Eden Garden

If a journey has been put off too often or for too long it loses its lustre; when you finally do accomplish it you wonder why you wanted it in the first place. This is what happened to me with Venice. Last year I booked a trip for February of this year and had to cancel it twice, and it was only after several months that I was finally able to go, just now, in October. I had a burning desire to go there, I do remember that, also to make up for the fact that on two previous visits I had never managed to see all I wanted. But by October the burning desire had faded, reduced to a rude limerick about Titian (rhymes with coition) that Rudy once told me, playing on a permanent loop in my brain.

     It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being there, it was of course quite wonderful and I saw some fantastic paintings. Not much Titian though, or not enough, and many of the Carpaccios were locked away being restored, or replaced by large colour photocopies. But it was an odd experience, wandering around and wondering what I was doing there. I even began to wonder, gazing unimpressed at the palaces on the Grand Canal, if I hadn’t somehow inherited Rudy’s dislike of Gothic architecture, which was the reason why I hadn’t seen enough of the place when we were there together. A dead spouse’s opinions can live on, especially such strong ones.

     In Venice I bought a copy of Venise à double tour (2019), by Jean-Pierre Kauffmann, a journalist, one of the French hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s, who spent several months in Venice trying to visit all the locked churches. It is an almost impossible quest but undeniably a good reason to be there, and his descriptions are marvellous; I went to the Giudecca, where he stayed, because of what he wrote about the view and the particular sound of the vaporetto as it arrived in front of his house. One of the many places he couldn’t visit was actually on the Giudecca, a garden made by an English couple, Frederic and Caroline Eden, between 1884 and 1900. Henry James visited it, so did Proust, Browning, D’Annunzio and Cocteau. It has been closed since the death in 2000 of its last owner, the painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who let it run wild. A real secret garden! By an amazing piece of luck Kauffmann was able to visit it, but alas he is no gardener, so his description falls rather short (“paysage idéal, rêve d’harmonie entre l’homme et la nature, fermé aux regards…”). It is the same as his locked churches; sometimes it is enough to know that such a place exists.

     On my last full day I followed a walk from a guidebook, which took me to the English church, where I hoped to see the tombstone of Joseph Smith (1682-1770), art collector and for many years British Consul in Venice, who was Canaletto’s patron (which is why there are hardly any Canalettos in Venice, Smith bought them all and later sold them to George III). It was Sunday morning and there was a service, the same service I sat through every Sunday of my youth. Friendly people pointed me to a seat and handed me a hymn book; Smith’s tombstone loomed on the other side of the church, escape was impossible. So I stayed, and at the sound of the familiar words, still not sure what I was doing there, found I had tears in my eyes. For a moment I could see myself going to church every Sunday again, being part of a congregation, believing, consoled.

     At the end of the service prosecco was served in paper cups (an excellent innovation), and I was able to sidle up to the tombstones. And there were the Edens: “They wrought with God and nature in the making of the Giardino Eden in this the well-loved home of their adoption. May they rest for ever beside the living waters in the eternal refreshment of the love of God and of their friends.”