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CHAPTER XVI
IN VENETIA

THE mainland background of Venice, in its most comprehensive sense the region lying north of the Po and south and west of the Austrian frontier, is not a much-travelled region by any class of tourists in Italy. The traveller by rail usually comes up from Bologna and Florence and, with a stop at Padua, makes for Venice forthwith and leaves for the Italian lake region, stopping en route at Verona. The automobilist too often does the thing even more precipitately, by taking Padua and Verona flying, or at least while he is stopping to replenish the inner man or the inner claims of his automobile. Certain readers of this book who may perhaps have done the thing a little more thoroughly may claim that this is an exaggeration, and so far as it applies to their particular case it may be, but the writer honestly believes that it fits astonishingly well with the majority of Italian itineraries in these parts. He bases this on the fact that he has seen tourists in droves in Padua and Verona, and he has not seen one in Este, Monselice, Battaglia, or even in Vicenza, Treviso, Asolo or Udine.

Verona, Vicenza and Padua were the capitals of three of the eight ancient provinces of Venezia.

Padua is built in the midst of a vast plain which merits being called Italian-Flanders. In everything but climate it is like a section of the Low Countries, and the city, with its domes and towers, looms up over the low-lying plain, faint and ghostly from afar, like a mirage of the desert.

Canals and fortress walls enclose the city even to-day, and the nearer one approaches, until one actually sees it from within the walls, the less and less Padua becomes like Italy. The greatest interest of Padua centres undoubtedly in its church of Sant’Antonio, dedicated to the pious companion of Francis of Assisi; after that the University which numbered among its masters Erasmus, Mantius and Galileo, and among its students Dante, Tasso and Petrarch. Padua is intimately associated with the name of Petrarch by reason of his having been a student here. Petrarch died before Chaucer’s time, but the Florentine’s fame had gone afield and from the “Clerk’s Tale” one recalls the following:

 
“Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,
Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete,
Highte this clerk, whose rethorike sweet
Enlumined al Itaille of poetrye.”
 

Padua in spite of its low lying situation is monumental at every turn. They had courage, the old builders, to plant great buildings down in the morass, and faith to believe they would last as long as they have.

On Padua’s great Piazzas – there are three of them, one leading out of the other – rise the chief civic buildings of mediæval times. The Loggia del Consiglio is an astonishingly ample Renaissance work of an early period, access to its great hall being by a monumental exterior stairway. An ancient column, with a San Marco lion is immediately in front.

The Palazzo Capitano, with its sky piercing clock tower of the fourteenth century, was formerly the residence of the Venetian Governor, and the Palazzo della Ragione, known as Il Salone, contains one of the vastest single roofed apartments known. There is a long unobstructed corridor in the mosque of Saint Sophia at Constantinople which holds the record in its line, but the Salone of Padua, built in 1420, is pre-eminent in superficial area.

The ancient Palace of the Carrera, tyrants of Padua, is one of the things that burn themselves in the mind from the sheer inability of one to overlook them. When one sees the colossal frescoes of the Entrance Hall one repeats unconsciously the dictum of Victor Hugo over Madame Dorval – the beautiful Madame Dorval: Je ne veux pas mourir.

It is the fashion to quote Dante and Byron and Shelley in Italy, but a little of Alfred de Musset is a cheerful relief. Here are some of his lines on Padua:

 
“Padoue est un fort bel endroit
Où de très-grands docteurs en droit
On fait merveille;
Mais j’aime mieux la polenta
Qu’on mange aux bords de la Brenta
Sous un treille.”
 

The Albergo Fanti-Stella d’Oro at Padua is all sufficient as a tourist hotel, but lacks a good deal of what a hotel for automobilists should be. There is accommodation for one’s automobile in the coach house, but it evidently is a separately owned concern, for when you come to take your auto out you will be followed like a thief when you try to explain that you prefer to pay the garage charges when you pay your hotel bill. You may eat à la carte in the hotel restaurant at any hour, and you may have a room across the way in the annex, a better room and for a smaller price than you can have at the Albergo itself. Altogether this opera bouffe hotel is neither bad nor good, and most confusing as to its personnel and their conduct. They need to have a “Who’s Who,” printed in German, French and English to put into the hands of each guest on arrival.

The automobilist has not yet reached Venice. The nearest that he may come to it is to Mestre, where he may garage his automobile in any one of half a dozen palatial establishments especially devoted to the purpose. Mestre, of absolutely no rank whatever as a city of art or architecture or sights for the tourist, has more automobile garages than any other city in Italy.

The splendour of Venice is undeniable, whether one takes note of its unique architecture or of its remarkable site. Men with courage to build gilded and marble palaces on a half submerged chain of isles scarce above the level of the sea do not live to-day. How well these early builders planned is evinced by the fact that Venice the magnificent exists to-day as it always has existed – all but the Campanile. The fall of this shows what may happen some day to the rest of this regal city. When? No one knows. Men conquered the morass in the first instance. Can they hold it in subjection into eternity?

Venice with all its gorgeousness is just the least bit triste.

Not a tree worthy of the name, not a garden or a farm yard, not a cart or a horse – and not an automobile is to be found within its purlieus. One is as if in prison. A watery barrier surrounds one on every side. The sea, always the sea, mostly mirror-like or gently lapping its waves at your very feet – and black gondolas everywhere. Yes, Venice is gorgeous, if you like, but how sad it is also!

The greatness of Venice dates from the time of the fourth crusade and the taking of Constantinople. It was then that the Venetian ships became the chief carriers between the east and the west; its vessels exported the surplus wealth of the Lombard plain, and brought in return not only the timber and stone of Istria and Dalmatia, but the manufactured wares of Christian Constantinople, wines of the Greek isles, and the Oriental silks, carpets, and spices of Mohammedan Egypt, Arabia and Bagdad.

There used to be an old time saying at Venice that if the Isthmus of Suez were pierced with a canal the glory of Venice would once more shine on the commercial world as well as shed its radiance over those who live in the sphere of art. The Suez Canal has come, but prophets are not infallible, and the present maritime glory of the Adriatic lies with Trieste and Fiume, with Venice a shadowy fifth or sixth in the whole of Italy.

It is an historic fact that may well be repeated here, that Venice, more than any other city of Italy, has ever been noted for its passion for amusements and unconventional pleasures. “For quite half of the year,” said Montesquieu, “everybody wears a masque; manners are very free and the passion for gaming immense.” A more vivid description of all this Venetian disregard for convention may be found in the memoirs of the Venetian adventurer Casanova.

The visitor to Venice must seek out for himself the things that interest him, with the aid of his guide-book, his hotel porter or his gondolier. Not all its splendours can be pointed out here; the record of the author and artist is a personal record; others if they will may choose a different itinerary.

The greatest fascination of all in Venice is undoubtedly the gondola, though the motor boat is pushing it hard for a place, and there be those matter-of-fact hurried tourists who prefer the practicality of the latter to the simplicity and romance of the former. The gondola still reigns however, and probably always will. It’s an asset for drawing tourists as potent as the lions or horses of San Marco or the pigeons of the Piazzas.

The Venetian cannot step without his door without taking a gondola, for his promenade on the Grand Canal, to cross to the Lido, or to go to church when he marries and when he dies. The gondola is as much a part of the daily life of the Venetian as is the street car or the omnibus elsewhere.

Though it doesn’t look it, the gondola is the most manageable craft propelled by man. It snakes in and out of crooked waterways and comes to a landing with far less fuss than anything ever pushed by steam or gasoline. All the same they are not as swift, though their pace is astonishing when one considers their bulk and weight.

It has been the fashion to laud the sweet idealism of the gondola and all that appertains thereto, not forgetting the gondolier, but when one has heard that backwater sailor’s cajoleries and cadences beneath his window for most of the long night one’s views in the morning will be considerably modified. “Cousin of my dog!” the gondolier will call his gondola, “Owl!” “Idiot!” “Sheriff of the Devil!” “Silly Ass!” “Miscreant of Rhodes!” and “Bag of Bones.” Such epithets shouted full and strong, if only to an inanimate gondola, will take a good deal of idealism out of nature.

With the Venetian palaces and churches and canals rank in popular interest its great piazzas. The importance of these great open spaces in the daily life of the people of the island city cannot be overestimated. Gaiety, noise and life are the characteristics of each, whether one is at San Marco or on the Rialto.

Gastronomical delights in Italy are largely of one’s own choosing. At Venice, where, of Italian cities, the tourist is most largely catered to, one may fare well or ill.

It’s a great experience to sit at one of the little tables at Florian’s, or at the Aurora on the opposite side of the Piazza of San Marco, and leisurely enjoy the spectacle spread out before one. At any time of the day or night it is the most burning, feverish spot in all the Venetian archipelago, though at midday, it is true, the sun-baked Piazza is deserted, even by the pigeons.

In the afternoon, as the shadows lengthen, and a slim suspicion of a sea-breeze wafts in from the lagunes, it is fairyland, peopled, if not with fairyfolk, at least with as conglomerate a horde as may be seen in Europe. As a performance the piece were almost worthy of its setting; it is a burlesque and a comedy of manners in one. If only you are “out of season,” when the English and Americans and Germans are still by their own firesides, and the cast of characters is made up of the peoples of the south and east, the comedy is all the more amusing, and you sip its charms as you sip your coffee and forget that such a personage as Baedeker ever existed. Usually tourists come to the Piazza, after they have done the surrounding stock sights, to buy two soldi-worth of maize and feed the pigeons. They would do better to watch the passing show from the vantage point of a little table at Florian’s.

Besides its treasures of art and architecture, one of the sights of Venice is Florian’s, celebrated for a hundred and fifty years. The specialty of Florian’s is the sabaion doro, made with the yellow of an egg and a small glass of Malaga. It is not bad, but it is a ladies’ drink, for it is sweet. The sorbets, the café turc’ and the vanilla chocolates of the establishment, with the aforementioned golden concoction, have placed it in the very front rank among establishments of its class. It remains open, or did a few years ago, all night. At five o’clock each morning, as the daylight gun went off from the fortress of the Lido, Florian’s put up its shutters, only to open just before midday.

The names of the great who have gathered within the walls of this famous café, and left memories behind them, would fill a long roster. Chateaubriand, Manzoni, Byron, Cimarosa, Canova, Léopold-Robert, Alfred de Musset, Balzac and others, many, many others. And many have left behind written souvenirs of their visit.

One thing the stranger to Venice will remark, and that is that here, as much as in any other place in Italy, one is pestered nearly to distraction with the little “extras” of their hotel bills, of the too-importunate guides, of door-openers and door shutters, of guardians of all ranks, of men and boys who call your gondola for you, and of mendicant ragamuffins by profession, or merely because occasion offered and you looked like an “easy mark.” It is the one blight on Venice.

The modest inns of other days have given way to the demands of a more exacting clientèle, but those who would follow Alfred de Musset and George Sand from the Palace of the Doges to the Hotel Danieli will have no trouble in getting a lodging in that hostelry. Or they may prefer to follow the footsteps of Chateaubriand (who in truth was anticipating a rendezvous with the Duchesse de Berry) to the neighbouring Hotel de l’Europe.

Venice’s Grand Canal is naturally the chief delight of the visiting stranger. The Canalazzo is from fifty to seventy metres wide with a length of three kilometres. A hundred and fifty or more palaces line its banks, most of them bearing famous names of history. Shopkeepers and manufacturers of various sorts occupy many of them, but they are still capable of staggering any otherwise blasé curiosity-seekers. The accompanying map with these palaces plainly marked should serve its purpose better than quires of printed pages.

Shakespeare’s “Jew of Venice” was no myth, whatever the shadowy existence of Juliet and Desdemona may have been. Venice in the middle ages had its Ghetto (a word which in Hebrew means “cut off” or “shut off”) where the Jews herded together and wore scarlet mantles in public that they might be known and recognized by faith and profession. The principal character of “The Merchant of Venice” was a very real entity, and Shakespeare, believing the saying of Tacitus, wrote him down truthfully as a man scrupulously faithful to his engagements, charitable to others of his race, but filled with an invincible hatred towards all other men.

Another Venetian type, not wholly disappeared to-day, is that of the Venetian blonde of Titian, Veronese and Giorgione, a type of feminine beauty unknown elsewhere. Italians are commonly brunettes, and indeed perhaps the Venetians were of the same teint one day. In the Library of San Marco is a parchment of Cæsar Vecelli, a Cousin of Titian, coming from the collections of the patrician Nani. It describes how there were built at Venice many house tops with sun parlours or terrazi. To these terrazi the women of the city of the Doges, who would bleach their hair by natural means, would repair and let the sun do its work.

Casanova, too, remarked the feminine beauties of the Queen of the Adriatic. He said of one of them: “I am content indeed to find so beautiful a creature. I do not conceive how so ravishing a creature could have lived so long in Venice without having married ere now.”

As night draws down, the scene at Venice changes manifestly from what it was in the garish sunlight of day. It becomes softer and more fairylike. Across the Piazzetta the rosy flush still glints from the tower of the island San Giorgio, though in the immediate neighbourhood day has practically blackened into night. A sunset gun sounds from seaward and here and there lights twinkle out when, in the magic of a very short twilight, another scene is set, a more wonderful, more fairylike scene than before, with a coming and going of firefly gondolas and boats, a streaming of arcs and incandescents on shore, and in the midst of it all a brass band arrives in front of San Marco and begins to bray ragtime waltzes and serenades. The note may be a false one, but it reiterates the fact that one may sit before his table at Florian’s all through the livelong day and night and see and hear the whole gamut of joyousness played as it is nowhere else. The townfolk, the strangers from the hotels, and sailor folk from the Lido and the Guiadecca all mingle in a seemingly inextricable maze. These last are the most picturesque note as to costuming and colouring in all Venice to-day.

The fishermen of the Guiadecca, swarthy hued and scarlet-capped, and with heavy hoops of gold hanging from their ears, stroll about the piazza as is their right, mingling with tourists and the “real Venetians.” All move about in lively measure like an operatic chorus, but with a much more graceful and less conscious gait.

Night on the Piazza or the Piazzetta is not the least of Venice’s charms.

The background hills bordering upon the Venetian plain are a very interesting corner of northern Italy. Throughout this region souvenirs are not wanting of the glorious days of the Venetian Republic.

For her own protection Venice conquered the surrounding mainland as she was laying the foundations of the island metropolis. Treviso fell to her permanently in 1339, and Udine in 1420, as did later many other towns to the south. From this time forth the lion of San Marco reared its head from its pedestal in the market place of each of these allied towns. Some five thousand square miles of Dalmatia came to Venice at this time and thenceforth her position was assured. Venice was occupied by the French in 1797 when Napoleon overthrew the Republic. It was the first time the city had ever been occupied by an enemy. It was given to Austria by a succeeding treaty, but later in 1805 was made over definitely to Italy.

Treviso, on the highroad from Venice to Vienna, is a great overgrown burg which lives chiefly in the historic past of the days when first it became a bishop’s see and was known as Trovisium, the capital of the province of the same name.

A story is current of Treviso that once the people, to celebrate one of the infrequent intervals of peace, had summoned all the neighbouring populations to a splendid festival. Among other amusements they had provided a mimic castle of wood, adorned in the most sumptuous manner. Within this castle were stationed the twelve most beautiful ladies of Padua, with their attendant maidens, loaded down with all kinds of flowers and fruits. The chosen youths of the neighbouring cities advanced in bands to attack the fortress defended by such a garrison. The ladies made a long and vigorous defence. But finally a band of Venetians pressed forward through the rain of projectiles, breached the walls, and planted on them the banner of San Marco. The youth of Padua, inflamed at this sight, pressed forward in turn to force their way inside the fortifications. The two bands were crushed together in the breach; angry words arose; from words both parties came to blows; the Paduans proved the stronger and in the struggle seized on the banner of San Marco and tore it to shreds. With difficulty the Trevisans restored order and drove both parties out of the town. The Venetians flew to arms to demand satisfaction for the outrage to their flag. The Government of Padua refused it. Hence a war between the two cities, in which the Paduans were worsted.

From Treviso to Belluno, and thence by the Ampesso Pass, is one of the gateways leading from the Italian plain into Austria. Feltre, en route, has a fine old “Rocca,” or castle, with a square donjon tower.

En route to Belluno one should, if he comes this way at all, branch off to Asolo. Among the many hundreds of visitors to Venice who formerly climbed to the top of the Campanile of San Marco in order to enjoy the wonderful panorama of the Venetian plain and mountains which it affords, few, probably, recall the distant little city of Asolo which the guide pointed out to them, unless, indeed, they happen to be familiar with Robert Browning’s poems, in which case they will, perhaps, wish to make a pilgrimage out into these background hills the poet loved so well: “My Asolo,” as he called it in the introduction to the last volume of his poems, “Asolando,” written during his stay there in 1889. A trip among the Asolan Hills will well repay not only the lover of poetry, but also the artist and the ordinary traveller with a liking for quiet, picturesque spots off the ordinary beaten track.

The Albergo Asolo, in the main street, offers clean and characteristic accommodation with charges to correspond. One turns off to Asolo from Cornuda, a station on the Belluno line, or by road from the same place. The imposing ruined Rocca is well worthy of a visit for the sake of the extensive view obtainable from the hill on which it stands. On a clear day the towers of Venice can be seen without a glass, and on every side the view is remarkably fine. To the north, beyond the nearer range of mountains, are visible several peaks in the Primiero group of Dolomites – the Sasso del Mur, Sagron, and others. Another good point of view is the belfry tower of the old Castello which was the residence of Queen Cornaro, the deposed Queen of Cyprus, whose gay court made the name of Asolo famous at the end of the fifteenth century.

From Treviso the road to Udine passes Conegliano, with a fine castle of imposing proportions and a Triumphal Arch erected in the nineteenth century to the Emperor of Austria.

Pordenone, ten kilometres farther on, is the old Portus Naonis of the Romans. This is almost its sole claim to fame, except that “Il Pordenone,” a celebrated fifteenth century artist, was born here.

Codroipo, actually a place of no importance to-day, takes its name from the crossing of two celebrated Roman roads of antiquity. Codroipo, by a vague etymological sequence, is supposed to have the same meaning as carrefour in French, i.e. quadrivium.

At Campo Formico, just before Udine is reached, Bonaparte and the Emperor of Austria signed the treaty, in October, 1797, by which Venice was so shamefully sacrificed by the French general to Austria. It was one of the deepest blots in the political history of Napoleon. The mean house in which this disastrous treaty was concluded is still pointed out.

It was in the Villa Passarino, near Udine, that this infamous treaty saw the light. Its gardens to-day are of the mixed formal and landscape variety, and great renown belongs to it because of the prominence of the Manins, its early owners. Borghetti restored the fabric in 1763, and it remains to-day a far more satisfactory structure to look at than many which are architecturally entitled to rank on a higher plane. Cypress and oak form the greater part of the verdure of the gardens.

Udine, of the picturesque name, is a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, once the capital of Friuli, and still surrounded by its ancient walls. In the centre is the castle, now a prison, built in 1517 by Giovanni Fontana on the height chosen by Attila to view the burning of Aquileja. Udine presents many features of resemblance in its buildings to the mother city, to whose rule it was so long subjected: it has its grand square, its Palazzo Publico, (1457) – a fine Gothic building on pointed arches instead of the Doge’s palace – the two columns, the winged lion of San Marco, and a campanile with two figures to strike the hours. Udine is indeed a little Venice, all but the canals and quays and the Adriatic’s waves.

South of Udine, on the marshy shore of the same series of lagoons which surround Venice itself, is Aquileja. Aquileja was in ancient times one of the most important provincial cities of Rome, and one of the chief bulwarks of Italy. Augustus often resided here, and its population was then estimated at 100,000. It was taken by Attila in 452, and reduced to ashes by that ferocious barbarian. It contains at present about 1,500 inhabitants, and even they have a hard time clinging to the shreds of life left them by a climate that is pestilential and damp.

From Venice and Treviso the Strada di Grande Communicazione runs to Vicenza and Verona, the former 63 kilometres from Treviso and the latter 50 kilometres farther on. At Vicenza the highroad is joined by another trunk-line from Padua, 32 kilometres to the southwest. All of these roads are practically flat and are good roads in good weather and bad roads – O! how bad! – in bad weather.

Few strangers stop off at Vicenza, on the line from Verona to Venice. Vicenza, then, is not lettered large in the guide books, and has only appeared of late in the public prints because of being the home of the romancer, Antonio Fogazzora. This makes it a literary shrine at all events, so we stopped to look it over. It was more than this; we first saw Vicenza by moonlight, and its silhouettes and shadows were as grimly ancient as if seen in a dream. Daylight discovered other charms. There were warm, lovable old Renaissance house fronts everywhere, with overhanging tiled roofs and advanced grilled balconies; and there was the Piazza dei Signori and its surrounding houses, almost entirely the work of the architect Palladio.

The Municipio itself was not a dead, dull thing in drab stone, but with a warm red tower, brought entire, it is said, from Venice, along with two columns of the façade which are borne aloft on two sculptured lions.

Vicenza, the neglected tourist point, was offering much, and we were glad we came.

Vicenza, more than any other of the little frequented tourist cities of Italy, may be counted as the city of palaces. They are of two non-contemporary styles, the Venetian semi-gothic of a good era, and Palladio’s classical copies, also good of their kind, particularly so when seen here in their natural environment.

In the Corso is a curious monumental structure called the Casa di Palladio, built it is said by the great architect for his own use. He had need for it as his work here was great and long in completion. It is something more than a mere architect’s office or bureau; it is in fact a palace.

One of the most curious buildings in the city, and certainly one of the most remarkable with which the name of Palladio is connected, is the Teatro Olimpico. Contrary to the architect’s manner of working, the edifice has no façade, being entirely surrounded by houses. It was begun in 1580, but in consequence of his death almost immediately afterwards it was completed by his son, Scilla.

The scenery, which is fixed, represents the side of a species of piazza, from which diverge streets of real elevation, but diminishing in size as they recede in the perspective. A great effect of distance is obtained, especially in the middle avenue. Daylight, however, by which a traveller usually sees it, is injurious to the effect.

Palladio’s architectural ideas went abroad even to England and many a “stately home” in Britain to-day is a more or less faithful copy of a Vicenza sixteenth century palazzo.

The Rotonda Capra, now in ruins, so well known as Palladio’s villa, was copied by Lord Burlington and planted squat down on the banks of the Thames at Chiswick. It loses considerably by transportation; it were decidedly more effective at the base of Monte Berico in Venezia.

Palladio himself is buried in the local Campo Santo. His grave should become an art lover’s shrine, but no one has ever been known to worship at it.

Between Vicenza and Verona runs a charming highway, strewn with villas of a highly interesting if not superlatively grand architectural order.

A dozen or fifteen kilometres from Vicenza are the two castles of Montecchio, the strongholds of the family of the name celebrated by Shakespere as one of the rivals of the Capulets.

At the Bridge of Arcole is an obelisk in commemoration of the battle when Napoleon went against the Austrians after his check at Caldiero.

Soave, a little further on, is an old walled town as mediæval in its looks and doings as it was when its great gates and towers and its castle fortress on the height were built six centuries ago.

Verona is reached in thirty kilometres and has a sentimental, romantic interest beyond that possessed by any of the secondary cities of Italy. It has not the great wealth of notable architectural splendours of many other places, but what there is is superlatively grand, the structures surrounding the Piazza Erbe and the Piazza dei Signori, for instance; the old Ponte di Castel Vecchio; the great Roman Arena; and even the Albergo all’Accademia, where one is remarkably well cared for in a fine old mediæval palace with a monumental gateway, and an iron and carved stone well in the courtyard.

The glory and sentiment which overshadowed the Verona of another day have passed, and now the noise of electric trams and the hoot of automobile horns awaken the echoes in the same thoroughfares where one day trampled the feet of warring hosts.

 
“The glory of the Scaliger has passed,
The Capuletti and Montague are naught:”
 

Instead we have the modern note sounding over all, and, if it is true that the “fair Juliet sleeps in old Verona’s town” hers must be a disturbed sleep. The romance of Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague was real enough; that is, there was a real romance of the sort, and there were real Capulets and Montagues. Just where the scene of this particular romance was laid one is not so sure.

The “House of Juliet” at Verona, one of the stock sights of the guide books, is of more than doubtful authenticity. Certainly, to begin with, it does not comport in the least with the dignified marble palace and its halls with which the stage-carpenter has built up the settings of Shakespere’s drama or Gounod’s opera. Perhaps they embroidered too much. Of course they did!

In 1905 the “Juliet House” was in danger of collapsing. As it is nothing more than a picturesque old house, such as northern Italy abounds in, perhaps it would not have mattered much had it fallen. It is no more Juliet’s house than Juliet’s tomb is the tomb of Juliet. This indeed has latterly been adjudged a mere water-trough. No house, it is asserted, in Verona to-day can be declared with certainty as the house of a Montague or a Capulet. Henry James points the moral of all this in “The Custodians,” and whether we can always make head and tail out of his dialogues or not, his judgments are always sound.