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Venetian Life

Chapter 3: W. D. H.
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About This Book

A first-person account of extended residence in Venice that blends travelogue, cultural history, and close social observation. The narrative covers arrival and the changing seasons, theater and opera, domestic life including dinners and housekeeping, and vivid descriptions of canals, balconies, churches, paintings, lagoon islands, and ethnic communities such as Armenians and Jews. Separate chapters examine commerce, national festivals and Christmas rituals, rites of courtship, marriage, baptism, and burial, and sketches of local character and society, concluding with reflections on the author's final year and on the city's persistent mixture of beauty, illusion, and everyday reality.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In correcting this book for a second edition, I have sought to complete it without altering its original plan: I have given a new chapter sketching the history of Venetian Commerce and noticing the present trade and industry of Venice; I have amplified somewhat the chapter on the national holidays, and have affixed an index to the chief historical persons, incidents, and places mentioned.

Believing that such value as my book may have is in fidelity to what I actually saw and knew of Venice, I have not attempted to follow speculatively the grand and happy events of last summer in their effects upon her life. Indeed, I fancy that in the traits at which I loved most to look, the life of Venice is not so much changed as her fortunes; but at any rate I am content to remain true to what was fact one year ago.

W. D. H.

Cambridge, January 1, 1867.


CONTENTS

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.
CHAPTER I. Venice in Venice
CHAPTER II. Arrival and first Days in Venice
CHAPTER III. The Winter in Venice
CHAPTER IV. Comincia far Caldo
CHAPTER V. Opera and Theatres
CHAPTER VI. Venetian Dinners and Diners
CHAPTER VII. Housekeeping in Venice
CHAPTER VIII. The Balcony on the Grand Canal
CHAPTER IX. A Day-Break Ramble
CHAPTER X. The Mouse
CHAPTER XI. Churches and Pictures
CHAPTER XII. Some Islands of the Lagoons
CHAPTER XIII. The Armenians
CHAPTER XIV. The Ghetto and the Jews of Venice
CHAPTER XV. Some Memorable Places
CHAPTER XVI. Commerce
CHAPTER XVII. Venetian Holidays
CHAPTER XVIII. Christmas Holidays
CHAPTER XIX. Love-making and Marrying; Baptisms and Burials
CHAPTER XX. Venetian Traits and Characters
CHAPTER XXI. Society
CHAPTER XXII. Our Last Year in Venice