Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino Part 11

Besides, he wrote me a note addressed "all' egregio pittore S.

Butler." To be called an egregious painter was too much for me, so I did the sketch. I was once addressed as "L'esimio pittore." I think this is one degree better even than "egregio."

The damage which torrents can do must be seen to be believed.

There is not a streamlet, however innocent looking, which is not liable occasionally to be turned into a furious destructive agent, carrying ruin over the pastures which at ordinary times it irrigates. Perhaps in old times people deified and wors.h.i.+pped streams because they were afraid of them. Every year each one of the great Alpine roads will be interrupted at some point or another by the tons of stones and gravel that are swept over it perhaps for a hundred yards together. I have seen the St. Gothard road more than once soon after these interruptions and could not have believed such damage possible; in 1869 people would still shudder when they spoke of the inundations of 1868. It is curious to note how they will now say that rocks which have evidently been in their present place for hundreds of years, were brought there in 1868; as for the torrent that damaged S. Rocco when I was in the valley of Mesocco, it shaved off the strong parapet of the bridge on either side clean and sharp, but the arch was left standing, the flood going right over the top. Many scars are visible on the mountain tops which are clearly the work of similar water-spouts, and altogether the amount of solid matter which gets taken down each year into the valleys is much greater than we generally think. Let any one watch the Ticino flowing into the Lago Maggiore after a few days' heavy rain, and consider how many tons of mud per day it must carry into and leave in the lake, and he will wonder that the gradual filling-up process is not more noticeable from age to age than it is.

Anzone, whence the sad torrent derives its name, is an exquisitely lovely little hamlet close to Mesocco. Another no less beautiful village is Doera, on the other side of the Moesa, and half a mile lower down than Mesocco. Doera overlooks the castle, the original hexagonal form of which can be made out from this point. It must have been much of the same plan as the castle at Eynsford in Kent-- of which, by the way, I was once a.s.sured that the oldest inhabitant could not say "what it come from." While I was copying the fresco outside the chapel at Doera, some charming people came round me. I said the fresco was very beautiful. "Son persuaso," said the spokesman solemnly. Then he said there were some more pictures inside and we had better see them; so the keys were brought. We said that they too were very beautiful. "Siam persuasi," was the reply in chorus. Then they said that perhaps we should like to buy them and take them away with us. This was a more serious matter, so we explained that they were very beautiful, but that these things had a charm upon the spot which they would lose if removed elsewhere. The nice people at once replied, "Siam persuasi," and so they left us. It was like a fragment from one of Messrs.

Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas.

For the rest, Mesocco is beautifully situated and surrounded by waterfalls. There is a man there who takes the cows and goats out in the morning for their several owners in the village, and brings them home in the evening. He announces his departure and his return by blowing a twisted sh.e.l.l, like those that Tritons blow on fountains or in pictures; it yields a softer sound than a horn; when his sh.e.l.l is heard people go to the cow-house and let the cows out; they need not drive them to join the others, they need only open the door; and so in the evening, they only want the sound of the sh.e.l.l to tell them that they must open the stable-door, for the cows or goats when turned from the rest of the mob make straight to their own abode.

There are two great avalanches which descend every spring; one of them when I was there last was not quite gone until September; these avalanches push the air before them and compress it, so that a terrific wind descends to the bottom of the valley and mounts up on to the village of Mesocco. One year this wind snapped a whole grove of full-grown walnuts across the middle of their trunks, and carried stones and bits of wood up against the houses at some distance off; it tore off part of the covering from the cupola of the church, and twisted the weatherc.o.c.k awry in the fas.h.i.+on in which it may still be seen, unless it has been mended since I left.

The judges at Mesocco get four francs a day when they are wanted, but unless actually sitting they get nothing. No wonder the people are so nice to one another and quarrel so seldom.

The walk from Mesocco to S. Bernardino is delightful; it should take about three hours. For gra.s.sy slopes and flowers I do not know a better, more especially from S. Giacomo onward. In the woods above S. Giacomo there are some bears, or were last year.

Five were known--a father, mother, and three young ones--but two were killed. They do a good deal of damage, and the Canton offers a reward for their destruction. The Grisons is the only Swiss Canton in which there are bears still remaining.

San Bernardino, 5500 feet above the sea, pleased me less than Mesocco, but there are some nice bits in it. The Hotel Brocco is the best to go to. The village is about two hours below the top of the pa.s.s; the walk to this is a pleasant one. The old Roman road can still be seen in many places, and is in parts in an excellent state even now. San Bernardino is a fas.h.i.+onable watering-place and has a chalybeate spring. In the summer it often has as many as two or three thousand visitors, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the Lago Maggiore and even from Milan. It is not so good a sketching ground--at least so I thought--as some others of a similar character that I have seen. It is not comparable, for example, to Fusio. It is little visited by the English.

On our way down to Bellinzona again we determined to take S. Maria in Calanca, and accordingly were dropped by the diligence near Gabbiolo, whence there is a path across the meadows and under the chestnuts which leads to Verdabbio. There are some good bits near the church of this village, and some quaint modern frescoes on a public-house a little off the main footpath, but there is no accommodation. From this village the path ascends rapidly for an hour or more, till just as one has made almost sure that one must have gone wrong and have got too high, or be on the track to an alpe only, one finds one's self on a wide beaten path with walls on either side. We are now on a level with S. Maria itself, and turning sharply to the left come in a few minutes right upon the ma.s.sive keep and the campanile, which are so striking when seen from down below. They are much more striking when seen from close at hand. The sketch I give does not convey the notion--as what sketch can convey it?--that one is at a great elevation, and it is this which gives its especial charm to S. Maria in Calanca.

The approach to the church is beautiful, and the church itself full of interest. The village was evidently at one time a place of some importance, though it is not easy to understand how it came to be built in such a situation. Even now it is unaccountably large.

There is no accommodation for sleeping, but an artist who could rough it would, I think, find a good deal that he would like. On p. 226 is a sketch of the church and tower as seen from the opposite side to that from which the sketch on p. 224 was taken.

The church seems to have been very much altered, if indeed the body of it was not entirely rebuilt, in 1618--a date which is found on a pillar inside the church. On going up into the gallery at the west end of the church, there is found a Nativity painted in fres...o...b.. a local artist, one Agostino Duso of Roveredo, in the year 1727, and better by a good deal than one would antic.i.p.ate from the epoch and habitat of the painter. On the other side of the same gallery there is a Death of the Virgin, also by the same painter, but not so good. On the left-hand side of the nave going towards the altar there is a remarkable picture of the battle of Lepanto, signed "Georgius Wilhelmus Groesner Constantiensis fecit A.D. 1649," and with an inscription to the effect that it was painted for the confraternity of the most holy Rosary, and by them set up "in this church of St. Mary commonly called of Calancha." The picture displays very little respect for academic principles, but is full of spirit and sensible painting.

Above this picture there hang two others--also very interesting, from being examples of, as it were, the last groans of true art while being stifled by academicism--or it may be the attempt at a new birth, which was nevertheless doomed to extinction by academicians while yet in its infancy. Such pictures are to be found all over Italy. Sometimes, as in the case of the work of Dedomenici, they have absolute merit--more commonly they have the relative merit of showing that the painter was trying to look and feel for himself, and a picture does much when it conveys this impression. It is a small still voice, which, however small, can be heard through and above the roar of cant which tries to drown it. We want a book about the unknown Italian painters in out-of- the-way Italian valleys during the times of the decadence of art.

There is ample material for one who has the time at his command.

We lunched at the house of the inc.u.mbent, a monk, who was very kind to us. We found him drying French marigold blossoms to colour his risotto with during the winter. He gave us some excellent wine, and took us over the tower near the church. Nothing can be more lovely than the monk's garden. If aesthetic people are ever going to get tired of sun-flowers and lilies, let me suggest to them that they will find a weary utterness in chicory and seed onions which they should not overlook; I never felt chicory and seed onions till I was in the monk's garden at S. Maria in Calanca. All about the terrace or artificial level ground on which the church is placed, there are admirable bits for painting, and if there was only accommodation so that one could get up as high as the alpi, I can fancy few better places to stay at than S. Maria in Calanca.

CHAPTER XIX--The Mendrisiotto

We stayed a day or two at Bellinzona, and then went on over the Monte Cenere to Lugano. My first acquaintance with the Monte Cenere was made some seven-and-thirty years ago when I was a small boy. I remember with what delight I found wild narcissuses growing in a meadow upon the top of it, and was allowed to gather as many as I liked. It was not till some thirty years afterwards that I again pa.s.sed over the Monte Cenere in summer time, but I well remembered the narcissus place, and wondered whether there would still be any of them growing there. Sure enough when we got to the top, there they were as thick as cowslips in an English meadow. At Lugano, having half-an-hour to spare, we paid our respects to the glorious frescoes by Bernardino Luini, and to the facade of the duomo, and then went on to Mendrisio.

The neighbourhood of Mendrisio, or, as it is called, the "Mendrisiotto," is a rich one. Mendrisio itself should be the headquarters; there is an excellent hotel there, the Hotel Mendrisio, kept by Signora Pasta, which cannot be surpa.s.sed for comfort and all that makes a hotel pleasant to stay at. I never saw a house where the arrangements were more perfect; even in the hottest weather I found the rooms always cool and airy, and the nights never oppressive. Part of the secret of this may be that Mendrisio lies higher than it appears to do, and the hotel, which is situated on the slope of the hill, takes all the breeze there is. The lake of Lugano is about 950 feet above the sea. The river falls rapidly between Mendrisio and the lake, while the hotel is high above the river. I do not see, therefore, how the hotel can be less than 1200 feet above the sea-line; but whatever height it is, I never felt the heat oppressive, though on more than one occasion I have stayed there for weeks together in July and August.

Mendris...o...b..ing situated on the railway between Lugano and Como, both these places are within easy reach. Milan is only a couple of hours off, and Varese a three or four hours' carriage drive. It lies on the very last slopes of the Alps, so that whether the visitor has a fancy for mountains or for the smiling beauty of the colline, he may be equally gratified. There are excellent roads in every direction, and none of them can be taken without its leading to some new feature of interest; I do not think any English family will regret spending a fortnight at this charming place.

Most visitors to Mendrisio, however, make it a place of pa.s.sage only, en route for the celebrated hotel on the Monte Generoso, kept by Dr. Pasta, Signora Pasta's brother-in-law. The Monte Generoso is very fine; I know few places of which I am fonder; whether one looks down at evening upon the lake of Lugano thousands of feet below, and then lets the eye wander upward again and rest upon the ghastly pallor of Monte Rosa, or whether one takes the path to the Colma and saunters over green slopes carpeted with wild-flowers, and studded with the gentlest cattle, all is equally delightful.

What a sense of vastness and freedom is there on the broad heaving slopes of these subalpine spurs. They are just high enough without being too high. The South Downs are very good, and by making believe very much I have sometimes been half able to fancy when upon them that I might be on the Monte Generoso, but they are only good as a quartet is good if one cannot get a symphony.

I think there are more wild-flowers upon the Monte Generoso than upon any other that I know, and among them numbers of beautiful wild narcissuses, as on the Monte Cenere. At the top of the Monte Generoso, among the rocks that jut out from the herbage, there grows--unless it has been all uprooted--the large yellow auricula, and this I own to being my favourite mountain wild-flower. It is the only flower which, I think, fairly beats cowslips. Here too I heard, or thought I heard, the song of that most beautiful of all bird songsters, the pa.s.sero solitario, or solitary sparrow-if it is a sparrow, which I should doubt.

n.o.body knows what a bird can do in the way of song until he has heard a pa.s.sero solitario. I think they still have one at the Hotel Mendrisio, but am not sure. I heard one there once, and can only say that I shall ever remember it as the most beautiful warbling that I ever heard come out of the throat of bird. All other bird singing is loud, vulgar, and unsympathetic in comparison. The bird itself is about as big as a starling, and is of a dull blue colour. It is easily tamed, and becomes very much attached to its master and mistress, but it is apt to die in confinement before very long. It fights all others of its own species; it is now a rare bird, and is doomed, I fear, ere long to extinction, to the regret of all who have had the pleasure of its acquaintance. The Italians are very fond of them, and Professor Vela told me they will even act like a house dog and set up a cry if any strangers come. The one I saw flew instantly at my finger when I put it near its cage, but I was not sure whether it did so in anger or play. I thought it liked being listened to, and as long as it chose to sing I was delighted to stay, whereas as a general rule I want singing birds to leave off. {32}

People say the nightingale's song is so beautiful; I am ashamed to own it, but I do not like it. It does not use the diatonic scale.

A bird should either make no attempt to sing in tune, or it should succeed in doing so. Larks are Wordsworth, and as for canaries, I would almost sooner hear a pig having its nose ringed, or the grinding of an axe. Cuckoos are all right; they sing in tune.

Rooks are lovely; they do not pretend to tune. Seagulls again, and the plaintive creatures that pity themselves on moorlands, as the plover and the curlew, or the birds that lift up their voices and cry at eventide when there is an eager air blowing upon the mountains and the last yellow in the sky is fading--I have no words with which to praise the music of these people. Or listen to the chuckling of a string of soft young ducks, as they glide single- file beside a ditch under a hedgerow, so close together that they look like some long brown serpent, and say what sound can be more seductive.

Many years ago I remember thinking that the birds in New Zealand approached the diatonic scale more nearly than European birds do.

There was one bird, I think it was the New Zealand thrush, but am not sure, which used to sing thus:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

I was always wanting it to go on:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

But it never got beyond the first four bars. Then there was another which I noticed the first day I landed, more than twenty years since, and whose song descended by very nearly perfect semitones as follows:-

[At this point in the book a music score is given]

but the semitones are here and there in this bird's song a trifle out of tune, whereas in that of the other there was no departure from the diatonic scale. Be this, however, as it may, none of these please me so much as the pa.s.sero solitario.

The only mammals that I can call to mind at this moment as showing any even apparent approach to an appreciation of the diatonic scale are the elephant and the rhinoceros. The braying (or whatever is the technical term for it) of an elephant comprises a pretty accurate third, and is of a rich mellow tone with a good deal of bra.s.s in it. The rhinoceros grunts a good fourth, beginning, we will say, on C, and dropping correctly on to the G below.

The Monte Generoso, then, is a good place to stay a few days at, but one soon comes to an end of it. The top of a mountain is like an island in the air, one is cooped up upon it unless one descends; in the case of the Monte Generoso there is the view of the lake of Lugano, the walk to the Colma, the walk along the crest of the hill by the farm, and the view over Lombardy, and that is all. If one goes far down one is haunted by the recollection that when one is tired in the evening one will have all one's climbing to do, and, beautiful as the upper parts of the Monte Generoso are, there is little for a painter there except to study cattle, goats, and clouds. I recommend a traveller, therefore, by all means to spend a day or two at the hotel on the Monte Generoso, but to make his longer sojourn down below at Mendrisio, the walks and excursions from which are endless, and all of them beautiful.

Among the best of these is the ascent of the Monte Bisbino, which can be easily made in a day from Mendrisio; I found no difficulty in doing it on foot all the way there and back a few years ago, but I now prefer to take a trap as far as Sagno, and do the rest of the journey on foot, returning to the trap in the evening. Every one who knows North Italy knows the Monte Bisbino. It is a high pyramidal mountain with what seems a little white chapel on the top that glistens like a star when the sun is full upon it. From Como it is seen most plainly, but it is distinguishable over a very large part of Lombardy when the sun is right; it is frequently ascended from Como and Cern.o.bbio, but I believe the easiest way of getting up it is to start from Mendrisio with a trap as far as Sagno.

A mile and a half or so after leaving Mendrisio there is a village called Castello on the left. Here, a little off the road on the right hand, there is the small church of S. Cristoforo, of great antiquity, containing the remains of some early frescoes, I should think of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century.

As usual, people have scratched their names on the frescoes. We found one name "Battista," with the date "1485" against it. It is a mistake to hold that the English scribble their names about more than other people. The Italians like doing this just as well as we do. Let the reader go to Varallo, for example, and note the names scratched up from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present day, on the walls of the chapel containing the Crucifixion.

Indeed, the Italians seem to have begun the habit long before we did, for we very rarely find names scratched on English buildings so long ago as the fifteenth century, whereas in Italy they are common. The earliest I can call to mind in England at this moment (of course, excepting the names written in the Beauchamp Tower) is on the church porch at Harlington, where there is a name cut and dated in one of the early years of the seventeenth century. I never even in Italy saw a name scratched on a wall with an earlier date than 1480.

Why is it, I wonder, that these little bits of soul-fossil as it were, touch us so much when we come across them? A fossil does not touch us--while a fly in amber does. Why should a fly in amber interest us and give us a slightly solemn feeling for a moment, when the fossil of a megatherium bores us? I give it up; but few of us can see the lightest trifle scratched off casually and idly long ago, without liking it better than almost any great thing of the same, or ever so much earlier date, done with purpose and intention that it should remain. So when we left S. Cristoforo it was not the old church, nor the frescoes, but the name of the idle fellow who had scratched his name "Battista . . . 1485," that we carried away with us. A little bit of old world life and entire want of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber.

In the Val Sesia, several years ago, I bought some tobacco that was wrapped up for me in a yellow old MS. which I in due course examined. It was dated 1797, and was a leaf from the book in which a tanner used to enter the skins which his customers brought him to be tanned.

"October 24," he writes, "I received from Signora Silvestre, called the widow, the skin of a goat branded in the neck.--(I am not to give it up unless they give me proof that she is the rightful owner.) Mem. I delivered it to Mr. Peter Job (Signor Pietro Giobbe).

"October 27.--I receive two small skins of a goat, very thin and branded in the neck, from Giuseppe Gianote of Campertogno.

"October 29.--I receive three skins of a chamois from Signor Antonio Cinere of Alagna, branded in the neck." Then there is a subsequent entry written small. "I receive also a little gray marmot's skin weighing thirty ounces."

I am sorry I did not get a sheet with the tanner's name. I am sure he was an excellent person, and might have been trusted with any number of skins, branded or unbranded. It is nearly a hundred years ago since that little gray marmot's skin was tanned in the Val Sesia; but the wretch will not lie quiet in his grave; he walks, and has haunted me once a month or so any time this ten years past. I will see if I cannot lay him by prevailing on him to haunt some one or other of my readers.

CHAPTER XX--Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino

But to return to S. Cristoforo. In the Middle Ages there was a certain duke who held this part of the country and was notorious for his exactions. One Christmas eve when he and his whole household had a.s.sembled to their devotions, the people rose up against them and murdered them inside the church. After this tragedy, the church was desecrated, though monuments have been put up on the outside walls even in recent years. There is a fine bit of early religious sculpture over the door, and the traces of a fresco of Christ walking upon the water, also very early.