Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-05-24
AN IDOL SHATTERED.
Edgar L. Wakeman Fails to Find in
Venice His City of Delight.
SMELLS BLOCKED A SEA ENTRY,
And Fashions Gaudy Gateway Failed to
Remove First Impressions.
LIS BLOCKED A SEA ENTRY,
COLD FACTS ABOUT THE sEA-PAVED CITY


VENICE, ITALY, May at is not pleas
ant to be ranked among those cynics who 60
about the Old World shying iconoclastic
bricks at the mystic fabrics which poets and
painters have more than half created and
which the rest Of the worlds friendly fancy
has clothed in warm and glowing embellish-
ment But however impressionable and
sympathetic one may be, the ideal Venice,
the complete composite of the expectant
wanderers dream, is another aud better
thing than the possessed actuality. One
hesiIates in such a confession. 1t seems
like setting ones own judgment, perception,
feeling, against those of myriads who have
come before. These have come to worship;
parted from Venice to adore. But so surely
as L would write all my life in justice, truth
and kindliness, never elsewhere came with
transports of expectancy to meet with such
bitter sadness in disappointment.
Every one hopes for travel and its peren-
NAL mental feast. Everybody sets as his
ultima Thule, some region. place or object,
to come to, know and enjoy. All my life
Venice was that transcendent point of at
tainment for me. Every song that had sung
Its praises / had read. In every one 1
L
regret that the singer could not frame his
words and measure in adequate alteration.
Standing before the great paintings of We
netian life and scenes, have seen a fairer
city behind the best the masters had done.
For a score and half years had gone on
building City of Delight, fair Armidean
vision Of enhancement, a fRr-awsy, radiant
place OF heckless air, OF tender skies, of
balmy zephyrs, of colorful tints thrilling
NTH iuip 1irbT of dop,ad nd min faI
palaces floating upon waters of translucent,
hyaline hue. This is the Venice we all have
made. There is no such city this side of the
Utmost Isle.
GREETED BY FOUL oDoRs.
I came from Brindisi by an Adriatic
coaster. We skirted Apulia, passed Bari,
Ancons, Rimini, and at Revenna were
alongside the lower region of lagoons. Pass
ing Pc della Maestro we had the whole up
per coast region of lagoons from Venice,
Far as ChioggIa's sails and reeds"
in view, and as the city gradually rose
higher and wider out of the waters, after
threading our way through a maze of ves-
sells with strange-colored sails, quaint craft
from Chioggia with high peaks and sterns
like the ancient galleons, and clumsy
feluccas from Crete and the Ionian islands,
came TO anchor inside the Malamocco Pass
dols, propelled by black and dirty gon-
dolier, upon quay in the very heart of the
city. That Venetian quay greeted me with
every disgusting aroma known to the Liver
pool and London docks, and the filthy
wharves along South and West streets. New
York. had come by the sea that all the
imagery, beauty, mysticism of the
sea might enhance the glory of the
approach to my visionary idol l had wor-
gh1pnpd a Goddess apH +ound bor 6oh fa
Ano 1 write in no captious or trifing spirit
when say that the hurt of it all was so
great that sneaked back into another an
cient, mildewed and funereal gondola; was
rowed to the railway station; took the first
train from the city towards Milan, shutting
out with closed eyes these unhappy first i'm
pressions; rode to the first station inland
which hid the Adriatic from sight; and then
returned over the great bridge of arches, the
way all other expectant travellers come;
hoping thus to find myself so wrong in NV
hrst seeing and feeling, that the glorious citv
OF dreamIul restiulness and delight would
be there awaiting me. 1t may be this will |
seem a foolish, trivial action. 1t was not.
i did 1t to be honest and 1st. l found pre-
cisely what had first discovered-a hot, ,sti- |
fling, sinking city, rotting at its base; crum- |
bling at its domes, and Haunting purile col |
Oring between; alive with Iazzaroni; hate
tul with importuning gondoliers; damp, |
uank, moldy with ooze and salt and slime. |
MUST PEER INTO THE PAST.
The truth about Venice is that, whatever |
might have been its charm and glory in the |
days OF the dOges, it presents but two as
pecis for study to the visitor of to-day. One !
is OF that intense sOlemnity awakened by
the contemplation OF the beauti ul dying or /
dead. The other is one OF ludicrousness
pitiable as that pathetic contempt with
which we view the antics and makeshifts of
Robert Adcdire upon the stage, or following
the disgusting baseness OF the Duke Of Bilge.
aodter with shaking sides and moist ewes
throughout the later adventures of Huckle-
berry Finn. So If you insist upon the for
mer aspect, you must look beyond the
bieached and rotJing skeleton OF the Venice !
which is, to the Venice which was. You
must see with historic ewes; accept with
sentimental enthusiasm: worship absolutely
what the past has made and called art; and
rehabilitate through your own blind imagln-
alton and willing fancy a once doubtful
perfection with the splendid proportions
ana establishment you believe were here in
some dim time before you.
On this line of tealJy to Venetian tradi-
tion your historic faith sees a noble people
flying from the wrath of Northern Huns.
and, casting their lot with the wild fisher
men of the Adriatic, founding a CITY, or
series OF cities, at last uniting numerous
shoals and islands IN a powerful and re-
sourcsful maritime league. 1t recalls the
eventual concentration of their communistic
peoples into a Republican Government and
the election of the first dux, doge or leader
IN 500, in the person of Pau luccio Anafesto,
who was given authority over all the islands.
You trace the time OF this first doge, to the
date of the extinction OF the Venetian re-
public precisely LOO years later, by Ma
poleon Bonaparte, long time of patriot,
warrior, statesman and navigator doges,
whose sole ambition was the protection of
the peoples liberties, the extension OF We
netian anne for science and art, the repell-
ance OF Eastern aggression on the one hand
and the statecraft OF the Lombards and the
Franks on the other.
FADED AND FALSE.
Your religious fervor is awakened that
the relics of St. Mark were recovered from
Egypt and a majestic church became their
reliquary; you feel the glow with which
Tasso wrote that Venice sent 200 vessels TO
assist in the holy wars; and YOU flout the
idea that the extension OF her commerce was
first consideration in her astounding prac-
tical evidence of piety. You remember her
"espousals of the sea- as a sweet and strik-
ingly symbolic mysticism. You believe her
to have been inspired by the highest patriot
ism in her almost incessant war against Ge-
noa and in her savage conquest of Padua,
Verona, Vicenza, Bassano, Belluno and of
the Milanian Brescia, Bergamo, Rovigo, Gre
mona, Crema and TrevisO. You are certain
she assisted in the suppression OF piracy,
rather than that her ieluccas and galIeons
for half a thousand years brought to her