The heroine of Henry James's The Wings of the Dove was about to die. But Milly Theale was not tired of life. She was just tired of London. So she did what any sensible person with limited time and unlimited money would do: she picked herself up and went to Venice.
Her idea was not to see Venice so much as to be there; not to gaze at the wonders but to become a figure in the tableau. Here are her instructions to her Italian majordomo: "At Venice, please, if possible, no dreadful, no vulgar hotel; but, if it can be at all managed - you know what I mean - some fine old rooms, wholly independent, for a series of months. Plenty of them too, and the more interesting the better: part of a palace, historic and picturesque, but strictly inodorous, where we shall be to ourselves, with a cook, don't you know? - with servants, frescoes, tapestries, antiquities, the thorough make--believe of a settlement."
Among the visitors in each era, and at any moment, are many Milly Theales (typically in better health but worse financial shape) in whom the fantasy is burgeoning. You can observe its inception in newcomers on the Grand Canal waterbus. Amid the bustle of commuters, shoppers and normal sightseers, these are the ones scanning the palaces for evidence of magical life inside. In the morning light, a lady or gentleman in a dressing gown may appear on a balcony, coffee cup in hand, to sample the weather. By night, the great chandeliers flicker and glint to reveal shadowy figures moving about their salons.
Perhaps there are observers who register all that as an animated touch to their sightseeing and return to their modern lives undeterred from plans to spend their next vacation on a beach or in Angkor Wat. On a not inconsiderable number of others the Milly Theale fantasy will be taking permanent hold. From then on, they will be propelled by the determination to get inside those palaces, not only to look around, which is difficult enough for a tourist because many are privately owned, but to look out from within.
It is possible. The romantic figures who appear on balconies or cast mysterious shadows from gothic or plain square windows are often advanced tourists whose Venetophilia has led them to expensive lengths. First there is the splurge on a Grand Canal bed-and-breakfast or hotel room that supplies the view and an approximation of 18th-century-ish trappings (the formula being: the more costly the quarters, the more rickety and threadbare the furnishings). From there, it is a remarkably short distance to more complex desires - the fantasy demands a palace of one's own, for however short a time one can afford it.
Renting - not necessarily a palace, but no vulgar hotel - is also a requirement for savouring the living Venice. It makes it possible to avoid the great disadvantage of being a tourist, which is the inability to pursue friendships with local people by entertaining them.
Venetophiles always remember their first visits, when their individual versions of the fantasy were conceived.I was 14 years old, slowly takingthe scenic/educational route home to Washington with my parents and brother from my father's one-year UN assignment in Greece. In my adolescent fantasy, it is a wintry night on the Grand Canal. Venice is enveloped in fog. I am enveloped in furs. Behind me is my brightly lit, overly furnishedpalace that I share with throngs of charming friends. Carefully positioning a satin slipper on the steps of my water entrance, I step into a dark gondola to be rowed silently to another brightly lit, etc, palace to attend a grand ball.
Well, it took 41 years but I did it. All, except for the gondola, that is. This having been a childish concoction, it required adjustments to reality. For a night-time gondola, by the time of that ball, the meter started running at $62. It is half as much again now. Furthermore, the water entrance at my palace was defunct and later, when it was repaired, it was in the exclusive use of the canal-level apartment. Oh, and incidentally, it is not my palace. Those fine old rooms on the piano nobile, with frescoes, tapestries, antiquities and such, where I dwell among that throng of charming friends - we pool resources and rent them, for two weeks at a time.
Everything else being pretty much as I had imagined, I did not quibble about waddling to the ball wearing my rubber boots. The host was in possession of a working water entrance but no gondolas pulled up to discharge guests, only equally expensive motorboats. He had thoughtfully placed chairs in the back entrance hall so that we pedestrian ladies, who were carrying our evening shoes in plastic bags, could tug off our boots before traipsing upstairs.
Venice is remarkably inconvenient for even the most leisurely of vacationists. The topography and system of assigning addresses is so confusing that pedestrians depend on one stranger after another to pass them along to their destinations, and hosts talk their guests in by mobile telephone, like air traffic controllers. The concept that motorised transportation takes longer than walking is so counterintuitive that no visitor can grasp it. "I'm late - I'll jump on a waterbus," you think, only to make yourself significantly later as it bumps along from one floating stop to another.
But Venice has its domestic virtues. Really. It is quiet. Even a relentless noisemaker such as Richard Wagner appreciated that. It was the absence of (perhaps competitive) noise that made him move there, he wrote to his father-in-law, Franz Liszt, as if the place were some bucolic retreat.
The chief sounds of Venice today are church bells, footsteps, the slapping of water in the wake of motorboats, the folkloric cries of boatmen and the animated shouts made by them, along with everyone else, into mobile phones.
It is a mystery why the jogging and gymnasium crazes have any adherents in Venice because treadmills and stair machines are provided by the municipality. With the necessity of walking everywhere, every few yards being up and down the steps of bridges, Venice's old people are said to be remarkably free of strokes and varicose veins. The greater peril would seem to be at the earliest stages of life when children are taken up and down bridges in their baby carriages and strollers. The favoured technique is to drag these vehicles up and push them down, with a resounding bump at each step.
For all its grandeur, Venice is built on a human scale. While the tangle of streets, alleys and canals forms a maze that can confuse even old-timers, the city is small enough to be comprehensible. You will continue to get lost but it will be in places that are welcoming. It is a truism among Venetophiles that although you will never be able to find the particular attraction you have set out to see, you will find something just as interesting that you did not know existed. The one you originally sought will pop up unexpectedly on a later, equally misdirected, expedition.
Venice is startlingly crime--free. The experience of taking a walk at night, finding oneself in a dark passage and suddenly hearing the echoes of a stranger's footsteps approaching from behind is disorienting in Venice because all it heralds is the arrival of a matron carrying home a pastry box by its ribbons.
Rudeness is a crime in Venice. One rarely encounters it, possibly because of the soothing effect of the slow pace which is the result of universal pedestrianism, and of the mid-day shutdown that is slipping away elsewhere in the Mediterranean. So it was a surprise to hear what we consider a normal emotional state articulated by a Venetian housewife on a bridge in a modest residential neighbourhood.
It happened during the last weekend of Carnival, recognised in this part of town mostly by costumed children and babies out with their parents. But there are masses of spectators for the outrageous displays in the historic centre, and those newly arrived by train were being ushered toward the action through this neighbourhood and over this bridge. A policewoman held back people already on the bridge, headed for home, making it temporarily a one-way passage for the visitors.
This was too much for that Venetian housewife, who alone gave voice to exasperation that would have inspired a full citizen uprising anywhere else. "Let me through!" she shouted. "I have to get home! I live here! Those people are tourists! They can wait! Not me! This is my neighbourhood!" and so on. The policewoman gently administered an occasional "Piano, piano, signora," - the graceful way of saying: "Hey, take it easy, lady." But the declaration of Venetian rights did not stop and when the tourists had passed, the policewoman held this lady back and began writing her a ticket.
"For what? I live here!" she said.
"For being badly brought up," was the reply.
This is an edited extract from
'No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice' by Judith Martin (with Eric Denker) published by
W.W. Norton (£15.99, $24.95). Judith Martin is the American syndicated columnist who writes as Miss Manners
