Entranced by Venice’s culture . . . and waiters
VICTORIA BLAKE grew up in the grounds of Oxford College and developed a lifelong love of history thanks to her dad, acclaimed historian Lord Robert Blake.
She has previously written a crime series and two non-fiction books, but Titian’s Boatman, partly set in 16th Century Venice, is her literary debut and is released on January 26 from Black & White.
WHEN I was eight we went on a family holiday to Venice.
I tried to comprehend a city built in the sea. It was unimaginable.
As the water taxi took us out to The Hotel Bucintoro, I thought: “This can’t be possible”.
At that age it wasn’t so much the art and architecture that made an impression on me, that came later, it was more the spirit of the place.
On the first day we saw a woman open shutters high up on a building and begin screaming at a man below. Then the shutters slammed shut, the man shrugged and moved on. Anger was not expressed in my family. Such volatility was entrancing and exciting.
Later on, St Mark’s Square flooded and I enjoyed running over the duckboards.
I loved feeding the pigeons and observing the group of feral cats which inhabited the Arsenale.
I also adored the Italians. At that time Italy had a much more child friendly culture than here.
In Britain in the early ’70s, children were rarely in restaurants, whereas in Venice every restaurant we went to I was feted. I was very blonde and waiters made a big fuss of me.
Venice also showed me different aspects of my parents’ characters. My mother took to drinking Campari and soda and Strega and loved being abroad. She spoke a mash-up of French and Latin to make herself understood.
My father had been a POW in Italy and escaped. He’d learned Italian then but was a shy man and reluctant to speak it.
When we left, our water taxi ran aground in a canal in thick fog.
Waiting for the tide to lift us free, my father drummed his umbrella up and down, muttering to himself in an impressively Italian manner. I wondered if perhaps some of that Italian expressiveness I found so entrancing had seeped into him during our stay.
The fog persisted and all flights were cancelled.
We got a train to Paris before getting the ferry the following day.