Casa Alvisi - Page 2

comparatively vulgar uses that
are doing their best to "paint out" in Venice, right and left, by
staring signs and other vulgarities, the immemorial note of
distinction. The house, in a city of palaces, was small, but the
tenant clung to her perfect, her inclusive position--the one
right place that gave her a better command, as it were, than a
better house obtained by a harder compromise; not being fond,
moreover, of spacious halls and massive treasures, but of compact
and familiar rooms, in which her remarkable accumulation of
minute and delicate Venetian objects could show. She adored--in
the way of the Venetian, to which all her taste addressed itself-
-the small, the domestic and the exquisite; so that she would
have given a Tintoretto or two, I think, without difficulty, for
a cabinet of tiny gilded glasses or a dinner-service of the right
old silver.

The general receptacle of these multiplied treasures played at
any rate, through the years, the part of a friendly private-box
at the constant operatic show, a box at the best point of the
best tier, with the cushioned ledge of its front raking the whole
scene and with its withdrawing rooms behind for more detached
conversation; for easy--when not indeed slightly difficult--
polyglot talk, artful bibite, artful cigarettes too,
straight from the hand of the hostess, who could do all that
belonged to a hostess, place people in relation and keep them so,
take up and put down the topic, cause delicate tobacco and little
gilded glasses to circulate, without ever leaving her sofa-
cushions or intermitting her good-nature. She exercised in these
conditions, with never a block, as we say in London, in the
traffic, with never an admission, an acceptance of the least
social complication, her positive genius for easy interest, easy
sympathy, easy friendship. It was as if, at last, she had taken
the human race at large, quite irrespective of geography, for her
neighbours, with neighbourly relations as a matter of course.
These things, on her part, had at all events the greater
appearance of ease from their having found to their purpose--and
as if the very air of Venice produced them--a cluster of forms so
light and immediate, so pre-established by picturesque custom.
The old bright tradition, the wonderful Venetian legend had
appealed to her from the first, closing round her house and her
well-plashed water-steps, where the waiting gondolas were thick,
quite as if, actually, the ghost of the defunct Carnival--since
I have spoken of ghosts--still played some haunting part.

Let me add, at the same time, that Mrs. Bronson's social
facility, which was really her great refuge from importunity, a
defence with serious thought and serious