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TITLE: ITALIAN HOURS
AUTHOR: HENRY JAMES
EBOOK: E00488 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

ITALIAN HOURS

BY

HENRY JAMES

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1909

PREFACE

The chapters of which this volume is composed have with few
exceptions already been collected, and were then associated
with others commemorative of other impressions of (no very
extensive) excursions and wanderings. The notes on various
visits to Italy are here for the first time exclusively placed
together, and as they largely refer to quite other days than
these--the date affixed to each paper sufficiently indicating
this--I have introduced a few passages that speak for a later
and in some cases a frequently repeated vision of the places and
scenes in question. I have not hesitated to amend my text,
expressively, wherever it seemed urgently to ask for this,
though I have not pretended to add the element of information or
the weight of curious and critical insistence to a brief record
of light inquiries and conclusions. The fond appeal of the
observer concerned is all to aspects and appearances--above all
to the interesting face of things as it mainly <i>used</i> to
be.

H. J.

CONTENTS

VENICE
THE GRAND CANAL
VENICE: AN EARLY IMPRESSION
TWO OLD HOUSES AND THREE YOUNG WOMEN
CASA AL VISI
FROM CHAMBERY TO MILAN
THE OLD SAINT-GOTHARD
ITALY REVISITED
A ROMAN HOLIDAY
ROMAN RIDES
ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
THE AFTER-SEASON IN ROME
FROM A ROMAN NOTE-BOOK
A FEW OTHER ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
A CHAIN OF CITIES
SIENA EARLY AND LATE
THE AUTUMN IN FLORENCE
FLORENTINE NOTES
TUSCAN CITIES
OTHER TUSCAN CITIES
RAVENNA
THE SAINT'S AFTERNOON AND OTHERS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE HARBOUR, GENOA (Frontispiece)
FLAGS AT ST. MARK'S, VENICE
A NARROW CANAL, VENICE
PALAZZO MOCENIGO, VENICE
THE AMPHITHEATRE, VERONA
CASA ALVISI, VENICE
THE SIMPLON GATE, MILAN
THE CLOCK TOWER, BERNE
UNDER THE ARCADES, TURIN
ROMAN GATEWAY, RIMINI
SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE
THE FACADE OF ST. JOHN LATERAN, ROME
THE COLONNADE OF ST. PETER'S, ROME
CASTEL GANDOLFO
ENTRANCE TO THE VATICAN, ROME
VILLA D' ESTE, TIVOLI
SUBIACO
ASSISI
PERUGIA
ETRUSCAN GATEWAY, PERUGIA
A STREET, CORTONA
THE RED PALACE, SIENA
SAN DOMENICO, SIENA
ON THE ARNO, FLORENCE
THE GREAT EAVES, FLORENCE
BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE
THE HOSPITAL, PISTOIA
THE LOGGIA, LUCCA
TOWERS OF SAN GIMIGNANO
SAN APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA
RAVENNA PINETA
TERRACINA

VENICE

It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure
there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything
to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of
times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to
visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find
a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and
you will find three or four high-coloured "views" of it. There
is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one
has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of
photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as
about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as
familiar as the postman's ring. It is not forbidden, however, to
speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-
lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said
about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It
would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to
say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having
no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten
the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I
hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love
with his theme.

I

Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after
extracting half a lifetime of pleasure and an immeasurable
quantity of fame from it. We all may do the same, after it has
served our turn, which it probably will not cease to do for many
a year to come. Meantime it is Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps
us to enjoy. He has indeed lately produced several aids to
depression in the shape of certain little humorous--ill-humorous--
pamphlets (the series of <i>St. Mark's Rest</i>) which embody
his latest reflections on the subject of our city and describe
the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are
numerous and deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have
spoiled Venice would be to admit that Venice may be spoiled--an
admission pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty.
Fortunately one reacts against the Ruskinian contagion, and one
hour of the lagoon is worth a hundred pages of demoralised prose.
This queer late-coming prose of Mr. Ruskin (including the revised
and condensed issue of the <i>Stones of Venice</i>, only one
little volume of which has been published, or perhaps ever will
be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to
children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and
might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is,
however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just.
There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author
has spent his life in laying down the principles of form and
scolding people for departing from them; but it throbs and
flashes with the love of his subject--a love disconcerted and
abjured, but which has still much of the force of inspiration.
Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice, she has
had the good fortune to become the object of a passion to a man
of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has
made her the world's. There is no better reading at Venice
therefore, as I say, than Ruskin, for every true Venice-lover can
separate the wheat from the chaff. The narrow theological spirit,
the moralism <i>a tout propos</i>, the queer provincialities and
pruderies, are mere wild weeds in a mountain of flowers. One may
doubtless be very happy in Venice without reading at all--without
criticising or analysing or thinking a strenuous thought. It is
a city in which, I suspect, there is very little strenuous
thinking, and yet it is a city in which there must be almost as
much happiness as misery. The misery of Venice stands there for
all the world to see; it is part of the spectacle--a
thoroughgoing devotee of local colour might consistently say it
is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call
their own--little more than the bare privilege of leading their
lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are
decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their
opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life
presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in
this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better
terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain.
They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear
bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist
at an eternal <i>conversazione</i>. It is not easy to say that
one would have them other than they are, and it certainly would
make an immense difference should they be better fed. The number
of persons in Venice who evidently never have enough to eat is
painfully large; but it would be more painful if we did not
equally perceive that the rich Venetian temperament may bloom
upon a dog's allowance. Nature has been kind to it, and sunshine
and leisure and conversation and beautiful views form the greater
part of its sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a
successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a
handful of quick sensibility. The Italian people have at once the
good and the evil fortune to be conscious of few wants; so that
if the civilisation of a society is measured by the number of its
needs, as seems to be the common opinion to-day, it is to be
feared that the children of the lagoon would make but a poor
figure in a set of comparative tables. Not their misery,
doubtless, but the way they elude their misery, is what pleases
the sentimental tourist, who is gratified by the sight of a
beautiful race that lives by the aid of its imagination. The way
to enjoy Venice is to follow the example of these people and make
the most of simple pleasures. Almost all the pleasures of the
place are simple; this may be maintained even under the
imputation of ingenious paradox. There is no simpler pleasure
than looking at a fine Titian, unless it be looking at a fine
Tintoret or strolling into St. Mark's,--abominable the way one
falls into the habit,--and resting one's light-wearied eyes upon
the windowless gloom; or than floating in a gondola or than
hanging over a balcony or than taking one's coffee at Florian's.
It is of such superficial pastimes that a Venetian day is

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