Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino Part 13

Before going up to the castle we stayed at the inn on the left immediately on entering the town, to dine. They gave us a very good dinner, and the garden was a delightful place to dine in.

There is a kind of red champagne made hereabouts which is very good; the figs were ripe, and we could gather them for ourselves and eat ad libitum. There were two tame sparrows hopping continually about us; they pretended to make a little fuss about allowing themselves to be caught, but they evidently did not mind it. I dropped a bit of bread and was stooping to pick it up; one of them on seeing me move made for it and carried it off at once; the action was exactly that of one who was saying, "I don't particularly want it myself, but I'm not going to let you have it."

Presently some cacciatori came with a poodle-dog. They explained to us that though the poodle was "a truly hunting dog," he would not touch the sparrows, which to do him justice he did not. There was a tame jay also, like the sparrows going about loose, but, like them, aware when he was well off.

After dinner we went up to the castle, which I have now visited off and on for many years, and like always better and better each time I go there. I know no place comparable to it in its own way. I know no place so pathetic, and yet so impressive, in its decay. It is not a ruin--all ruins are frauds--it is only decayed. It is a kind of Stokesay or Ightham Mote, better preserved than the first, and less furnished than the second, but on a grander scale than either, and set in incomparably finer surroundings. The path towards it pa.s.ses the church, which has been spoiled. Outside this there are parts of old Roman columns from some temple, stuck in the ground; inside are two statues called St. Peter and St. Paul, but evidently effigies of some magistrates in the Roman times. If the traveller likes to continue the road past the church for three- quarters of a mile or so, he will get a fine view of the castle, and if he goes up to the little chapel of S. Quirico on the top of the hill on his right hand, he will look down upon it and upon Arona. We will suppose, however, that he goes straight for the castle itself; every moment as he approaches it, it will seem finer and finer; presently he will turn into a vineyard on his left, and at once begin to climb.

Pa.s.sing under the old gateway--with its portcullis still ready to be dropped, if need be, and with the iron plates that sheathe it pierced with bullets--as at S. Michele, the visitor enters at once upon a terrace from which the two foregoing ill.u.s.trations were taken. I know nothing like this terrace. On a summer's afternoon and evening it is fully shaded, the sun being behind the castle.

The lake and town below are still in sunlight. This, I think, is about the best time to see the castle--say from six to eight on a July evening, or at any hour on a gray day.

Count Borromeo, to whom the castle belongs, allows it to be shown, and visitors are numerous. There is very little furniture inside the rooms, and the little there is is decaying; the walls are covered with pictures, mostly copies, and none of them of any great merit, but the rooms themselves are lovely. Here is a sketch of the one in which San Carlo Borromeo was born, but the one on the floor beneath is better still. The whole of this part was built about the year 1350, and inside, where the weather has not reached, the stones are as sharp as if they had been cut yesterday. It was in the great Sala of this castle that the rising against the Austrians in 1848 was planned; then there is the Sala di Giustizia, a fine room, with the remains of frescoes; the roof and the tower should also certainly be visited. All is solid and real, yet it is like an Italian opera in actual life. Lastly, there is the kitchen, where the wheel still remains in which a turnspit dog used to be put to turn it and roast the meat; but this room is not shown to strangers.

The inner court of the castle is as beautiful as the outer one.

Through the open door one catches glimpses of the terrace, and of the lake beyond it. I know Ightham, Hever, and Stokesay, both inside and out, and I know the outside of Leeds; these are all of them exquisitely beautiful, but neither they nor any other such place that I have ever seen please me as much as the castle of Angera.

We stayed talking to my old friend Signor Signorelli, the custode of the castle, and his family, and sketching upon the terrace until Tonio came to tell us that his boat was at the quay waiting for us.

Tonio is now about fourteen years old, but was only four when I first had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. He is son to Giovanni, or as he is more commonly called, Giovannino, a boatman of Arona. The boy is deservedly a great favourite, and is now a padrone with a boat of his own, from which he can get a good living.

He pulled us across the warm and sleepy lake, so far the most beautiful of all even the Italian lakes; as we neared Arona, and the wall that runs along the lake became more plain, I could not help thinking of what Giovanni had told me about it some years before, when Tonio was lying curled up, a little mite of an object, in the bottom of the boat. He was extolling a certain family of peasants who live near the castle of Angera, as being models of everything a family ought to be. "There," he said, "the children do not speak at meal-times, the polenta is put upon the table, and each takes exactly what is given him, even though one of the children thinks another has got a larger helping than he has, he will eat his piece in silence. My children are not like that; if Marietta thinks Irene has a bigger piece than she has, she will leave the room and go to the wall."

"What," I asked, "does she go to the wall for?"

"Oh! to cry; all the children go to the wall to cry."

I thought of Hezekiah. The wall is the crying place, playing, lounging place, and a great deal more, of all the houses in its vicinity. It is the common drawing-room during the summer months; if the weather is too sultry, a boatman will leave his bed and finish the night on his back upon its broad coping; we who live in a colder climate can hardly understand how great a blank in the existence of these people the destruction of the wall would be.

We soon reached Arona, and in a few minutes were in that kind and hospitable house the Hotel d'Italia, than which no better hotel is to be found in Italy.

Arona is cooler than Angera. The proverb says, "He who would know the pains of the infernal regions, could go to Angera in the summer and to Arona in the winter." The neighbourhood is exquisite.

Unless during the extreme heat of summer, it is the best place to stay at on the Lago Maggiore. The Monte Motterone is within the compa.s.s of a single day's excursion; there is Orta, also, and Varallo easily accessible, and any number of drives and nearer excursions whether by boat or carriage.

One day we made Tonio take us to Castelletto near Sesto Calende, to hear the bells. They ring the bells very beautifully at Vogogna, but, unless my recollection of a good many years ago fails me, at Castelletto they ring them better still.

At Vogogna, while we were getting our breakfast, we heard the bells strike up as follows, from a campanile on the side of the hill:-

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

They did this because a baby had just died, but we were told it was nothing to what they would have done if it had been a grown-up person.

At Castelletto we were disappointed; the bells did not ring that morning; we hinted at the possibility of paying a small fee to the ringer and getting him to ring them, but were told that "la gente"

would not at all approve of this, and so I was unable to take down the chimes at Castelletto as I had intended to do. I may say that I had a visit from some Italian friends a few years ago, and found them hardly less delighted with our English mode of ringing than I had been with theirs. It would be very nice if we could ring our bells sometimes in the English and sometimes in the Italian way.

When I say the Italian way--I should say that the custom of ringing, as above described, is not a common one--I have only heard it at Vogogna and Castelletto, though doubtless it prevails elsewhere.

We were told that the people take a good deal of pride in their bells, and that one village will be jealous of another, and consider itself more or less insulted if the bells of that other can be heard more plainly than its own can be heard back again.

There are two villages in the Brianza called Balzano and Cremella; the dispute between these grew so hot that each of them changed their bells three times, so as to try and be heard the loudest. I believe an honourable compromise was in the end arrived at.

In other respects Castelletto is a quiet, sleepy little place. The Ticino flows through it just after leaving the lake. It is very wide here, and when flooded must carry down an enormous quant.i.ty of water. Barges go down it at all times, but the river is difficult of navigation and requires skilful pilots. These pilots are well paid, and Tonio seemed to have a great respect for them. The views of Monte Rosa are superb.

One of the great advantages of Arona, as of Mendrisio, is that it commands such a number of other places. There is rail to Milan, and again to Novara, and each station on the way is a sub-centre; there are also the steamers on the lake, and there is not a village at which they stop which will not repay examination, and which is not in its turn a sub-centre. In England I have found by experience that there is nothing for it but to examine every village and town within easy railway distance; no books are of much use: one never knows that something good is not going to be sprung upon one, and few indeed are the places where there is no old public-house, or overhanging cottage, or farmhouse and barn, or bit of De Hooghe-like entry which, if one had two or three lives, one would not willingly leave unpainted. It is just the same in North Italy; there is not a village which can be pa.s.sed over with a light heart.

CHAPTER XXIV--Locarno

We were attracted to Locarno by the approaching fetes in honour of the fourth centenary of the apparition of the Virgin Mary to Fra Bartolomeo da Ivrea, who founded the sanctuary in consequence.

The programme announced that the festivities would begin on, Sat.u.r.day, at 3.30 P.M., with the carrying of the sacred image (sacro simulacro) of the Virgin from the Madonna del Sa.s.so to the collegiate church of S. Antonio. There would then be a benediction and celebration of the holy communion. At eight o'clock there were to be illuminations, fireworks, balloons, &c., at the sanctuary and the adjacent premises.

On Sunday at half-past nine there was to be ma.s.s at the church of S. Antonio, with a homily by Monsignor Paolo Angelo Ballerini, Patriarch of Alexandria in partibus, and blessing of the crown sent by Pope Leo XIII for the occasion. S. Antonio is the church the roof of which fell in during service one Sunday in 1865, through the weight of the snow, killing sixty people. At half-past three a grand procession would convey the Holy Image to a pretty temple which had been erected in the market-place. The image was then to be crowned by the Patriarch, carried round the town in procession, and returned to the church of S. Antonio. At eight o'clock there were to be fireworks near the port; a grand illumination of a triumphal arch, an illumination of the sanctuary and chapels with Bengal lights, and an artificial apparition of the Madonna (Apparizione artificiale della Beata Vergine col Bambino) above the church upon the Sacro Monte. Next day the Holy Image was to be carried back from the church of S. Antonio to its normal resting- place at the sanctuary. We wanted to see all this, but it was the artificial apparition of the Madonna that most attracted us.

Locarno is, as every one knows, a beautiful town. Both the Hotel Locarno and the Hotel della Corona are good, but the latter is, I believe, the cheaper. At the castello there is a fresco of the Madonna, ascribed, I should think rightly, to Bernardino Luini, and at the cemetery outside the town there are some old frescoes of the second half of the fifteenth century, in a ruinous state, but interesting. If I remember rightly there are several dates on them, averaging 1475-80. They might easily have been done by the same man who did the frescoes at Mesocco, but I prefer these last.

The great feature, however, of Locarno is the Sacro Monte which rises above it. From the wooden bridge which crosses the stream just before entering upon the sacred precincts, the church and chapels and road arrange themselves as on p. 269.

On the way up, keeping to the steeper and abrupter route, one catches sight of the monks' garden--a little paradise with vines, beehives, onions, lettuces, cabbages, marigolds to colour the risotto with, and a little plot of great luxuriant tobacco plants.

Amongst the foliage may be now and again seen the burly figure of a monk with a straw hat on. The best view of the sanctuary from above is the one which I give on p. 270.

The church itself is not remarkable, but it contains the best collection of votive pictures that I know in any church, unless the one at Oropa be excepted; there is also a modern Italian "Return from the Cross" by Ciseri, which is very much admired, but with which I have myself no sympathy whatever. It is an Academy picture.

The cloister looking over the lake is very beautiful. In the little court down below--which also is of great beauty--there is a chapel containing a representation of the Last Supper in life-sized coloured statues as at Varallo, which has a good deal of feeling, and a fresco (?) behind it which ought to be examined, but the chapel is so dark that this is easier said than done. There is also a fresco down below in the chapel where the founder of the sanctuary is buried which should not be pa.s.sed over. It is dated 1522, and is Luinesque in character. When I was last there, however, it was hardly possible to see anything, for everything was being turned topsy-turvy by the arrangements which were being made for the approaching fetes. These were very gay and pretty; they must have cost a great deal of money, and I was told that the munic.i.p.ality in its collective capacity was thought mean, because it had refused to contribute more than 100 francs, or 4 pounds sterling. It does seem rather a small sum certainly.

On the afternoon of Friday the 13th of August the Patriarch Monsignor Ballerini was to arrive by the three o'clock boat, and there was a crowd to welcome him. The music of Locarno was on the quay playing a selection, not from "Madame Angot" itself, but from something very like it--light, gay, sparkling opera bouffe--to welcome him. I felt as I had done when I found the matchbox in the sanctuary bedroom at Graglia: not that I minded it myself, but as being a little unhappy lest the Bishop might not quite like it.

I do not see how we could welcome a bishop--we will say to a confirmation--with a band of music at all. Fancy a bra.s.s band of some twenty or thirty ranged round the landing stage at Gravesend to welcome the Bishop of London, and fancy their playing we will say "The two Obadiahs," or that horrid song about the swing going a little bit higher! The Bishop would be very much offended. He would not go a musical inch beyond the march in "Le Prophete," nor, willingly, beyond the march in "Athalie." Monsignor Ballerini, however, never turned a hair; he bowed repeatedly to all round him, and drove off in a carriage and pair, apparently much pleased with his reception. We Protestants do not understand, nor take any very great pains to understand, the Church of Rome. If we did, we should find it to be in many respects as much in advance of us as it is behind us in others.

One thing made an impression upon me which haunted me all the time.

On every important s.p.a.ce there were advertis.e.m.e.nts of the programme, the substance of which I have already given. But hardly, if at all less noticeable, were two others which rose up irrepressible upon every prominent s.p.a.ce, searching all places with a subtle penetrative power against which precautions were powerless. These advertis.e.m.e.nts were not in Italian but in English, nevertheless they were neither of them English--but both, I believe, American. The one was that of the Richmond Gem cigarette, with the large ill.u.s.tration representing a man in a hat smoking, so familiar to us here in London. The other was that of Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machines.

As the Patriarch drove off in the carriage the man in the hat smoking the Richmond Gem cigarette leered at him, and the woman working Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machine sewed at him. During the illuminations the unwonted light threw its glare upon the effigies of saints and angels, but it illumined also the man in the black felt hat and the woman with the sewing machine; even during the artificial apparition of the Virgin Mary herself upon the hill behind the town, the more they let off fireworks the more clearly the man in the hat came out upon the walls round the market-place, and the bland imperturbable woman working at her sewing machine. I thought to myself that when the man with the hat appeared in the piazza the Madonna would ere long cease to appear on the hill.

Later on, pa.s.sing through the town alone, when the people had gone to rest, I saw many of them lying on the pavement under the arches fast asleep. A brilliant moon illuminated the market-place; there was a pleasant sound of falling water from the fountain; the lake was bathed in splendour, save where it took the reflection of the mountains--so peaceful and quiet was the night that there was hardly a rustle in the leaves of the aspens. But whether in moonlight or in shadow, the busy persistent vibrations that rise in Anglo-Saxon brains were radiating from every wall, and the man in the black felt hat and the bland lady with the sewing machine were there--lying in wait, as a cat over a mouse's hole, to insinuate themselves into the hearts of the people so soon as they should wake.

Great numbers came to the festivities. There were special trains from Biasca and all intermediate stations, and special boats. And the ugly flat-nosed people came from the Val Verzasca, and the beautiful people came from the Val Onsernone and the Val Maggia, and I saw Anna, the curate's housekeeper, from Mesocco, and the old fresco painter who told me he should like to pay me a visit, and suggested five o'clock in the morning as the most appropriate and convenient time. The great procession contained seven or eight hundred people. From the balcony of the Hotel della Corona I counted as well as I could and obtained the following result:-

Women 120 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and red capes 85 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and no capes (?) The music from Intra 30 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and blue capes 25 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and no capes 25 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and green capes 12 Men with white s.h.i.+rts and no capes 36 The music of Locarno 30 Girls in blue, pink, white and yellow, red, white 50 Choristers 3 Monks 6 Priests 66 Canons 12 His Excellency Paolo Angelo Ballerini, Patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt, escorted by the firemen, and his private cortege of about 20 25 Government ushers (?) The Grand Council, escorted by 22 soldiers and 6 policemen 28 The clergy without orders 30 583

In the evening, there, sure enough, the apparition of the Blessed Virgin was. The church of the Madonna was unilluminated and all in darkness, when on a sudden it sprang out into a blaze, and a great transparency of the Virgin and child was lit up from behind. Then the people said, "Oh bel!"

I was myself a little disappointed. It was not a good apparition, and I think the effect would have been better if it had been carried up by a small balloon into the sky. It might easily have been arranged so that the light behind the transparency should die out before the apparition must fall again, and also that the light inside the transparency should not be reflected upon the balloon that lifted it; the whole, therefore, would appear to rise from its own inherent buoyancy. I am confident it would have been arranged in this way if the thing had been in the hands of the Crystal Palace people.

There is a fine old basilicate church dedicated to S. Vittore at the north end of Locarno. It is the mother church of these parts and dates from the eighth or ninth century. The frescoes inside the apse were once fine, but have been repainted and spoiled. The tower is much later, but is impressive. It was begun in 1524 and left incomplete in 1527, probably owing to the high price of provisions which is commemorated in the following words written on a stone at the top of the tower inside

1527 Furm. [fromento--corn] cost lib. 6.

Segale [barley] lib. 5.

Milio [millet] lib. 4.