-days of the Republic, when the whole city took boat for the Lido, or the Giudecca, or Murano, and the gondoliers were allowed to exact any pay they could, they were a numerous and prosperous class. But these times have passed from Venice forever, and though the gondoliers are still, counting the boatmen of the Giudecca and Lido, some thousands in number, there are comparatively few young men among them, and their gains are meagre.
In the little city of Venice, where the dialect spoken at Canareggio or Castello is a different tongue from that heard under the Procuratie of St. Mark’s Place, the boatmen of the several quarters of the city of course vary greatly in character and appearance; and the gondolier who lounges at the base of the columns of the Piazzetta, and airily invites the Inglesi to tours of the Grand Canal, is of quite a different type from the weather-beaten barcaiuolo, who croaks “Barca!” at the promenaders on the Zattere. But all, as I say, are simple and harmless enough, and however loudly they quarrel among themselves, they never pass from the defamation of their female relatives to blows. As for the game of knives, as it is said to be played at Naples, and as About describes it at Rome, I doubt if it is much known to the populace of Venice. Only the doctors let blood there—though from their lancets it flows pretty freely and