Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino Part 7

Any man who can write, can draw to a not inconsiderable extent.

Look at the Bayeux tapestry; yet Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in her life. See how well prisoner after prisoner in the Tower of London has cut this or that out in the stone of his prison wall, without, in all probability, having ever tried his hand at drawing before. Look at my friend Jones, who has several ill.u.s.trations in this book. The first year he went abroad with me he could hardly draw at all. He was no year away from England more than three weeks. How did he learn? On the old principle, if I am not mistaken. The old principle was for a man to be doing something which he was pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get a much younger one to help him. The younger paid nothing for instruction, but the elder took the work, as long as the relation of master and pupil existed between them. I, then, was making ill.u.s.trations for this book, and got Jones to help me. I let him see what I was doing, and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and then left him alone--beyond giving him the same kind of small criticism that I expected from himself--but I appropriated his work. That is the way to teach, and the result was that in an incredibly short time Jones could draw. The taking the work is a sine qua non. If I had not been going to have his work, Jones, in spite of all his quickness, would probably have been rather slower in learning to draw. Being paid in money is nothing like so good.

This is the system of apprentices.h.i.+p versus the academic system.

The academic system consists in giving people the rules for doing things. The apprentices.h.i.+p system consists in letting them do it, with just a trifle of supervision. "For all a rhetorician's rules," says my great namesake, "teach nothing, but to name his tools;" and academic rules generally are much the same as the rhetorician's. Some men can pa.s.s through academies unscathed, but they are very few, and in the main the academic influence is a baleful one, whether exerted in a university or a school. While young men at universities are being prepared for their entry into life, their rivals have already entered it. The most university and examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese, and they are the least progressive.

Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing: they should go into a painter's studio and paint on his pictures. I am told that half the conveyances in the country are drawn by pupils; there is no more mystery about painting than about conveyancing--not half in fact, I should think, so much. One may ask, How can the beginner paint, or draw conveyances, till he has learnt how to do so? The answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate trying to do? If he likes his subject, he will try: if he tries, he will soon succeed in doing something which shall open a door. It does not matter what a man does; so long as he does it with the attention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way to something else. After long waiting he will certainly find one door open, and go through it. He will say to himself that he can never find another. He has found this, more by luck than cunning, but now he is done. Yet by and by he will see that there is ONE more small, unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceeds through this too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no other, do not let him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven, they come not by observation, least of all do they come by forcing: let them just go on doing what comes nearest, but doing it attentively, and a great wide door will one day spring into existence where there had been no sign of one but a little time previously. Only let him be always doing something, and let him cross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous efficacy of crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the evolutionist. Then after years--but not probably till after a great many--doors will open up all round, so many and so wide that the difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain the means of even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand invitingly open.

I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side.

It may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on the watch for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is incessantly pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never find it--so that the kingdom does come by observation. It is with this as with everything else--there must be a harmonious fusing of two principles which are in flat contradiction to one another.

The question whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantage of opportunities that come, or to go further afield in search of them, is one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects--animals and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the other--that it is better on the whole to stay at home and profit by what comes--in plants. Some intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during which the schism was not yet complete.

If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would say that it is the plants and not we who are the heretics. There can be no question about this; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable; it is much more true to say that plants have descended from animals than animals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind indeed, but still wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well--as well as though they kept the most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our bigoted and intolerant way of trying to convert them: eating is only a violent mode of proselytising or converting; and we do convert them--to good animal substance, of our own way of thinking. But then, animals are eaten too. They convert one another, almost as much as they convert plants. And an animal is no sooner dead than a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, however, that no schism could have been so long successful, without having a good deal to say for itself.

Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever is or can be?

Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end--will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves; this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile, and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait. It may appear, however, on the whole, like reopening a settled question to uphold the principle of being busy and attentive over a small area, rather than going to and fro over a larger one, for a mammal like man, but I think most readers will be with me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art and literature, it is he who does his small immediate work most carefully who will find doors open most certainly to him, that will conduct him into the richest chambers.

Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany a dray and team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose at night that they might feed. There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I could not find my team in the morning, and had no clue to the direction in which they had gone. At first I used to try and throw my soul into the bullocks' souls, so as to divine if possible what they would be likely to have done, and would then ride off ten miles in the wrong direction. People used in those days to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or fortnight--when they perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by the place where they were turned out. After some time I changed my tactics.

On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation house, and stand occasional drinks to travellers. Some one would ere long, as a general rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks.

This case does not go quite on all fours with what I have been saying above, inasmuch as I was not very industrious in my limited area; but the standing drinks and inquiring was being as industrious as the circ.u.mstances would allow.

To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to the finding of doors in later life; partly because they push their young men too fast through doorways that the universities have provided, and so discourage the habit of being on the look-out for others; and partly because they do not take pains enough to make sure that their doors are bona fide ones. If, to change the metaphor, an academy has taken a bad s.h.i.+lling, it is seldom very scrupulous about trying to pa.s.s it on. It will stick to it that the s.h.i.+lling is a good one as long as the police will let it. I was very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never again could be so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindly recollection both of Cambridge and of the school where I pa.s.sed my boyhood; but I feel, as I think most others must in middle life, that I have spent as much of my maturer years in unlearning as in learning.

The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business of life many years earlier than he now commonly does. He should begin at the very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which his family has pursued before him--for the professions will a.s.suredly one day become hereditary. The ideal railway director will have begun at fourteen as a railway porter. He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more than a short time; but he should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of the lower branches in the profession. The painter should do just the same. He should begin by setting his employer's palette and cleaning his brushes. As for the good side of universities, the proper preservative of this is to be found in the club.

If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there must be a complete standing aloof from the academic system. That system has had time enough. Where and who are its men? Can it point to one painter who can hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to 1550? Academies will bring out men who can paint hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes, but this is not enough. This is grammar and deportment; we want it and a kindly nature, and these cannot be got from academies. As far as mere TECHNIQUE is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in the least desirable. The same mutatis mutandis holds good with writing as with painting. We want less word-painting and fine phrases, and more observation at first-hand. Let us have a periodical ill.u.s.trated by people who cannot draw, and written by people who cannot write (perhaps, however, after all, we have some), but who look and think for themselves, and express themselves just as they please,--and this we certainly have not. Every contributor should be at once turned out if he or she is generally believed to have tried to do something which he or she did not care about trying to do, and anything should be admitted which is the outcome of a genuine liking. People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy. A cat is good company when it is purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail.

The sketching clubs up and down the country might form the nucleus of such a society, provided all professional men were rigorously excluded. As for the old masters, the better plan would be never even to look at one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom.

While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art for art's sake." Who is art that it should have a sake? A work of art should be produced for the pleasure it gives the producer, and the pleasure he thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond; but neither money nor people whom he does not know personally should be thought of. Of course such a society as I have proposed would not remain incorrupt long. "Everything that grows, holds in perfection but a little moment." The members would try to imitate professional men in spite of their rules, or, if they escaped this and after a while got to paint well, they would become dogmatic, and a rebellion against their authority would be as necessary ere long as it was against that of their predecessors: but the balance on the whole would be to the good.

Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet for this, that they know too much for the beginner to be en rapport with them. It is the beginner who can help the beginner, as it is the child who is the most instructive companion for another child.

The beginner can understand the beginner, but the cross between him and the proficient performer is too wide for fertility. It savours of impatience, and is in flat contradiction to the first principles of biology. It does a beginner positive harm to look at the masterpieces of the great executionists, such as Rembrandt or Turner.

If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax all one's strength, nothing fatigues so much as casting upward glances to the top, nothing encourages so much as casting downward glances. The top seems never to draw nearer; the parts that we have pa.s.sed retreat rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see the drawing by Turner, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of our National Gallery, dated 1787.

This is the sort of thing for him, not to copy, but to look at for a minute or two now and again. It will show him nothing about painting, but it may serve to teach him not to overtax his strength, and will prove to him that the greatest masters in painting, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is no way superior to that of their neighbours. A collection of the earliest known works of the greatest men would be much more useful to the student than any number of their maturer works, for it would show him that he need not worry himself because his work does not look clever, or as silly people say, "show power."

The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flat refusal to be hurried or to pa.s.s anything as understood which is not understood, and an obstinacy of character which shall make the student's friends find it less trouble to let him have his own way than to bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or universities are covertly, but essentially, radical inst.i.tutions and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a hurry, and of believing in short cuts too soon. But it must be remembered that this proposition, like every other, wants tempering with a slight infusion of its direct opposite.

I said in an early part of this book that the best test to know whether or no one likes a picture is to ask one's self whether one would like to look at it if one was quite sure one was alone. The best test for a painter as to whether he likes painting his picture is to ask himself whether he should like to paint it if he was quite sure that no one except himself, and the few of whom he was very fond, would ever see it. If he can answer this question in the affirmative, he is all right; if he cannot, he is all wrong. I will close these remarks with an ill.u.s.tration which will show how nearly we can approach the early Florentines even now--when n.o.body is looking at us. I do not know who Mr. Pollard is. I never heard of him till I came across a cheap lithograph of his Funeral of Tom Moody in the parlour of a village inn. I should not think he ever was an R.A., but he has approached as nearly as the difference between the geniuses of the two countries will allow, to the spirit of the painters who painted in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Look, again, at Garrard, at the close of the last century. We generally succeed with sporting or quasi-sporting subjects, and our cheap coloured coaching and hunting subjects are almost always good, and often very good indeed. We like these things: therefore we observe them; therefore we soon become able to express them.

Historical and costume pictures we have no genuine love for; we do not, therefore, go beyond repeating commonplaces concerning them.

I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for another occasion.

CHAPTER XIII--Viu, Fucine, and S. Ign.a.z.io

I must now return to my young friend at Groscavallo. I have published his drawings without his permission, having unfortunately lost his name and address, and being unable therefore to apply to him. I hope that, should they ever meet his eye, he will accept this apology and the a.s.surance of my most profound consideration.

Delighted as I had been with his proposed ill.u.s.trations, I thought I had better hear some of the letterpress, so I begged him to read me his MS. My time was short, and he began at once. The few introductory pages were very nice, but there was nothing particularly noticeable about them; when, however, he came to his description of the place where we now were, he spoke of a beautiful young lady as attracting his attention on the evening of his arrival. It seemed that she was as much struck with him as he with her, and I thought we were going to have a romance, when he proceeded as follows: "We perceived that we were sympathetic, and in less than a quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows that we would never marry one another." "What?" said I, hardly able to believe my ears, "will you kindly read those last words over again?" He did so, slowly and distinctly; I caught them beyond all power of mistake, and they were as I have given them above:- "We perceived that we were sympathetic, and in less than a quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows that we would never marry one another." While I was rubbing my eyes and making up my mind whether I had stumbled upon a great satirist or no, I heard a voice from below--"Signor Butler, Signor Butler, la vettura e p.r.o.nta." I had therefore to leave my doubt unsolved, but all the time as we drove down the valley I had the words above quoted ringing in my head. If ever any of my readers come across the book itself--for I should hope it will be published--I should be very grateful to them if they will direct my attention to it.

Another day I went to Ceres, and returned on foot via S. Ign.a.z.io.

S. Ign.a.z.io is a famous sanctuary on the very top of a mountain, like that of Sammichele; but it is late, the St. Ignatius being St.

Ignatius Loyola, and not the apostolic father. I got my dinner at a village inn at the foot of the mountain, and from the window caught sight of a fresco upon the wall of a chapel a few yards off.

There was a companion to it hardly less interesting, but I had not time to sketch it. I do not know what the one I give is intended to represent. St. Ignatius is upon a rock, and is pleased with something, but there is nothing to show what it is, except his att.i.tude, which seems to say, "Senza far fatica,"--"You see I can do it quite easily," or, "There is no deception." Nor do we easily gather what it is that the Roman centurion is saying to St.

Ignatius. I cannot make up my mind whether he is merely warning him to beware of the reaction, or whether he is a little scandalised.

From this village I went up the mountain to the sanctuary of S.

Ign.a.z.io itself, which looks well from the distance, and commands a striking view, but contains nothing of interest, except a few nice votive pictures.

From Lanzo I went to Viu, a summer resort largely frequented by the Turinese, but rarely visited by English people. There is a good inn at Viu--the one close to where the public conveyance stops--and the neighbourhood is enchanting. The little village on the crest of the hill in the distance, to the left of the church, as shown on the preceding page, is called the Colma di S. Giovanni, and is well worth a visit. In spring, before the gra.s.s is cut, the pastures must be even better than when I saw them in August, and they were then still of almost incredible beauty.

I went to S. Giovanni by the directest way--descending, that is, to the level of the Stura, crossing it, and then going straight up the mountain. I returned by a slight detour so as to take the village of Fucine, a frazione of Viu a little higher up the river. I found many picturesque bits; among them the one which I give on the next page. It was a grand festa; first they had had ma.s.s, then there had been the funzioni, which I never quite understand, and thenceforth till sundown there was a public ball on the bowling ground of a little inn on the Viu side of the bridge. The princ.i.p.al inn is on the other side. It was here I went and ordered dinner. The landlady brought me a minestra, or hodge-podge soup, full of savoury vegetables, and very good; a nice cutlet fried in bread-crumbs, bread and b.u.t.ter ad libitum, and half a bottle of excellent wine. She brought all together on a tray, and put them down on the table. "It'll come to a franc," said she, "in all, but please to pay first." I did so, of course, and she was satisfied.

A day or two afterwards I went to the same inn, hoping to dine as well and cheaply as before; but I think they must have discovered that I was a forestiere inglese in the meantime, for they did not make me pay first, and charged me normal prices.

What pretty words they have! While eating my dinner I wanted a small plate and asked for it. The landlady changed the word I had used, and told a girl to bring me a tondino. A tondino is an abbreviation of rotondino, a "little round thing." A plate is a tondo, a small plate a tondino. The delicacy of expression which their diminutives and intensitives give is untranslateable. One day I was asking after a waiter whom I had known in previous years, but who was ill. I said I hoped he was not badly off. "Oh dear, no," was the answer; "he has a discreta posizionina"--"a snug little sum put by." "Is the road to such and such a place difficult?" I once inquired. "Un tantino," was the answer. "Ever such a very little," I suppose, is as near as we can get to this.

At one inn I asked whether I could have my linen back from the wash by a certain time, and was told it was impossibilissimo. I have an Italian friend long resident in England who often introduces English words when talking with me in Italian. Thus I have heard him say that such and such a thing is tanto cheap.i.s.simo. As for their gestures, they are inimitable. To say nothing of the pretty little way in which they say "no," by moving the forefinger backwards and forwards once or twice, they have a hundred movements to save themselves the trouble of speaking, which say what they have to say better than any words can do. It is delightful to see an Italian move his hand in such way as to show you that you have got to go round a corner. Gesture is easier both to make and to understand than speech is. Speech is a late acquisition, and in critical moments is commonly discarded in favour of gesture, which is older and more habitual.

I once saw an Italian explaining something to another and tapping his nose a great deal. He became more and more confidential, and the more confidential he became, the more he tapped, till his finger seemed to become glued to, and almost grow into his nose.

At last the supreme moment came. He drew the finger down, pressing it closely against his lower lip, so as to drag it all down and show his gums and the roots of his teeth. "There," he seemed to say, "you now know all: consider me as turned inside out: my mucous membrane is before you."

At Fucine, and indeed in all the valleys hereabout, spinning-wheels are not uncommon. I also saw a woman sitting in her room with the door opening on to the street, weaving linen at a hand-loom. The woman and the hand-loom were both very old and rickety. The first and the last specimens of anything, whether animal or vegetable organism, or machine, or inst.i.tution, are seldom quite satisfactory. Some five or six years ago I saw an old gentleman sitting outside the St. Lawrence Hall at Montreal, in Canada, and wearing a pigtail, but it was not a good pigtail; and when the Scotch baron killed the last wolf in Scotland, it was probably a weak, mangy old thing, capable of little further mischief.

Presently I walked a mile or two up the river, and met a G.o.dfather coming along with a cradle on his shoulder; he was followed by two women, one carrying some long wax candles, and the other something wrapped up in a piece of brown paper; they were going to get the child christened at Fucine. Soon after I met a priest, and bowed, as a matter of course. In towns or places where many foreigners come and go this is unnecessary, but in small out-of-the-way places one should take one's hat off to the priest. I mention this because many Englishmen do not know that it is expected of them, and neglect the accustomed courtesy through ignorance. Surely, even here in England, if one is in a small country village, off one's beat, and meets the clergyman, it is more polite than not to take off one's hat.

Viu is one of the places from which pilgrims ascend the Rocca Melone at the beginning of August. This is one of the most popular and remarkable pilgrimages of North Italy; the Rocca Melone is 11,000 feet high, and forms a peak so sharp, that there is room for little else than the small wooden chapel which stands at the top of it. There is no accommodation whatever, except at some rough barracks (so I have been told) some thousands of feet below the summit. These, I was informed, are sometimes so crowded that the people doze standing, and the cold at night is intense, unless under the shelter just referred to; yet some five or six thousand pilgrims ascend on the day and night of the festa--chiefly from Susa, but also from all parts of the valleys of the Dora and the Stura. They leave Susa early in the morning, camp out or get shelter in the barracks that evening, reaching the chapel at the top of the Rocca Melone next day. I have not made the ascent myself, but it would probably be worth making by one who did not mind the fatigue.

I may mention that thatch is not uncommon in the Stura valley. In the Val Mastallone, and more especially between Civiasco (above Varallo) and Orta, thatch is more common still, and the thatching is often very beautifully done. Thatch in a stone country is an indication of German, or at any rate Cisalpine descent, and is among the many proofs of the extent to which German races crossed the Alps and spread far down over Piedmont and Lombardy. I was more struck with traces of German influence on the path from Pella on the Lago d'Orta, to the Colma on the way to Varallo, than perhaps anywhere else. The churches have a tendency to have pure spires--a thing never seen in Italy proper; clipped yews and box- trees are common; there are lime-trees in the churchyards, and thatch is the rule, not the exception. At Rimella in the Val Mastallone, not far off, German is still the current language. As I sat sketching, a woman came up to me, and said, "Was machen sic?"

as a matter of course. Rimella is the highest village in its valley, yet if one crosses the saddle at the head of the valley, one does not descend upon a German-speaking district; one descends on the Val Anzasca, where Italian is universally spoken. Until recently German was the language of many other villages at the heads of valleys, even though these valleys were themselves entirely surrounded by Italian-speaking people. At Alagna in the Val Sesia, German is still spoken.

Whatever their origin, however, the people are now thoroughly Italianised. Nevertheless, as I have already said, it is strange what a number of people one meets among them, whom most people would unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounce to be English if asked to name their nationality.

CHAPTER XIV--Sanctuary of Oropa

From Lanzo I went back to Turin, where Jones again joined me, and we resolved to go and see the famous sanctuary of Oropa near Biella. Biella is about three hours' railway journey from Turin.

It is reached by a branch line of some twenty miles, that leaves the main line between Turin and Milan at Santhia. Except the view of the Alps, which in clear weather cannot be surpa.s.sed, there is nothing of very particular interest between Turin and Santhia, nor need Santhia detain the traveller longer than he can help. Biella we found to consist of an upper and a lower town--the upper, as may be supposed, being the older. It is at the very junction of the plain and the mountains, and is a thriving place, with more of the busy air of an English commercial town than perhaps any other of its size in North Italy. Even in the old town large rambling old palazzi have been converted into factories, and the click of the shuttle is heard in unexpected places.

We were unable to find that Biella contains any remarkable pictures or other works of art, though they are doubtless to be found by those who have the time to look for them. There is a very fine campanile near the post-office, and an old brick baptistery, also hard by; but the church to which both campanile and baptistery belonged, has, as the author of "Round about London" so well says, been "utterly restored;" it cannot be uglier than what we sometimes do, but it is quite as ugly. We found an Italian opera company in Biella; peeping through a grating, as many others were doing, we watched the company rehearsing "La forza del destino," which was to be given later in the week.

The morning after our arrival, we took the daily diligence for Oropa, leaving Biella at eight o'clock. Before we were clear of the town we could see the long line of the hospice, and the chapels dotted about near it, high up in a valley at some distance off; presently we were shown another fine building some eight or nine miles away, which we were told was the sanctuary of Graglia. About this time the pictures and statuettes of the Madonna began to change their hue and to become black--for the sacred image of Oropa being black, all the Madonnas in her immediate neighbourhood are of the same complexion. Underneath some of them is written, "Nigra sum sed sum formosa," which, as a rule, was more true as regards the first epithet than the second.