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Venetian Life by W. D. Howells

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VENETIAN LIFE

by

W. D. HOWELLS

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In correcting this book for a second edition, I have sought to complete it
without altering its original plan: I have given a new chapter sketching
the history of Venetian Commerce and noticing the present trade and
industry of Venice; I have amplified somewhat the chapter on the national
holidays, and have affixed an index to the chief historical persons,
incidents, and places mentioned.

Believing that such value as my book may have is in fidelity to what I
actually saw and knew of Venice, I have not attempted to follow
speculatively the grand and happy events of last summer in their effects
upon her life. Indeed, I fancy that in the traits at which I loved most to
look, the life of Venice is not so much changed as her fortunes; but at
any rate I am content to remain true to what was fact one year ago.

W. D. H.

Cambridge, January 1, 1867.




CONTENTS.

I. Venice in Venice
II. Arrival and first Days in Venice
III. The Winter in Venice
IV. Comincia far Caldo
V. Opera and Theatres
VI. Venetian Dinners and Diners
VII. Housekeeping in Venice
VIII. The Balcony on the Grand Canal
IX. A Day-Break Ramble
X. The Mouse
XI. Churches and Pictures
XII. Some Islands of the Lagoons
XIII. The Armenians
XIV. The Ghetto and the Jews of Venice
XV. Some Memorable Places
XVI. Commerce
XVII. Venetian Holidays
XVIII. Christmas Holidays
XIX. Love-making and Marrying; Baptisms and Burials
XX. Venetian Traits and Characters
XXI. Society
XXII. Our Last Year in Venice
Index



CHAPTER I.

VENICE IN VENICE.


One night at the little theatre in Padua, the ticket-seller gave us the
stage-box (of which he made a great merit), and so we saw the play and the
byplay. The prompter, as noted from our point of view, bore a chief part
in the drama (as indeed the prompter always does in the Italian theatre),
and the scene-shifters appeared as prominent characters. We could not help
seeing the virtuous wife, when hotly pursued by the villain of the piece,
pause calmly in the wings, before rushing, all tears and desperation, upon
the stage; and we were dismayed to behold the injured husband and his
abandoned foe playfully scuffling behind the scenes. All the shabbiness of
the theatre was perfectly apparent to us; we saw the grossness of the
painting and the unreality of the properties. And yet I cannot say that
the play lost one whit of its charm for me, or that the working of the
machinery and its inevitable clumsiness disturbed my enjoyment in the
least. There was so much truth and beauty in the playing, that I did not
care for the sham of the ropes and gilding, and presently ceased to take
any note of them. The illusion which I had thought an essential in the
dramatic spectacle, turned out to be a condition of small importance.

It has sometimes seemed to me as if fortune had given me a stage-box at
another and grander spectacle, and I had been suffered to see this VENICE,
which is to other cities like the pleasant improbability of the theatre to
every-day, commonplace life, to much the same effect as that melodrama in
Padua. I could not, indeed, dwell three years in the place without
learning to know it differently from those writers who have described it
in romances, poems, and hurried books of travel, nor help seeing from my
point of observation the sham and cheapness with which Venice is usually
brought out, if I may so speak, in literature. At the same time, it has
never lost for me its claim upon constant surprise and regard, nor the
fascination of its excellent beauty, its peerless picturesqueness, its
sole and wondrous grandeur. It is true that the streets in Venice are
canals; and yet you can walk to any part of the city, and need not take
boat whenever you go out of doors, as I once fondly thought you must. But
after all, though I find dry land enough in it, I do not find the place
less unique, less a mystery, or less a charm. By day, the canals are still
the main thoroughfares; and if these avenues are not so full of light and
color as some would have us believe, they, at least, do not smell so
offensively as others pretend. And by night, they are still as dark and
silent as when the secret vengeance of the Republic plunged its victims
into the ungossiping depths of the Canalazzo!

Did the vengeance of the Republic ever do any such thing?

Possibly. In Venice one learns not quite to question that reputation for
vindictive and gloomy cruelty alien historians have given to a government
which endured so many centuries in the willing obedience of its subjects;
but to think that the careful student of the old Republican system will
condemn it for faults far different from those for which it is chiefly
blamed. At all events, I find it hard to understand why, if the Republic
was an oligarchy utterly selfish and despotic, it has left to all classes
of Venetians so much regret and sorrow for its fall.

So, if the reader care to follow me to my stage-box, I imagine he will
hardly see the curtain rise upon just the Venice of his dreams--the Venice
of Byron, of Rogers, and Cooper; or upon the Venice of his prejudices--the
merciless Venice of Daru, and of the historians who follow him. But I
still hope that he will be pleased with the Venice he sees; and will think
with me that the place loses little in the illusion removed; and--to take
leave of our theatrical metaphor--I promise to fatigue him with no affairs
of my own, except as allusion to them may go to illustrate Life in Venice;
and positively he shall suffer no annoyance from the fleas and bugs which,
in Latin countries, so often get from travelers' beds into their books.

Let us mention here at the beginning some of the sentimental errors
concerning the place, with which we need not trouble ourselves hereafter,
but which no doubt form a large part of every one's associations with the
name of Venice. Let us take, for example, that pathetic swindle, the
Bridge of Sighs. There are few, I fancy, who will hear it mentioned
without connecting its mystery and secrecy with the taciturn justice of
the Three, or some other cruel machinery of the Serenest Republic's
policy. When I entered it the first time I was at the pains to call about
me the sad company of those who had passed its corridors from imprisonment
to death; and, I doubt not, many excellent tourists have done the same. I
was somewhat ashamed to learn afterward that I had, on this occasion, been
in very low society, and that the melancholy assemblage which I then
conjured up was composed entirely of honest rogues, who might indeed have
given as graceful and ingenious excuses for being in misfortune as the
galley-slaves rescued by Don Quixote,--who might even have been very
picturesque,--but who were not at all the material with which a well-
regulated imagination would deal. The Bridge of Sighs was not built till
the end of the sixteenth century, and no romantic episode of political
imprisonment and punishment (except that of Antonio Foscarini) occurs in
Venetian history later than that period. But the Bridge of Sighs could
have nowise a savor of sentiment from any such episode, being, as it was,
merely a means of communication between the Criminal Courts sitting in the
Ducal Palace, and the Criminal Prison across the little canal.
Housebreakers, cut-purse knaves, and murderers do not commonly impart a
poetic interest to places which have known them; and yet these are the
only sufferers on whose Bridge of Sighs the whole sentimental world has
looked with pathetic sensation ever since Byron drew attention to it. The
name of the bridge was given by the people from that opulence of
compassion which enables the Italians to pity even rascality in
difficulties. [Footnote: The reader will remember that Mr. Ruskin has said
in a few words, much better than I have said in many, the same thing of
sentimental errors about Venice:--

"The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere
efflorescence of decay, a stage-dream, which the first ray of daylight
must dissipate into dust. No prisoner whose name is worth remembering, or
whose sorrows deserved sympathy, ever crossed that Bridge of Sighs, which
is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice
ever saw that Rialto under which the traveler now pauses with breathless
interest; the statue which Byron makes Faliero address at one of his great
ancestors, was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years
after Faliero's death."--_Stories of Venice_.]

Political offenders were not confined in the "prison on each hand" of the
poet, but in the famous _pozzi_ (literally, wells) or dungeons under
the Ducal Palace. And what fables concerning these cells have not been
uttered and believed! For my part, I prepared my coldest chills for their
exploration, and I am not sure that before I entered their gloom some
foolish and lying literature was not shaping itself in my mind, to be
afterward written out as my Emotions on looking at them. I do not say now
that they are calculated to enamor the unimpounded spectator with prison-
life; but they are certainly far from being as bad as I hoped. They are
not joyously light nor particularly airy, but their occupants could have
suffered no extreme physical discomfort; and the thick wooden casing of
the interior walls evidences at least the intention of the state to
inflict no wanton hardships of cold and damp.

But on whose account had I to be interested in the _pozzi_? It was
difficult to learn, unless I took the word of sentimental hearsay. I began
with Marin Falier, but history would not permit the doge to languish in
these dungeons for a moment. He was imprisoned in the apartments of state,
and during one night only. His fellow-conspirators were hanged nearly as
fast as taken.

Failing so signally with Falier, I tried several other political prisoners
of sad and famous memory with scarcely better effect. To a man, they
struggled to shun the illustrious captivity designed them, and escaped
from the _pozzi_ by every artifice of fact and figure.

The Carraras of Padua were put to death in the city of Venice, and their
story is the most pathetic and romantic in Venetian history. But it was
not the cells under the Ducal Palace which witnessed their cruel taking-
off: they were strangled in the prison formerly existing at the top of the
palace, called the Torresella. [Footnote: Galliciolli, _Memorie
Venete_.] It is possible, however, that Jacopo Foscari may have been
confined in the _pozzi_ at different times about the middle of the
fifteenth century. With his fate alone, then, can the horror of these
cells be satisfactorily associated by those who relish the dark romance of
Venetian annals; for it is not to be expected that the less tragic
fortunes of Carlo Zeno and Vittore Pisani, who may also have been
imprisoned in the _pozzi_, can move the true sentimentalizer.
Certainly, there has been anguish enough in the prisons of the Ducal
Palace, but we know little of it by name, and cannot confidently relate it
to any great historic presence.

Touching the Giant's Stairs in the court of the palace, the inexorable
dates would not permit me to rest in the delusion that the head of Marin
Falier had once bloodily stained them as it rolled to the ground--at the
end of Lord Byron's tragedy. Nor could I keep unimpaired my vision of the
Chief of the Ten brandishing the sword of justice, as he proclaimed the
traitor's death to the people from between the two red columns in the
southern gallery of the palace;--that facade was not built till nearly a
century later.

I suppose,--always judging by my own average experience,--that besides
these gloomy associations, the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of
brilliant and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the brightest
picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of antic delight, romantic
adventure, and lawless prank. But the carnival, with all the old merry-
making life of the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the
conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving Venice is become as gross a
fiction as if, like that other conventional Venice of which I have but
spoken, it had never existed. There is no greater social dullness and
sadness, on land or sea, than in contemporary Venice.

The causes of this change lie partly in the altered character of the whole
world's civilization, partly in the increasing poverty of the city, doomed
four hundred years ago to commercial decay, and chiefly (the Venetians
would be apt to tell you wholly) in the implacable anger, the inconsolable
discontent, with which the people regard their present political
condition.

If there be more than one opinion among men elsewhere concerning the means
by which Austria acquired Venetia and the tenure by which she holds the
province, there would certainly seem to be no division on the question in
Venice. To the stranger first inquiring into public feeling, there is
something almost sublime in the unanimity with which the Venetians appear
to believe that these means were iniquitous, and that this tenure is
abominable; and though shrewder study and carefuler observation will
develop some interested attachment to the present government, and some
interested opposition of it; though after-knowledge will discover, in the
hatred of Austria, enough meanness, lukewarmness, and selfish ignorance to
take off its sublimity, the hatred is still found marvelously unanimous
and bitter. I speak advisedly, and with no disposition to discuss the
question or exaggerate the fact. Exercising at Venice official functions
by permission and trust of the Austrian government, I cannot regard the
cessation of those functions as release from obligations both to that
government and my own, which render it improper for me, so long as the
Austrians remain in Venice, to criticize their rule, or contribute, by
comment on existing things, to embitter the feeling against them
elsewhere. I may, nevertheless, speak dispassionately of facts of the
abnormal social and political state of the place; and I can certainly do
this, for the present situation is so disagreeable in many ways to the
stranger forced to live there,--the inappeasable hatred of the Austrians
by the Italians is so illiberal in application to those in any wise
consorting with them, and so stupid and puerile in many respects, that I
think the annoyance which it gives the foreigner might well damp any
passion with which he was disposed to speak of its cause.

This hatred of the Austrians dates in its intensity from the defeat of
patriotic hopes of union with Italy in 1859, when Napoleon found the
Adriatic at Peschiera, and the peace of Villafranca was concluded. But it
is not to be supposed that a feeling so general, and so thoroughly
interwoven with Venetian character, is altogether recent. Consigned to the
Austrians by Napoleon I., confirmed in the subjection into which she fell
a second time after Napoleon's ruin, by the treaties of the Holy Alliance,
defeated in several attempts to throw off her yoke, and loaded with
heavier servitude after the fall of the short-lived Republic of 1849,--
Venice has always hated her masters with an exasperation deepened by each
remove from the hope of independence, and she now detests them with a
rancor which no concession short of absolute relinquishment of dominion
would appease.

Instead, therefore, of finding that public gayety and private hospitality
in Venice for which the city was once famous, the stranger finds himself
planted between two hostile camps, with merely the choice of sides open to
him. Neutrality is solitude and friendship with neither party; society is
exclusive association with the Austrians or with the Italians. The latter
do not spare one of their own number if he consorts with their masters,
and though a foreigner might expect greater allowance, it is seldom shown
to him. To be seen in the company of officers is enmity to Venetian
freedom, and in the case of Italians it is treason to country and to race.
Of course, in a city where there is a large garrison and a great many
officers who have nothing else to do, there is inevitably some
international love-making, although the Austrian officers are rigidly
excluded from association with the citizens. But the Italian who marries
an Austrian severs the dearest ties that bind her to life, and remains an
exile in the heart of her country. Her friends mercilessly cast her off,
as they cast off every body who associates with the dominant race. In rare
cases I have known Italians to receive foreigners who had Austrian
friends, but this with the explicit understanding that there was to be no
sign of recognition if they met them in the company of these detested
acquaintance.

There are all degrees of intensity in Venetian hatred, and after hearing
certain persons pour out the gall of bitterness upon the Austrians, you
may chance to hear these persons spoken of as tepid in their patriotism by
yet more fiery haters. Yet it must not be supposed that the Italians hate
the Austrians as individuals. On the contrary, they have rather a liking
for them--rather a contemptuous liking, for they think them somewhat slow
and dull-witted--and individually the Austrians are amiable people, and
try not to give offence. The government is also very strict in its control
of the military. I have never seen the slightest affront offered by a
soldier to a citizen; and there is evidently no personal ill-will
engendered. The Austrians are simply hated as the means by which an alien
and despotic government is imposed upon a people believing themselves born
for freedom and independence. This hatred, then, is a feeling purely
political, and there is political machinery by which it is kept in a state
of perpetual tension.

The Comitato Veneto is a body of Venetians residing within the province
and abroad, who have charge of the Italian interests, and who work in
every way to promote union with the dominions of Victor Emanuel. They live
for the most part in Venice, where they have a secret press for the
publication of their addresses and proclamations, and where they remain
unknown to the police, upon whose spies they maintain an espionage. On
every occasion of interest, the Committee is sure to make its presence
felt; and from time to time persons find themselves in the possession of
its printed circulars, stamped with the Committee's seal; but no one knows
how or whence they came. Constant arrests of suspected persons are made,
but no member of the Committee has yet been identified; and it is said
that the mysterious body has its agents in every department of the
government, who keep it informed of inimical action. The functions of the
Committee are multiplied and various. It takes care that on all patriotic
anniversaries (such as that of the establishment of the Republic in 1848,
and that of the union of the Italian States under Victor Emanuel in 1860)
salutes shall be fired in Venice, and a proper number of red, white, and
green lights displayed. It inscribes revolutionary sentiments on the
walls; and all attempts on the part of the Austrians to revive popular
festivities are frustrated by the Committee, which causes petards to be
exploded in the Place of St. Mark, and on the different promenades. Even
the churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at
the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when the
moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in
the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of questionable
utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by the fiercer of
the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the patriotic
discipline in which the members of the Committee keep their fellow-
citizens may gall some of them, yet any public demonstration of content,
such as going to the opera, or to the Piazza while the Austrian band
plays, is promptly discontinued at a warning from the Committee. It is, of
course, the Committee's business to keep the world informed of public
feeling in Venice, and of each new act of Austrian severity. Its members
are inflexible men, whose ability has been as frequently manifested as
their patriotism.

The Venetians are now, therefore, a nation in mourning, and have, as I
said, disused all their former pleasures and merry-makings. Every class,
except a small part of the resident _titled_ nobility (a great part
of the nobility is in either forced or voluntary exile), seems to be
comprehended by this feeling of despondency and suspense. The poor of the
city formerly found their respite and diversion in the numerous holidays
which fell in different parts of the year, and which, though religious in
their general character, were still inseparably bound up in their origin
with ideas of patriotism and national glory. Such of these holidays as
related to the victories and pride of the Republic naturally ended with
her fall. Many others, however, survived this event in all their splendor,
but there is not one celebrated now as in other days. It is true that the
churches still parade their pomps in the Piazza on the day of Corpus
Christi; it is true that the bridges of boats are still built across the
Canalazzo to the church of Our Lady of Salvation, and across the Canal of
the Giudecca to the temple of the Redeemer, on the respective festivals of
these churches; but the concourse is always meagre, and the mirth is
forced and ghastly. The Italianissimi have so far imbued the people with
their own ideas and feelings, that the recurrence of the famous holidays
now merely awakens them to lamentations over the past and vague longings
for the future.

As for the carnival, which once lasted six months of the year, charming
hither all the idlers of the world by its peculiar splendor and variety of
pleasure, it does not, as I said, any longer exist. It is dead, and its
shabby, wretched ghost is a party of beggars, hideously dressed out with
masks and horns and women's habits, who go from shop to shop droning forth
a stupid song, and levying tribute upon the shopkeepers. The crowd through
which these melancholy jesters pass, regards them with a pensive scorn,
and goes about its business untempted by the delights of carnival.

All other social amusements have shared in greater or less degree the fate
of the carnival. At some houses conversazioni are still held, and it is
impossible that balls and parties should not now and then be given. But
the greater number of the nobles and the richer of the professional
classes lead for the most part a life of listless seclusion, and attempts
to lighten the general gloom and heaviness in any way are not looked upon
with favor. By no sort of chance are Austrians, or Austriacanti ever
invited to participate in the pleasures of Venetian society.

As the social life of Italy, and especially of Venice, was in great part
to be once enjoyed at the theatres, at the caffe, and at the other places
of public resort, so is its absence now to be chiefly noted in those
places. No lady of perfect standing among her people goes to the opera,
and the men never go in the boxes, but if they frequent the theatre at
all, they take places in the pit, in order that the house may wear as
empty and dispirited a look as possible. Occasionally a bomb is exploded
in the theatre, as a note of reminder, and as means of keeping away such
of the nobles as are not enemies of the government. As it is less easy for
the Austrians to participate in the diversion of comedy, it is a less
offence to attend the comedy, though even this is not good
Italianissimism. In regard to the caffe there is a perfectly understood
system by which the Austrians go to one, and the Italians to another; and
Florian's, in the Piazza, seems to be the only common ground in the city
on which the hostile forces consent to meet. This is because it is
thronged with foreigners of all nations, and to go there is not thought a
demonstration of any kind. But the other caffe in the Piazza do not enjoy
Florian's cosmopolitan immunity, and nothing would create more wonder in
Venice than to see an Austrian officer at the Specchi, unless, indeed, it
were the presence of a good Italian at the Quadri.

It is in the Piazza that the tacit demonstration of hatred and discontent
chiefly takes place. Here, thrice a week, in winter and summer, the
military band plays that exquisite music for which the Austrians are
famous. The selections are usually from Italian operas, and the attraction
is the hardest of all others for the music-loving Italian to resist. But
he does resist it. There are some noble ladies who have not entered the
Piazza while the band was playing there, since the fall of the Republic of
1849; and none of good standing for patriotism has attended the concerts
since the treaty of Villafranca in '59. Until very lately, the promenaders
in the Piazza were exclusively foreigners, or else the families of such
government officials as were obliged to show themselves there. Last
summer, however, before the Franco-Italian convention for the evacuation
of Rome revived the drooping hopes of the Venetians, they had begun
visibly to falter in their long endurance. But this was, after all, only a
slight and transient weakness. As a general thing, now, they pass from the
Piazza when the music begins, and walk upon the long quay at the sea-side
of the Ducal Palace; or if they remain in the Piazza they pace up and down
under the arcades on either side; for Venetian patriotism makes a delicate
distinction between listening to the Austrian band in the Piazza and
hearing it under the Procuratie, forbidding the first and permitting the
last. As soon as the music ceases the Austrians disappear, and the
Italians return to the Piazza.

Letter: Gender roles in the Cinderella story

Doctors assure us that wherever you find an elderly, pompous old writer long past his prime you will find a bottle of scotch nearby. If only that were the case. Hilly hid mine after I fell up the stairs when I came home from the Garrick yesterday, and I've had to make do with a bottle of Blue Nun I found in the maid's parlour. Not that I am an alcoholic. Dipsomaniacs are a breed of the lower orders you meet on street corners: people like myself are bon viveurs who happen to like a drink. Or 12.

My primary observation is that drinking makes the daily grind of dealing with people so much easier. You drink a pint of whisky and become the life and soul of the party. You then start insulting people, before sweating heavily and wetting yourself involuntarily. You will usually find that everyone quickly avoids you, thereby relieving you of the need to make conversation. This is why I prefer to do much of my drinking at home. It saves so much time.

There are a great many drinks on the market - spirits, wines and beers - and I've probably drunk them all. Usually in some kind of combination with one another. Mixing cocktails is one of my favourite hobbies. Here's one I invented last week for my great sycophant, Christopher Hitchens.

The Hitch

One bottle of Babycham

One bottle of absinthe

Five shots of Angostura very bitters

Two tablespoons of bile

Two or three glasses of this tincture can give you a lifetime of self-satisfaction.

At some time you will probably be forced to invite people to your home and they may expect a drink. My advice is to offer them the cheapest tipple you can find; my local off-licence does a ghastly Mosel at 70p a bottle. I've never cared for even the best wines, and this should guarantee those poncing off you neither ask for top-ups nor stay long, thereby leaving you more money and time for the pub.

It is well known that only the very dullest of petit-bourgeois minds fail to over-imbibe on a daily basis, so I regard hangovers as a price worth paying for my brilliance. That said, I have found ways of coping with this metaphysical malaise. The first is to fuck someone; preferably somebody else's wife, but if your own is the only one around then she will do. The second is to read a book by that little shit Mart; it will either remind you you're not that bad a writer or give you some sleep.

The one downside to drinking is that it can make you fat. This is remedied by cutting out food entirely and drinking all spirits without mixers. My weight has gone down to 19st with this diet. There isn't much more to say, but as I'm being paid by the column I'd better repeat myself. And now that I'm dead, there's no harm in Bloomsbury repackaging the same material several times in the same collection.

I don't really like wine. Gin is for pansies, though a snifter with water doesn't go amiss. Liqueurs are best left to patent-shoed Wops. Or Americans. Champagne is an overrated girl's drink, though it can be drunk with any food; as such, it's a perfect breakfast drink because a scotch before 10am is very non-U.

I loathe pubs with loud music, but my utmost detestation is reserved for sanctimonious ex-topers. There's nothing worse than a man who doesn't drink. I once tried not drinking for several hours and my wives and mistresses said how dull it was that I was conscious and they were spared removing my soiled trousers from my bloated legs.

Whisky is my favourite tipple, though I recommend never giving it to a Welshman as it's wasted on someone with an IQ of less than 80. Have I mentioned that I'm partial to a Macallan? Gosh is that the time? Hilly's coming to change my IV drip before I fall unconscious again. The publisher can bloody well pad out the rest of the book with a pointless quiz without me.

Q: Who will buy this?

A: No one.

The digested read digested: The old pub bore.

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Jury clears judge of libelling mother
Sales of 'misery memoirs' fall after they boomed beyond all expectations since Dave Pelzer wrote A Child Called It

Constance Briscoe wins Ugly libel case

A judge who was sued for libel by her mother over allegations of childhood cruelty and neglect in her bestselling "misery memoir" won her case yesterday.

Constance Briscoe burst into tears at the high court in London as a jury unanimously cleared her and publishers Hodder & Stoughton over the claims in Ugly, which her mother Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, had alleged were a "piece of fiction".

During the 10-day trial, Briscoe, 51, who was one of the first black women judges in the UK, told the court her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore", a "potato-head" and "miss piss-a-bed".

She described trying to kill herself by drinking diluted bleach after failing to get taken into care, and told the jury she used a university grant to have plastic surgery to remove the "ugliness" her mother had taunted her over.

Briscoe, of Clapham, south London, also said that when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.

Ugly, published in 2006, has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK. Briscoe and Hodder & Stoughton had denied libel and said the book was substantially true. Andrew Caldecott QC, for Briscoe, said the events occurred between 1964 and 1975.

Briscoe-Mitchell, from Southwark, south-east London, left court without making any immediate comment about her legal defeat. During the trial she had denied all the allegations of verbal and physical abuse and claimed she and her daughter had enjoyed a loving relationship within a happy family.

Her counsel, William Panton, told the jury Briscoe was "spinning a yarn", claiming his client had struggled to bring up her 11 children and had provided for them equally to the best of her ability.

Outside court, Briscoe told reporters she was "very happy" with the jury's verdict, which came after more than a day of deliberation.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me," she said. "Now I just want to get on with my career. I would like to thank all my readers who have sent me messages of support, including the very many children who provided helpful advice.

"I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors it should never be swept under the carpet."

Hodder & Stoughton said it was pleased with the verdict. "We are very proud to be Constance Briscoe's publisher," a statement said. "Her books Ugly and Beyond Ugly have touched hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them children. Sadly, as we know from the news over the past few weeks, child abuse is all too common and nothing and no one should ever stand in the way of the truth."

Asked during the trial why she wrote the book, Briscoe said: "I didn't believe for a split second that I owed my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone who from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, who faced adversity at every turn, could come through."

The court heard she had cleaned offices for two hours every day before school until her studies took her to Newcastle University, the criminal bar and, eventually, to become one of the country's few black women judges.

"I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be whatever you want to be," Briscoe said. "You just have to believe in yourself ... you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar.

"You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe that my book has done an enormous amount of good."

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