pe

ae)
« Ge

y findde prynted with his softy shoures
Shis gardyn, full of (eves and of flourts,
yy rAand craft of mannes hand sa curiously
Ss Arrayed faode this garbdyn, trewely,
> hat never was ther gardyn of swich prys
But if it were_the verray Paradys.
She odour of floures and the fresshe sighte
Waldt fian maked any ferte (ighte
Ghat ever was born, but if to arect sifinesse,
Or to arect sorwe, helde it in distresse
So full if wos of beautee with plesaunce.

a, a a ee as

Wy gardens sweet enclosed with cunfles strong,
Gindanked with benches to sytt and take my rest.
The Knotts so enkuothed if cannot be express.
Thith arhors and ayles so pleasaunt andso dulce

—

CIN I IT LEI TD TO EET

THE LIBRARY
OF
SaRAH CoopeR HEWITT

PRESENTED IN MEMORY OF
HER FATHER

ABRAM S. HEwITT
AND HER SISTER

ELEANOR GARNIER HEWITT

es eer 7

lame

| Sere 3 Ee
§@NDON. PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES

die QU NTRY LIFE,” TAVISTOCK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN, W.C. & BY GEORGE
NEWNES, LTS. SOUTHAMPTON STREET,
STRAND, WC, CMR LE

AJITHOO AHT

<2 4

1 LE,

THE COR

A GARDEN

IN VENICE
Br F. EDEN

LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES
OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” TAVISTOCK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN, WC...) BY GEORGE
NEWNES, LTD. SOUTHAMPTON Sl REESE.

STRAND, W.C. MCMIIL

—~{—
r~

g YB

HH

x
S

BALLANTYNE PREss
Lonpon & EDINBURGH

Ce

The Lord God planted a garden

In the first white days of the world ;
And set there an angel warden,

Ln garments of light enfurled.

So near to the peace of Heaven,

That the hawk might nest with the wren;
For there in the cool of the even,

God walked with the first of men.

And I dream that these garden closes,
With their shade ana their sun-flecked sod,
And their lilies and bowers of roses,

Were laid by the hand of God.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth—

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

Dorotuy Gurney.

1D 9499

aes

= Sey aes —

story I would tell was once
a bank of mud. Uncon-
scious of its sweet destiny
for thousands of years it
lay inert in the lap of Adri-
| atic waters. The south
' wind blew then as it blows

now across the Libian Desert, and hurried on to

quench its thirst in the Mediterranean Sea. Across
A I

oA

A GARDEN IN VENICE

that sea and up the Adriatic it carried the moisture
by wind and sun evaporated north to the chain of
Alps that bound the Veneto. There condensing in
the cooler atmosphere, the vapour turned to rain—

_ therainwhich oncewashed up the garden and now

fertilises it. This rain, where nothingin this world
stands still, had no sooner done its genial work on
mountain side and plain than it hastened to the
seas from whence it came. In its reasoned, if
reckless, haste it cut canals through the sleeping
mud, throwing up the displaced ooze on either
hand to dry and harden. On such soft stuff the |
islands in time were formed where now stand
Venice and the Giudecca.

This law or accident of Nature that in the first
ages made the islands now orders the weather of
our modern days. There are but four winds on
the Giudecca where the garden stands, though
the head of the Observatory may write the signs
of more; but then, the Venetians say, he must
show something for his sa/ario. First, the
Scirocco, that south wind from Africa that be-

comes south-east with the trend of the Adriatic ;
ea

A GARDEN IN VENICE

then its opponent and conqueror, the north-east
wind the rude Bora, that, acknowledging no
bounds nor master, keeps to the road it has
beaten for itself, regardless of the coast lines it
severely punishes. Of less importance and weaker
mind, Levante, the east wind that follows the
course of the sun; and Garbin, south-west, that
leaves the weather as it finds it, in Giudecca
language, “Lascia quel che trova.”

It is Scirocco and the Bora that have made
the Venice islets and that now rule them. The
first brings the moisture, the last turns that
moisture into rain. And so we have the apparent
contradiction, that has made many a tourist dis-
trust his aneroid, of a rising glass with a falling
rain.

The contest between our master winds threw
up in past ages a bank here and there, awash with
the surface of the tide, to warm into life under
the kiss of the summer sun. On this the wind
and wave drove and left the soil, the sand, the
vegetable matter, borne by the salt tide and the

fresh torrents from mainland. Here and there
A2 3

A GARDEN IN VENICE

fell a seed or root, torn from in or under water,
soon to grow into the many plants we call sea-
weed ; a salt forest to give food and shelter to
millions of animalcule that gave food and sport
- to thousands of small fishes.

As these seaweeds ripened, dried, and sank,
their remains gave root-hold and sustenance to
others, fending off the canal waters and adding
each its mite to the ever rising bank ; until, in
countless generations of plant life, the plants,
little knowing that they were beneficial workers,
prepared the way for other plants and wrought
their own extinction.

Then the fresh torrents from mainland gave
their aid. Seeds from the shore, roots from dry
earth, were borne seawards on the flood and left
stranded. Some, when life was still in them, to take
root and grow, and so to thicken, strengthen, and
protect the bankthatsavedthem. Their work done,
to give place, as happily seems the rule on earth,
and must be in the universe, for something better.

So the dry land that was to be our garden was
slowly made, and surely fitted for life on a higher
4

A GARDEN IN ‘VENICE

scale. Man came now to carry on the work of
nature. Escaping from the mainland with life,
happy if his skin were whole, he built himself a
shelter of reeds, then a cabin of wood, then a cot
of burnt earth or brick. Round the cottage the
earth grew solid. There is no waste absolute, or
loss entire, in God’s law. What is rubbish at
one time or place serves a wholesome purpose at
another, and as man built his better building the
old discarded matter took another form and
certainly a fairer.

‘There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
would man observingly distil it out.” He does
and rightly does, poor fellow, wittingly or of
pure instinct, get from most things as much of
good as from them may be got, and so the mud,
and dirt, and dust heap, become dry land, was
dug and planted, and its crops coming to useful
lite helped sustain it. The necessary attained,
his stomach filled, his eye sought to feed its soul
with form and colour. Thus in time grain and
roots gave some place to flowers and fruit, till
with added charm and beauty, there blossomed

5

A GARDEN IN VENICE

outagarden. But before this happy climax ages
passed and much work was needed.

_ Fortunately to our gain, if to others’ loss,
society in the cimgue cento was not perfect. Men
and women were rarely safe out of patrician
houses, or away from under that sign of peace,
the Church. So Monasteries set up this sign on
every islet in the Lagoon of Venice, and one on
the Giudecca fenced in with a thick wall from
depredation of man or encroachment of the tide,
the plot of ground of which I write.

To the monks we owe the present gardener’s
cottage, and the sign of the Cross that decorates,
and, let’s hope, blesses it.

Then the monk gave way to the patrician who
built the so-called Palazzina for the pleasure of
himself and friends, that, conscious maybe of its
worldly purpose, turns its shoulder to the Cottage
Cross.

Perhaps the life of the one was as good as the
life of the other, in any case they were both use-
ful even if they did not mean or know it; for they
dug and planted, or made dig and plant, and we
6

THE GARDENER’S COTTAGE.

q@utagarden. But before rant
wn passed and much work was n

len in the cingue cento was not pet

mes and women were nt ooh: a pa om

AOATTOO @A4VaGHAD ANT

A GARDEN IN “ NICE

Fortunately to our gain, if

the plot of ground of which , wri
‘To the monks we owe the prese
cottage, and the sign of the Cross oa
and; let’s hope, blesses it. 6, Vt
‘Then the monk gave way to the patrici
built the so-called Palazzina for the : te.
himself and friends, that, ecalioees fim
when? purpose, turns turns its shouide tie the Compe bid
Perhaps the life of the o: one wavelignid as the | Ot Aas
life of the other, in any case they were ae RT TO
ful even if ~— did not mean or know it; oat ey ah

A GARDEN IN VENICE

profit by theirlabour, A labour from which was
born the beauty that isour gain. Ifthe man who
makes two blades of grass grow where one grew
before deserves well of his fellows, surely he who
turns plainness into beauty should be put upon a
pedestal for worship, and, better still, for imitation.

eS

P< 4 ad
ST Sis — WS

“Na:

Zea ENICE is a delightful
2 place for man, sick or
well. It was in the
less happy state that I
drifted to and took root

ew in it more than a score
é Be BOY ke ofyearsago. Onefloated
Sy A py Ss in a gondola without

c\

were from me exacted by bath-chair or carriage.
B 9

the pain or stress that

A GARDEN IN VENICE

No noise, no flies, no dust. An air so gentle
that it could scarce be called a breeze. <A
sun that warms and rarely burns; a light,
veiled white and soft, that lets one read without
glare-made fatigue ; a climate which asks no man
to do anything, and is answered affirmatively by
all. So we, too, should have been content not
to do.

The more so that in Venice there is no mono-
tony. Of all places on earth it is the most vari-
able in its moods. ‘The changes in its colour are
as great from day to day, and sometimes from
hour to hour, as in more northern climes from
month to month, or even from season to season.
This variableness, the despair of her studious
student, is the joy of her loitering lover. The
painter finds a lovely subject, indeed they are all
around him, and goes from his first day’s work,
and perhaps his second, content that he has caught
the tone that charmed him. Even as he says so
a change comes on that makes him doubtful of that
work. The golden light has become silver, the

cool blue shadows are swimming in a cinque cento
10

A GARDEN IN VENICE

richness. He must alter his whole scheme of
colour or go home. The next day it may be
worse, and he may wait for weeks for the effect
that he had not quite time to render. Thusit is
that finished studio-painted pictures of Venice so
rarely tell of Venice to the man who knows it,
whilst the quick sketches made by the artist who
can see, and is possessed of the hand that can
render, faithful to his eye and taste, are so very
lovely.

To the idle man this change of mood and colour
is, or should be, perfection. He should never tire,
and rarely does so, of his fickle mistress. He is
floating to-day where he floated yesterday. The
lagoon, the island, the buildings are all the same,
but how different! The Euganean Hills, or per-
haps the Alps, that spoke to him of Shelley, or
of snow, the distant line of terra-jfirma that held,
as in a fine cut frame, the steely lagoon waters,
are now hidden in a mist of light. The Ducal
Palace, the Salute’s dome, that yesterday appeared
clear and earthly, the grand Campanile of San
Marco—alas that it has fallen a victim to its own

B.2 Il

A GARDEN IN VENICE

weight and Time’s corrosion—the scarcely less
beautiful Campanile of San Giorgio, whose clean
outlines stood out so sharply in the atmosphere of
vivid blue, to-day all swim ethereal in a golden
haze. ’Tis all there, but a dream rather than a
reality, a spirit picture more than a motive for a
sketch.

Alas ! to the most faithful come moments of
aberration. Man is never wholly contented.
Adam and Eve, I fancy, were perfectly sick of
Paradise before they sinned to leave it ; and I, a
petty descendant with inherited longing for action
and of change when I could do nothing, got tired
day after day of doingit. One’s eyes got satiated
with the very beauty of palace and church, of
sky and of sea, and my nerves, ajar with the per-
fection of repose, broke out one afternoon more
lovely than its fellows, and said, “I’m sick of all
this water. I’m tired of pink and grey, of blue
and of red. I thirst for dry land and green trees
and shrubs, and flowers; a garden.” I was
answered, “A garden.” You know we have

asked for one everywhere ; there’s no such thing
12

A GARDEN IN VENICE

in Venice. If there were, what good. Does not
the proverb speak of “ Venezia, tomba det fort”?

We were floatin g on the Giudecca canal and the
proverb, that I had heard before, was too much
for my sick temper, and it cried out, “‘ Via via, a
terra, Eugenio. Get out and find me a garden.”
And Eugenio answered, ‘“‘ Sz Monsignore.”

pe

is rr
Rr
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E if y
TPA
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tis CS) ee S

will shine all day.

old, the true, the delightful

e) type, says what he thinks

you would like him to say.

2 If you are going a picnic,
» or you are making hay, he

assures you that the wind is

" from ferra-firma, and the sun

If your flowers need rain, or
15

A GARDEN IN VENICE

your grass is burnt, he swears in the teeth of the
north wind that it is scirocco, and the rain will
fall when the tide shall run to sea. If you ask
him to do what is easy, he says, “ Sz, Signor,” and
will do it if it suits him sotodo. If you ask
him an impossibility, or what he thinks will not
tornare a conto, his “$7, Monsignore,” gives you a
grade or two of rank as compensation for not
doing it, and an assurance to the knowing that
it will not be done.

But I was flushed with my teeble effort of self-
assertion and put him on shore. One had scarce
time to cool when I heard Federico from the poppe
behind, “See, Signor, ecco Eugenio, he has found
it.” Truly there was Eugenio on the bridge of
the Rio della Croce directing us to turn out of
the Giudecca canal and follow him up the Rio.
We did so, rowing up the small canal to a gate
near by that once had had pretensions.

As it stood, Eugenio, with an air declaring that
there was no whim of his Paron’s, however mon-
strous, that Eugenio d’Este was not equal to ; and
at his side an enormous blue plush waistcoat,
16

‘VUUAL Ud A AUVN UAd VLVULNA

=

EULBVLVY BEB WNVBE E

LEBEW

bEK

it, and an asmipanice 4 ve ibe Heli
will not be done, | |
~ But I was flushed with toy feshte effort of self

_ assertion and put him on shore. One had scarce

time to cool when I heard Federico from the poppe
behind, « See, Signor, ecco Eugenio, he has found

‘it.’ Truly there was Eugenio on the bridge of ©

the Rio della Croce directing wa to tatn cmt af

_ the Gindecea canal and fieliove uta up vy Mie,

We did so, rowing up the senile Ranal wi ® gute

near by.that once had had rs |

As it stood, Eugenio, with an air ic ecdating HN |

, there was no whim of hw Paron’'s, however mone -

strous, that Eugenio d’ liste was not equal to ; and

at his side an enormous blue plush waistcoat,
16

A GARDEN IN VENICE

radiant with green glass buttons. Inside the
waistcoat, a mere accident thereof, was Pietro
“ Ortolano.” Pietro looked doubtful, till at that
open sesame, Una buona lira, the waistcoat pocket
gaped, and Pietro changed his chill frown of
doubt for a servile grin of welcome.

We landed in a scene that neglect would have
made repellant out of Italy. There stood the
Cottage of the Monk, the Palazzina of the Patri-
cian. In front of the Palazzina was a small
cortile, and in the centre was a well, both fenced
in with an ugly iron rail. In front again, across
a broad deep-trodden path, was a tiny square of
garden, closed in with an unshapely hedge of
thuya and euonymus. Four grand cypresses grow-
ing in the angles within the hedge, straight and
strong, seemed and seem, to point to heaven.
Statues and stone vases, deftly carved with fruit
and flowers, had stood on pilasters in front of the
Palazzina, but these were mostly on the ground.
Two arbours, one of yellow jessamine, one of
honeysuckle, leant on the round stone tables they

once had shaded. There were flower-beds too
c 17

A GARDEN IN VENICE

laid out in islands of various shapes, with paths
like small canals serpentining among them. These
beds still held aged plants of sweetbrier, cabbage,
and moss roses, with iris and white lilies, their
bulbs struggling for existence half out of the
ground, seeking in the air the nourishment an
exhausted soil could no longer give them.

Outside the hedge, vines were planted in
straight and crossing lines, and within the squares
made by the vine-pergolas grew, seemingly at
their own wild will, peach trees and apricots,
mulberries and maranelli, pears and apples.

The vines and fruit trees, like the statues, were
mostly on the ground; but the orchard, where
weeds or cabbages were not, was made lovely by
the broad grey green leaves of artichokes.

The Venetian artichoke is pur sang a Venetian
plant; easy to cultivate, easy to sell, and excellent
to eat. The core has no choke, and can be swal-
lowed whole. The crop is cut with any knife.
The plant requires only that its roots should be
covered by and heaped up with soil before the

frosts, and uncovered after them. Worth as much
18

A GARDEN IN VENICE

as two and three centimes each when scarce,
they are sold at twenty to thirty centimes the
hundred when full in season, and as each plant
will yield some score of heads its owner wins his
profit with small labour. Pietro and his family
were the “‘ Ortolani” of the garden. His Paron
was a Greek who lived at Venice, and came
every morning to get the ess: that Pietro’s arti-
chokes were sold for.

I fell at once in love. What a garden could be
made of the abandoned orchard, what scope for
planting, what an escape from constant idleness,
what a relief from my lately loved mistress the
lagoon, from whom my soul now turned in the
ungrateful satiety of too long possession.

The next morning we went to meet the Greek,
a Venetian so called, because his house was near
the Church of the Greci.

To the natives of the Giudecca all are foreigners
who are not Giudecchites. I once had a garden
man, a native of neighbouring Murano, who left
me because he was hunted when he went outside

the garden by the Giudecca boys as a Forrest,
e2 19

A GARDEN IN VENICE

and this Paron was a Greek. Well, it was
all the same, Greek, Francese, Inglese; he
was a foreigner, for he did not live on the
Giudecca.

Pietro was right, his Paron was a Greek.

I asked if I could rent the garden? ‘“* No.”
“Well, a bit of it?” To oblige me, yes, he would
let me the cypress plot (twenty yards square, out
of some four acres). I said it was not much;
and he, that the orto was very valuable; but he
would let me the cypresses, and give me leave to
walk about the orchard—a permission that did
not cost him anything, for, as he saw, I could
not walk. “How much?” ‘Would I give him
a parola of how much I was ready to pay?”
Then Eugenio said the parola must come from
him. ‘ Well, as I was ill, and he wished me well,
and he would like to do the Signore a kindly
action, therefore he would let him the plot for
nine hundred lire.” ‘ My Signore is tired now,”
said Eugenio, and he took me away.

When out again in the lagoon Eugenio said,

“‘Lascia mi fare, the brigand, that is what he
20 ;

A GARDEN IN VENICE

pays, or ought to pay, for the whole garden.” It
was true; and as he didn’t pay, the proprietor
was as ready to sell as I to buy, and so we came
to terms.

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CHAP TE REV

T was the end of 1884.
There was much to do,
and we set at once to do
it. The houses were
repaired, and the boun-
dary wall was made good.
Half dead and_ useless
trees were felled, dead

wood cut out and young trees planted. All this
a5

A GARDEN IN VENICE

was very easy : something less so to restrain the
cortellazzo that hung from the back of the blue
waistcoat, for Pietro and his helpers declared
nearly every tree to be useless, and all wood
dead, that they might have the more to sell and
burn.

Much less easy was it, the orchard being ours,
to decide what to do with it. A brand new plan
in the old ground was desecration, and we agreed
to make such changes only as, consistent with
the existing scheme, were needed to utilise and
beautify it.

It was necessary, too, to have tender regard for
the genius of the place. ‘All is fine that is fit.”
An Italian garden has found a home in many an
English pleasaunce, indeed the Italian, or rather
Roman garden, as old and older than the Plinies,
was the model of some of our loveliest. But our
individual taste loves vegetation as Nature grows
it rather than as man clips it.

Suitable as is the evidence of man’s art to such
gardens as those of the Pamfili Doria or Albani
Villas, indeed to any appurtenant to grand Italian
24,

A'IGARDEN EN VENDCE

palaces or Scottish castles, and charming as are
cut yews or box trees in their proper places, as
illustrations in Country Life so often show us, we
thought it as out of character to dump them down
in the Giudecca, and to trace winding paths in a
Venetian orchard, as it would be to set an up-to-
date water-colour in a Sansovino frame, or a
Titian in a modern one.

The universal measure that rules at Venice is
the square, and the square is never square. The
houses and palaces were built along the banks
following the devious course of the canals. The
Grand Canal is a letter S writ large. The founda-
tions of the buildings were laid on upright piles
driven some forty feet deep along the margins;
the frontage was square, more or less, as the curve
of the bank where the palace rose was slight or
rapid. The building itself ran as squarely back-
wards as the square of its neighbours on either
side permitted, and to attain the utmost cubic
space that he could on his expensive foundation
the builder designed a square that is seldom as

equilateral as it looks.
D 25

A GARDEN IN VENICE

The outcome of this regard for economy of
space and spese is a most commodious house with
scarcely a quite square room within it; and few
things are cleverer in decoration than the way in
which the old stucco artist adapted his square
design to a room that was not so, and makes one
lose the sense of unsquareness in both design and
room. A big sa/a runs most times through the
centre of the house from front to back, the rooms
opening into it on either side, and at the back of
very many of the old houses there greets you the
lovely surprise of an old and generally abandoned
garden.

The approach proper to a Venetian house is
{from the water. There are numberless small
canals, or vi, that divide, cut up the city into
blocks. Sometimes, where the blocks are large,
there is a campo in the centre, and houses built
around it. Ca//e, or small footways, run at the
back of these; and, when the space is sufficient,
at the back or side of the gardens attached to the
houses. ‘These gardens then were, and are, more

or less square or oblong; forms that necessitated
26

A GARDEN IN VENICE

lines straight and intersecting. The man who
had laid out our orchard had followed, indeed it
was prescribed for him, this universal Venetian
rule, and the invention of the pergola—the great
inventor’s name, alas, is lost to history—made it
easy, practical, and beautiful.

As something is written nowadays in books
and papers on the pergola, and many are put up
in England, I may hazard a few observations on
its use and possible abuse. If you buy a horse,
is it to ride or drive? Some men take or seek a
wife as a friend, a dear friend, constant, or occa-
sional ; some as a companion, a sweet companion,
by day or night; some as a managing directress,
and she oft becomes a tyrant; some as a servant,
of whom they’re apt to make a slave. So with
the pergola; decide what you want it for, and
the choice of one of its kind, or of none, is easy.
In Italy we need it for the vine; in England
it serves more often for the rose.

The pruning of a plant must depend upon its
habit, and the amount of pruning must be in
inverse ratio to its strength. A plant of strong

D2 2

A GARDEN IN VENICE

growth hard-pruned will apply all its vigour to
the making of more growth, and if continuously
restrained and over-thwarted in its nature, it dies.
A less vigorous plant will be aided by cutting
back, to put the strength that is in it to the
growth of flowers or fruit rather than of wood.
The Italian vine, with its force of habit and
ramping nature, cannot be treated asa French or
German one, and cut down close to the soil. So
in roses, strong climbers must be allowed to climb.
But whilst the pergola is admirable in Italy for
the vine, it is, it seems to me, little adapted to
the rose.

For the vine, then, we want support in Italy,
and are glad of shade. Beauty is of the essence
of the place. All this the pergola gives us. Sup-
port may, it is true, be given by stakes or poles,
with wires stretched like a fence along the rows
of vines, but this way of training like a hedge
gives no shade, and if simple and practical it has
little charm, unless seen in ground, left open as
a field, or laid out as an orchard rather than a

garden.
28

A GARDEN IN VENICE

In a warm climate there are few things more
enjoyable than a stroll, even in August, under a
vine pergola. You walk in deep shade, the fierce
sun held outside, the big bunches of grapes, black
and purple, yellow and golden, all the promise of
a rich harvest, hanging down to knock your hat,
to blob your nose, feast your eye, and tempt
your lips.

The rose, too, needs support, and this should
be given so as to show the beauty of the plant
and the redundance of its bloom. But under the
pergola you see nothing but what you should not
see; the unhealthy leaves, pining for light and
air, and possibly an occasional blossom fading
and colourless. The pendant growth of the grape
brings its fruit into sight, the upward shoot of
the rose carries its flowers out of touch and view.
So that to see a rose, much more to pick one,
you must go outside the pergola that holds it.

The support, then, in the nature of a pergola,
best fitted for the rose is not a pergola but an
arbour. Coming to such a leafy rose-house the
wealth of blossom on either side, and even on the

29

A GARDEN IN VENICE

top, is in full view; even sitting within it the
roses climbing up the entrance posts or columns,
and hanging down the front, are within the easy
reach of eye and hand. Prolong the arbour and
it becomes a tunnel, and, as is the case with tun-
nels, the sooner one gets out of it and the less
one sees of it the better pleased one may be.

30

CEP TER V

HERE are three beautiful
kinds of pergola that I
know. Two others far
less so. To dispose of
these last first. The per-
gola is sometimes made of
iron. The heat of the
metal in a hot climate

hurts the vine and its material offends the eye.

31

A GARDEN IN VENICE

Then there is wood sawn, and worse bepatterned.
I was asked last year what should be done with
such a one, that reminded me in the fashioning
of its woodwork of decoration used in the South
Sea Islands, and I curtly said, “Take it down.”
Two days afterwards I found it gone. There is
some pleasure in giving advice that you are asked
for if, when its worth is recognised, it is so
quickly acted on. The other forms of pergola
that I know, and that are practical and lovely,
may be seen, amongst many other places, at
Amalfi, Gravosa, and Venice. .

At the convent) hotel Sor Amman) there are
(happily not touched by the earth-slip of three
years ago) large square columns built of stone and
mortar with big wooden beams overhead. This
solidity was very suitable to a place that might
slip, and nothing can be more lovely than the
effect of the heavy old grey-white pergolas
from under the vines of which one looked
along the terrace that stands hundreds of feet
above the pretty Italian town and _ harbour,
and the bright blue sea dotted with dots of sails
32

A GARDEN IN VENICE
As at Shakespear’s Cliff, but with brighter

colours—
‘’The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles.”
“The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring bark,
Diminished to her cock; her cock a buoy
Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge

That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high.”

I have lately seen a pergola of masonry some-
thing similar at Venice in a garden bought by
Lady Radnor. But there is only one line of
columns, the crossbeams resting at the other side
on the outer wall that protects the garden from
the canal outside. The path underneath is paved
and sunk some two feet below the surface of the
ground and the result is charming.

At Gravosa, that most lovely place that stands
on a bay back to back with Ragusa and its port,
the road that joins the two towns runs over the
promontory that rises between them, and along
that road may be seen some medieval, probably
Greek pergolas, the whole in a scene of witching

E 33

A GARDEN IN VENICE

beauty. The supports are very ancient marble
and stone columns not large nor high, but per-
fectly proportioned, serving well their purpose
and in entire harmony with all around them.

The pergolas in general use at Venice are of
other and very evanescent kind. The pollard
willows that grow in the low lands of the neigh-
bouring ferra-firma supply the poles, and they are
sold, according to their size, at from five francs
to twenty the hundred. The initial cost is small,
and so, well suited to Venetian habits; but it is
not a cheap vine support, as the soft wood, quickly
grown, quickly decays, and requires constant
renewal. The upright pa/, planted about two
metres apart in a line on either side of the foot-
way, are first connected with cordom, as the laterals
are called, at from five to eight feet from the
ground, according to the strength of the vines
and their owner’s requirements for use or appear-
ance, Then the two lines, six to eight feet apart,
are joined and made interdependent by cross poles,
traverst. On these traversi are laid two longi-
tudinal lines constructed of the lighter poles, and
34

a
s
=
—
a
Z.
<
<x
=)
©
oO
a
oe
a
<

ee ey? SSE eR areee DTe pt : eae ey nM ie , . 7; ot ie re ie vai

ui as '$0, Tdvalons Nicaea Sakae
nota cheap vine support, as the soft wood, ai |
“grown, quickly decays, and requires const:
renewal. The upright pa/i, planted. about t
"metres apart in a line on either side of the fo
way, are first connected with corcdlernn, ae etl
are called, at from five te ee
ground, a accordi | | the
and their owner’ ’s requiremesy fe ee: oral
ance, ‘Then the two lines, dw nowight unl
are joined : and made interdependent by cross
traversi: On these traveqst are laid two.
tudinal lines constructed of the lighter poles, ¢
34

Okt. CMA AO a | ay

at

a
ie
‘

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the worn pali and cordoni judged not strong
enough for their former service. In their place,
to give more air and light, I now use lines of
zinc wire. The whole is bound together by osier
bands called stroppe, and secured against lateral
wind pressure by buttress poles tied to every
fourth or fifth upright.

The stroppe require renewal every two years,
pali and cordoni every three to four, when the
whole pergola is thrown down and remade. The
vines, though often thrown to the ground too, in
the erection of the pergola, do not suffer; but
when the cost of the labour is added to the price
' of pali and stroppe such a pergola is not in the
long run cheap. If not so light and taking little
space it is most appropriate and the effect is
charming. In such a garden as ours the six or
seven hundred yards of pergolas built on solid
brick or stone pilasters would be utterly out or
character, and so weighted might gothrough the
bottom or sink with it into the lagoon we swim
on.

Our pergolas then were there, and we too happy

EZ 35

A GARDEN IN VENICE

to accept them in line and kind. But the spaces,
the so-called squares they formed and enclosed,
had to be dealt with. Many were small, filled
with useless, dwarfed, and ugly fig-trees. The
cabbages and potatoes, not too well grown, that
filled others in due season, scarcely commended
themselves to us as permanent inhabitants, and
we called on our imagination and our: memories
for plans of betterment.

36

MB) HERE was a Ross-shire
} varden we had known and
loved many years ago,
that may be in much as
unlike our present one as
Scotland is to Italy, yet
was in its laying out not
unsimilar, and might give
us a theme, as it were, on which to write in
flowers our garden story. With the old castle
wall to the north, and the ground sloping to the
south, it was divided and protected from cold
37

A GARDEN IN’) PNG &

winds by high cut hedges. Each division was
subdivided by espalier hedges of pears and apples.
Outside the espalier-formed squares were borders
of flowers, and inside were currant, gooseberry
bushes, and the ordinary plants of a kitchen
garden. At its south boundary it had a ha-ha
wall, with below a meadow and a trout stream.

Our Venice garden had the main features of
the Scotch one. For the trout stream, that
sparkling joy of life, we had, alas, a quiet substi-
tute in the lagoon. But to our north was the
high wall that once enclosing the Convent, that
Casa di Chiesa, now shuts in the perhaps more
useful Casa di Pena. Useful to society and use-
ful to us, for, though it is sad for the bad ones in
it to be constrained to silence, security from north
wind and noise is a boon of great price to the
garden and to us.

Of espaliers there were none, but they could be
made, and in the meantime we had the vines to
mark out and serve as a background to our garden
plots. The borders of these could be given to
flowers, and to Pietro and his waistcoat could be
38

A GARDEN IN VENICE

left the inner squares. Setting to work on this
plan, we planted pears to make espalier hedges
and duly trained them. But the sun is too hot,
at least on the southern exposure which we chose
for them, killing them with the heat of its regard.
Of the dozens of trees so planted a few only lived,
either where they got some shade, or single trees
that have been allowed to grow as Nature meant
them.

The vines were at once taken in hand. One or
two pergolas were suppressed where the vines were
past recovery or weak, and one or two squares were
thrown together ; thus in one case massing two
tiny orchards of Marinelli, that looked at each
other across the line of the vines they stifled.
Then Furlani were called in, men who, passing
the summer on the mountain slopes, leave their
wives to the snows of winter, and come to Venice
and the neighbouring towns to sell hot chestnuts
or cooked pears, and to bake bread or make
chocolate. Men of this kind are very frugal and
industrious. They go to France and Germany in
numbers to work at various trades, and return

39

A GARDEN IN VENICE

when their pockets are full with hard-earned
economies. It is their ambition to buya plot of
land and build a house for their wives and chil-
dren. The children when they grow up bring
_ their wages to the home, and the fathers grown
old are so supported. At Belluno, where we
spend the summer, I have seen half a dozen of
such houses built in the last five or six years.
Each has its plot of ground for grano turco, and
often grass enough to keep a cow, and the price
of such lots is high.

One of these men who came to me was a very
able worker, not rare among them, but also an
honest worker, giving a fair day’s work for his
day’s pay; and this, being with me something
above the general rate, was a further temptation
perhaps to misconduct. N evertheless, he ac-
counted to the last centime of the money he
spent, till at the end of his third season he disap-
peared, and I was told, the police wanting him,
he had gone to America. I sincerely trust he
met there with the fortune that his conduct with
me deserved. It was anerring cast of the police-
40

A GARDEN IN VENICE

man’s net that cost me a good man. A cast
doubly erring, for it was too well made and its
object badly chosen. There are so many I know
who might have been better wanted, and both
less missed, and better missed at Venice.

By his help a couple of thousands of pali were
bought and planted. The cordoni and traversi
were prepared in length and shape where neces-
sary, to render their tying easy. Many thousands
of stroppe were sorted into sizes and lengths ; the
large branches split, to be put in use where
greater strength was needed, the smaller and
shorter to tie the vines to the pergola framework.

Next, the paths were made, and mindful of
Hyde Park, boat-loads of sea shells were brought
from the Lido as substitutes for, and improve-
ment on, the gravel that the Veneto does not
furnish. The paths were then bordered with box
or old bricks. The last the best, for bricks,
especially the old ones, are not unsightly, want
no trimming, take nothing from the soil, harbour
no insects, and hold rather than consume the
precious moisture.

F 41

A GARDEN IN VENICE

Then the borders were planted, not an easy
task, for one side of the pergola running, as ours
mostly do, east and west, is in the shade. Some-
times too the pergolas are doubled to meet the
exigencies of some extra vigorous vines, and few
herbaceous and seedling plants will submit grace-
fully to be deprived of so much light and air. It
took then some time to fill them, and it takes
some thought to keep them filled, but nothing is
more marvellous than the growthand multiplica-
tion of plants in Venice that are pleased with
Venice. And here a word must be said on the
peculiarities of Venice gardening, bound up, as
these are, with its pains and pleasures.

There is no other soil and climate so full of
whim and fantasy. You buy ascore of magnolias,
trees that you see growing luxuriantly in other
Venice gardens. One of your score alone will
perhaps thrive. You plant a dozen roses of the
same kind, bought from the same rose garden ;
this and that plant will ramp, the rest not move.
Your efforts to fill the garden is a story of failures,
and yet the successes thrive so fast that the
42

PERGOLA AND OLD GATEWAY.

i - these are, with its pains and pleasures.

YAWATAD GIO GVA AIODAAI.

“ = ‘tion of ee in Mau an are. | ;
_ Venice, And here a word must. be said 0
a peculiarities of Venice gardening, bound

neaes, intevmte

‘ “ee thrive, You plant a : ne
saan + hed, or from the sume nose

et

A GARDEN IN VENICE

scissors and knife and billhook must be kept at
work to let in air and sunlight.

After a time our thick heads found out one
cause of failure. The soil is made; brought in
boats from pulled down houses or dust heaps, or
from the bottom of dredged canals. One rose
you plant may have the luck to light on an ancient
dung heap, the next vainly strive to root in the
scorched débris of some long-forgotten fisher’s
kitchen. Again, the soil on the surface may be
sweet and wholesome, but all plants that have
tap-roots, or seek deep feeding, would find at
some three feet down salt earth or even salt water.
I have seen in a very hot and dry summer the
surface in places white with a salt efflorescence
drawn up by the power of the sun.

Peach trees, therefore, have so short a lifetime
that I have renewed them twice and some even
three times already. Nor does cutting their tap-
root before planting add materially to their en-
durance. Only lateral root running trees can live
to full age. So our Marinelli last, lovely with
white flowers or red fruit each in its season,

F2 43

A GARDEN. IN VENICE

and the mulberries see out generations of
Furlani.

- These mulberries are a source of income. We
have five trees large and wide-spreading. In their
_ season, July, they are purple black with delicious
fruit, their branches so laden that they are some-
times broken with the weight. When I bought
the garden I found that a family of Furlani came
yearly from the mountains of Friuli, paying a
rent of seventy lire for the right to pick and sell
the fruit—first, however, providing a supply for
the master’s use. In addition to money they
bring, a relic perhaps of the old payment in kind,
two mountain cheeses, bound up in green-leaved
boughs—one of fresh hard creamy curd, that is
generally eaten with sugar, the other smoked and
seasoned. I would not disturb their tenancy, and
the children of those days now carry on the trade
their father is no longer fit for.

To pick the fruit is a stainful task that requires
skill. Unless well plucked a nearly empty skin
remains in the bungler’s hands. The juice has
spurted on his arms and face and clothes,

44

A GARDEN IN VENICE

Among our young women visitors are some
who are fond of mulberries, and we advise the
prettiest ones to pick with their lips. This may
be, and often is successfully done, but not always,
as lips with teeth no longer white, and tips,
stained dark red, of upturned tilted noses so often
show. There are simple ways, as old perhaps as
the days of Adam, of getting rid of stains on
pretty lips; but the frocks, and it’s well worth
knowing, will only yield the colour that betrays
their mistress’s fancy to the smoke of burning
sulphur. So even the oldest habit may be worth
repeating and the commonest match have a merit
of its own.

The Feast of the Redentore is the mulberry
sacrifice or triumph. It is held on the third
Saturday and following Sunday of July. A couple
of days before we have a visit from the monks of
the Monastery of the Redentore, who seek our
flowers and fruit. We give them branches of
either, with which are made large garlands of
Mantegna type for the decoration of the church
and doorway. These mendicants, for they are

45

A GARDEN IN VENICE

of the Franciscan order, are, in the language and
experience of the Fondamenta, Buona gente.

Begging with us at home is not a high ideal
nor a meritorious practice, but then we have a
poor law. In a land where no Elizabeth ever
signed a law to prevent the starvation of her
meanest subject, ’tis wonderful that those who
by sickness, laziness, or incapacity run off the
course, can eat enough to live. The kindness of
the people to the people is wonderful. Of the
service of the children to their parents I shall
speak later. The charity of the well-to-do to
the poorly off is great, the bequests of the dying,
or the fearful, to make their peace with purgatory
are many, but still there are hundreds with no
kith or kin placed well enough to help them
who would starve but for such men as these
monks.

The Father Superior is an acquaintance |
gladly see. ‘Tall, gaunt, and handsome, in his
brown frock he reminds one of a Ribera picture,
and he is gentle in his voice and manner, unre-
mitting in his quest, untiring in his labour.

46

GOOWMO WTIAG OLY AHL GNV VINANWVANOG waive

ONB EOUDVYNEULVY VYUD LHE KIO DEVPy CKOCE

“who. would stares deo Soe Noth men as tha

-mitting in his quest, untiring in his labour,

ST TOs OO as A ee ae ee ee

t

A GARDEN rN VENIOR

obithe Franciscan order, gonial
experience of the. Fondamenta, Buona gente. ©
_ Begging with, us| ‘etsiaiomne:4 is not a high! eal

poor. dave. | el a ae no Elizabeth ever” :
signed «law 9h ume the starvation of her —
tare! RAN, ‘Yu weederful that those who

ny clelteutee, laziness, or incapacity run off the
coment, a eat enough to five, ‘Why Anwiiyane ab oe
the people to the peapie w besa iat OF the Se
service of the chikiven te their parents | shalt i y
speak later, The charity of the well-to-do to. u
the poorly off is great, the bequests of the dying,
or the fearful, to make their peace with purgatory | By 2.
are many, but still there are hundewi with wo |
kith or kin placed wel! cog oc Aelp them

Yue Father Superior is an acquemance 1
gladly see. Tall, gaunt, and handsome, in his
brown frock he cousbats ome of a Ribera picture, ut
and he is gentle in his voice and manner, unre

46

TC

TORRE YAN! RSIS aN SSL
PP NTRS SP I Se de SPN NLS Nr

a

PO

PUAy ad Diol gh ted

A GARDEN IN VENICE

We have Cucine Economiche at Venice and
on the Giudecca, which do much good, but the
Redentore monk is not behind in the same service.
The Padre and his fellows go out far and near,
as do their brother monks of San Francesco nel
Deserto, collecting everything that can help their
poor, excepting money.

One summer evening years ago we had a picnic
dinner at San Francesco with many other residents
and friends. It came on to storm and the party
sought refuge, that was most kindly given, in the
part of the monastery that women are allowed to
enter. It was proposed by one who knew much
of monks, as he knew of many things in Italy,
Spain, and the East, to make a collection that
would show some return for the hospitality we
had received. But the money for the monks’ dis-
tribution to their poor, that we should have been
glad to leave behind, had to be taken to Venice
and spent in provisions before it could be accepted.

One day, some time ago, I was told at Salce
near Belluno, sixty miles away, where we pass the
hot part of the summer, that a Venetian acquaint-

47

A GARDEN IN VENICE

ance wished to see me. It was my Padre of the
Giudecca. He was carrying a sack half full of
white beans with which to make the soup so
freely given in the winter to the Venetian poor,
and asked my help to fill it from our farm pro-
duce.

On the Saturday, the eve of the Redentore festa,
all Venice, poor and rich, gentle and simple,
spend their night abroad. From dark to dawn the
Giudecca quays, called Fondamente, are crowded
with sightseers and pleasure-wooers of every age
and size and sex. Among them the Furlani have
a ready sale for their fruit. For there are few
on bank or boat who do not eat that night of
mulberries.

On the canal thousands of boats pass up and
down the water, most, if not all, decked with
awnings or shelters built of green boughs and
flowers, hung with lanterns of every shape, device,
and colour, laden with suppers of all degrees of
merit, and crowded with families, or parties, of
quality as varied. The girls and boys, the women
and the men seem, and do, I believe, eat all night;
48

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the babies refuse their mothers’ breasts for their
fathers’ glasses, and why every one, or at least
very many, do not burst and die is a mystery.
Or is it a miracle to be ascribed to the Church
of the Redentore?

Nothing noisy or unpleasant, however, happens
to them as far as I have heard or seen; and faute
de miracle, it may be the distraction of the bands
of music in barges or on the Fondamenta, and
the firework displays, that give them pause and us
immunity.

An hour or two before dawn very many of the
Redentore votaries leave the Giudecca for the
Lido. One night we went too, and ’twas one of
the strangest sights a long life has shown me.

At our supper was a capital young fellow,
with, by-the-bye, a story to his credit, who had
been sent by Armstrong’s firm to put up a huge
crane at the Arsenal. It was proposed by some
wild tiptilted one that we should go in my steam
launch to the Adriatic outside and see what was
to be seen on the Lido shore. My engineer was
naturally not to be found, engaged as he probably

G 49

A GARDEN IN VENICE

was in eating the fifth hour of his supper on or
under the seat of some family boat. But our
Armstronger volunteered to light the fire, and
stoke and drive, and so we went.

It was a lovely morning as I steered in the
clear night light through, and then away from,
the crowds of boats, and running alone out to
sea at San Nicoletto, we steamed gently along
the Lido eastern shore.

Dawn broke as we got abreast the bathing-
places, and we saw a dark line stretching along
the sands, say perhaps a quarter of a mile in
length. We ran in to some sixty yards or so
from this line, and saw it was composed of people
motionless and silent, two or threein depth. The
dawn got lighter, and I turned to see in the east
behind me the first ray of the sun rising from
the Adriatic. Attracted by a noise, a rustle, and
a hum, I looked back shorewards. The dark
line had become pink and white. As the first
ray of the sun struck the water, as much of every
man’s or woman’s clothes as the law permitted
was left at their feet, and with a rush the peace
50

A GARDEN IN VENICE

of the calm poetic sea was broken by the splash
and frolic of a thousand bathers.

It must have been the sun that coloured our
faces and called out such ohs of unfeigned amaze-
ment, that Armstrong forgot his engine, and the
tilted tip changed for the moment its tempting
charm for rigid straightness. To avoid the per-
manence of so dire a calamity I turned the boat’s
head for home.

g

f
g SWI — ~
EPC ch
yp

N

2 Ema ZS a
By Aaa ¥ DS ER. Y/ Yabo wy Sy)
5 SG oe a B es Kh hare A Bs
yf ) ‘

Wf j
y

h ye mf &
aK i f mA
a -———— |

CH ASP TE. Re VA
Re GARDEN is not made in

a year; indeed it is never

7] z CEA made in the sense of
os Ss ff); .

finality. It grows, and
x Y 35 with the labour of love
er g Ws should go on growing.
S Ao} There are old gardens
Se that one might fear to
touch, and yet I suppose that the most devout

53

A GARDEN IN VENICE

and respectful worshipper and worker in one who
really loved it would leave some impress on it.

There are others made d& nuovo, and on these
the owner may let his fancy run, or call in the
aid of the high priests of gardening, who, with
dogmatic confidence, tell us what is wrong and
what is right. And there are some like the
garden of our story, for which the main design
has already long been drawn, with full scope left
for filling in details.

To achieve this worthily, we called up memory
in aid of our conception and borrowed from the
gardens we had seen. I have said how we got
help from distant Ross-shire for the general plan.
We turned to it again for the completion of the
picture, getting other ideas, however, from Bat-
taglia, close at hand; and from gardens as far
apart in distance, climate, and muse en scene as
Hampton Court and the gardens of the Moorish
Generaliffe at Granada.

One or two of the squares, formed in accord-
ance with the Scottish design, were at once stolen
from Pietro’s vegetables and laid out in rose
54

A GARDEN IN VENICE

gardens, Year after year the same theft was
made until we were obliged to stop, not for
kitchen needs, or less love of roses, or from lack
of other varieties to add to those we have, but
that we thought, and think, the mixture of the
useful with the beautiful gives the latter greater
value.

For this same reason of utility lawns were made
of several other former cabbage plots to serve as
places where in summer heats we sit.

On one such lawn two huge mulberry trees
grow, said to have four hundred years of age,
with at one corner a large bay. These bays are
very picturesque. ‘They were not above a few
feet in height when we bought the garden, being
cut each year and their branches sold, either as
evergreens at Christmas or for use in laundries.
We have saved them from further robbery, and
many of them are now really fine features among
the trees. The trunks, possibly from having been
cut in old times, grow as the hazels and ashes and
birches in English copses that are cut for faggots
every fourteen or fifteen years, and have a dozen

55

A LGARDEN PENI VENICE

silvery stems growing close together. These
running up into the dense covering of the dark
green leaves they nourish, give an evergreen and
southern look; indeed, they are only second to
the cypresses in their height and beauty.

Two other small lawns were made as the ground
plan of some oleanders; one of these shrubs, not
less than thirteen or fourteen feet in height, and
as many in breadth, is, in July, one mass of
bright red flower. Others are red and pink, ot
various tints, and pale yellow and pure white.

Round and on these lawns, too, are Japanese
kaki, the only magnolia I can get to grow, and
pomegranates. ‘The kaki and the small Japanese
maples are worth a place in any garden. The
last are slow in growing; but the kaki shows
more than mere contentment with its new home
by the vigour of its growth, the masses of its
beautiful glossy dark foliage, and the size and
quantity of its luscious golden orange fruit.

Of the pomegranates we have several kinds.
It is the common one that gives the fruit, so
dear to old designers on wood and canvas, and in
56

‘Tods NaidO NV

WU ObEU @bOL’

‘ranning up gree covering of the

fess than thirteen or fourteen feet in height, and

bright red flower. Others are red and pink, ot

last are sto 4 geowing; but the laki saws

so |

ee | |

| southern look ; indeed, vate ate: only second to fs

diy atta ma er aa
#s crany in breadth, is, in July, one mass of

various tints, and pale yellow: and pure white.

Round and on these lawns, too, are Japanese
kaki, the only magnolia I can get to grow, and
pomegranates. The kaki and the small Jenene
maples are worth a place in any garden, Whe

more thwn mere contentment with its new home
by the vigour of its growth, the masses of its —
beautiful glossy dark foliage, and the size and
quantity of its luscious golden orange fruit. :
Of the pomegranates we have several inds.
It is the common one that gives the scl
dear to old designers on wood and canvas, and in

A GARDEN IN VENICE

marble, stone, and metal. Other species have
double flowers, red, red and white, and white ;

the first two grow luxuriantly and are beautiful.
I might here mention a peach that, new to me,
was brought us from Valdobiadene, near Feltre.
The flower is very double, and a lovely red
colour. The fruit, for, unlike many double-
flowering trees, it fruits freely, is of a double form,
such as one sees occasionally in a sport of plums.
At Battaglia we had seen a wondrous China
rose hedge, high and thick, one mass of bloom
and loveliness. In partial imitation, and perhaps
in betterment, as far as material goes, we planted
a hedge of that dearest and sweetest of roses, the
old cabbage, on either side of a vine pergola
more than a hundred and fifty yards long. Our
lines of cabbage roses do not grow thick and high
as the Battaglia China, and it is high praise to
say of any rose that it can be better for the pur-
pose of a hedge than a really good specimen of
Bengaliensis ; but in late May or early June, when
other roses are for the moment going off betwixt
their blowing seasons, this pergola is very
H a7

A GARDEN IN VENICE

charming, and carries on our bloom with the help
of the iris, Canterbury bells, larkspurs, foxgloves,
&c., to the madonna lilies, whose flower-time
theirs overlaps.

The idea taken from Hampton Court was not
successful. I remembered half a century ago
some beds there surrounded by a hedge of Devon-
iensis roses. With us, though offered many sites,
Devoniensis will not grow. For reasons of soil
and climate, given later, the refusals of certain
plants to be transplanted are with us much too
common. We console ourselves that, if their love
be not for me, some other love there’ll surely be.

The idea we borrowed from the Generaliffe
was the fashion of a tank. Few places are better
able to give advice on this crucial subject for a
garden than the Alhambra hill, Standing in a
torrid climate, and dry and springless in itself,
finishing off a promontory five hundred feet
above Granada, it would be barren but for the
engineering care and skill of the thirteenth
century Moors. As it is, their work is still in
being, and rills of sparkling water, brought in
58

A GARDEN IN VENICE

conduits, generally invisible, give drink and life
to lovely gardens.

There was one there, El] Hacir del Gran
Capitan, a tiny house, the passage between it
and its kitchen roofed by a huge vine, and a
small garden of some seven terraces, each com-
posed of the sustaining wall of the one above it,
two narrow flower borders, a path between them,
and a fountain with an open conduit carrying
the water to the basin lower down.

The garden itself, and then Granada below,
and then the Vega, as the plain is called, with
the Guadalquivir shimmering in silver bends
amongst green meadows, grey trees, and small
hills or hillocks, each giving standing-room to
the village and the church, and perhaps the con-
vent; at the*end of all, rising in the intense blue
sky, the snows of the Sierra Nevada. That view
and the Museo del Prado pictures are the wonders
of old Spain.

From the larger garden of the Generaliffe we
copied a tank for holding water, but this expensive
subject must be dealt with later.

H 2 59

POODDDODOG DDD

HDDODODDODODG

CHAP TER: VIII

ROBABLY the joy of a

garden lies, more or less, in

its wealth; one loves to see
things grow as if they liked
it. To see colour in masses,
| depthofshade,bloomin pro-
fusion, glorious promise,
: | and bountiful flowering—
these are the characteristics that the soil of the
Tomba dei Fiori will give to those who ask it. It is
well, no doubt, where Nature is more frugal, to
plant beds and borders with many different sorts of

flowers ; with paint-box in hand to study precisely
61

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the contrasts and juxtaposition of plants and
tints, and so to plan and grow a very lovely and
finished picture.

This is as a Meissonier to a Tintoretto. But
' Tintoret is the better master for Venice. The
extent is ample, the borders many and long, the
separate divisions of beds are numerous, and a
bigger brush can be filled with fuller colour and
the plants planted in larger masses.

In Italy, too, flowers grow and multiply in a
way unknown to England, and it is wise to take
advantage of Nature’s bounty.

As the cabbage and artichokes of our prepos-
sessors gave way to the daffodils, anemones, and
tulips mostly brought from Holland, the produce
of these bulbs yearly made demand for greater
space. Small islets of foxgloves or columbines
or larkspurs spread themselves into continents,
and a splash of Love in the Mist flowed over
into a sea of blue. The vigour, too, of the
plants that love the soil is so great that to reduce
them and their groups to the dimensions that are
observed in what is called a well-kept garden
62

wi oh eT ey , er PTS ae "oh
Wve? a °

NATURE'S. BOUNTY.

UVLOBE.2 BONULA

_ depen ae

way unknown to. Sila oe Hm te

spaces) -Sumalll idets of foxgloves on:

rye Ce 2 he 8) AR eee Oe ee Pees eerie OTL Ale tyye Ce yo HONG

A GARDEN IN manne

tints, and so, to pin and ‘grow | a wey love y
finished. picture, — A th i

This is as a Meissoniet to a rsdradebal I
_ Tintoret is the better mast r for Venice, The

In Italy, too, acy grow and aki sa . ’

tulips pais bala
of these bulbs ywarty: pe

or larkspurs spréad then weeatts
and a splash of Love in the. Mis med OVER
into a sea of blue, The vigoun, too, of the .
plants that love the woil is so great that to reduce _
them and their pres to the dimensions shat ess ie :

ee,

Role

Rah ye

ae

a ee sia:

A ‘GARDEN IN VENICE

would be to restrain their nature, and we mostly
prefer to let them ramp. As much as possible
we give Nature her head, and when she is ridden
it is with the lightest snaffle.

The result is that from early spring to late
autumn we see a mass of bloom. The daphne
tells us spring has come, and we are snow white
with Marinelli, the only cherry which will stand
our salt air and soil. Then pink with peach
blossom, sweet with lilac, gay with may, For-
sythia, Deutsia, Spirea, Weigelea, and Azalea.
A laburnum, the only one we could persuade to
grow, reminds one of the Derby, and wistaria
disputing with roses the clothing of our cottages,
climbs to the top of tall trees to deck with flowers
the leaves of Chionanthus. A little later Pitto-
sporum with shining dark foliage and white
intensely daphne-scented flowers, quits shrub size
to figure as a tree—one I know reaches the second
storey of a neighbouring palace—and Rhincos-
pernum hides the stone garlands of our modest
Venus, runs over the Faun that stands near by,
and helps to hide a cottage front. Whilst the

63

A GARDEN IN VENICE

bower that stretches between the statues is a
purple glory of Clematis Jackmanni.

Before this the garden is white and gold with
daffodils that, blossoming with the Marinelli,
blow on to greet the roses—the Emperor, Em-
press, and Sir Watkin only yielding in size and
beauty to the well-named Incomparable Sulphur
Phcenix, with a flower larger and sweeter than
the gardenia it resembles; and our dozen rose
gardens are carpeted with tulips and anemones.

We have found it answer to mix standard roses
with the bush ones, the shade of the tall plants
giving some shelter to the dwarfer ones from the
hot summer sun. For the same reason it has
succeeded extremely well to plant tulips and ane-
mones and even strawberries among the roses.
Of course the ground plants are planted thinly.
And a rose-bed carpeted with Cardinal and Rose
de Nice, or with the Caen or Chrysanthemum
Anemones, is very lovely. It is delightful, too,
to pick one’s strawberries and cut one’s tea rose
from the same bed.

When the tulips are nearly over the Iris come
64

A GARDEN IN VENICE

in. Of these we have a great profusion. Purple,
pale blue, and white, bronze and yellow, Floren-
tine, English and German, Spanish and Japanese.
In a long border that joins one side of the cherry
orchard large groups of different kinds are grow-
ing, and when in flower they so fill the eye that
as one looks up the border more than a hundred
yards long, leading to the square of the cherry
orchard, it seems one continuous mass of their
bloom. Round three sides of this orchard there
is little else except some lilies of the valley, the
offshoots as it were of the fourth side, which
is filled with them growing beside and under
cabbage roses.

These delicious so-called lilies make full return
for our love and small demand upon our care. It
is an amusement for young women in the spring
to pick them in large bunches, or rather to pull
them, for the lily flower stalk should be pulled
out of its socket, never broken. To favour this
pastime and for ourselves, we have four or five
plots some ten to fifteen yards long in the trans-

verse borders; the sites chosen so as to prolong
I 65

AJIGA.RDEN EN VENWCHE

as much as possible the flowering season. It is
necessary to change a bed in rotation nearly
every year, for they growso thick that the leaves
suffocate the flowers. The first year they do
little, the next two or three they bloom profusely,
and the next more poorly. The double flower-
ing plants, less social, require more space. They
seem to do best dispersed about in small colonies,
or singly, in places generally chosen by them-
selves, or moved to, aided by accident or perhaps
by birds.

In May, early and mid, comes our great show,
the roses. We have very many kinds, but we
love best those that love us best, and are rather
fond of putting a good many of any of the varieties
that blow most freely in a mass, trying as to place
to suit their idiosyncrasies. A large group of
Comte de Paris, or Papa Gontier, in the shade
they seek; or of Beauté Inconstante, Madame
Jules Grolez, Maria Immaculata, in the sun they
revel in. Further, there are so many roses, such
as Gustave Regis, Souvenir de Catherine Guillot,
Madame Eugene Resal, and her elder sister,
66

A GARDEN IN VENICE

Madame Laurette Messimy, Comtesse Riza du
Parc, Caroline Testout, Madame F alcot, and the
old Malmaison, and that sweetest of roses, La
France, which, seemin g to the climate born, give us
flowers in such rich masses that we rather give up
trying to grow the more fickle or contradictory,
beautiful as they may be. Madame Hoste is
unkind, but I hope to overcome her coyness. La
Marque, Devoniensis, and Niphetos will have
none of us. I am sorry, but as from April gene-
rally to Christmas, and sometimes to the Russian
New Year’s Day, we can cut from thousands of
plants of hundreds of varieties that thrive with
us, we may well be and are content.

Standard, pillar, and climbing roses revel in
Venice air. I once counted a thousand blooms
on a Marechal Niel that, grafted on a Banksia,
covered an old cow-house. Alas, the effort was
too much for the tree, and it died. The Marshal
we find capricious, he will not grow on his own
roots, and is rather difficult to please as to place.
Well suited in this respect he is Napoleonic.

Most useful roses for pillars or post, for arbour
r2 67

A GARDEN IN VENICE

or hedges, are Madame Abel Carriere, Aimée
Vibert, Madame Berard (her mother, Gloire de
Dijon, grows thick and imperfect flowers), Reine
Olga de Wurtemburg, Gloire Lyonnaise, and
Celine Forrestier, in full sun, Réve d’Or and
William Allen Richardson in half-shade. Shade,
that is, from sun, not light. All roses here, as I
suppose everywhere, do best in full light, though
some cannot resist our sun; and crave full open
air, whilst needing protection from wind.
Another pull we have in, Venice is that the
colour of some roses, said to be doubtful in Eng-
land, is in our fine weather immaculate. Our
Crimson Rambler, for instance, grows on grafted
stock magnificently. The stretch it covers is
enormous, the growth astounding, the bloom
profuse, and the colour, even to the last, the
truest crimson. It must, however, have free air
and full sun. Planted in a place ever so little
shaded from light and air it grows moderately,
the leaves are often yellow, and its colour faulty.
Reine Marie Henriette, sometimes reckoned a

coarse rose in England, has with us the same
68

A GARDEN IN VENICE

merits and requirements, and blooms too, early
and. late:

The roses that will grow on their own roots
we prefer so grown. The system of reproduction
called Margottz is general in Italy, and renders
this mode of cultivation easy. Less known in
England I may describe it for amateurs. The
simplest way is with small cornucopias of zinc,
in form as the paper ones the grocers fill with
pennyworths of sugar, only open at the bottom;
or with four to five inch pots having a slit in the
side. In July a branch of the new but well-ripened
wood of the rose to be reproduced is surrounded
by the zinc or passed through the slit in the pot,
a cut being first made under a bud. The pot or
zinc is then filled with fine ordinary earth, or
earth with sand, and tied for support to a small
cane or stake, then covered with moss to prevent
evaporation, and kept moderately moist. In about
eight weeks the branch is cut from underneath
its cradle, the contents taken out without disturb-
ance, and the plant well rooted, potted. The
young plants then pass the winter out of doors,

69

A GARDEN IN VENICE

in any place protected from cold winds and shel-
tered from frost by a covering of leaves or of
moss or fine fodder. I have found this better
than sinking the pot in the soil, which with us,
perhaps owing to the salt it contains, is very cold
in winter. Roses so made gain a full year on
those taken from cuttings, and are strong flower-
ing plants by the next early summer. Most
varieties also last, and in all ways do so much
better than plants grafted on any stock that we
layer as soon as may be the many roses we get
from Lyons or elsewhere, earthing up the plant to
near the graft and bending one or more branches
under the soil, to root.

In late May we have the lilies. Li/um candidum,
the only one of the genus that takes to us kindly,
borders our pergolas in such tall quantities that
the anniversary of their patron, Saint Antonio of
Padua, the thirteenth of June, is made lovely by
day and bright by night with the light of the
virgin flowers. On some evenings they even
drive us from the garden by their overwhelming
scent. They require re-planting with change of
FO

RAKING COSMOS.

77s ook Tan Sh Cee Oe a ee” ee St ee Seon Saree) wie it | oe

2OMZO0 OUIAAA

A GARDEN IN VENICE

“in any place protected from cold winds’and shel
tered’ from: frost by a covering” of leaves: or of

moss or fine fodder. I have found this bette
ass We ‘ne it the soil, which with us;

piclap sing see sien oa
oe wie ie, ahaa ait a

iin phan by Ne anol nag
TE also last, and in Sere og
better than plants, grafted on any stock ¢
layer as soon as may be the many roses Ww
from Pe or iy gi eee ap the'pl

under the seit: ‘to root. | i 4 site

"In late May ss cosa Lilium andidum
the only on¢ ef the genus that tzkes tow) sa,
borders our pergolas in such fal qetitin ai
the anniversary of their partie, Gait aaoal
Padua, the chireetnth of June, in eade lovely. |
day amd bright Se night with the light of th
virgin flowers. mn some’ evenings they”
drive us from the garden by their overwhelming
scent. They mr ih 0 with on of
JO

A GARDEN IN VENICE

place every half-dozen years, and in fresh soil
grow so grandly that we have often heads of
fifteen, sixteen, and even twenty flowers on a
single stem, of sometimes 54 feet high.

We used to fill our borders and other beds
with summer plants and annuals. This we have
given up, as we migrate in July with the swallows
to the mountains. Coming back to the late part
of our vintage we strive to be reconciled for the
cutting of our grapes by the money they bring
in, and to accept as the glory of the garden the
white and pink flowers of the raking cosmos, the
scarlet of the amaranthus and salvias, the autumn
roses, and the chrysanthemums that grow in
glorious profusion of all colours.

There has been a great improvement in the
fruit of Venice since we’ve known it, in obedience
to the law of constant progress that happily pre-
vails despite the doubts of the soured or unhappy.
A pear was unknown other than the small brown
native which ripened and decayed in August.
Now from trees brought from Milan we gather
grand fruit of the names best known in exhibi-

71

A GARDEN IN VENICE

tions, and eat delicious pears from July to May.
The figs were prized for their size; now we
have three or four kinds notable for their excel-
lence in taste. Of grapes I write later; suffice
it now to say that if not so large as those growing
in English hothouses, ours will yield to none in
flavour. ‘The strawberries were of the woodland
without the woods that gave them their food and
shelter; now we have them of good size and
quality, though curiously the several varieties we
have imported have merged their differences and
agreed to make one first-rate family. Just as
English and other races have founded across the
ocean that excellent human type, the American.

Raspberries will not bear our whiff of the sea,
but gooseberries give us tarts when tiny, and are
less crude than the fruit grown at home. When
ripe in July they are neglected, for there is so
much fruit that is better. Currants, white, red,
and black, are great bearers. Of apples on the
Giudecca we only know the flower, though on
the island of Sant Erasmo near by, some trees
own do fairly well. Peaches are excellent. Years
72

A GARDEN IN VENICE

ago the fruit that bore the name had a hard
yellow flesh that clung to its skin, and uncooked
was uneatable. Now it would be difficult to
find better peaches of sorts early, mid, and late
from July to October. Apricots are plentiful but
not so very good. I suppose they ripen too
quickly to get the mellow flavour of an English
wall-grown apricot ; and nectarines will not grow.
Plums of very many sorts are unrivalled. My
youth remembers at home the joy of the green-
gage; the lesser pleasure of a well-ripened egg
plum when you found one; and the wholesome
tartness of a wine-sour tart. This last we have
not. I believe out of Yorkshire it is difficult to
find, but with us the sun does the cooking of
kinds that are similar: the egg plum is always
ripened, the greengage is a delight, and a dark
sister, the black gage, dark blue without and
golden green within, is in the fulness of flavour
as a brunette of the south to a flaxen-coloured
German. We have, too, the golden drops, each
one mouthful of sun sugared plum excellence;

amoli, suchetti, and many others all of merit.
es 73

A GARDEN IN VENICE

Of fruit less known there are the Kaki and
Nespolo that come from Japan. The last is very
good in early spring; they ripen in Venice as
late as May. And the Kaki is a golden bag of
sugarin November and December; too sweet for
me, but those that like them like them greatly.
Then there are melons of many sorts and great
excellence. They seem, however, to require
early renewal from their parent stock. The fruit
grown from the seeds that come to us from
England lose in a year or two their respective
characters. Even Bacirro, the great yellow melon
of the Greek archipelago, has a tendency to
round his long form and fatten. The Egyptian
water-melon, Anguria, is much grown, but those
who have crushed its red flesh like frozen snow
in the desert heat, would scarcely recognise the
Venetian temperate produce.

Our fruit then is abundant and excellent, as it
should be in a temperature where it should form,
and does form, a large part of one’s daily diet.
And then the price brings it happily within
the reach of the poorest. Our surplus fruit is
74 ‘

A GARDEN IN VENICE

considerable, and we sell in their full season the
Marinelli cherries at five centimes, z¢., a half-
penny, the kilo of 24 lbs. Grapes at times as
low as eight centimes the kilo ; peaches eight to
ten centimes the kilo. Pears, such as one used
to pay one and even two francs apiece for at
Paris, at twenty to thirty centimes the kilo; and
delicious figs at thirty centimes the hundred. A
huge melon, an excellent supper for four people
with bread, sells for ten centimes. Thus a
Venetian, be he Gondolier or Conte, may, and
often does in summer time, eat healthily at small
cost. The people’s fire is rarely lit more than
once a day, when the polenta, made of maize
flour, is cooked in sufficient quantity to be eaten
hot at midday, cold at dusk. Sometimes even the
ever-present polenta is dispensed with, and the
outlay on the fire which is not laid out will
almost pay for the bread bought to take polenta’s
place.

For twopence, too, you may make a beggar
happy. Fifteen to twenty figs at five centimes,
fifteen centimes of bread, and a generous penny

K 2 75

A GARDEN IN VENICE

more will buy him from a glass to a pint of
wine, or, what he will like better, a glass of
graspa, the spirit they distil here from the wine
lees, and love.

76

i is Soa — al
WUAUTRESTHARTIRICHENET Tat a tp Sat

: Ne
sae pee ee AEN

CHAPTER IX
gJEKiE vintage is, as they say

H here, an affare serio, and,
| like all affairs, it may be
good or bad or indifferent.
Some years ago the gross
| yield was less and _ less
¥ evenly distributed. The
diseases, if not fewer, were
more confined to the vineyards badly cultivated,

On

A GARDEN IN VENICE

whose consequent smaller produce made the
prices better for the cultivators of those that,
taken better care of, gave also the better yield.
So that the profits gained by the few were
increased, as is often the case, by their neighbours’
loss.

Now the culture of the vine is better under-
stood. A liberal and timely use of sulphate of
copper and of sulphur combats the diseases.
The commercial want of combination of Italy
with France and Germany prevents the sending,
as was once done, of large quantities of grapes to
make Bordeaux or Rhenish wines, and the result
is that too large quantities are thrown on the
home market, with a corresponding fall in
prices.

We have several kinds of eating grapes, ‘“‘ Uva
di Tavola,” amongst others two or three sorts of
Muscats, black and white, and a black and a
white Lugliatico, an early grape, as the name
denotes, something like the old English Sweet-
water, a Cenerentola, a Meran, and Uva d’Ora.
These used to sell at what I called the fair price
78

i
* 3
‘
>” \
Hf
be

AIMVE@ VAD VIPIE?

make Bordeaux c or Rhenish wines, and i re sult 3
is. that too large quantities are ‘thrown on the

Me ds

A GARDEN IN VENICE

of a penny to twopence a pound; but the prices
are now so low, especially in good seasons, that,
as with English fruit, the culture does not
always pay.

At Venice, too, if the table grapes, not grown
in too large quantities, can make a price, low
though it may be, the wine grapes are worse off,
for the wine made at Venice matures in six
months, and will not, in my experience, keep.
Wine forced on the market was being sold this
last spring at fifteen centimes the litre, or one
penny halfpenny the quart.

The old garden, without the Sacca extension
to be later spoken of, gave me for some years
annually more than five tons of grapes. This
paid when sold at an average of five to six
farthings the pound ; but for a year or two our
yield has been much diminished and the prices
lowered. The beginning of the decadence in
yield was one of the hail-storms that are the flail
of Italy. We were in the garden one late July
afternoon when a heavy storm attacked us.
There was just time to seek shelter in the tea-

79

A GARDEN IN VENICE

house before the hail began. Then, with a
scream, the storm burst on us; hailstones fell for
five to six minutes, many the size of partridge
eggs, but mostly of a flatter form. In that short
time we saw the vines almost denuded of leaves ;
the grapes, nearly fit for picking, cut to the
ground ; the garden bloom of course destroyed,
and the paths covered with the hailstones that
had done such savage mischief. It was a
dreadful scene of garden devastation. Nor was
the immediate effect the last ; the heavier stones
so cut and bruised the rods which should the
next years have borne the grapes that succeeding
crops were greatly injured. On ¢erra-firma
many attempts have been made to drive the
hail-storms off by cannon fire, and to the solution
of the question the Government has lent its aid,
but it is not yet decided whether the result is
worth the powder.

These storms are very -partial The one I
speak of did not break a pane of glass at Venice,
and left untouched some gardens within a quarter
of a mile of ours. By others I have known alk
80

A GARDEN IN VENICE

unprotected windows at Venice smashed and our
garden uninjured. Fortunately for us, the
mainland suffers much more than we do. The
storms seem to be less bad near the sea and
near the mountains, worse in the intermediate
plain.

With occasional hail-storms, ever-present
disease, cost of material, of labour, and low
prices, the vine-grower’s budget is not likely to
show a large surplus. ‘To set his mind at rest as
to the paying probabilities of his vineyard the
Government steps in. Land is very highly
taxed; our inner garden of about four acres pays
two hundred and sixty francs a year. At the
market the grapes are taxed 10 per cent. by that
honest broker, the licensed go-between, and
before they are cut in Venice their amount is
estimated by a Government official and charged
at the rate of six francs ninety-five centimes the
quintale of a hundred kilos. Last year was an
abundant year, the grapes were not of first
quality, and I sold many quintali at ten francs,

some at eight. Should the reader ask where
L SI

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the profit comes in, the answer is that it is found
in the shade and the beauty of the pergolas, and
is satisfactory and great.

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SS

GARDEN would be an
arid waste without water,
and before buying ours
I had made inquiries as
to the supply. I was
shown the well in the
cortile in front of the
Palazzina. Its mouth was nearly flush with

the ground, and as.I could see through the
L.2 83

A GARDEN IN VENICE

iron guard running round it that the water was
nearly level with the mouth, and Pietro put
a stick down to show its depth of nearly four
yards, I accepted the assurance that there was
always plenty. One thirsty day, when the
garden was already ours, I asked for a glass
of water. I got it, and with a very wry face
began to learn how Venice of old was watered.
It cost a good bit of money before I had com-
pleted my education and provided the garden
with the supply it needed.

In the old days a hole was dug in the court-
yards of the palaces, say, as in our case, ten yards
by’ five, and ten fect deep. The sides and
bottom of this were lined by clay about two feet
thick. Inthe centre of this so formed basin a
canna, or round chimney, say four to five feet
across, was built of brick ; the lowest yard left
pervious without mortar that the water might
pass through to the upper part, made solid with
cement. The whole basin was then filled with
sand; and pipes led into small chambers con-
structed of open brickwork in this sand, from
84.

>

a clue Teele Tek yt}
mere
oe ; } J

| ordi i. the sachs ies as 4 our bask, ean
by five, and ten feet ‘deep. Ai he Heraist an
hors i the elaine y olay a wo fine

‘tant se ‘pean chimney, say fa. a * vo tee
across, was built of brick ; teat oepee oyard left:
pervious without mortar that the ehker might v4
pass through to the upper part, made solid with | ap
cement. The whole basin was then filled with
sand; and pipes led into small chambers: con

structed of Spee brickwork in this sand, fall
S45":

OSX309 1G. AAAV A CHA AMIRNALIAS 40T Br

aI

i
f
|

aoe ee, = he eee Oe ee

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the gutters of the palace roof, the rain that fell
there.

The sand, I was told, occupied no space, ze.,
the well basin would hold almost as much water
when filled with sand as when empty. It
filtered the rain, and this passed, so filtered,
through the lower pervious tier of bricks, and
rose within the canna to the height of the water
in the sand outside it. The water was drawn
from the well by throwing down a secchio with
a rope, and the blow of these secchi aérated the
water. So the Venetian got his drink fresh
from heaven, pure and sparkling, with no trouble
but that of sending his womenfolk to fetch it.
But if in a long summer the rain was forgetful
and the women drew the well .dry, the clay
dried also ; cracked, as the rude manner of dry
clay is; salt water from outside came to the
rescue of the clay and the spoiling of the well.

This had happened in our cortile. So we had
to call cunning well-makers to our aid. They
first cleared the well basin of the sand, then cut

the clay wall down inch by inch, patted it,
85

A GARDEN IN VENICE

talked to it, covered it with mats, and left it till
the next morning to see if any drop of outside
salt water, /a goccia, as their head man called it,
might come through despite the talking to and
patting. ‘This pretty play went on for weeks in
a way that would have delighted the British
Union workman’s heart until the cutting and
paring had nearly reached the bottom of the
well, and quite passed the limits of our patience.
Seeing us thoroughly out of temper, the cunning
men built up the clay wall again with clay fresh
from the mainland, much patted and befashioned
it, built anew the canna, filled the basin with
sand,‘and did not wait for the rain to say how
elever they were, what a splendid well they’d
made, and how cheap I ought to think their
outrageous bill.

The water supply of old Venice, by means of
these wells, was by no means bad as long as the
clay walls held good. In long droughts only it
was insufficient, and water was brought in barges
from the neighbouring rivers, the Brenta or the
Sile. Now, the supply is excellent. A number
86

A GARDEN IN VENICE

of artesian wells have been sunk on ¢erra-firma at
the base of the Euganean hills. The water
passes direct from the wells into tubes, which,
laid under ground and the Lagoon, carry the
supply to a reservoir at S. Andrea, and from
thence to the public wells and private houses of
all Venice. The water is of the best and the
supply sufficient.

It isa great gain to the comfort, cleanliness,
and the health of the town; paid for by private
consumers at six francs the ton, and alas, by all,
with the loss of the Bigolante. These women
were so called from the Bigol or yoke on their
shoulders on which the bright copper secchi
were hung, and came from near Udine or
Belluno. They wore the mountain dress: a low
soft black felt hat with silk cord and tassel; a full
white chemise, with a sleeveless bodice and
skirt of dark blue or green. It was their work
to fill their secchi at the Pozzi Publici, and
incidentally to add to the picturesqueness of the
streets as they carried the water to many houses
that had no wells of their own but could afford

87

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the service of the Bigolante and desired it.
Into such houses now the water from the main-
land is carried, and the streets are without one
more of the decorative mementos of the past.

The use of water has a future in the Veneto.
The water-power of the rivers is already used in
many of the smaller towns to supply electric
light, and the torrent of Cellina will shortly give
its aid to light Venice at a very low price, and
to work by electricity a number of the small
machines that carry on the handicrafts.

The well we made on the ancient system
answered for a time, but was insufficient for our
needs, and after a year or two I remembered the
cistern in the garden of the Generaliffe. A deep
stone basin with marble cornice, some twenty
yards long by five, if my memory is approxi-
mately right; with a grass border next the
cornice and almost flush therewith ; then a path,
then borders of flowers on either side sloping to
the path, and a temple building at the end. I
followed the plan as regards the grass border,
path, and flower borders ; but as these got filled
88

FHE VASCA GRANDE,

2 PR NE ee Ran EER hme o

SQUAD AQ@AV FHT

Mine: puliveinbe ar me, me

the: path, and a teraple building. at the

SS

ah ie si deeb ih te

Garden ae io, if my memory is app
ane night with” a grass hearin nex

bil hinds alten italia oi aa

followed the’ plan as: ra vepapey the rt

A GARDEN IN VENICE

with bush and standard roses, the long continuous
border of the Generaliffe got cut up into small
beds by transverse paths for the convenience of
tending and picking the roses. Standing back
in each corner, the better to remind us of Spain,
is a Chamoerops palm, grown now into trees
more than twenty feet in height. Some bamboos
too throw shadows on the water, and leaving
out the temple that I could not copy, I have
replaced it at either end by a rose-clad felse, as
they call a tunnelled bower here, of at one end
Celine Forrestier, and at the other some climbing
Devoniensis, that have now ceded the place to
Reine Marie Henriette. The sunny side of
the Celine Forrestier is, when in bloom, a sight
to see.

To make the reservoir or vasca the earth was
excavated for the dimensions above given to a
depth of six feet. About two feet below the
surface the earth proper gave place to brick
rubbish, showing that the way of reclamation I
had afterwards a painful chance of seeing, was

carried out by the fathers of Venice as it is now
M 89

A GARDEN IN VENICE

by their descendants. At four feet down the
earth was moist. A little more and it drained
in so quickly at high tide, although the site was
fifty yards inland, that a pump had to be kept at
work to dry the excavation. Arrived four or
five inches below the required six feet the
bottom was levelled, then covered with larch
boards, and on these was laid in cement a course
or two of bricks. The end and side walls when
built up on this foundation to eight or ten inches
above the level of the garden, were coped with
red Verona marble. The vasca so made received
the rainfall of many paths and gave us much
water. It got filled too with water-lilies and
goldfish ; and with lemon trees in Venetian vases.
all around, with the rose borders, bamboos, and.
palms, the vasca plot is certainly a success.

But Venice is a thirsty place, and the supply
was again insufficient. The vasca had in dry
seasons to be filled with water brought in barges.
from the Brenta, and this was not only expensive
and troublesome, but disgusted one at times when
one’s money had been spent on the barge-load
90

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the day before the long-desired tardy rainstorm
fell.

Then I heard that artesian wells had already
been sunk in Venice, and visions of running rills
and splashing fountains excited our imaginations.
One well, Peter told me, that had been sunk near
a church and convent, was perfect in its yield
and conduct, but another attempt made in a less
holy place had brought itself and surroundings
to fiery grief. The devil, perhaps, had toyed
with its bottom and blown the water, the well
itself, and the houses round to pieces.

On inquiry, I became acquainted with a well-
maker from Badia Polesine, who had invented a
new way of boring wells that is most ingenious,
and saves some four-fifths of the expense incurred
under the old system. He provides a number of
iron tubes, about five inches in diameter and ten
feet long. The tube to be first put in use is shod
witha steel point, and the lower yard of its length
is pierced with holes. This tube is planted at
the spot chosen for the well, and driven into the

ground as piles here are driven, by a gang of men
M 2 gI

A GARDEN IN VENICE

singing a wild chaunt, much resembling that sung
by the Arabs drawing water for irrigation with
the sakiyas on Nile bank. The prosaic but more
efficient steam-engine now replaces the men.
When the first tube is up to its head in the earth
a second is screwed into it and hammered down.
Then another and another, and so the driving
and screwing of length to length goes on till
good water is reached.

Water finds its way into the tube through the
holes in the lower length. During the sinking
process it will rarely rise of itself to the surface,
and is pumped up for testing by a pump con-
nected with the tube for the purpose. If the
main tube gets choked with mud or sand, as it
often does, a small tube composed of lengths
four metres long and of 14 inch diameter, and of
similar construction to the main tube, is screwed
together and passed down till it touches the im-
peding matter. A force-pump is then connected
with the small tube, and the sand is washed up
the main tube by water driven down the small
one from above. The main tube cleared, the
92

A GARDEN IN VENICE

pump is disconnected, the small tube is drawn
up, unscrewed length by length, and the driving
of the main tube process is continued

Good water at last reached, the ordinary pump
is again put to work, and for a day or two more
is kept continually going to draw up the sweet
water from outside through the holes in the
bottom tube, and so to entice and show the way,
as it were, to the spring below.

Naturally this comes charged with sand, and
the sucking process is carried on until some
cubic metres of solid stuff are brought to surface,
leaving a hollow chamber or reservoir below of
corresponding size. In this the water collects,
and the flow, at first dribbling and spasmodic,
becomes regular and full.

aS

CHAPTER XI

ATCHING the _ well-
making was very inter-
esting. There was, of
course, the element of
gamble, of good water

I and plenty, of badornone.

The water brought up

= || was constantly tasted, the
sand was classed as coarse and good, or fine and
disappointing. Once, when some thirty yards
down, the tube was seen to sink at a small touch,
almost with its own weight, and it was evident
it was passing through water. This was tasted
95

A GARDEN IN VENICE

and proved salt, and as in other wells made here
the same thing happens it would lead one to
suppose that the Venice islands are floating on a
subterranean sea.

When, on the fourteenth of July last year, the
Campanile of San Marco fell—that Gentiluomo,
as the people called it, because it did no one any
harm—I thought at first that the great shaft,
with its hundred and twenty yards in height,
had pierced the tired foundation and gone to the
bottom of this sea, wherever that bottom might
be, but a look at the debris half an hour after it
fell, when the air was still thick with its dust,
showed that it was the shaft itself, not the founda-
tion, that gave way, crushed to powder by its
own weight.

Below the subterranean water we came to a
stratum of rock, through which the steel-pointed
lower tube was driven with the greatest difficulty,
blow on blow of the heavy hammer making
scarcely a line-breadth’s impression on resistance
so great that at last the main tube was fractured
with the concussion. Then the part above the
96

THE DIPPING WELL.

| with its hundred and twenty yards in
had pierced the tired foundation and goue .
bottom of this sea, wherever that botto
be, but a look at the debris half an | k
fell, when the air was still thick rith
_ showed that it was the shaft itself, not he
tion, that gave way, satel ” owe
own weight, | , BM) :
Below the subterranean water: we cme |
stratum of rock, through which the sseelepois
| lower tube was driven withthe greatest
blow on blow of the. heavy hammer r
scarcely. a line-breadth’s s impression on
so great that at last the main tube was fract
with. the! concussion, | T i had Ut ab
geile

LEW DHT 2a

A GARDEN IN VENICE

break, perhaps twenty yards in length, was drawn
up. This done with very hard labour, each length
as recovered was unscrewed for future use. Next,
the broken lengths were fished for, but uselessly,
and abandoned. So we had to begin again with
some loss of gear and much of labour, planting
a fresh length of tubes within a yard or so of the
fractured one.

Another day we passed through peat which
gave us not a little trouble. This peat would
seem to be decayed and gave off gas. The gas
would light with a match and often blew up
without one, throwing mud and sand twenty feet
into the air. The explosion choked the whole
tube with debris. The force-pump was then put
in action, and it often took a day or two of hard
work to clear the main tube. At last at sixty
metres, say two hundred feet, we arrived.

It was a most exciting moment. There was
the extracted heap of sand and mud and dirt all
around, and a dozen sandy or dirty men watching
with triumphant looks the drops of dirty water,
that all of themselves came up the tube and

N a7

A GARDEN IN VENICE

actually oozed out of it. This mixture, thick as
water in a flood, was held up exultingly in a
glass none too clean. I tasted, and with entire
content declared it excellent, and so it was; the
fruit of a month’s hard work carrying to com-
pletion the happy useful thought of an able and
honest withal old man.

Pietro had told me the blowing-up story so
graphically that I had doubts of the success of an
artesian well, and to remove them the well-maker
put into my contract an obligation in the case of
the water’s failure, or insufficient yield, anywhere
within ten years to make me a new well. My
first well’s tube was filled again and again during
five years with gas explosions; as often cleared
at the contractor’s expense; and at the end of
that time he thought it best to make a new well,
and did so at a spot distant perhaps a hundred
yards from the first, thanking me warmly when
I voluntarily paid him half the expense.

The same demoniac symptoms, but with less
virus, show themselves in this second well. To
this day, eight or nine years since it was made,
08

A GARDEN IN VENICE

you may light the water, or what appears to be
the water, though of course it is the gas, and see
it blaze for many minutes at atime. But there
have been no real explosions, and the flow ot
water has never ceased, though, singular to relate,
the yield varies with the tide.

The rise and fall of the Venice tide is rarely
more than three feet. The chamber and the
vein which fills it are two hundred feet below
the surface. The water that flows along that
vein probably comes from the Euganean hills
twenty miles away. At least they are the nearest
high lands which would give the necessary fall
and spring. Unless it be that the lagoon water
unconsciously does the work unassisted by any
fall from the hills, and by its weight and pressure
on the stratum of earth which rests on the fresh
water two hundred feet below, forces that water
up the tube driven down to seek it. Whichever
it is, the additional weight of a high tide has a
marked effect on the well’s yield. Is it not a
tum world we live in?

So sensitive again is this spring that at the

N 2 99

A GARDEN IN VENICE

level of the ground the discharge was some
sixteen litres in the minute, say twenty-four tons
in the day. Raising the mouth of the discharge
pipe two feet for the purposes of distribution,
reduced the yield one-third; raising it again for
experiment some three feet more, and the spring
became a dribble.

The well made, its water was captured for the
moment in an old Venetian wellhead, or Vera
di Pozzo, and led therefrom in gas-pipes under-
ground to vaschettine made in different places
for watering convenience. It was an easy and
cheap mode of conveyance. But many of the
pipes intended for gas would not hold water, and
in a year or two required changing. It might
be that their side joints, for that was the faulty
part, rusted, or do gas-pipes leak on purpose to
give occupation to the poor fellows who lay
them with much displacement of the pave-
ment?

To dig up, cut, unscrew, and replace the
faulty tubes with new would have given much
trouble, and I bethought me of merely uncovering
LOO

VNILLAHOSVA V

V AV@CHELLIUY

sixteen litres in the minute, say twenty-four tons _

@ Powzo, and ted therefrom in

for watering convenience. It was an easy and

in a year or two required changing. It

give occupation to the poor fellows wha lay.

trouble, and I bethought me of merely: sncaveeaale

A GARDEN IN VENICE
fewel of the ground the discharge was some,

in the day. Raising the mouth of the anc
pipe two feet for the Purposes of distribution, — ba
reduced the yield one-third; raising it again for ye
experiment some e three feet more, and the spring ee
ve walt susie, 0s waves wus captured doin
execs im an old Venetian welthead, or

ground to vaschettine made in hae pl

cheap mode of conveyance. But many of the i
pipes intended for gas would not hold water, and ae Aca

be that their side joints, for chat was the fauley
part, rusted, or do gas-pipes leak on purpose to Feu

them with mucl Ee of the. bint ul au
ment | : “hatha - my if

To dig apy os, unscrew, and replace. La 4
faulty tubes a aew would have given much —

100,

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the tubes and casing the faulty ones as they lay
with Portland cement. This answered perfectly
at small cost, and the doing it gave much amuse-
ment to me and my gondoliers. If you can’t
model busts it is more useful and not bad fun ;
casing gas-pipes.

The water led from the vaschettine passed
into the vasca grande and did me there a
mischief without remedy. The day after its
introduction my poor goldfish, who, in the rain-
water of their tank, increased and multiplied as
do Italian children of the outdoor working class
(a larger reproduction could not be), came to
the surface, but alas, with bellies uppermost and
heads out of water seeking air instead of bread-
crumbs.

They all died, poor fish, in a few days, sent
off their heads perhaps by the iron in the water.
The water-lilies that were thick and very
floriterous did the same. And yet the water is
very wholesome. My people drink it rather
than cross my bridge to fill their pitchers from
the aqueducts. My cows love it and thrive on

1or

A GARDEN IN VENICE

it. And after passing through the vasca grande
I allowed it to be carried into the neighbouring
prison, whether to strengthen the prisoners in
their reformation or to wash them and their
work I do not know. —

The Italian Government is more economic
than artisans’ opinions and votes allow ours to be.
The prisoners here, instead of living on the
rates, are taught to earn their polenta; and
hundreds of mats and carpets, of chairs and boots
and shoes, are made amongst other things at our
next door. More economic, certainly in the
present and possibly in the future, for the detenuti
not only pay the expense of their keep and
keeping, but when, their sentence served, they
are again free men, they may have acquired a
habit of work and a trade that will enable them
to live for instead of on their neighbours.

We are, let us say it to ourselves, justly proud
of British Jaws and institutions ; but sometimes
we may perhaps learn something from the polity
of others, and surely it is better for society at

large, working men included, that the man who
102

A GARDEN IN VENICE

is-paying the penalty of his wrong-doing should
not do so at others’ cost, and should after his
discharge have a chance of earning honestly
enough to live on.

103

SS ———
ety

~
a

a

1:
ey 3

VIA) our only earthwork pas-

GBB our onty cat was not
( \/ |

y/, time. We had scarcely

got our garden into shape
and were ready to sit under
our own fig trees, to enjoy
their shade and fruit, and
it is so good at Venice,
when we were rudely wakened from our self-
Oo 105

A GARDEN IN VENICE

congratulation by seeing huge barges discharg-
ing mud and rubble under our lagoon wall.
This wall, rising on its inner side some four
feet above the garden surface, and standing on
its outer side, say eight or nine feet above the
tide-bank, fenced us in from the lagoon.

About thirty yards from the wall is a deep
canal, but the bank betwixt canal and wall was
often dry at low water. The Municipio were
making improvements in the city, and to give
us clear comprehension of how our garden had
been made, were discharging on the inter-
vening bank the rubbish of the pulled down
houses. :

It was pitiful; thirty yards of mud and
broken bricks and used up mortar, to be piled
up between us and the lagoon. And worse.
Some horrid person perhaps to lease the Sacca,
as they call such reclaimed land here; to dig
and plant it, and to shut us in from the open
water with a screen of vines and trees, or greater
horror still, of cottages.

My civil remonstrance and demonstration of

106

A GARDEN IN VENICE

the damage that would be done me; how fatal
it was to cut us off from the view and access to
the lagoon with all its beauty and its air, was
met by the answer, made with equal civility,
that the bank was outside our property, and was
under the control of the Municipio, who would
do what they liked with their own. I had a
right to a metre’s free space beyond my boundary
wall and this would be respected.

There was no redress. Private interest must
give way to the public good, and if the
Municipio thought this bank was the place to
shoot their rubbish on, we could but make the
best of it. Clearly the best was to become the
horrid person, and buy or rent the Sacca oneself.
It would take pages to tell the story of the
efforts made during fourteen years, and express
our gratitude to Prefects and Sindacos, and even
Ministers and Ambassadors, for their interest,
sympathy, and help before we arrived at the
desired proprietorship.

First we obtained a lease for three years.
The length of such leases is limited, and it is

a2 107

A GARDEN IN VENICE

generally prescribed that they should be put up
to public auction. Think of an auction in
Venice, when it was well understood that the
value of the garden depended on the possession
of the Sacca, and the art of Squeeze, equally
well understood, is carried to perfection.

On obtaining this first lease we played the
game of Brag ; spent money freely on the Sacca,
levelled, dug and planted it. This expenditure
was made a reason for extending the lease to
nine years. Then our argument was pressed at
Rome and accepted, that right as it was to
sacrifice the individual for the public good, no
greater harm should be done to him than was
necessary to carry out the public object. There-
fore if the land was to be reclaimed and parted
with,..at. least ,.we , had,,,the | prior right at
purchase.

Another lease of six years was granted us, but
to sell was a different matter, and difficult. For
rightly the Italian law places many restrictions
on the alienation of public property ; but the
higher authorities did us justice, and gave them-
108

A GARDEN IN VENICE

selves no little trouble in so doing. And we are
deeply grateful, as I think all foreigners who live
in Italy may be, for the reception given them in
small things and great by the Italian authorities
and people.

No wonder that foreigners who have lived in
Italy find it difficult to live out of it. There is
the climate, the warmth, and the beauty. In no
country that I know, except perhaps our own,
can a reasonable man pass his time so free of
restraint from law and regulation. There is no
country where a foreigner will meet with such
kindness and civility from the people of every
class—a people, too, to whom snobbishness is
unknown ; and last, if not least, Italy is the
home and soil of all, save Grecian statues, that’s
best in art, and of these it holds the best col-
lection.

And now, thanks, as I have said, to the
Venice authorities, our garden has grown bigger
by only a little less than two acres. The Sacca
become a vineyard is not unproductive, and not
without its charm. The once outer old sea wall,

109

A GARDEN IN VENICE

now become an inner one, has been lowered in
height, so that the two plots of land may become
more intimately one.

Along the inner side of this wall grow broken
clumps of bays, pomegranates, and zizole, as the
jujube tree, zigzaggy in its form, is phonetic-
ally named. On the outside is a border, two
hundred yards in length, with an almost un-
broken line of China roses, having anemones at
their feet. The ground is further divided trans-
versely with vine hedges, and has three cross
paths bordered by China roses standing in a
carpet of hyacinths, tulips, and wood straw-
berries.

The vine hedges, with their long waving and
climbing shoots, green in summer, grape adorned
in autumn, make a brave show in esthetics and
economy. ‘The strips of land that divide the
hedges are rich with Lucerne that, cut five times
a year, gives green crops as required for the
cows, or a cut of hay sweet and succulent. The
view inwards shows our garden trees massed

almost as a wood, from whence, its lower portion
110

“AHUOLNGGAA II] GNV SHOGAH ANIA

AIVE HEDCEe VYUD IF BEDEULOBE

A GARDEN IN VENICE

now become an inner one, has been lowered in | i i"
height, so that the two Plots of land may become nt

more intimately one.
Along the inner side of this wall grow broke |

- clumps of bays, pomegranates, and zizole, as chee)": oy

jujube tree, zigzaggy in its form, is phonetic-
ally named, Oe the eomide G «| border, tw0
hopriced verkk Lr eigth, ee ae olemoe we
heokire Tas of adna roses, having anemones at
their feet. The ground is further divided trans

wersely with vine hedges, and has three cross

paths bordered by China roses standing in a
carpet of hyacinths, tulips, and wood straw-
berries.

The vine hedges, with their long waving ail
climbing shoots, grees i summer, grape adarned
in autumn, make «4 brave show ix eainate and
economy. The strips of amd that divide the
hedges are rich with Lucerne that, cut five times
a year, gives greem crops as required for the
cows, or a cut of hay sweet and succulent. The
view inwards shows our garden trees massed

almost as a wood, from whence, its lower portion |
TiO

Me’ GARDEN IN(WENI CH

only hidden, rise the dome and towers of the
Redentore Church, that just outside calls up, let’s
hope, good thoughts to those that need them
and lends to all the charm fine architecture adds
to sylvan scenery.

The cross-paths lead to the terrace, with a
summer-house thereon, at the margin of the
lagoon, for refuge from the sun, and a resting-
place from whence to see the glorious view.

Our frontage to the lagoon that we have been
enabled to retain is also about two hundred
yards in length. A broad grass terrace has been
made along it, with cn one side a line of round
golden yews, broken by clumps of cypresses that,
planted fourteen years ago, already make a
goodly sight; on the. other is a defending
boundary wall, about three feet high on the
inner side. On the outer, the wall rests on the
sloping stone barrier to the tide that has been
built at the margin of a deep canal used for
navigation. Nothing, then, but the sails of
passing boats can intercept our view, and as,

winners in a hard-fought fight, we stand on the
III

A GARDEN IN VENICE

terrace, it is with a feeling of grateful security,
as well as of Nature-lesson taught enjoyment,
that we look out over the lovely lagoon to the
Lido on the one side and the Euganean Hills on
the other, with Chioggia in our front, hills and
fishers’ town each some twenty miles away.

EN
. iy

ah

th Na
ig

CHAPTER XIII

mi OME would say the story
ei of the garden is not com-
Wai plete without reference to
sq) the animal life within it.
N§| Makers of the modern

N | garden, we are now also
<yVeei its head gardeners. In
4 filling this post before we
assumed it we met with many disappointments.

P 113

A GARDEN IN VENICE

The pockets of the waistcoat that held it first were
found to gape very widely, and the man the waist-
coat adorned, though he gave one lettuces such
as I thought only grew in Covent Garden, knew
nothing of flowers. So we took an Italian from
the garden of a Scotch friend who had been
settled in Venice for fifty years. The man was
clever, but he died in little more than a year.
We then had others brought from Como, and
from Florence, and Lago Maggiore, but could
not keep them. Probably an Italian settled in
England would find some English gardeners
ready to and thinking they could fairly draw
profit from their master’s foreign origin.

Then we imported a Scotchman, and were
unlucky. The man consigned to us could not fill
the place, and after five years of patience we had
to send him and his wife back to Scotland with
the family that had come to him.

There was thena short reign, when the throne
was occupied by a lady gardener from ¢erra-jirma.
Her master, for whom they said she had done
everything, had lately died; and as both his
114

A GARDEN IN VENICE

house and garden when I visited them seemed
well kept, and she had made the old man’s life
easy, I hoped she might do the same for mine.
The experiment completely failed. I had to
do her work and console her that she could not
doit. Her Giudecca subjects ruled her, and after
this venture I determined to do for myself. It
was, after all, easier if one had to see that any
orders given were carried out to do so at first
hand rather than through an intermediary who
let all things drop. And then the pleasure of it
all is so much greater. The garden, ours by
rights of purchase, of laying out, and planting,
became ours all the more completely by the work
daily done within it. Not only nearly all the
trees and all the shrubs and plants were ours by
their introduction, but also by their education.
The children we brought to life we feed, fashion,
and educate in the way that they should grow.
Our aids are mostly the men who, coming to
the garden as boys, have grown up init. Their
training has been bad, but they have lately been

more content to learn than a Venetian generally
P2 115

A GARDEN IN VENICE

is. Disobedience and lack of discipline are, in
the lower class of the Venetians, racial qualities,
and so, ingrained. On subjects on which he is
ignorant he will give instruction; of his own
mestiere knowing little, he is so proud of what he
knows that he will not learn, and it takes years
of training from his boyhood before you can get
a man to use a Dutch hoe, or in any way to
loosen the soil before he picks the weeds out of
it with his hands. A broom on the paths or
lawn is an insult not to be offered them, and I
still get my garden roller worked by my gon-
doliers, who do it as a joke. It is well, therefore,
to catch your gardeners early.

They have their excuse. Men who have never
learnt are hard to teach. Things new are to
them detestable, and the habits of their fathers,
the result of years spent in saving themselves
trouble, are quoted and regarded as the sum of
hallowed wisdom because it allows their doing
of the little that must be done in the way that is
the easiest.

Then a modern garden was to them unknown ;
116

A GARDEN IN VENICE

well-swept paths, the close-cut lawns, the borders
without a weed, the plants trimmed and staked,
all the tidiness that goes to the keeping of an
English garden, is seldom found abroad. The
Italian garden in Italy means cypresses and ever-
greens for borders, with statues and vases of stone
or marble, terraces and staircases; all very lovely
things that grow or do without labour; and for
flowers, pots.

These the Italian loves in hundreds, but his
poco curante ways restrict the number of varieties.
A new flower or a choice one cannot keep his
continuous attention. I have had many such
given me brought by ships from far distant lands.
If the new-comers will accommodate themselves
to the existing habit of cultivation they live. If
they need special attention they die. Why should
they want more or less water than the plants
become their fellows in the next pots? Why
should they demand a temperature more even
than the varying degrees of heat and cold that
have hitherto sufficed their neighbours’ needs?

And really it does not so much matter to persons

117

A GARDEN IN VENICE

like ourselves who prefer beauty to rarity. Many
rare things are also beautiful, but there are so
many that are beautiful and not rare, that where
the power of effort and the space disposable is
not unlimited, it is wise to get the best one can
with the means one has. We have then hundreds
of pot plants, survivals of the fittest, and our
entrance court where they stand in summer is
gay and much admired.

It has a door with steps running in from
the water and a land entry parallel, with steps
running in the counter sense out to our bridge
over the canal. At the sides are arranged our
pots, or what I call our Italian garden. At the
corner between the land stair and the gardener’s
cottage that is clad with roses and wistaria, is a
large may tree whose blossom is brilliant red,
and a tamarisk with long feathery shoots that
hang pendent over the wall till they almost touch
the water. Next these and around them are
palms, and then jessamines and ivy-leaved gera-
niums trained in pyramids. Groups of arum
lilies and other high growing things with lower
118

rope Ny

25 | | ENTRANCE COURT, OUR ITALIAN GARDEN.

we, ere. ee eee

Aanee ee vote 2 VEPoeh apg | yy Orr Tees OAV ER AA | A or oN TTP T et le a ter oe Wey wap
wae & a ;

many. ae are F alkasiéol and not rare, that
the power of effort and the space dis: !
not unlimited, it is wise to get the best: one ce
with the means one has. We have then hundreds
of pot plinm, sorvirals of the fimem, and ome |
entrance comet where they standin. jenna; |
gey and much admired. r
ris Mien!a: doin wie aings late aa
si water and a land entry parallel, with steps
running in the counter sense out to our bridge —
over the canal. At the sides are arranged our a
pots, or what I call our Italian garden. At the —
corner between the land stair and the gardener's —
- cottage that is clad with roses and wistaria, is a
large may tres whose blossom is brilliant red,
and a tamarisk with long feathery shoots that
hang pendent over the wall till they almost touch
the water. Next these and around them are
palms, and then jessamines and-ivy-leaved geras _
niums ‘trained in pyramids. Groups of arum
lilies and other high growing things with lower
118

MAGAAD UAIIATI AUO , TAUOD HOUWVAATASA

A GARDEN IN VENICE

groups in front of such plants as Paris daisies,
agapanthus, azaleas, Canterbury bells, geraniums
in large masses of one shade, brilliant scarlet, or
pink or crimson, and then dwarfer plants such as
begonias, coleus, lobelia, mimulus, variegated
leaved callas, and a score of others; with a fringe
in front of Convallaria japonica, for once accept-
able, as it hides the pots, keeps them cool, and
is content to grow in the earth it also hides,
placed for its sustenance on the stone and brick
pavement.

At the side of the Palazzina, facing the gar-
dener’s cottage, is a similar border in a curving
line that marks out, whilst uniting, the groups
of the plants within it; and the wall above the
plants is covered with white jessamine, whilst
overhead hang a couple of broad rose arches,
the redundant shoots of Maréchal Niel and Reine
Marie Henriette that throw themselves from the
gardener’s cottage across the broad-paved passage
that separates it from the Palazzina.

If hard to teach, however, their gentle Italian
manners make the garden men pleasant to work

I19g

A GARDEN IN VENICE

with, and they are not badly paid in this part of
Italy. My head man, aged twenty-five, gets a
hundred francs a month, and the others various
sums going down to sixty. Those that like get
house and fuel in the garden, others prefer to
live with their families outside, and their living,
as I know, is cheap, for I was once asked to act
as arbitrator in a dispute they had with their
caterer; the question submitted being whether
they should pay him fifteen or sixteen lire the
month for their whole food. So the remainder
of their wages gives them a larger amount of
pocket money than is probably at the disposal of
any other people of their class.

This remainder is rarely badly spent; some-
thing to tobacco, something to wine, which is
not dear at forty to fifty centimes a quart, and
this year as low as fifteen centimes; something
for clothes, also not dear in this climate, where,
tor say eight months in the year, a cotton shirt
and trousers are sufficient dress; and a good deal
to their families, for the young fellows about

here, as far as I can see, spend the greater part
120

A GARDEN IN VENICE

of their wages on their fathers and mothers, till
they are perhaps called to the army, when the
families find them pence for their necessities and
small pleasures, or till they marry, which they
do as a rule very young, and their own obliga-
tions begin. The children come quick, and
there is a struggle perhaps until the elder ones
begin to work, when the money they earn is
brought into the family budget. So taken is this
for granted, that when a boy of sixteen in my
service died the other day, and I expressed my
very real regret to one of his family, he said,
“Yes, is it not hard on his father, who will lose
his salary.”

Next to the gardeners come the Dachshunds,
of which there were eight this spring. Alas, .
appreciative friends carried off four, and now
there are only the grandmother, father and
mother, and baby. As co-proprietors of the
garden it is necessary to mention them ; indeed,
what would the garden be without them ; their
skins like satin, their manners of perfection,

their tempers, which yield each to each without
Q I21

A GARDEN IN VENICE

a growl the bone they have done with ; and to
the baby, the bone only half eaten—the baby,
now of twelve months old, who owns me, who
croons for its milk, and wears a coat of plush the
colour of frosted silver.

122

U
ext LLL

ATS hs
A « S &

=== |H1E mention of milk brings
i me to the cows, for our
\ garden holds a stall and
| la dairy.

" | ~ Milk, that education
| should not “touch, often
NS} showed at Venice signs of
~ over-discipline. Water is

good, and flour is good, but they are out of place
Q 2 123

Ps

A GARDEN IN VENICE

in the milk jug. And we, enduring what
could not be helped, were sometimes constrained
to accept a work of Art we did not care for
in the place of a product of Nature that was
good for us. One day a fine yacht, Mr. Gordon
Bennett’s Namouna, came into harbour to lay up
for the summer, and I was told that she had on
board a cow for sale—a splendid cow shipped
from one of the ports of Switzerland. I went to
see, and bought her. Namouna, as we called
her, was pleased at first with the garden, but
soon missed her sailors. In vain we walked her
about, and added to her corn and hay and
grass tempting dishes of pea halm and cabbages.
She would not be comforted until we got
her a companion. Some friends then who,
tasting at our house Namouna’s milk, pre-
ferred it to milk and water, had other friends
of like tastes, and to content and supply them I
bought other cows, until we have fifteen,
brought down from the Italian and Austrian
mountains. Two distinct breeds—one which
gives much milk, one which gives much cream,
124

WINDING PATHS,

“She” would “not pit mforted
her a. companion, ‘ne riet
tasting at our house Namouna’s.
ferred it to milk: and water, hi do
of like tastes,and to content and sv
bought other cows, until we have
brought dows, from the. Italian and. A
mountains. Two distinct breeds—one which
gives much milk, one which gives much cream,

124 fa et ! i at

ecHTALT DUAIGCUIW

A GARDEN IN VENICE

and both fair, though one, the Austrian is dark,
to look at.

Before arriving at this number, the old stable
having been turned to plant uses, a new one was
built, partly within the walls of a pleasaunce
house of the Patrician, so that no spick and span
new structure might stare at us.

The fodder was at first difficult. Grass in
summer cut in the orchard and brought to the
stall, and hay in winter, are the staple foods of
the Venetian cow, who, except to drink, rarely
leaves the stable, and when she does seems in a
hurry to get back to it.

To stall feed is necessary in this climate. In
summer the animal would suffer from heat and
flies, in winter from cold, and her feet would
destroy the pastures. But I found Venice hay
something like Venice milk, one was never sure
of what one could buy, and to suit Namouna’s
fastidious taste I bought some acres at an island
some three miles off, called S. Erasmo. The
price paid was that of a foreigner to a native,
and I was told much too high, but I had

125

A GARDEN IN VENICE

examined well the old vineyard that had become
from neglect a meadow, and a couple of years of
kindly treatment with stall manure and Scorie
Thomas phosphates raised its yield from thirty
tons of hay to fifty-five, with grass and with
grapes in proportion.

We grow here, or the climate grows for us,
three crops of hay and an aftermath of ‘grass.
There is a good deal of trouble in it all, but then
one must do something as long as one can do
anything, and the return for one’s money would
surely please an English landlord. To visit one’s
farm is the object for a run in one’s launch, with
three or four water routes to choose from. It is
one of the peculiarities of Venice that to go any-
where by water there are at least. three ways of
going. And another, that in the going any
slight distance you will change the tide, though
the tide does not change, and have it with you
or against you two or three times.

The lagoons discharge into the Adriatic
through several mouths that cut the Lido, that
long sea bank which for five-and-twenty miles.

126

A GARDEN IN VENICE

protects them from the sea. So in the same
straight channel, if such there be, you will meet
the tide against you making for the exit that is
at your back, and after you have crossed the
watershed, marked in one place by a tiny chapel,
you will take the current with you seeking the
exit that lies before you. Nor does the seeming
cussedness of the current end here. Owing to the
numerous islands and many canals, as one runs
acrossthe tide making forthe same mouth, youmay
have the tide for and against you many times. In
my small run of about three miles to S. Erasmo, I
sometimes make this change no less than six times.

S. Erasmo is lovely. An old Venetian orchard
of vines and peach, cherries, figs, pears, and
apples. In spring a dream of white thorn and
pink peach blossom, fenced in on two sides by
the lagoon over which one looks at ancient
Venice, called Torcello; the fishers’ isle, Burano;
and the monastery of San Francesco nel Deserto,
lovely with its cypresses and isolation. In the
background is the mainland, bounded by the

whole range of the snowy Alps.
127

A GARDEN IN VENICE

We once had some hives of Ligurian bees,
which, if not stingless, rarely sting. A poor
fellow, poor in purse and poor in health but
excellent in purpose, got them for us from I
don’t know where. He was a clever, single-
minded and painstaking man, with a passion for
fruiticulture and all things akin. The Govern-
ment gave him an appointment with the duty of
visiting, inspecting, and lecturing on such sub-
jects in the Communes of the Veneto. He held
some meetings, ora meeting too much, when he
should have been, and knew he should have been,
in bed, and died. The bees did not long survive
him. They were free from vice, as was he, so
that our commerce with them was as safe and
innocent as was all men’s with him. For a year
ot two they gave us honey, as did he with advice
and information, but still like him they seemed
to have no grip on life, and so the thrip, as I was
told were called the horrid brutes that killed them,
got into the hives, and though we did the best
we could they died, as he did, working to the

last.
128

A GARDEN IN VENICE

The birds in the garden are few. Birds go so
well with polenta, that in spite of all one can say
they are probably killed in the garden, and are
certainly shot all round it. We have a few
blackbirds, sometimes a cuckoo, anda nightingale
yearly pays us a spring visit. But after three
days he goes to join his mates on the Lido,
S. Erasmo, and less inhabitated islands, where he
is heard in happy numbers. It is a twofold pity,
for the want of birds is our loss of pleasure and
the insects’ opportunity. With grubs and cater-
pillars we are therefore sadly pestered.

The grapes have their own devourer. A
mother moth lays her eggs in the berry and
worse in the stalk. The grub eats its way inside
the stalk and causes rot, if let alone, to all the
grapes below it.

Roses, too, have a similar enemy. A black
and orange fly, the shape of and a quarter the
size of a daddy-long-legs, flits in early spring
from cluster to cluster of the tender rose shoots
and leaves an egg in each. This egg in a day

or two hatches out a small maggot, which eats
R 129

A GARDEN IN VENICE

its way into and down the stalk of the cluster,
cutting a hole of escape when full grown and
leaving its nursery dead behind it.
They tell one of cures that kill these pests, but
I have found none so efficacious as handpicking.
Then we have the bobolo in too prolific
numbers ; a strange snail both male and female
each of itself, and yet forming a connection with
another double-sexed bobolo when mating. These
snails are edible, and for that reason it has been
difficult to keep them under. The garden boys
catch the large ones in hundreds, and do not care
perhaps to destroy the breed, as they can sell
them to men who put them in earthen jars to
make them firm and white, and about Christmas
sell them again, when they are eaten as we eat
oysters. ©
The locust, too, visits us, and crowds of lovely
white butterflies that I have learned to see killed
with cruel acquiescence, in protection or in
revenge of my spoiling and spoilt cauliflowers.
And mosquitoes, that have become scarce since
our artesian well was made. ‘The water from
130

A GARDEN IN VENICE

this, sulphur ferruginous, is carried, as I have
said, underground to the vasca. ‘The family
mosquito, thinking the vasca a safe place in
which to lay her eggs, is betrayed, for the sulpho-
iron kills them, as it killed my goldfish and
lilies.

Lastly, we have not the earthworm, and I at
first thought Venice threw a doubt on Darwin’s
earthworm theory that makes them the makers
of all vegetable mould. Was it the exception,
perhaps, which proved the rule? Or are there
not rather in the difficulties of our cultivation
some slight proofs to be found of the great man’s
insight.

Darwin tells how the earthworm prepares the
ground in an excellent manner for the growth of
all fibrous rooted plants, and seedlings of all
kinds ; that their working in it is as that of the
gardener who prepares fine soil for his choicest
plants, and that, mixing it with their humus,
they leave it in a state well fitted to retain mois-
ture. They burrow, too, to a depth of five or
six feet, and their burrowings allow the air to

RaZ IZ!

A GARDEN IN VENICE

penetrate deeply, making it friable, as well as
materially adding to the drainage and so helping
all plants to root. Now with us newly-planted
plants root with difficulty. The soil dries quickly,

cakes badly, and for want of drainage is easily
~ saturated.

The earthworm, says Darwin, drags into the
soil the harder part of insects, the shells of land
molluscs, and an infinite number of dead leaves
and other parts of plants. ‘This material must
form a rich manure, and as their work is continu-
ous the soil is continually renewed. With us,
plants, when they have taken root, will thrive
abundantly and after a year or two die out. They
have exhausted that part of the soil they fed on
much more quickly and entirely than they would
do at home, and they die out as rapidly as they
first grew. Larkspurs, for instance, sown by us
one year sow themselves the next so thickly that
they suffocate all other plants. In two years
more the larkspur is almost extinct. So with
poppies, and with antirrhinums, foxgloves, sweet-

williams, and many other plants, whether sown
132 7

A GARDEN FN. VENICE

or self-sown, in a year or two their abundant
vigour seems to exhaust the soil and that place
knows them no more. ‘The Iris that grow with
us as people say like a weed, is no exception to
the rule, and requires rather than manure that
the soil they stand in should be changed, and the
lilies that we so love give us only of their joy on
condition that their site be changed or the fresh
earth they need be brought them from another
place.

So, too, Christmas roses. A single plant per-
haps will thrive for years ; a plot of say twelve
to twenty plants, planted together, however care-
fully manured, will die out in the centre of the
plot after a few years’ strong growth ; the out-
side plants in an enlarging circle still doing well.
We seem to lack the worm, that kindly gardener
which prepares the vegetable mould and renews
it, fitting the soil for the rocts of the plants, and
bringing them the food they have eaten out of
it ; that keeps the soil moist too with humus in
dry weather, and lets the surplus water drain
away in rain. One ought to import some of the

135

A GARDEN IN VENICE

lobs they use or used to use in Thames punt
fishing.

It is difficult to take leave of one’s garden,
even in writing. Though it is not an altogether
selfish mistress, it is so all absorbing that even if
one had the pen of a great word-painter, and
could say all one would say as one would wish to
say it, one might easily doddle too long over its
lilies and roses, as a young man is prone to do
over his lady’s charms and perfections.

I will leave mine, then, advising those who
have not a garden if they can to get one.. Those
who have, to work in it. Those who have
children, to bring them up with a taste forit. I
was given a garden of my own, a rake and a
spade, when I could scarcely walk, and can
remember still my delight when I saw the oats
I had taken from the stable cornbin begin to
sprout.

There is no pursuit, as has been found by big
men and small, that will so readily and healthily
take a man out of himself, and away from his
pains and his griefs, physical or moral. If the
134

A GARDEN IN VENICE

passion for games and athletics may, as we are
told, be carried too far, surely that for a garden
cannot be. If football and cricket may too soon
be too much for us; if bridge all day, as well as
all night, is not, or may not be, entirely healthy ;
gardening must be so always, and will give us
eccupation and delight from one’s earliest days to
one’s end, making even the weary strive to post-
pone that end from the longing to see the next
year’s blossom.

God Almighty, Bacon tells us, planted a
garden. What can we do better, who can so
little do, than humbly yet lovingly strive to make
another ?

135

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here as ther swetnesse evecmorey now is,

With floures white. b

With fyanes rede and sealis sifuer-br

fosmy bowss ft

ites whilt, blewe, yelwe, and rede, |

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Ghat swomimen ful of smale fisches ot ?
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he soyf was pleyne, soothe, and under soft Fle

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With bowes grene, the floures for to sure Pa

Ghat in theit beauty they may fong endu Ce

From aC assault of Phoebus fervent fere a
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7 Pt

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