October 15th.--We left Radicofani long before sunrise, and I saw that
ceremony take place from the coupe of the vettura for the first time in a
long while. A sunset is the better sight of the two. I have always
suspected it, and have been strengthened in the idea whenever I have had
an opportunity of comparison. Our departure from Radicofani was most
dreary, except that we were very glad to get away; but, the cold
discomfort of dressing in a chill bedroom by candlelight, and our
uncertain wandering through the immense hotel with a dim taper in search
of the breakfast-room, and our poor breakfast of eggs, Italian bread, and
coffee,--all these things made me wish that people were created with
roots like trees, so they could not befool themselves with wandering
about. However, we had not long been on our way before the morning air
blew away all our troubles, and we rumbled cheerfully onward, ready to
encounter even the papal custom-house officers at Ponte Centino. Our
road thither was a pretty steep descent. I remember the barren landscape
of hills, with here and there a lonely farm-house, which there seemed to
be no occasion for, where nothing grew.
At Ponte Centino my passport was examined, and I was invited into an
office where sat the papal custom-house officer, a thin, subtle-looking,
keen-eyed, sallow personage, of aspect very suitable to be the agent of a
government of priests. I communicated to him my wish to pass the
custom-house without giving the officers the trouble of examining my
luggage. He inquired whether I had any dutiable articles, and wrote for
my signature a declaration in the negative; and then he lifted a
sand-box, beneath which was a little heap of silver coins. On this
delicate hint I asked what was the usual fee, and was told that fifteen
pauls was the proper sum. I presume it was entirely an illegal charge,
and that he had no right to pass any luggage without examination; but the
thing is winked at by the authorities, and no money is better spent for
the traveller's convenience than these fifteen pauls. There was a papal
military officer in the room, and he, I believe, cheated me in the change
of a Napoleon, as his share of the spoil. At the door a soldier met me
with my passport, and looked as if he expected a fee for handing it to
me; but in this he was disappointed. After I had resumed my seat in the
coupe, the porter of the custom-house--a poor, sickly-looking creature,
half dead with the malaria of the place--appeared, and demanded a fee for
doing nothing to my luggage. He got three pauls, and looked but half
contented. This whole set of men seem to be as corrupt as official
people can possibly be; and yet I hardly know whether to stigmatize them
as corrupt, because it is not their individual delinquency, but the
operation of a regular system. Their superiors know what men they are,
and calculate upon their getting a living by just these means. And,
indeed, the custom-house and passport regulations, as they exist in
Italy, would be intolerable if there were not this facility of evading
them at little cost. Such laws are good for nothing but to be broken.
We now began to ascend again, and the country grew fertile and
picturesque. We passed many mules and donkeys, laden with a sort of deep
firkin on each side of the saddle, and these were heaped up with grapes,
both purple and white. We bought some, and got what we should have
thought an abundance at small price, only we used to get twice as many at
Montanto for the same money. However, a Roman paul bought us three or
four pounds even here. We still ascended, and came soon to the gateway
of the town of Acquapendente, which stands on a height that seems to
descend by natural terraces to the valley below. . . . .
French soldiers, in their bluish-gray coats and scarlet trousers, were on
duty at the gate, and one of them took my passport and the vetturino's,
and we then drove into the town to wait till they should be vised. We
saw but one street, narrow, with tall, rusty, aged houses, built of
stone, evil smelling; in short, a kind of place that would be intolerably
dismal in cloudy England, and cannot be called cheerful even under the
sun of Italy. . . . . Priests passed, and burly friars, one of whom was
carrying a wine-barrel on his head. Little carts, laden with firkins of
grapes, and donkeys with the same genial burden, brushed passed our
vettura, finding scarce room enough in the narrow street. All the idlers
of Acquapendente--and they were many--assembled to gaze at us, but not
discourteously. Indeed, I never saw an idle curiosity exercised in such
a pleasant way as by the country-people of Italy. It almost deserves to
be called a kindly interest and sympathy, instead of a hard and cold
curiosity, like that of our own people, and it is displayed with such
simplicity that it is evident no offence is intended.
By and by the vetturino brought his passport and my own, with the
official vise, and we kept on our way, still ascending, passing through
vineyards and olives, and meeting grape-laden donkeys, till we came to
the town of San Lorenzo Nuovo, a place built by Pius VI. as the refuge
for the people of a lower town which had been made uninhabitable by
malaria. The new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old, with
all its novelty shows strikingly the difference between places that grow
up and shape out their streets of their own accord, as it were, and one
that is built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This little
rural village has gates of classic architecture, a spacious piazza, and a
great breadth of straight and rectangular streets, with houses of uniform
style, airy and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on the
Continent. Nevertheless, I must say that the town looked hatefully dull
and ridiculously prim, and, of the two, I had rather spend my life in
Radicofani. We drove through it, from gate to gate, without stopping,
and soon came to the brow of a hill, whence we beheld, right beneath us,
the beautiful lake of Bolsena; not exactly at our feet, however, for a
portion of level ground lay between, haunted by the pestilence which has
depopulated all these shores, and made the lake and its neighborhood a
solitude. It looked very beautiful, nevertheless, with a sheen of a
silver mid a gray like that of steel as the wind blew and the sun shone
over it; and, judging by my own feelings, I should really have thought
that the breeze from its surface was bracing and healthy.
Descending the hill, we passed the ruins of the old town of San Lorenzo,
of which the prim village on the hill-top may be considered the daughter.
There is certainly no resemblance between parent and child, the former
being situated on a sort of precipitous bluff, where there could have
been no room for piazzas and spacious streets, nor accessibility except
by mules, donkeys, goats, and people of Alpine habits. There was an
ivy-covered tower on the top of the bluff, and some arched cavern mouths
that looked as if they opened into the great darkness. These were the
entrances to Etruscan tombs, for the town on top had been originally
Etruscan, and the inhabitants had buried themselves in the heart of the
precipitous bluffs after spending their lives on its summit.
Reaching the plain, we drove several miles along the shore of the lake,
and found the soil fertile and generally well cultivated, especially with
the vine, though there were tracks apparently too marshy to be put to any
agricultural purpose. We met now and then a flock of sheep, watched by
sallow-looking and spiritless men and boys, who, we took it for granted,
would soon perish of malaria, though, I presume, they never spend their
nights in the immediate vicinity of the lake. I should like to inquire
whether animals suffer from the bad qualities of the air. The lake is
not nearly so beautiful on a nearer view as it is from the hill above,
there being no rocky margin, nor bright, sandy beach, but everywhere this
interval of level ground, and often swampy marsh, betwixt the water and
the hill. At a considerable distance from the shore we saw two islands,
one of which is memorable as having been the scene of an empress's
murder, but I cannot stop to fill my journal with historical
reminiscences.
We kept onward to the town of Bolsena, which stands nearly a mile from
the lake, and on a site higher than the level margin, yet not so much so,
I should apprehend, as to free it from danger of malaria. We stopped at
an albergo outside of the wall of the town, and before dinner had time to
see a good deal of the neighborhood. The first aspect of the town was
very striking, with a vista into its street through the open gateway, and
high above it an old, gray, square-built castle, with three towers
visible at the angles, one of them battlemented, one taller than the
rest, and one partially ruined. Outside of the town-gate there were some
fragments of Etruscan ruin, capitals of pillars and altars with
inscriptions; these we glanced at, and then made our entrance through the
gate.
There it was again,--the same narrow, dirty, time-darkened street of
piled-up houses which we have so often seen; the same swarm of ill-to-do
people, grape-laden donkeys, little stands or shops of roasted chestnuts,
peaches, tomatoes, white and purple figs; the same evidence of a fertile
land, and grimy poverty in the midst of abundance which nature tries to
heap into their hands. It seems strange that they can never grasp it.
We had gone but a little way along this street, when we saw a narrow lane
that turned aside from it and went steeply upward. Its name was on the
corner,--the Via di Castello,--and as the castle promised to be more
interesting than anything else, we immediately began to ascend. The
street--a strange name for such an avenue--clambered upward in the oddest
fashion, passing under arches, scrambling up steps, so that it was more
like a long irregular pair of stairs than anything that Christians call a
street; and so large a part of it was under arches that we scarcely
seemed to be out of doors. At last U----, who was in advance, emerged
into the upper air, and cried out that we had ascended to an upper town,
and a larger one than that beneath.
It really seemed like coming up out of the earth into the midst of the
town, when we found ourselves so unexpectedly in upper Bolsena. We were
in a little nook, surrounded by old edifices, and called the Piazza del
Orologio, on account of a clock that was apparent somewhere. The castle
was close by, and from its platform there was a splendid view of the lake
and all the near hill-country. The castle itself is still in good
condition, and apparently as strong as ever it was as respects the
exterior walls; but within there seemed to be neither floor nor chamber,
nothing but the empty shell of the dateless old fortress. The stones at
the base and lower part of the building were so massive that I should
think the Etrurians must have laid them; and then perhaps the Romans
built a little higher, and the mediaeval people raised the battlements
and towers. But we did not look long at the castle, our attention being
drawn to the singular aspect of the town itself, which--to speak first of
its most prominent characteristic--is the very filthiest place, I do
believe, that was ever inhabited by man. Defilement was everywhere; in
the piazza, in nooks and corners, strewing the miserable lanes from side
to side, the refuse of every day, and of accumulated ages. I wonder
whether the ancient Romans were as dirty a people as we everywhere find
those who have succeeded them; for there seems to have been something in
the places that have been inhabited by Romans, or made famous in their
history, and in the monuments of every kind that they have raised, that
puts people in mind of their very earthliness, and incites them to defile
therewith whatever temple, column, ruined palace, or triumphal arch may
fall in their way. I think it must be an hereditary trait, probably
weakened and robbed of a little of its horror by the influence of milder
ages; and I am much afraid that Caesar trod narrower and fouler ways in
his path to power than those of modern Rome, or even of this disgusting
town of Bolsena. I cannot imagine anything worse than these, however.
Rotten vegetables thrown everywhere about, musty straw, standing puddles,
running rivulets of dissolved nastiness,--these matters were a relief
amid viler objects. The town was full of great black hogs wallowing
before every door, and they grunted at us with a kind of courtesy and
affability as if the town were theirs, and it was their part to be
hospitable to strangers. Many donkeys likewise accosted us with braying;
children, growing more uncleanly every day they lived, pestered us with
begging; men stared askance at us as they lounged in corners, and women
endangered us with slops which they were flinging from doorways into the
street. No decent words can describe, no admissible image can give an
idea of this noisome place. And yet, I remember, the donkeys came up the
height loaded with fruit, and with little flat-sided barrels of wine; the
people had a good atmosphere--except as they polluted it themselves--on
their high site, and there seemed to be no reason why they should not
live a beautiful and jolly life.
I did not mean to write such an ugly description as the above, but it is
well, once for all, to have attempted conveying an idea of what disgusts
the traveller, more or less, in all these Italian towns. Setting aside
this grand characteristic, the upper town of Bolsena is a most curious
and interesting place. It was originally an Etruscan city, the ancient
Volsinii, and when taken and destroyed by the Romans was said to contain
two thousand statues. Afterwards the Romans built a town upon the site,
including, I suppose, the space occupied by the lower city, which looks
as if it had brimmed over like Radicofani, and fallen from the
precipitous height occupied by the upper. The latter is a strange
confusion of black and ugly houses, piled massively out of the ruins of
former ages, built rudely and without plan, as a pauper would build his
hovel, and yet with here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a
pillar, that might have adorned a palace. . . . . The streets are the
narrowest I have seen anywhere,--of no more width, indeed, than may
suffice for the passage of a donkey with his panniers. They wind in and
out in strange confusion, and hardly look like streets at all, but,
nevertheless, have names printed on the corners, just as if they were
stately avenues. After looking about us awhile and drawing half-breaths
so as to take in the less quantity of gaseous pollution, we went back to
the castle, and descended by a path winding downward from it into the
plain outside of the town-gate.
It was now dinner-time, . . . . and we had, in the first place, some fish
from the pestiferous lake; not, I am sorry to say, the famous stewed eels
which, Dante says, killed Pope Martin, but some trout. . . . . By the by,
the meal was not dinner, but our midday colazione. After despatching it,
we again wandered forth and strolled round the outside of the lower town,
which, with the upper one, made as picturesque a combination as could be
desired. The old wall that surrounds the lower town has been
appropriated, long since, as the back wall of a range of houses; windows
have been pierced through it; upper chambers and loggie have been built
upon it; so that it looks something like a long row of rural dwellings
with one continuous front or back, constructed in a strange style of
massive strength, contrasting with the vines that here and there are
trained over it, and with the wreaths of yellow corn that hang from the
windows. But portions of the old battlements are interspersed with the
line of homely chambers and tiled house-tops. Within the wall the town
is very compact, and above its roofs rises a rock, the sheer, precipitous
bluff on which stands the upper town, whose foundations impend over the
highest roof in the lower. At one end is the old castle, with its towers
rising above the square battlemented mass of the main fortress; and if we
had not seen the dirt and squalor that dwells within this venerable
outside, we should have carried away a picture of gray, grim dignity,
presented by a long past age to the present one, to put its mean ways and
modes to shame. ------ sat diligently sketching, and children came about
her, exceedingly unfragrant, but very courteous and gentle, looking over
her shoulders, and expressing delight as they saw each familiar edifice
take its place in the sketch. They are a lovable people, these Italians,
as I find from almost all with whom we come in contact; they have great
and little faults, and no great virtues that I know of; but still are
sweet, amiable, pleasant to encounter, save when they beg, or when you
have to bargain with them.
We left Bolsena and drove to Viterbo, passing the gate of the picturesque
town of Montefiascone, over the wall of which I saw spires and towers,
and the dome of a cathedral. I was sorry not to taste, in its own town,
the celebrated est, which was the death-draught of the jolly prelate. At
Viterbo, however, I called for some wine of Montefiascone, and had a
little straw-covered flask, which the waiter assured us was the genuine
est-wine. It was of golden color, and very delicate, somewhat resembling
still champagne, but finer, and requiring a calmer pause to appreciate
its subtle delight. Its good qualities, however, are so evanescent, that
the finer flavor became almost imperceptible before we finished the
flask.
Viterbo is a large, disagreeable town, built at the foot of a mountain,
the peak of which is seen through the vista of some of the narrow streets.
There are more fountains in Viterbo than I have seen in any other city of
its size, and many of them of very good design. Around most of them
there were wine-hogsheads, waiting their turn to be cleansed and rinsed,
before receiving the wine of the present vintage. Passing a doorway,
J----- saw some men treading out the grapes in a great vat with their
naked feet.
Among the beggars here, the loudest and most vociferous was a crippled
postilion, wearing his uniform jacket, green, faced with red; and he
seemed to consider himself entitled still to get his living from
travellers, as having been disabled in the way of his profession. I
recognized his claim, and was rewarded with a courteous and grateful bow
at our departure. . . . . To beggars--after my much experience both in
England and Italy--I give very little, though I am not certain that it
would not often be real beneficence in the latter country. There being
little or no provision for poverty and age, the poor must often suffer.
Nothing can be more earnest than their entreaties for aid; nothing
seemingly more genuine than their gratitude when they receive it.
They return you the value of their alms in prayers, and say, "God will
accompany you." Many of them have a professional whine, and a certain
doleful twist of the neck and turn of the head, which hardens my heart
against them at once. A painter might find numerous models among them,
if canvas had not already been more than sufficiently covered with their
style of the picturesque. There is a certain brick-dust colored cloak
worn in Viterbo, not exclusively by beggars, which, when ragged enough,
is exceedingly artistic.