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Table of Contents

Material from which to construct a history of Goldoni’s life and works—reasons why his autobiography is not sincere—Goldoni had nothing to conceal—is a typical Venetian citizen of his time—importance of the middle class in Venice—the Venetian merchant petted and protected—Venetian amusements shared by all the people—Venice well governed and orderly—Venetian religion a ceremonial and without faith—Goldoni family citizens of Modena—Carlo Alessio, Goldoni’s grandfather, settles in Venice—his hospitality and extravagance—Goldoni born in Venice in 1707—his father Giulio, a physician, mother of good family—Goldoni’s estimate of his father and mother—Giampaolo, his brother, born in 1712—Carlo mother’s pet—happy home life—at eleven he composes his first comedy—obedience and “manners” Italian ideal of education—schools were clerical—Carlo goes to school in Perugia—acts female rôle in Gigli’s play, Sorellina di Don Pilone—his family leaves Perugia for Chioggia 1720—he leaves Rimini for Chioggia with theatrical troupe—enters Ghisleri College at Pavia 1722—is expelled—his travels—his relations with women inside and outside theatre—immorality of Venetian convents—Goldoni studies law at Modena—enters Chancellery of Chioggia—father dies—admitted to Venetian Bar 1732—is not successful as lawyer.

N the two volumes of his Memoirs, in the prefaces to his plays, in many short poems, and in a few letters, Goldoni has provided much material from which to construct a history of his life and works. This fragmentary material, however, affords only a reticent portrayal of his character. Why did a man of Goldoni’s expansive nature, having nothing to conceal, no reason to screen or disguise himself, leave an incomplete account of his life and a purposely blurred and distorted picture of the events and persons that were a part of it? A general and a personal reason account for this inaccuracy.

Goldoni belonged to a society that worshipped decorum, that blindly obeyed the code of politeness, that abolished the last remnant of sincerity, and that stifled all self-revelation and real feeling. A typical Venetian of his time, he reverenced propriety; he could not, even if he tried, frankly reveal his whole mind, either about himself or about others. Violent expostulation, a display of his real feelings, would have seemed to him undignified.

Also, he was a playwright, which means that he had learned the art of making up a personage, and had caught the knack of presenting it under the best light in the best pose. He knew what stage optics require—shortening of lines, contrast of colours—to set a personage in appropriate relief. He knew how a player should paint his face, what brilliant clothes he should wear, how he should exaggerate his gesture and force his voice, how omit details and emphasise his intonation, so as to produce the desired effect on the audience. The multiple demands of the footlights have no better interpreter than Goldoni.

When he writes about himself he instinctively applies the technique of his art. Seeing himself on the world stage as an actor, he says only that which fits with the general outline and colouring of the personage, such as it is in his mind, such as he wants people to see it. And because he is very clever, because he has mastered all the secrets of his profession, he succeeds in his performance. His autobiography is not a portrait, then, but an interpretation. He sees himself under an artificial aspect, and he paints himself according to a special method which may be called truth, adapted to suit a fixed plan. The portrait has lost in absolute sincerity, but it has gained in power and relief. The elements composing it are all true to life; it is the artistic arrangement, the general outline, the disposition of lights and shades, the choice of attitude, that give it a special character.

Not that Goldoni ever aimed at exalting his own personality. He is delightfully free from petty ambition. Unlike every other writer of Memoirs of his time, he neither attacks other people nor defends himself. He merely puts himself upon the stage in the same manner and with the same technique which he used for depicting so many others.

This instinctive preoccupation appears not only in the Prefaces and the Memoirs, but even in the Letters that were never meant for publication. The Prefaces were written currenti calamo, in order to supply some explanation to the volume containing plays already performed. He afterward used them as memoranda for the painful compilation of the two volumes, in French, of his Memoirs, published by subscription in his old age. No wonder, then, if the anecdotical material when compared with reality appears inaccurate, and evidently coloured to suit his readers, and to supply padding for his book. There is the same mental attitude, the same unconscious pose in the letters he wrote to his friends and patrons.

The character of himself which Goldoni has thus composed is singularly attractive. It beams with smiles, glows with spontaneous carelessness; it possesses the charm of persisting youth and unruffled cheerfulness which has won the sympathy of readers for almost two centuries.

Yet the genuine Goldoni, when stripped of the thin veil of semi-confessions and more or less inaccurate anecdotes, appears even more lovable and more honourable, in its prosaic simplicity. His gain in human reality exceeds his loss in artificial grace; though less debonaire he is more manly. His individuality acquires greater consistency, yet he remains the representative of a class and of an epoch. He is the typical Venetian citizen in the first half of the eighteenth century.

A simple bourgeois he is by birth, and a bourgeois he remains through all the vicissitudes of his life, in close communion with the middle class of which he writes with loving comprehension. Notwithstanding many travels and a long exile, he remains at heart and in spirit Venetian.

An ignored world, this Venetian middle class. A little world which foreign travellers disdained, which contemporary Italians disregarded, but which modern critics eagerly investigate, searching for the origin of that, otherwise, unaccountable revival of the nation and its civilisation.

The splendour and the magnificence of Venice were solidly grounded on the extensive trade of a great body of merchants, pioneers of commerce abroad, purveyors of costly goods at home. The autocratic rule of the State as well as traditional reverence for the patrician caste, confined the middle class within the rank long since assigned to them, even while none of their activities, their spirited enterprises, lacked encouragement. No European nation has more forcibly conserved the class distinction, none has more constantly upheld an aristocratic government; yet in no other European nation were relations between the different classes more cordial or the sense of social solidarity more pronounced.

Only superficial or prejudiced foreign visitors, misunderstanding the magniloquent spagnolism of certain complimentary formulas, have interpreted as servility that which was only an exaggeration of politeness, an inveterate inclination to ceremonious rites.

For centuries, the Venetian merchant, giving support, providing wealth for the State, had acquired consciousness of his own power and importance; it was not certainly in the eighteenth century, when the oldest and largest patrician estates were threatened with ruin, when the Senate made money by offering for sale titles and honours, till then reserved to birth and rank, it was not then, certainly, that the merchant would surrender any of his well-earned pride. The pioneers who carried the winged lion of Saint Mark to the distant shores of the Adriatic, to the farther coasts of the East, begot generations of proud descendants whom the Senate honoured and, in the first twilight of decadence, even cajoled and flattered in many ways. Almost every week saw some new decree issued for the protection of trade, for the defence of Venetian rights of commerce, for the safety of ships, or the increase of customs taxes, in the vain hope of averting foreign competition and political decline; but also with the immediate purpose of pleasing the commercial class.

The senatorial government, in its dotage, was anxious to bestow a maximum of order, comfort, and support on its subjects. Every branch of public service, education, assistance, justice, amusement was masterfully ordained in Venice; yet the rulers were constantly reforming, perfecting things.

Pompeo Molmenti’s erudite and patient reconstruction of Venetian Life and Customs provides exhaustive information on the matter. The number and the accuracy of regulations, the frequent correction and revision of decrees, testify to the good will of that government which romanticism has painted so ominously black. If wisdom and good government could save a nation from the decadence and oppression to which geographical conditions and foreign competition fatally doomed her, Venice would have prospered under the government of an illuminated patriciate, for the greater benefit of the whole people.

Impending ruin could not be averted by the foresight of any Council. It was not possible for the Venetian Senate to save the commonwealth. Unable to grapple with the distant causes of decay the Venetian Senate fought against the symptoms of the incurable disease. Nor did they perceive the hidden danger of dissolution then threatening almost every European government. Their policy was to ensure public peace by granting privileges, by encouraging every class and especially the industrious middle class.

Thus protected and petted the Venetian merchant, as blind as his rulers, basked in the sunlight of favour, and rejoiced in the many advantages offered by a rule so paternal yet so indulgent. Trade, indeed, was slackening; but banking was increasingly remunerative, while magistrates condoned usury, that last resource of an aristocracy in distress which upheld many a patrician house.

The Church, the Law, the Civil Service offered brilliant opportunities which universal favouritism encouraged, promising success to all who knew how to push their way. Schools of commerce and navigation, public lectures on almost every branch of learning, lent a false appearance of modernity and enlightened responsibility to the government. In fact it was not so. It was simply the continuance of ancient and adequate laws; it was the nation’s evolution, as yet untrammelled by foreign interference; it was the normal growth of all the civic virtues fostered by peace and prosperity; it was the development of a sense of solidarity promoted by a good government careful of every class of citizens.

There were other capitals in Europe which rivalled Venice in magnificence, but no other city in the world equalled it in gaiety. In other cities pleasure was the privilege of a few; in Whitehall or at Versailles the courtiers alone enjoyed the prerogative of gaiety and dissipation; in Venice all the people were included in the perpetual round of public festivities. Everyone could claim a place in the sunshine of State ceremonies, everyone could hold a rôle in the grand pageantry, and everyone contributing to the general effect partook both of the actor’s and of the spectator’s enjoyment.

It was an endless chain which linked, into a consistent whole, this multifarious crowd. The patrician in his scarlet robe who filled the principal place was, in the eyes of many, a reliable protector or patron under whose wing they expected to find a refuge, in case of need, with whose help they hoped to make their way in the career of public employment. It was a perpetual exchange between the merchants and their noble-born patrons. The former needed protection, the latter needed votes for election to public offices, and ready money to support the splendour of their position. On public occasions, in the days of pomp and pleasure, they spontaneously joined in perfect concord.

Visitors who at that time noted the undisturbed order presiding over crowded meetings, “not more than three officers being on duty”; the unanimity of feelings that “transformed the assembled crowd into one family,” did not realise that the fundamental cause of this cordiality was the bond of reciprocal assistance and equality in the pursuit of pleasure—the only equality which, at the time, was claimed by the people.

In Venice, the middle class enjoyed, if possible, a larger share of amusements than the nobility. If the patricians held the first places in public solemnities, they were merely spectators in a larger number of festivities, celebrated by the humbler classes of citizens—regattas and fairs, processions and dances.

If a few doors were closed to the plebeian in his own garb, even those opened wide before him when he wore a mask and a tabarro.^[17] As good coffee was sipped in popular bottaghe, as good wine was drunk in the malvasie, as good jokes cracked, as hearty fun enjoyed, in the campiello as in the palazzi. Venice was bountifully provided with luxuries unknown to other cities,—easy communications, well-lit streets, hygienic conditions, and police regulations which gave to this Mecca of pleasure-seekers a security and a charm recognised by all visitors. The special charm of Venetian life was its habitual mirth. Such a happy disposition of the mind was both cause and effect of the customs. Venetians were cheerful because they were well governed; and their government was good because the national temper was so happily inclined. All contemporaries, every document, every tradition, and Goldoni, most distinctly confirm this fact.

An atmosphere of peace and serenity pervaded the quiet corner of tormented Europe where Goldoni was born. People lived there in the contentment due to equipoise between aspirations and possibilities. That was the unique and fugitive moment in which a nation’s ideals fitted exactly with the material conditions of life. It can never come but once in the life of a nation, and the Venetians were then enjoying it. They ensured their peace of mind by obeying blindly, and never indulging in speculations.

A narrow and strict code of morals, stringent regulations for all social and family relations, rules of propriety established on the rock of tradition, refinement of manners, elaborated through centuries of politeness and courtesy, all combined to form this atmosphere of quiet which the Church carefully forbore to trouble by any uncalled-for rigor.

In Venice the Church vied in leniency with public opinion, moulding her code of laws on the same pattern of numerous, precise rules for ceremonial worship and almost unlimited indulgence in regard to faith. Just as social life ran smoothly along the lines of many petty duties and exact rules of etiquette, leading strings for timid worldlings, so the religious life of Venetians was ruled by an infinity of external practices, adapted to every private or public occasion, forming a comfortably padded pillow for timorous consciences and piously inclined souls.

For the average middle-class man or woman who blindly followed both the rules of worldly etiquette, sanctified by tradition, and the religious observance, dictated by complacent clergy, what greater source of satisfaction, what greater promoter of quiet, than this persuasion of duty accomplished in the total absence of disquieting doubts?

Conscience, cradled in a bed of formalism, ignored the torment of questioning articles of faith; ignored the sting of controversy, the bitterness of doubt; moreover, in every occurrence, in family or business relations, in social meetings as in private transactions, a formulary of polite prescriptions was always there, handed down by generations of honoured forefathers, ripened into perfection by uninterrupted appliance.

The people who accepted these two guides, and obeyed the minutely detailed unvarying rules of civil and religious conduct, without ever trying to brush aside their ordinances of etiquette and custom that involved their whole life, were, in a measure, a nation of overgrown children. Some of the puerile grace of childhood outlived in the sweetness of manner, in the soft, lisping dialect, in the constant mirth, which characterised the Venetian middle class in early 1700, when Carlo Goldoni’s birth enriched it with the addition of a new member.

The patronymic name being spelled Guldoni in some ancient registers, has suggested an improbable, distant Teutonic origin, but not the slightest alien ethnical trait can be found in Goldoni’s figure or face; not the faintest shade of foreign character can be discovered in his psychology; he incarnated a purely Venetian spirit in a typically Italian body.

The Goldoni family was settled in Modena, enjoying an official and comfortable position, when our author’s grandfather, Carlo Alessio (or Alessandro) decided to transfer himself to Venice, attracted there by an instinctive affinity. No man born and bred in the laguna was ever more Venetian in temper, taste, spirit, and character than this Modenese.

The bigotry, the deadly seriousness of his native Modena jarred with Carlo Alessio’s sunny nature and extravagant tendencies. Venice offered a more fitting theatre for his aptitudes, more congenial conditions for the expansion of his natural gifts. His ambition, guided by tact, served by grace of manner and savoir vivre, his sociable and artistic inclinations, carried him through a prosperous career of public charges, and landed him safe in a second marriage and useful connections, so that he was able to lead a life of brilliancy and pleasure until his persistent good luck brought him to a timely death at the moment when the effects of his extravagance threatened his position.

His office in the court of “Dei Savi del Commercio”^[18] was no sinecure. To this special court of justice resorted all doubtful cases between foreign merchants. A delicate and most important jurisdiction, in the international mart which Venice then was. The Greek, the Turk, the Oriental, the Jew, all relied on obtaining fair judgment from the people whose rallying cry was “Pane in Piazza, Giustizia a Palazzo” (Bread in the market and justice in the palace).

It must be inferred that Carlo Alessio Goldoni honourably fulfilled the duties of his office, since he remained in charge until his death, yet, according to his grandson’s narrative, he found sufficient leisure for squandering his money, living according to the standard of the times, when the pursuit of pleasure was the supreme ideal of Venetians.

Carlo Alessio’s notion of hospitality included a large house and dinner parties, in his city dwelling in Cà Cent anni as well as in his villa on the banks of the Sile. To keep up appearances, to remain on parade, to uphold one’s rank and decorum, such was the supreme ambition of every Venetian. However large or small the world, the set, the coterie he belonged to, the object was the same, and, for its sake, Venetians endured everything. They curtailed even necessary expenses, restrained their natural inclinations, checked their passions and desires, disciplined themselves by a self-denial that, turned to a higher purpose, would have been heroism. Vanity did duty for sterner qualities and smothered more dangerous vices.

Foreigners, like the semi-anonymous author of l’Espion Chinois, noted this mania without suspecting that some proportion of good was mixed with the evil effects of vanity. A constant preoccupation about other people’s opinion, an unflagging desire of approval, are not always incentives to wrong-doing; occasionally they prevent or restrain it.

Goldoni, himself inclined to this social tendency, dwells with complacency on these acts of his grandfather. “He was a fine gentleman, but he lacked economy. He was fond of pleasure and adopted the manners of Venice.” He further tells how the villa on the Sile was always crowded by visitors “from every part of the country”; how the greater lords of the neighbourhood were jealous of the splendid entertainments given at this princely villa, and how they endeavoured to drive Carlo Alessio out of the place, and how he managed to undermine their plans, by obtaining further grants and further authority from the Duke of Carrara, his patron and landlord.

Goldoni carefully mentions that his grandfather used to have theatrical performances by “the best artists of the time.” He further adds that he was born during this time of gaiety and extravagance, hence that he was bound to be inclined toward gaiety and extravagance. “Could I help liking the theatre? Could I help being gay?”

The picture is pretty. As a preface to a first volume of plays it was an amusing scene; in his Memoirs he makes it an interesting first chapter, but—it is only a fib, a first lapse into that preconceived plan which the writer means to keep up all through his Memoirs. He strikes, even from the first pages, the note of gaiety and carelessness and the predestination to the theatre which he persuades himself, and would persuade his readers, to have been there from the first.

Carlo Goldoni was not born in the splendid dwelling of his spendthrift grandfather; he came into this world four years after this jolly ancestor had left it. The official death certificate of Carlo Alessio dated 1703, the baptismal certificate of Carlo dated 1707, destroy the pretty scaffolding, and betray the hereditary megalomania transmitted from grandfather to grandson. Did Goldoni mistake for early reminiscences that which he heard from family stories, or did he embellish his narrative with purely literary intent?

Anyhow, the death of Carlo Alessio did mark a change in the tide of family affairs. Under the patriarchal system which ruled Venetian families the sudden disappearance of the chief generally heralded much unexpected havoc. Carlo Alessio had sadly neglected to provide for his son Giulio’s future career, the boy’s upbringing having been entirely entrusted to a stepmother. His education consisted of the usual smattering of classics that led to nothing in particular. Giulio Goldoni was poorly prepared to fight life’s battle. His father, exerting the authority of the paterfamilias, disposed of his son; or, according to the adopted term, gli diede uno stato (lui donna un état) by choosing a wife for him.

Margherita Salvioni possessed the virtues and merits which would please a father-in-law. It is not evident that she possessed the charms that would ensure the love and the fidelity of a young husband; to Carlo Alessio that was a superfluity. Margherita Salvioni came of a good family, distantly related to the Goldonis she brought a comfortable dot, secured influential connections, was pious, modest, and thrifty. What more could a father-in-law require?

The very youthful bridegroom—Giulio was twenty at his father’s death—was probably not asked for his opinion, else he might have objected to a wife who was seven years his senior, who was lame, and who, instead of sharing his own sociable disposition, preferred church-going, convent-visiting, and clerical friends.

Giulio did not succeed his father in the office of notary or secretary at the Council of Commerce. “A Greek more clever got the place,” says Goldoni. “My father did not like to dwell on painful thoughts; he decided to start on a trip to Rome as a diversion.” Here Goldoni alters facts and wrongs his father. Giulio Goldoni did not leave immediately for Rome. He first went to Modena, and did his utmost to realise the remainder of his patrimonial estate and settle other financial matters. Then when he found it necessary to make his own destiny he went to Rome, and started on a course of medical studies. When Goldoni writes, “My father left home for a few months and remained away four years,” he throws discredit on that which was a wise and manly resolution.

These must have been four years of hard study, since Giulio Goldoni obtained his medical doctorate and won the esteem of famous Doctor Lancisi, the physician of Pope Clement XI, who favoured him with his patronage. Inasmuch as, like many another Venetian husband, Doctor Goldoni might, without offending public opinion, have lived quietly at home on his wife’s income, but preferred instead the manlier and more difficult way of earning his own living by pursuing a course that was neither smooth nor common, his son might have introduced Doctor Giulio with an interpretation of his departure better responding to its aims and motives.

“My father was, perhaps, a good doctor; he certainly was a very amiable man of the world. To the pleasant ways of his countrymen he joined the refinement of the polite circles wherein he always moved.”

If he did not always cure his patients of their real illness, he never failed to cure them of imaginary ones. Doctor Giulio wisely forbore to undertake difficult cases; he was neither quack nor humbug. He possessed tact and great power of pleasing. Neither parasite nor toady, a gifted conversationalist, he conciliated favour without being a dependent. No gambler but a fair player, useful for organising the customary card tables, but even more indispensable for the staging of theatricals, he possessed that common sense and understanding of things and men which smoothed his own way and helped him to direct wisely his son’s affairs.

It was clever of him to move from one city to another when he realised that the first bloom of his fame was fading. Whenever a colleague attacked him, whenever a powerful patron showed signs of weariness, Doctor Giulio lifted his tent, and in some new environment again began the cycle—a warm welcome at some great man’s house, a pleasant season of professional and social work, then another timely departure.

What capacity Giulio Goldoni might have developed for the education of his son was lessened by these frequent absences. Then Doctor Goldoni lacked the prestige, the self-assertion which strengthened the authority of his own father, who was sure he was always right and permitted neither opposition nor contradiction; while Giulio was in advance of his time, allowing his wife or his son to discuss his commands. On the whole he proved a good father, according to unambitious standards. He promoted his son’s interests, got him out of scrapes, obtained for him the patronage of powerful men, delivered appropriate lectures about the ways of the world and the peril of imprudence, and he also set him an example of self-respect, of honesty, and of amiability.

Goldoni has better loved and better understood his mother. “My mother gave me birth almost without suffering, and always loved me the better for that.” A somewhat puerile explanation to account for a lifelong affinity of temperament, a communion of souls.

Behind the veil of tenderness which haloes Goldoni’s picture of his mother, Margherita Salvioni appears fairly representative of her time and of her class. She was the submissive stay-at-home wife who ignored her husband’s wanderings, forbore from recriminating, and was ever willing to assist in rebuilding the family nest, in order to welcome back its prodigal master. Rather pretty, though her complexion was dark, graceful in spite of her lameness, she possessed the tact and common sense, the easy flow of talk, the prompt repartee typical of Venetian women. Without ever asserting herself, she managed to have her way in most things.

The same narrow piety which encouraged the visits of clerical friends, and devoted her leisure hours to visiting the convent parlatorios, also prejudiced her against her second son Giampaolo for his refusal to take holy orders.

Giampaolo, the undesired offspring of hard times, the latecomer whose boisterous nature jarred with her own prudish notions, contrasted with Carlino’s pretty manners, with his father’s refinement, was first sent out to nurse in the country; afterward to a school of friars, as a preparation for monastic life. Giampaolo developed a rebel disposition, a spirit of adventure that found, later, its vent in a military career, and caused much trouble to himself and to his family.

That tenderness and care which she stinted to her second son, Margherita Goldoni lavished on her first born, on her Carlino. She was proud of his precocious wit, and rejoiced in his gentle disposition which welcomed her fondling and petting. On her husband’s departure, Signora Goldoni kept house with her maiden sister on their small joint incomes. “She had only me to care for; she wished to bring me up under her eyes. I was a quiet, good-tempered boy; when only four years old I could write and read. I learned my catechism by heart, and I was given a tutor.”

Thus while Giampaolo in exile grew up a stranger to his own mother, Carlino, “le bijou de la famille,” was brought up in his mother’s lap, nestled in more comfort and tenderness than ever he could have enjoyed in the crowded, sumptuous villa or city palace of more prosperous days.

To this great and rare boon of a happy childhood, Goldoni owes the great and rare privilege of a sunny nature, of that moral and physical health, that perfect balance of mind and body, ripening in self-confidence and cheerful courage. Home life was delightfully quiet and pleasant between the two ladies, who stinted their own expenses in order to provide largely for the little darling’s education. A quiet but not a lonely home. Signora Goldoni being a thorough Venetian admitted many friends to her conversazioni. Of course the child was made much of by visitors, who wished to please the mistress of the house; of course Venetian politeness praised his progress.

Goldoni dwells on this first childish success; he inaccurately records a comedy composed by him, at some uncertain date, but not, certainly, at the unripe age of eight as he says. More probably at eleven, the age suggested by his biographers.

He makes a pretty picture of the admiring group centring round his own childish person; a nurse being the first confidant, his aunt laughing, his tutor wisely pronouncing that the composition showed more wit than the age of the writer justified. Then in comes a godfather, “richer in money than in learning,” who pretends that he cannot be persuaded of the boy’s authorship; whereupon the tutor grows angry and the quarrel is warming up when a third personage—he is an abbot—comes in and settles the question. An areopagus of three, a magistrate, a tutor, and an abbot, disputing over the first paper Goldoni darkened with penmanship, his mother sitting with a smile of exultation and listening to the discussion. Is it not a pretty picture of Venetian customs? It was a happy idea to use this subject for the engraving prefacing the first volume of plays. We hope it was true. Such a system of education threatened to turn the boy into that absurdity, a youthful prodigy, when his father sent for him.

Nothing is more significant of a nation’s degree of civilisation than its ideal of education. In 1700, in the Italy morselled into many States, still more divided by different traditions, tendencies, customs, and even languages, a few common traits remained as tokens of past unity, as links for future reunion. Among the strongest and most persistent of these links was the ideal of education, the plan of studies. From childhood to the tardy emancipation of youth, from the grammar school to the university degree, the line was unbroken.

The keystone of this system was obedience. His parents first, his teachers afterward, his confessor always, were expected to guide the boy’s every step. This was not an abstract theory, but a fairly working social and familiar system. The child was to imitate the example of the other members of the family in their allegiance to the chief of the household. Naturally, especially in Venice, this allegiance was often infringed in practice, but appearances were safe, at least as far as the child could see them.

Children were kept out of the way, not for lack of love, but because there was little time for the privacy of home life. Habits of inveterate dissimulation, of exaggerated politeness, tinged with a mannerism that checked the free expansion of a child’s spirits, kept him in great respect of his elders. The dogma of familial hierarchy was still inflexible, for the child.

Beyond this lesson of obedience the child was taught “manners,” how to behave himself, how to speak and move about with elegance and grace according to the infinite rules of deportment. The lesson began at home where, in every word, gesture, and look, he saw the same desire of pleasing, the same constant endeavour to avoid disagreements and make everything smooth for one’s self and for others. This standard of gentility was adopted by every class of citizens. All professed, and taught to the growing generations, the supreme virtue of old-fashioned gentilezza, untranslatable word or untranslatable idea, comprising much more than mere politeness and elegance, of a politeness that stretches even to the unspoken feeling; of modesty which applies to every word and look; a tact for smoothing angles, for restraining impertinence and malice; a determination never to annoy one’s fellow-creatures, and to amuse them, whenever opportunity offered.

Children were taught to practise this gentilezza long before they could realise its general purport or resent its limitations. In consideration of other people’s feelings, they were drilled to disguise every annoyance under a smile; they were instructed to speak no word, to make no movement, but those which could give pleasure to onlookers. Such an education paved the way to very agreeable social intercourse.

To Carlino Goldoni these teachings were imparted with the added sweetness of some extra petting, and much maternal devotion.

Like other Venetian ladies—perhaps even more than others—Signora Goldoni visited at the grates of convents. When Carlino attended her in this round of visits, he enjoyed an early opportunity for perfecting his manners, in these substitutes, and rivals, of drawing-rooms, amid the crowd of visitors, the prattle of pretty girls, whilst sweet-meats were handed round and music was performed. There he was taught the elegance of manners, the refinement of conversational wit, which enabled him, later, to visit at the grandest houses, to attend princely and royal courts, and always appear perfectly at ease.

So far and not farther, did the rôle of parents go in the education of their offspring. In aristocratic families, boys were entrusted to a tutor, generally an abbot, whose task it was to prepare them for school, by teaching them the first rudiments of Latin, whose situation in the household was something between the cavalier servente and the lackey.

Goldoni, like most boys of his social standing, was provided with tutors who taught him arithmetic, catechism, and Latin. Sooner or later every boy went to school, clerical schools generally, the Church having almost monopolised the so-called “humanities,” and controlling the universities. Under their direction, the classical curriculum narrowed to little more than the trivium and quadrivium of earlier ages, but, on the other hand, it gained in consistency and unity. Centuries of civilisation, of unbroken peace, of religious formalism, of but half-concealed scepticism and dissipation created a special atmosphere in the Venetian society; centuries of classical training and undiscussed empirism created the moral and intellectual atmosphere of the Venetian schools, as indeed of most Italian schools.

The strength of their system was chiefly due to its narrowness, to its exclusiveness, which smothered all contradiction. Moreover there was no break of continuity of the several stages of education. From the first stammering of Latin verbs to the ceremonious granting of university degrees, all was directed by the same spirit. What value such a course of studies had in the development of intellect, in the formation of character, it is not necessary to consider in Goldoni’s case, since his schooling was intermittent and he was such an indifferent pupil.

It is worth noting, in the much divided Italy of his time, that he could pass from one city to another, from one school to another, without any perplexing break, without finding any sudden change of direction. When he was eight years old, according to his Memoirs, or eleven, according to late biographers, Carlino was sent to school. He tells us that the play composed by him and sent to his father suggested to Doctor Giulio this extraordinary reflection: “Reckoning on arithmetical principles, he said that if nine years gave four carats of wit, eighteen years must give twelve, and so on in arithmetical progression, until a fine degree of perfection.” It is more likely that Doctor Goldoni being then in Perugia the medical adviser, or favoured protégé, of the Baglionis and the Antinoris—two of the greatest families of the city—he wanted his son to have a share in the advantages of his situation, and to get some better schooling than he could get at home. Carlino left home gaily, voyaged pleasantly to Rimini, then journeyed to Perugia, and finally entered the school directed by Dominican friars.

His first year at school was such as might be expected from a boy brought up by women and over-indulgent teachers. The youthful prodigy who boasted about the play he had written was chagrined that his comrades did their Latin exercises much better. Introduced as a pupil ripe for the higher form, he hardly managed to keep in the lower form. Instead of admiring him, as his teachers at home used to do, his comrades laughed at him. The school register for this year confirms this unlucky start, and also gives further evidence of Goldoni’s method of adapting truth, when he tells his own history. These records show that, at the end of the year, Goldoni was not promoted to the higher form, but that, with three other boys out of threescore, he was kept in the lower form.

Yet in a preface first, and afterward in his Memoirs, he tells this pretty story, which is consistent with Goldoni’s character. In the Memoirs he writes: “The end of the year was fast coming; we expected the Latin exercise which is called ‘of promotion,’ as it decides the passage to the upper form or retention in the lower form. I foresaw that the latter misfortune was likely to befall me. The day comes, the Regent dictates, the pupils write; everyone does his very best. I summon all my forces, I set before my mind’s eye my ambition, my honour, my parents’ wishes. I notice that my comrades are slyly eyeing me and laughing, facit indignati versum. I am pricked by shame and wrath; I read the theme, I feel my head cooling, my hand is steady, my memory in full activity. I am the first to finish the translation and to seal my paper. I give it to the Regent and depart well satisfied with myself.”

The translation was all right, and the author of it complimented and promoted. But it all happened one year later. Goldoni accomplished the feat which, at every future crisis of his career, he is able to repeat. At every decisive moment, whenever his pride or his ambition is roused, his sense of obligation is stirred or his anger kindled, Goldoni thus responds. Under the lash of his will he accomplished greater things on other occasions. It is typical of him that he does not anticipate the crisis, nor realise the importance of the effort; he merely rejoices at its accomplishment.

In Goldoni’s time holidays were long and frequent. Doctor Giulio made the most of them, in order to provide his son with short excursions, entertainments, which fill many pages of his Memoirs, after providing many pages of prefaces for his editors—with pretty anecdotes of doubtful authenticity, but undoubted attraction. These anecdotes are valuable for the information they furnish about the manners and customs of the time, but are not reliable information about the boy’s doings.

As a reward for some promotion at school, Doctor Goldoni treated his son to that amusement par excellence of his time and nation—amateur theatricals. A powerful patron of his wanted coaxing, and Doctor Giulio, turning into a stage manager, set up the performance of Gerolamo Gigli’s Sorellina di don Pilone.

His contempt of bigotry was evidenced in the choice of this play, the most daring attack then made against clericalism. It is most characteristic of the inefficiency of the Church’s regulations that while, in Perugia, women were not allowed to act in the theatre, yet this anticlerical comedy was permitted, under the protection of the Baglioni escutcheon. Carlino was then a handsome boy and remained so until marred by the smallpox. In the female rôle of la Sorellina, he won a success not entirely due, as he claims, to his acting. He was also applauded when he delivered a prologue in verse probably written by Baglioni’s aristocratic pen, so stuffed with the hyperboles and antitheses then popular that the remembrance of it amused him ever after.

On this occasion his father declared that he did not lack understanding, but would never be a good actor.

Margherita Goldoni, for her son’s sake, endured the rough weather of Perugia, so different from the mild Venetian climate, and the uncouth manners of the Perugians, so different from her Venetian friends. “She suffered and grew so ill that we feared for her life; but still she overcame pain and danger, as long as she thought that it was good for me to stay in this city and finish my studies.” When Carlino finished his course, and as at the same time the Baglioni-Antinori patronage declined, the whole family left Perugia.

The original plan was to leave Carlino in Rimini, in care of Dominican teachers, for his class of “philosophy,” while his parents returned to Venice. But when the ship stopped at Chiozza, and the doctor discovered there some useful and willing patrons, they landed and settled there for some years. Doctor Giulio started a fair practice in the island, then far more prosperous than it is now.

Goldoni was seldom happy away from Venice. He was decidedly unhappy in dull Rimini, where his first experience was an attack of smallpox severe enough to disfigure his face for life. Goldoni’s stay in Rimini was brief. His good luck provided him with a double incentive to leave, first a teacher more than usually dull, who could not conquer Goldoni’s distaste for abstract logic and pedantic philosophy; then, as an additional motive for leaving, the pleasant temptation of a whole bevy of actresses.

Rimini being only indirectly under the rule of Rome, women were allowed to appear on the stage; the Riminise were spared the unpleasant spectacle of closely shaven men impersonating feminine characters. When Goldoni went behind the scenes at the theatre, he was welcomed by the actresses who, as it happened, were all Venetians and bound, after a short stay in Rimini, for Chioggia.

It was the opening of a new world to Goldoni, his first introduction to a class of people, to a manner of life, which answered so exactly to his own disposition that in spite of his disenchantment it always appealed to him. And how prettily he tells of his experience. His landing at Chioggia is almost as amusing as the trip on board the boat. His mother’s welcome was what he expected, but his father, Doctor Giulio, who now saw all his plans for his son imperilled by a bit of imprudence, was disappointed. Goldoni charmingly describes the interview between father and son.

Despite the gaiety of the picture, it is evident that the Goldonis were displeased with their boy. By the favour of a patrician namesake, Marquis Goldoni Vidoni Aymi, then Governor of Pavia, Doctor Giulio next obtained his son’s admission to the very exclusive Papal College of Ghisleri, a high favour coveted by young men of good families, as an excellent opening into an official career.

According to the Italian university plan, a young man could, while staying at the Collegio Ghisleri, attend any course of lessons he preferred. Goldoni intended to become a doctor of medicine. As a preparation for these studies, as a punishment for his escapade, or perhaps in hopes to keep him out of mischief, Doctor Giulio decided that he should begin a sort of medical apprenticeship. It was a singular idea. Carlino was to accompany his father on the daily round of visits, in order to learn the manners and language of a doctor, with a view to facilitating his knowledge of technical terms. This premature exposure to dangers and temptations beyond his age nearly resulted in disagreeable consequences, fortunately averted through the vigilance of his mother, who discovered the perilous intrigue prepared by a disreputable mother and daughter.

Goldoni showed no disposition for the career of a physician. His sympathetic nature could not endure the spectacle of either bodily or mental suffering.

The comedians had gone; Chioggia (Chiozza) offered no amusements. His attendance on his father’s calls was irksome, he lost his habitual high spirits; that was more than enough to secure his mother’s help, and to obtain from easy-going Doctor Giulio a radical change of plan. Without giving up his place at Ghislieri College, Carlino was inscribed for the study of law, so as to become an avvocato. In the meanwhile he would stay in Venice in a sort of apprenticeship. Signora Goldoni remembered that her uncle, Parlo Indric, was a lawyer. Thus Carlino spent a few hours daily in the “studio” of a Procuratore, and many more hours in discovering Venice.

Venice, the city of his heart, the abode of pleasure, the centre of intellectual life, answered to his deepest desires. Long, weary years later, as he describes these first impressions of Venice, La Serenissima, his awkward French becomes eloquent through retrospective emotion. It was love at first sight, and a lifelong passion. He never quitted Venice without a pang, he always returned to her with the exultation of a lover returning to his mistress. In later years this affection for Venice often reveals itself in unguarded moments.

Goldoni at college affords an amusing insight into contemporary student life. He was transformed into a little abbot—tonsure, little collar, certificates, and permissions by clerical authorities, which did not bind the students to the Church, but was enforced by the articles of the college, founded by Pope Ghisleri. This priestly garb was little more than a masquerade. Its adoption shows the persistence of formalism, and religious indifference.

On finding that Carlino was younger than the age of admittance, his father accomplished a miracle; Carlino went to bed only sixteen years old and he rose next morning full eighteen. Luxury and no restraint were the college customs. Students came and went almost as they pleased, provided they went out and returned in pairs. They parted company at the first street turning and went their ways, sometimes to the halls of learning, more often to fashionable resorts and social gatherings, and frequently to gambling houses and other undesirable places. When they came in too late at night, or singly, they paid hush money to a porter, who made more than a minister of state’s salary out of these illegitimate profits.

College regulations also protected the students. The costly and gorgeous sovrana (cloak) worn by them, the stola fixed on their left shoulder and bearing in gold embroidery the keys of Saint Peter, which was the Ghisleri escutcheon, enforced respect for the spruce abbots who took advantage of their privileged position and behaved “like officers in a garrison.” They visited the very best and the very worst resorts; they flirted, gambled, and fought duels; but they also cultivated the arts of a gentlemanly education. They practised fencing, music, painting, as well as games of cards and dice.

Goldoni’s amiable manners received here a polish, even while license and bad example got him into some scrapes. First he was entrapped into a disgraceful expedition. On being discovered he committed the unpardonable mistake of betraying the names of his accomplices, thus ensuring for himself enemies. These decoyed him into a compromising situation which resulted in his banishment from college, which is thus recorded in the archives of the establishment, at the date 1726: “Propter satiricam poesim fuit evictus.” He now relinquished his legal studies, but resumed them, first in Udine, under the celebrated Morelli, then again in Modena, and finally in Padua, where he secured his degree.

Goldoni travelled much. In 1726 travelling was not the monotonous affair it has since become, but required exertion and courage, because of banditti and the many other dangers of the road. Post chaise and stage coaches were liable to get overturned or to stop at inconvenient places, inns were crowded or scantily stocked with food. The traveller who could make himself useful and agreeable to his companions, who was cheerful and good-tempered, could find much pleasure in a journey, and Goldoni not only possessed all these requisites, but also knew how charmingly to describe his adventures and perhaps sometimes to invent them.

Whenever Goldoni was asked to write a preface or a poem, he fetched from his memory or his imagination some anecdote, he turned it into a pleasant little picture, a lively scene wherein he managed to play a rôle, and, since he was not on oath and harmed no one, he spoke just that proportion of truth which his sense of art required. These spontaneous pictures are charming sketches. If they are not absolutely true, they are perhaps even more interesting as imaginative creations and elaborations.

His first leaving home, his first ride along the hilly roads from Rimini to Perugia, his first experience with a horse, was a startling experience for any Venetian boy, who could have seen little more than the bronze horses of St. Mark. A trip in burchiello, the long flat boat enthusiastically described by Président des Brosses, makes a pretty picture of customs. He describes the luxurious and comfortable barge with its carved wood furniture, its padded couches, its many windows and sculptures, and the delightful company. As the barge containing, besides our Goldoni, the Venetian ambassador’s secretary and other persons of his household, glides along the Po, it is a perpetual round of concerts, dances, suppers that marks its passage. Everyone on board plays on some instrument or sings; and Goldoni’s, the young poet’s, share is to chronicle all these adventures day by day in rhyme.

He gives scant information about the places he visits, he has no eye, no sympathy, for that which is not Venetian. His account of a trip in Carinzia and in Friuli, as in later times his descriptions of Paris, is superficial. Outside of his Venetian world, he even loses his facility for reading a character, and interpreting ways and manners, but that which appeals to him he describes delightfully. Naturally during these trips he has many love affairs, which he tells with a reticence that bears evidence to his good taste, besides discovering his consideration for the only woman he ever really loved—his wife, who was his secretary and amanuensis in writing his Memoirs.

In his relations with women Goldoni is of his time and of his class. Fine letters and arts and social life made a throne for woman, and paid her homage. She was the incensed idol, extolled in verse and prose, saluted with compliment and flattery, her power was exerted in intrigues, and her occult influence felt in public as in private affairs; yet woman was denied the simplest and most natural of rights. The right of fair play was reserved to the stronger and ruder sex. To abuse her innocence or to make dishonourable profit out of her weakness was a petty sin that did not discredit a man.

Goldoni, always a devoted son and a kind husband, a model of honesty in his dealings with men, is, according to his own account, not above suspicion of levity in his behaviour with women. If the stories he tells about himself are not exactly true, they are consistent with what he thought to be becoming and creditable. His flirtations with actresses are of little consequence. Goldoni was at first a toy in their pretty hands, and when he became an important person, the man who could give a rôle, he in turn toyed with their petty vanities and rivalries.

His adventures outside the theatre are more characteristic. One of the most typical is to be found in the first part of his Memoirs. He was staying in Udine—reading for the law—when he noticed a pretty girl; he followed her to church, obtained the favour of some sly glances, and was further encouraged by the offer of the young lady’s maid to carry messages and presents. He wrote love letters, he sent presents, at night he sighed under a closed window and was rewarded by a glimpse of a little head half concealed in a cap, and a merry laugh, half smothered by the closing of a casement. His pride in his conquest is, however, soon crushed; he discovers that the chamber-maid, and not the lady, has got both presents and love letters. Goldoni has excuse for being angry, but his manner of revenge is not creditable.

Goldoni’s excuse for thus using the women of his time is that they were usually worthy of little regard. Without adopting a Casanova’s standard of feminine virtue, in Venice, and especially in Venetian convents, one must recognise that those women who, since they had adopted the religious vows of seclusion and chastity and had solemnly promised to direct and protect young girls, should have set an example of modesty, nevertheless lacked even common honesty. Président des Brosses talks much about their musical skill and their pretty costume. Goldoni supplies an anecdote that is a revelation of the influence of nuns.

In Chioggia (Chiozza) he frequently visited a convent in which the parlatorio was probably one of the most lively resorts of the town. Goldoni saw there a young pensionnaire and fell in love. The Mother Abbess smiled on this courtship; she promised to manage things for the best. A little while later Goldoni perceives a change, the young lady cannot be seen. He complains to the “Mother,” likely the real mother, and he gets the most extraordinary answer. The world-wise abbess says that the guardian has decided himself to marry the young lady; but “as a young wife is likely to shorten the days of an aged husband you will soon have a rich widow who has only been a wife in name—trust me to keep watch over her, I give you my word of honour.” Never was “word of honour” more extraordinary. It is terribly significant, the more so as Goldoni is not an anticlerical.

Never in his plays, rarely in the Memoirs, does he describe clericals. The friar he met on board the boat that brought him home, after his eviction from the Collegio Ghisleri, is one of the few. If loyalty to his own training by clericals had not prevented him, he could have described much and most interestingly. Possibly fear of the censor restrained him.

There is only one episode in his life in which a religious terror played an important part. It betrays a strange spiritual condition. His father had sent him to Modena, to pursue those endless studies, also with the intent of recovering certain rights of Modenese citizenship which the Goldonis never entirely relinquished. Goldoni was apprenticed to a lawyer, il notaio Zavarisi, who assisted him in the reëstablishment of his family in Modena in their ancient position.

A recent edict, issued by the Duke of Modena, raised the tax which absentees were made to pay. Goldoni by taking his abode in Modena could have obtained exemption from this tax. Strangely enough, Doctor Goldoni, though a thorough Venetian, was also a citizen of Modena, and managed to retain a double citizenship, almost a double nationality, so that his son might have the choice. Goldoni, like his father, always paid the Modenese tax on absentees and rendered some sort of verbal homage to the Duke of Modena; but to stay in that dull and bigoted city was beyond even the power of his filial obedience. Yet he went there and entered the legal office of his relative and friend, Zavarisi. But he also got into a nest of bigots. Bastia, the captain of the boat that carried him to Modena, ordered all on board to say their beads before going to bed, and to sing litanies every day. In Modena Goldoni lodged with this Bastia, and was persuaded to join in the psalm-singing and church-going, and seemed for a time under deep religious impression, when a shocking event drove him out of Modena.

On the public Piazza, surrounded by all the impressive array of such terrible spectacles, he saw a man^[19] in the pillory cross-examined and tortured by a priest and his acolytes. The degradation, the humiliation, and the pain endured by the man, who was only guilty of indiscreet speech, so shocked Goldoni that he fled in terror. He could neither think nor talk of anything else. He trembled for his own salvation, fell into morbid depression, and spoke of entering a convent, to expiate his sins and to avoid temptation.

Prudent Doctor Giulio, far from opposing this religious frenzy, promised to consider the matter, and invited his son to Venice, in order that the religious authorities there might be informed of his plans. The wind that blew on the shores of Venice, on the sunny Piazzetta, on the Campiello, soon blew away Goldoni’s vocation for the cloister, and even that thin veneer of mysticism adopted by contagion in Modena.

He was twenty in 1727, and as a return to Modena was out of the question, Doctor Giulio resolved that it was time for his son to secure “an honourable and remunerative place that should cost nothing.” Through his influence, Goldoni was appointed “Aggiunto del Coadgiutore, dipendente dalla Cancelleria Criminale.” It was the lowest place in the magistracy, but a pleasant situation. Board and lodging at the governor’s house, besides dinner parties, concerts, and plays were included, but no salary was attached to the position.

Goldoni records with pride how he toiled at his desk, how zealously he fulfilled his official duties. His business being to examine the suspected culprits, he fully realised that it is the examiner’s duty to reconcile the demands of justice with the pity due to the offender, but he says not one word of how in order to accomplish this examination he was forced to apply torture. But the engraving which adorns the first page of the volume shows Goldoni at his desk, and in front of him a man whose hands are tied behind his back to the rope that hangs from the ceiling. In the background the assistant is seen standing by the torture wheel. In a private letter Goldoni confesses that “at first it was painful to interrogate a man just released from the rope”; but in time he grew accustomed to the thing. When Goldoni’s immediate superior, the chancellor, was transferred to Feltre he offered to take Goldoni with him as Coadgiutore. More work and more responsibility, but also more honour.

In contrast with the dark pictures of Venetian justice, so often presented, one should read Goldoni’s account of his expedition to a village where some crime was to be investigated. A party of twelve persons walking gaily along shaded roads and flowered paths, in the low, fruitful country, stopping at hospitable convents or village inns, drinking milk at cosy farms, singing blithely as they marched through village streets, and rehearsing comedies and even tragedies wherever they could raise anything like a stage.

Goldoni’s career was once more arrested by circumstances beyond his control. His father, Doctor Giulio, seemed to have settled permanently in the quiet little city of Bagnocavallo, when he suddenly fell ill, and died peacefully in the arms of his wife and son. Goldoni dried his own and his mother’s tears, and accompanied her back to Venice. During the journey, Signora Goldoni entreated him to give up his actual career, complete his legal studies, and obtain the title of avvocato in Venice. The magic title of Venetian lawyer answered to the ambition of middle-class parents, it bridged the distance between them and aristocracy, it also promised financial advantages.

The promising magistrate was once more transformed into a student preparing for his final examination in the Venetian university of Padua. Things were so cleverly managed that the usual long course of study was shortened into a few months’ coaching. The chapters describing his preparation and his passage through his examination form a series of Goldonian sketches unparalleled in his plays. A great deal of amusement and even more sound information may be got from this truthful picture.

It contains several portraits. First Signor Radi, a teacher who coached the pupils supposed to be studying in Padua, where they put in an appearance, four times a year, just to obtain the required certificates. Though he had plenty of pupils Signor Radi’s irresistible propensity for gambling kept him in perpetual poverty, his own pupils winning from him at cards the price of their lessons. Indeed on the very eve of his examination, Goldoni was persuaded to spend most of the day and the whole night gambling. When called to put on the robe and cap, Goldoni rose from his cards and proceeded straight to the hall, where the areopagus of professors sat in judgment.

In order to gain admittance to the bar, Goldoni should have practised two years in the office of a barrister, yet as early as March, 1732, Goldoni was presented at the Palazzo. This presentation is a landmark in his life, the crowning of his youthful ambition, the conquest of a title he held in the greatest honour. As he fulfilled the rites of the ceremonial, standing between two colleagues at the foot of the Giants’ Stair, bowing so low and so often that his ample wig was tossed about like a lion’s mane, we may be sure that in his elation he had forgotten the theatre.

Immediately after this solemn introduction to his new dignity he was offered the opportunity of seeing quite the opposite aspect of his profession. A woman, all dimples and smiles, with flashing jewellery and in gay dress, approached him one day, and after complimenting him on his appearance offered her influence to facilitate his first steps. She was born and bred in the palace, she said, her father having made his living by listening at doors, and carrying the first news of the magistrate’s decision to the parties. She followed the same practice; and, knowing everyone and known by everybody, she could bring customers to lawyers who wanted them. Goldoni smiled, and dismissed the woman.

Of the many qualities required for the successful barrister he possessed the two rarest and most difficult to attain, charm and entire honesty. For the less brilliant part of an avvocato’s work, the preparation of briefs, he was also gifted, as he showed a few years later in Pisa. Yet his début in Venice was not successful. Few persons found their way to his office, and those who came did not pay him for his advice. Far from providing for his mother, he was supported by her, getting into debt. He tells a vague story of an intrigue and broken marriage, which reads like a scenario for improvised comedy; he gives several reasons to account for his sudden departure, and slips, as lightly as he can, over the only true one, which is also the most honourable.

[17] Tabarro, cloak, domino.

[18] Five Commercial Sages, originally instituted to supervise commerce.

[19] Von Löhner supposes this man to have been Gio. Battista Vicini the poet.