Casual Friday: Late Victorian Travel Films

Courtesy Library of Congress

Loretta reports:

Some early travel films, set to rather sad music.  Yes, as some of the YouTube comments point out, everyone in these films is dead.  However, those people were very much alive when they were being filmed.  So you might wish to choose your own music to accompany it—and have fun, as I did, trying to guess the locales.  I was delightfully surprised to see early film footage of a locale featured in Mr. Impossible.

Gondolas then & now

Loretta reports:

Didst ever see a Gondola?  For fear
    You should not, I’ll describe it to you exactly:
‘Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here,
    Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly;
Row’d by two rowers, each call’d ‘Gondolier,’
    It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
  (Lord Byron, Beppo)

Byron’s description of a gondola opens the first chapter of my “Venice book,” Your Scandalous Ways.

The gondolas he knew, though, no longer exist, except in museums—like this one at Venice’s Palazzo Ducale. Yes, it needs some work. But if we look at the modern gondolas, with their shiny black and gold, we can get a sense of what it was like in its heyday.

Unlike today’s gondolas, which leave passengers in public view—and at the mercy of the weather—the gondola of Byron’s time offered privacy and comfort.  The cabin or felze had a door, casement windows, Venetian blinds, and a cushy interior.

Today, a gondola ride is mainly for tourists.  But in the early 1800s, even though Venice had fallen on hard times, these boats were still the city’s taxis and limousines. According to Byron’s friend Hobhouse:

“Our lacquey told us that there are about 2,000 public gondolas and that those houses which used to keep five and six boats now keep one – or none.  We saw some pushed by men in livery.  It is an imagined speed with which they glide along, but great dexterity is shown in cutting round the corners of the lanes or little canals through the lighters and little boats.”—excerpted from the Venice section of Peter Cochran’s fantastic online presentation of John Cam Hobhouse’s) diaries, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Men Behaving Badly: Byron at Carnival

Loretta reports:

From Byron's Letters & Journals, Volume 6, "The Flesh is Frail," edited by Leslie A. Marchand.

[TO JOHN MURRAY*]
Venice—J[anuar]y 27th. 1818
It is the height of Carnival—and I am in the estrum & agonies of a new intrigue—with I don’t know exactly whom or what—except that she is insatiate of love—& won’t take money—& has light hair & blue eyes—which are not common here--& that I met her at the Masque--& that when her mask is off I am as wise as ever.——I shall make what I can of the remainder of my youth—& confess—that like Augustus—I would rather die standing.—

[TO THOMAS MOORE]
Venice, February 2d, 1818
I have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past.  We are in the agonies of the Carnival’s last days, and I must be up all night again, as well as to-morrow.  I have had some curious masking adventures this Carnival; but, as they are not yet over, I shall not say on.  I will work the mine of my youth to the last veins of the ore, and then—good night.  I have lived, and am content.

[TO JOHN CAM HOBOUSE]
Venice.  Feb[ruary] 23rd.  1818
They may say what they like of Petrotini’s being  a liar—but he has told me the only two truths that I have heard in Venice—the first—about the passage in Bianchoni…and the second that a Girl (whom you don’t know—Elena da Mosta—a Gentil Donna) was clapt—and she has clapt me—to be sure it was gratis, the first Gonorrhea I have not paid for. —I am getting better—the Carnival was short—but very lively—and there was good fun among the Masques…When Spooney, sends out a Clerk in Spring with the writings it will be a very good time to send out my little shild (I mean the bastard**) and I wish you would settle it in that way with Shelley—who has written to me frequently upon it—as for the legitimate I hear she is very well.

*Byron's publisher.

**His daughter Allegra, by Claire Clairmont***.

***Byron wrote of Claire:  " I never pretended to love her—but a man is a man—& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours—there is but one way—the suite of all this is that she was with child and returned to England to assist in peopling that desolate island."

The painting at upper left is Pulcinella love (1797) by Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727 - 1804).  Venice, Ca Rezzonico (scroll down & enlarge for a sharper image)- Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Villa-House Zianigo Pulcinella inv: Cl. I No 1751. 

Ring my chimes, Campanile

Loretta reports:

One marvelous thing about setting a book in Venice is that so much hasn’t changed. True, today there are far fewer gondolas than in Byron’s time, and the few are for tourists. He would not have seen a gigantic cruise ship bearing down on the fragile city or heard motors. Still, he would have found today’s Venice far more recognizable than today’s London. This made my research for Your Scandalous Ways quite a bit easier. I could read his letters and the entries in his friend Hobhouse’s diary, peruse other contemporary travel guides and accounts--and, for the most part, find every location mentioned, even when the names of places had changed or, as in the case of La Fenice opera house, when it had burned down.

But when I decided to set a climactic (ahem) scene in the Campanile, I was on my own. The building had fallen down early in the 20th century and been rebuilt; now it has elevators, and no one climbs up, apparently, and so it took some digging to find out what the interior was like in 1820. But thanks to the magic of the Internet, it wasn’t hard to find pictures of the view from the top. And most important for my love scene were the bells. In that case, Byron couldn’t help me. A bit of video is worth a thousand words, even by him. So if you want to know what Francesca and James heard that morning, turn up your speakers and listen here and here.