Gore Vidal spins a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek tale of his search for supposedly noble relations in his book titled Vidal in Venice. The photos are by Tore Gill. In his preface, Gore Vidal introduces us to his Aunt Fenita, saying that she was the self-appointed emissary between the family in America and the family in Europe. She traveled, traveled, traveled.

On Aunt Fenita’s death, trunks were found filled with Brownie snapshots of houses, castles, stout ladies, bearded burghers, coats-of-arms, pressed flowers from gardens of relatives in Feldkirch, St. Gallen, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and a list of the doges of Venice--her greatest discovery and the family’s Rosetta Stone--of whom three were called Vidal or Vitale . . .

Along with all these photographs were postcard views of the church, the piazza and the Rio S. Vidal, a small canal that passes behind the Church of S. Vidal, which has been deconsecrated and is now a commercial art gallery. Rio S. Vidal is a small canal that carries its share of rubbish out to the Grand Canal. There’s a photo (in color) of this prime bit of real estate; it’s filled with trash. The piazza, Campo S. Vidal is a precinct run by dozens of Venetian Cats who are supported by the locals.

It seems that Aunt Fenita fueled her nephew up to do some searching on his own. After taking a few verbal swipes at some of his forefathers, Vidal is off to Europe to check out his heritage. Inspired by the backs of all those post cards, he drives through Switzerland and Austria where he finds out that . . . from 1300 to 1848, the Vidals were apothecaries--more like wholesale chemists--and Vidalhause still stands, a splendid 14th century arcaded building, currently occupied by the provincial tax office.

All very impressive, but Gore Vidal is good at puncturing people’s balloons, even his own. What follows doesn’t look too promising.

His great grandfather, Eugen Fidel Vidal married an heiress from Lucerne who was promptly and permanently disinherited. In 1848, he moved to Wisconsin and from there on out it seems that he failed at whatever he put his hand to. One day he disappeared leaving the bitter heiress to raise four children alone. He returned 21 years later only to have his wife slap him in the poorhouse where he eventually died.

Through his search, Vidal discovered that Eugen Fidel had been in Friuli. It’s a part of part of Italy that for centuries had been a province of Venice. When he discovered this bit of news he says he then knew ecstasy. The Vidals had gone south to be doges. Aunt Fenita (who no one took seriously), was vindicated. With this in mind Gore Vidal takes us along on a journey to the city that the Italian press still calls La Serenissima.

The Face of Venice:

Gore Vidal recommends seeing Venice at dawn before the tourists arrive. That’s when it’s at its most beautiful. He says, “Even on a snowy day in winter it is the most beautiful sight on earth. There is a wonderful photo of Venice after a snowfall that seems like it is all white and shades of gray, until you realize that there is color in the glass shades of the lamp posts.”

History records a rare event: the Grand Canal freezing and the Venetians celebrating by roasting pigs in the middle of the lagoon. Also in winter there is a chance of acqua alta (high water), which happens about 55 times each year when the tidal waters cover the lower areas of Venice with two or three feet of water. Vidal tells us that even this high water can be considered as part of seeing Venice.

I have some friends who were in Italy for six months. They spent the Millennium New Year in Florence and then went to Venice (on the Lido) for two months. I got weekly e-mails of their Journals (as did lots of other folks) and I remember the one about St. Mark’s being flooded. Of course they thought it was all great fun and wrote about walking on the wooden risers the Venetians had put up to keep the tourists out of the wet.

Back to the book. We are told that the majority of tourists anywhere in Italy are Italians, and are “day-trippers.” There are whole families of parishioners led by parish priests, and entire classrooms of rowdy kids who are just glad to be anywhere but in school. Hordes of Bavarian peasants arrive at dawn with their lunches and wine, only to return to their farms by the next daybreak. Vidal says, “After writing some post cards, and maybe buying a gondola-shaped ashtray, all these day-trippers leave behind them are a few lira and a pile of rubbish.”

Vidal quotes Mary McCarthy in “Venice Observed,” where she says, “Nothing can be said here (including this statement) that has not been said before.” He calls Venice the most beautiful cliché on earth, and adds: “When you go to Venice for the first time, unlace yourselves from your own clichés.”

In The Beginning:

We learn thorough pictures and text how this watery city got its start some one thousand, five hundred and sixty-three years ago (at the time of the writing). The inhabitants of the mainland moved to the mud flats in the lagoon to escape the barbarian tribes that were on the move. Initially, about 100 souls settled on Torcello, and built a cathedral filled with mosaics. The community swelled to 20,000 and they also cornered the market on the salt trade and made a fortune. Now Torcello is back full circle to about 100 people.

Some of the residents moved to the Rivo Alto, which means high embankment. The name became Rialto and the original Venetians drove millions of wooden pilings into the mud and clay of the lagoon to create Venice as we now know it. They even filled in smaller canals along the way. There is an amazing photo of a 17th century painting of a map of Venice that shows the basin of St. Marks surrounded by an armada of Venetian galley’s and black gondolas. Vidal tells us somewhere along the line that all gondolas were decreed to be painted black--just like Henry Ford’s Model T’s.

The Birth of an Empire

A city the size of New York’s Central Park overwhelmed Constantinople, went on to acquire Crete, the Cyclades and the Peloponnese. They stole most of their relics including the corpse of St. Mark who they smuggled into Venice packed in a crate of pork. The Arabs wouldn’t go near it. Clever guys! There’s a nice bit of information about where Blackamoors came from and the tale of a formidable Englishwoman who faced down the current Doge after an insult, got an apology and returned to England with a gondola and her very own (live) Blackamoor.

There’s also a story about Bartolomeo Colleoni, a mercenary warrior, who beat down the attack of King Charles VII. As Colleoni lay dying he left a sizable sum to Venice so they could erect a large public equestrian statue of him in front of St. Mark’s. The state confiscated all of his assets and decided to only spend one tenth of the amount he left them. What resulted was a statue by Verrocchio (da Vinci’s teacher), which was placed in front of the Scuola of St. Mark’s where it still stands today. The story continues with some information on his coglioni, of which Colleoni boasted three. Leave it GV to find that out.

The Mercantile City and Its People

“From the first salt merchants to the empire builders, the Venetian nobles, like their American counterparts, based their wealth and glory on trade.” Vidal says they never wanted an empire, they just wanted to make money. The Rialto was where the money was kept, and there is a picture of a painting by Gabriele Bella that shows Venice’s second public bank with swarms of Venetians milling about. The same area is now a fruit and vegetable market. Bella wasn’t one of Venice’s finest artists, but his views are valuable for the way they show Venetian life. His small canvases of political life show you where the power was.

Our next lesson is one on how the Doge of Venice, after being selected by an extremely lengthy process (quoted from Mary McCarthy’s book because he thought she said it well enough), would go out on the sea in a splendid barge and throw in a gold wedding ring saying, “We wed you O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion.”

Today the mayor just tosses in a floral wreath. The doge may have been called Most Serene Prince, while all others were called noblemen, but as only Gore Vidal can, he adds the ultimate b*tchy comment: “The large number of today’s Venetian counts and countesses were created during the Austrian occupation . . . or, more sensibly, by themselves.”

The Doges were the guys that Gore Vidal was hoping to be related to. I think he changed his tune when he found out that the early ones had no personal powers and “the only gifts he could accept were items like rose water and balms.” Many of them were blinded or killed. The later ones were encouraged to die of old age.

Along the GV discovered that not only were there NO noble Vidal families listed in The Book of Gold, but that the three doges he thought he was related to had a first name, not a last name of Vidal. He tells us, however, that the Vidals are very well represented in the Venetian telephone directory and by Vidal Soap--the Lifebouy of Italy. He says that six centuries of pharmaceuticals have been distilled into a cake of pine-scented soap!

the Turning of the Tide is all about politics and poker. You know how GV loves politics; he ran for Congress in 1960. If he had been elected he would have shaken up more than a few people. He gets some nasty licks in about Ronnie Reagan and the CIA and moves on to Venice’s Three Inquisitors who operated as heads of both intelligence and counter-intelligence. They had a codebook designed, which allowed them to send messages back and forth from every corner of Europe and Asia.

About this time the current Doge closed Venice’s 150-year-old red light district. Some of these women had become educated and preferred the title courtesan to whôre.

When an older member of the senate visited one of the ladies and let some state secrets slip out, the ladies squealed on him and his body was found hanging in front of the doge’s palace. To continue on in the same vein of fun and games in Venice, we are told about a scandal involving a Franciscan friar who got fifteen Noble Nunnes (each) with child--and, all in one year, yet. After much fuss and lying by the NN’s to protect the innocent, the convent doors were closed.

Like Florence, Venice had a letter-box where anonymous denunciations could be dropped. There is a picture of The Lion’s Mouth box in the book. It’s still in use, but only to Venetians. The inscription urges squealing on citizens who don’t report their full incomes. Wish we had one of those in the States! The back cover has a photo of Vidal sitting in the doge’s chair. Indeed!

Sultan Mehmet appeared on the scene and Venice quickly lost Constantinople, Nauplia, Naxsos, the Cyclades and Cyprus. When Crete, Venice’s last stronghold, fell in 1669, the Venetian Empire was ended. Vidal says, “What had been acquired and held through cunning and resourcefulness was lost, in the end, to brute force and Islam.”

We go on through the Flowering of the Arts with tributes to the Villa Barbaro, designed by Andrea Paladio. There are photographs of every great painting in every church and palace imaginable. Venice had begun to turn inward and the plague of 1630 didn’t help. The desperate citizens decided to appease the Madonna with a new church. The plague ended during the fall of 1631 and a procession over a bridge og gondolas made its way to where S. Maria della Salute was being built. There is a wonderful painting of this event.

Coryate in Seventeenth Century Venice:

This chapter is about one Thomas Coryate, a Londoner, who Vidal says must have been one of the world’s first “crazed” tourists. After three years and 2,000 miles, TC wrote a book of his impressions (they were mostly of Venice), that he had problems getting published. Tom wrote about the doge’s new prison (he liked it) and took a dim view of Venetian gentlemen doing their own shopping in the public market. He fussed about the gondoliers hijacking foreign male passengers and taking them to see courtesans. He eventually made the trip himself--on foot--and Gore Vidal has great fun making fun of Tom through the rest of the chapter.

Carnival and Decline:

By the 18th century gambling filled Venice. There were private clubs like The Ridotto, the ‘reduced quarters’ where the family of the Palazzo Dondolo lived during the winter. There is a wonderful photograph of the rooms, which today are a theater. Vidal says that the Venetians have always been secretive about themselves and only one person told all. That person was Giacomo Casanova, who wrote Venice’s only proper, improper memoir. Vidal calls him far too much of an enlightened thinker for Venice.

Vidal says that moralists attributed Venice’s collapse to wantonness. His comment is “Who knows.” He goes on to compare America’s Declaration of Independence with the Venetian idea of freedom and goings on. He kind of lost me there for a bit, but there’s more about Casanova, the Roman Catholic Church, freemasonry and the Risorgimento that stripped the pope of his temporal rule over Rome and unified Italy.

We get filled in on Carnival, which once lasted for just three weeks before Lent, and was now proposed that it go on for six months of the year. “Shocked” Europeans, if they could beg, borrow or steal the money, headed straight for Venice to join in on the fun. By the 18th century Carnem levare was almost a year-‘round event. We are told that Carnival was formed from young men’s social clubs called Compagnie do Calza (the Stocking Companions). These guys got bored with stockings and stared having masked balls on the day before Ash Wednesday. The fun was on.

Today, Venetians and pseudo Venetians again say goodbye to the flesh for three weeks, much to the joy of the Ministry of Tourism. They celebrate with music, dancing, masks and costumes. The idea is to see but not be seen, to suspect but not to know. There’s a photo of a herd of Venetians in costume crossing one of the bridges. It must have been a rainy day for they all have matching umbrellas. Theoretically anything goes! My friends said they had a blast.

Venice and the Romantics:

The city became a part of Austria at the beginning of the 1800s. Almost every starry-eyed romantic came to make the most of Venice. Vidal says, “Venice was always closer to Vienna than Rome.” Among the famous visitors, Henry James, Robert Browning, John Singer Sargent and Claude Monet all frequented the rooms of the Palazzo Barbaro.

Across the canal Richard Wagner worked on his opera Tristan and Isolde. He even brought his own piano and his own bed from Deutschland. His father-in-law, Franz List popped in for a visit. Georges Sand arrived with a lover who told her he didn’t love her and threw himself off the balcony into the Grand Canal. She wrote a novel about it. ‘Nuff said?

The City Today:

“Venice is the Empress of European Tourism,” so says Gore Vidal, who can certainly turn a phrase or two of his own. He says there are only 83,000 Venetians residing in the historic city today (that’s 1985). The smaller the place the bigger the crowd, and the tourists prove it. “Few are the Venetian families of any class who do not benefit directly or indirectly from the invasion of tourists.” The hotel keepers devise ways of turning two single rooms into three.

In this final chapter we get a lot of information on gondolas and rowing. Fathers taught sons, generation after generation. Once there were 10,000 gondolas in Venice. Today there are about 350 and many are in dry dock for repairs. A fully fitted gondola with all the accessories costs between 12,000 and 15,000 dollars. My friends met a gondolier who ended up being their friend and confidant. They were invited to meet his parents and he said he doesn’t think he will be rowing much longer. He wants to come to America.

Each spring there is the volga Longa, or Long Row. It’s a 25-mile race around Venice’s main island, and it’s a reminder of who the Venetians once were. Anyone who wants to take part can do so. Five grey-haired ladies from Bavaria arrive to participate every year. There is a photograph of the Grand Canal filled with gondolas of all sizes and colors. We are told that the motor boats (water taxis) have been blamed for causing the waves, which cause the corrosion of many building’s foundations. At one point divers went to look at the pilings and reported they resembled Swiss cheese.

The book’s photographer is given a whole page which he calls Behind the Camera. Tore Gill says, “The challenge to obtain good photographs faced with batteries of tourist cameras going off all around you, requires a calm philosophy--and a better camera.” He used a Pentax 6cm X 7cm. He adds, “the freedom this can give you helps predict the importance of the subject before you.” I know from nuthin’ about cameras, but the pictures are beautiful. He did a superb job.

Gore Vidal’s words are brilliant. They always are! I got the feeling that what I was reading were the words that Gore Vidal had spoken during a two-hour documentary on Venice. He only referred to this documentary twice . . . specifically, his sinking up to his knees in a mud flat near the island of Torcello. Anyone remember seeing this on the tube about 1984-85? I sure don’t.

This book was originally published in 1985 and is currently out of print. If you want a look, you could check your local library for a copy. After that, if you can’t live without one you might try alibris.com, a site for hard to find books. (Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 0-671-60691-3).

The following review was an entry in the epinions.com Venetian Blinds Write-Off hosted by the now departed mshawpyle (at least he was the last time I checked).

The participants were: caconti; ed_grover; erik_kosberg; frazzledspice; lovebygod7; mshawpyle; penguinlady; and vollmann. In the OLD days there was an Epinions Write-Off link on the Books Category page. Now you will have to look through the member pages to find these reviews.



Recommended: Yes