The first chill of autumn, which reminds us locals to order firewood from the mainland for our illegal fireplaces, is always a moment of reckoning. Not for nothing does the Russian Aesop, Krylov, in his fable of the socially responsible ant and the bohemian dragonfly, suggest that such a moment has arrived when a wintry blast gets in the eyes of the homeless idealist, hi my own case, however, the fault is not entirely mine. It seems ages since I started looking for a new apartment, and ages since I began rehearsing the many explanations—some more interesting than “Well, you know, you have to pay the rent . . . “—of the difficulty of finding one. Last time, I described what it’s like to try to wrest an apartment from a born-and-bred Venetian. Now, I’d like to suggest what happens when the owner of the house is a Venetian by adoption.

Let us unfold a little scenario that involves a socially well-connected visitor to Italy, with a cast of mind typical of what was once called the Fifth Avenue matron. Her daughter, who was at Brown, is an active supporter of Save Venice and has written about it in her alumni notes. Her younger brother, an antiques dealer in the Fulham Road in London, has just returned from Nencia Corsini’s wedding in Florence. Her husband is an investment banker from Short Hills, New Jersey. They travel to Europe several times a year, know Italians with residences in Manhattan and Mayfair, have been to charity balls at the Palazzo Pisani Morctta, have stayed at the Cipriani, and are known to the waiters at Harry’s Bar. Now they’ve bought a palazzo of their own, part of which they are thinking of renting out to suitable tenants. And here she is, just as she might appear in W, “Mrs. Matron in Valentino,” in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Ducal Palace, standing inquisitively before the famous black square substituting for the portrait of Marino Falier, with the inscription; “Hic est locus Marini Falethri decapitati pro criminibus.” Of the 76 doges represented here, only Falier’s face is deleted for all eternity, for the alleged act of treason that got him beheaded in 1355.

Now, the Faliers have all died out in the last century, but the Palazzo Falier Canossa—now Palazzo Matron—still stands on the Grand Canal, a witness to the family’s history. Paolo Lucio Anafesto Falier was elected doge in Eraclea with the consent of Byzantium, followed by the family’s three properly Venetian doges: Vitale, who built St. Mark’s Basilica in its final form; Ordelaffo, who founded the shipyards of the Arsenale; and the unfortunate Marino. The story, as told by the chronicler Marin Sanudo, is that during a banquet at the Ducal Palace given by the 70-year-old doge and his young wife, Alvica Cradenigo, a young “new patrician” by the name of Michele Steno “made a nuisance of himself,” whereupon the doge had him ejected. As he was leaving, Steno made a slanderous proclamation about the woman’s virtue, whereupon he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment. The doge, interpreting the lightness of the sentence as a sign that his position was being undermined, conspired against Steno and the party of new patricians which supported him. The plot was discovered, the doge was beheaded, and all official records of the affair were destroyed. Alvica went mad and spent the rest of her life in seclusion.

What I relish imagining is Falier popping back into this world, suitcase in hand, through that famous black square. Obviously he needs an apartment to rent, at least until he can get his bearings, and at the new Venetian home of Mr. and Mrs. F.A. Matron there ensues the following brutal discussion:

MRS. MATRON: Who’s who? I mean, how d’you do? So nice to meet you.

MARINO FALIER: I heard through the grapevine that you have a piano nobile I could have on a year’s lease. Is that true?

MRS. MATRON: Would you like some coffee? (Rings for the Filipino.) Arthur, will you bring in the coffee, please. Do you know the Sammartini?

MARINO FALIER: Well, as you may have realized during your walk through the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, I’m not acquainted with very many people after the fateful year 1355. But naturally I can provide you with all the necessary banking references. And, as doge . . .

MRS. MATRON (impatiently): I know all that. But the Sammartini own Palazzo Pisani Moretta! We’ve been to some wonderful parties there, with all those flaming candles, and music, and gondolas . . . Jenny is a good friend. She is a fantastic decorator.

MARINO FALIER: My ancestor, Vitale . . .

MRS. MATRON: I’m afraid that name doesn’t mean anything to me.

MARINO FALIER: Vitale consecrated St. Mark’s. Doesn’t that say something about our family’s appetite for splendor? And a later ancestor, Ordelaffo, brought the Pala d’Oro to St. Mark’s from Constantinople. It is probably the most famous decorative object in the world, with jewels en cabochon . . .

MRS. MATRON: I know all that. But did you attend the wedding of the young Princess Corsini in Florence? Everybody was there, and it’s going to be in Chi magazine.

MARINO FAUER: You must pause to reflect that the social world of which you are speaking is alien to me. When my ancestor Anafesto was enthroned, Chi magazine did not exist. Florence didn’t exist. Since then, the 120 doges of Venice, ending with the traitor Lodovico Manin who handed our country over to the French, came from just 59 families. Fifty-nine families in a thousand years. What do we care about princes and princesses? To us, the names to be revered belonged to those who freed Venice from Byzantium: Corner, Ipato, Bembo, Contarini, Morosini, Dandolo, Tiepolo, Gradenigo, Falier. . . All right, also people like Querini, Zorzi, Soranzo, Ziani, who later joined them. Then came the new patricians, and even though they proved to be my undoing, I accept those among them who were inscribed in the Golden Book at the close of the Great Council in 1297: Foscari, Loredan, Grimani, Barbarigo, Donà, Gritti, Marcello, Malipiero, Tron, Venier, Mocenigo .. . We could all have made ourselves princes and marquesses and counts and whatnot, but the only title a Venetian citizen may bear as properly his own is that of “Nobil Homo.” We used to believe this an appellation greater than that of many a king, and even three centuries after my birth Henry III of France, the last Valois, asked that he might be permitted to style himself a Venetian nobleman . . .

MRS. MATRON: I know all that, but now you expect to live in my . . . in your palazzo, and I’m not prepared . . . and frankly puzzled, because you’re not really telling me anything. Do you know the Gradenigo family? My brother was staying at their house in the country last weekend. He was at Harvard with Giovanni. And Lucy, I hear, is a wonderful tennis player.

MARINO FALIER: My wife is of the family of Pietro Gradenigo. He became doge in 1289.

MRS. MATRON; But do you know them? I mean, do they know you?

MARINO FALIER: Er, well, my name, yes, but I’m afraid . . .

MRS. MATRON (businesslike): I’ll have to speak with my husband, but I don’t think we’ll be renting out the apartment after all. I’m very sorry to have to cut this short, and it was a pleasure meeting you, but my daughter and I are going to an important meeting of Save Venice this afternoon, and I must get ready. It’s being held at the home of the Steno family. You know their ancestor Michele became doge, too. In 1400, I think. Do you know them?

MARINO FALIER (killing her with an ornamental paperweight): Aargh!

As the curtain falls on my little vaudeville, I must add a couple of things. One is that almost all the living personages depicted therein are almost entirely my own spiteful inventions. The other is that, of course, I’m not Marino Falier returned from the dead, but in fact a reasonably eager and even accomplished social climber who would have Mrs. Matron, were I ever to run across such a perfectly formed representative of her social class, eating out of my hand. You want names, babycakes? I give you names. You want country weekends? You can have all the country weekends you want, the week-ends with a hyphen. You want hobnobbing with princes? Okay, here goes. Unfortunately, life is not vaudeville, and a perfectly formed representative of that social class is hard to find, which leaves me with Mrs. Matron’s imperfectly formed, flawed, partial namesakes: German, French, Hungarian, English.

All of them, each in his or her own cluelessly snobbish way, manage to reenact the scene from the Tenth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, when the old Ghibelline, Farinata degli Uberti, fixes the poet with his beady eye and demands to know, literally, who in hell he is:

 

Com’ io al piè della sua tomba fui,

guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi sdegnoso,

mi dimandò: “Chi fuor li maggior tui?”

lo ch’era d’ubidir disideroso,

non lil celai, ma tutto lil’apersi . . .

 

And the harder I try to “conceal nothing and reveal all,” the sorrier I feel for poor Marino Falier. He would never find an apartment in Venice.