Soazza and the Valley of Mesocco
I REGRET that I have not space for any of the sketches I took at
Bellinzona, than which few towns are more full of admirable subjects.
The Hotel de la Ville is an excellent house, and the town is well adapted
for an artist’s headquarters. Turner’s two water-colour drawings of
Bellinzona in the National Gallery are doubtless very fine as works of
art, but they are not like Bellinzona, the spirit of which place (though
not the letter) is better represented by the background to Basaiti’s
Madonna and child, also in our gallery, supposing the castle on the hill
to have gone to ruin.
At Bellinzona a man told me that one of the two towers was built by the
Visconti and the other by Julius Cæsar, a hundred years earlier. So,
poor old Mrs. Barratt at Langar could conceive no longer time than a
hundred years. The Trojan war did not last ten years, but ten years was
as big a lie as Homer knew.
Almost all days in the subalpine valleys of North Italy have a beauty
with them of some kind or another, but none are more lovely than a quiet
gray day just at the beginning of autumn, when the clouds are drawing
lazily and in the softest fleeces over the pine forests high up on the
mountain sides. On such days the mountains are very dark till close up
to the level of the clouds; here, if there is dewy or rain-besprinkled
pasture, it tells of a luminous silvery colour by reason of the light
which the clouds reflect upon it; the bottom edges of the clouds are also
light through the reflection upward from the grass, but I do not know
which begins this battledore and shuttlecock arrangement. These things
are like quarrels between two old and intimate friends; one can never say
who begins them. Sometimes on a dull gray day like this, I have seen the
shadow parts of clouds take a greenish-ashen-coloured tinge from the
grass below them.
On one of these most enjoyable days we left Bellinzona for Mesocco on the
S. Bernardino road. The air was warm, there was not so much as a breath
of wind, but it was not sultry: there had been rain, and the grass,
though no longer decked with the glory of its spring flowers, was of the
most brilliant emerald, save where flecked with delicate purple by
myriads of autumnal crocuses. The level ground at the bottom of the
valley where the Moesa runs is cultivated with great care. Here the
people have gathered the stones in heaps round any great rock which is
too difficult to move, and the whole mass has in time taken a mulberry
hue, varied with gray and russet lichens, or blobs of velvety green moss.
These heaps of stone crop up from the smooth shaven grass, and are
overhung with barberries, mountain ash, and mountain elder with their
brilliant scarlet berries—sometimes, again, with dwarf oaks, or alder, or
nut, whose leaves have just so far begun to be tinged as to increase the
variety of the colouring. The first sparks of autumn’s yearly
conflagration have been kindled, but the fire is not yet raging as in
October; soon after which, indeed, it will have burnt itself out, leaving
the trees it were charred, with here and there a live coal of a red leaf
or two still smouldering upon them.
As yet lingering mulleins throw up their golden spikes amid a profusion
of blue chicory, and the gourds run along upon the ground like the fire
mingled with the hail in “Israel in Egypt.” Overhead are the umbrageous
chestnuts loaded with their prickly harvest. Now and again there is a
manure heap upon the grass itself, and lusty wanton gourds grow out from
it along the ground like vegetable octopi. If there is a stream it will
run with water limpid as air, and as full of dimples as “While Kedron’s
brook” in “Joshua”:—
[Picture: Score of While Kedron’s Book]
[Picture: Last part of score?]
How quiet and full of rest does everything appear to be. There is no
dust nor glare, and hardly a sound save that of the unfailing waterfalls,
or the falling cry with which the peasants call to one another from afar.
{201}
So much depends upon the aspect in which one sees a place for the first
time. What scenery can stand, for example, a noontide glare? Take the
valley from Lanzo to Viù. It is of incredible beauty in the mornings and
afternoons of brilliant days, and all day long upon a gray day; but in
the middle hours of a bright summer’s day it is hardly beautiful at all,
except locally in the shade under chestnuts. Buildings and towns are the
only things that show well in a glare. We perhaps, therefore, thought
the valley of the Moesa to be of such singular beauty on account of the
day on which we saw it, but doubt whether it must not be absolutely among
the most beautiful of the subalpine valleys upon the Italian side.
The least interesting part is that between Bellinzona and Roveredo, but
soon after leaving Roveredo the valley begins to get narrower and to
assume a more mountain character. Ere long the eye catches sight of a
white church tower and a massive keep, near to one another and some two
thousand feet above the road. This is Santa Maria in Calanca. One can
see at once that it must be an important place for such a district, but
it is strange why it should be placed so high. I will say more about it
later on.
Presently we passed Cama, where there is an inn, and where the road
branches off into the Val Calanca. Alighting here for a few minutes we
saw a _cane lupino_—that is to say, a dun mouse-coloured dog about as
large as a mastiff, and with a very large infusion of wolf blood in him.
It was like finding one’s self alone with a wolf—but he looked even more
uncanny and ferocious than a wolf. I once saw a man walking down Fleet
Street accompanied by one of these _cani lupini_, and noted the general
attention and alarm which the dog caused. Encouraged by the landlord, we
introduced ourselves to the dog at Cama, and found him to be a most sweet
person, with no sense whatever of self-respect, and shrinking from no
ignominy in his importunity for bits of bread. When we put the bread
into his mouth and felt his teeth, he would not take it till he had
looked in our eyes and said as plainly as though in words, “Are you quite
sure that my teeth are not painful to you? Do you really think I may now
close my teeth upon the bread without causing you any inconvenience?” We
assured him that we were quite comfortable, so he swallowed it down, and
presently began to pat us softly with his foot to remind us that it was
our turn now.
Before we left, a wandering organ-grinder began to play outside the inn.
Our friend the dog lifted up his voice and howled. I am sure it was with
pleasure. If he had disliked the music he would have gone away. He was
not at all the kind of person who would stay a concert out if he did not
like it. He howled because he was stirred to the innermost depths of his
nature. On this he became intense, and as a matter of course made a fool
of himself; but he was in no way more ridiculous than an Art Professor
whom I once observed as he was holding forth to a number of working men,
whilst escorting them round the Italian pictures in the National Gallery.
When the organ left off he cast an appealing look at Jones, and we could
almost hear the words, “What _is_ it out of?” coming from his eyes. We
did not happen to know, so we told him that it was “Ah che la morte” from
“Il Trovatore,” and he was quite contented. Jones even thought he looked
as much as to say, “Oh yes, of course, how stupid of me; I thought I knew
it.” He very well may have done so, but I am bound to say that I did not
see this.
[Picture: Soazza Church]
Near to Cama is Grono, where Baedeker says there is a chapel containing
some ancient frescoes. I searched Grono in vain for any such chapel. A
few miles higher up, the church of Soazza makes its appearance perched
upon the top of its hill, and soon afterwards the splendid ruin of
Mesocco on another rock or hill which rises in the middle of the valley.
The mortuary chapel of Soazza church is the subject my friend Mr. Gogin
has selected for the etching at the beginning of this volume. There was
a man mowing another part of the churchyard when I was there. He was so
old and lean that his flesh seemed little more than parchment stretched
over his bones, and he might have been almost taken for Death mowing his
own acre. When he was gone some children came to play, but he had left
his scythe behind him. These children were beyond my strength to draw,
so I turned the subject over to Mr. Gogin’s stronger hands. Children are
dynamical; churches and frescoes are statical. I can get on with
statical subjects, but can do nothing with dynamical ones. Over the door
and windows are two frescoes of skeletons holding mirrors in their hands,
with a death’s head in the mirror. This reflected head is supposed to be
that of the spectator to whom death is holding up the image of what he
will one day become. I do not remember the inscription at Soazza; the
one in the Campo Santo at Mesocco is, “Sicut vos estis nos fuimus, et
sicut nos sumus vos eritis.” {204}
On my return to England I mentioned this inscription to a friend who, as
a young man, had been an excellent Latin scholar; he took a panic into
his head that “eritis” was not right for the second person plural of the
future tense of the verb “esse.” Whatever it was, it was not “eritis.”
This panic was speedily communicated to myself, and we both puzzled for
some time to think what the future of “esse” really was. At last we
turned to a grammar and found that “eritis” was right after all. How
skin-deep that classical training penetrates on which we waste so many
years, and how completely we drop it as soon as we are left to ourselves.
On the right-hand side of the door of the mortuary chapel there hangs a
wooden tablet inscribed with a poem to the memory of Maria Zara. It is a
pleasing poem, and begins:—
“Appena al trapassar il terzo lustro
Maria Zara la sua vita finì.
Se a Soazza ebbe la sua colma
A Roveredo la sua tomba . . .
she found,” or words to that effect, but I forget the Italian. This poem
is the nearest thing to an Italian rendering of “Affliction sore long
time I bore” that I remember to have met with, but it is longer and more
grandiose generally.
Soazza is full of beautiful subjects, and indeed is the first place in
the valley of the Moesa which I thought good sketching ground, in spite
of the general beauty of the valley. There is an inn there quite
sufficient for a bachelor artist. The clergyman of the place is a monk,
and he will not let one paint on a feast-day. I was told that if I
wanted to paint on a certain feast-day I had better consult him; I did
so, but was flatly refused permission, and that too as it appeared to me
with more peremptoriness than a priest would have shown towards me.
It is at Soazza that the ascent of the San Bernardino becomes
perceptible; hitherto the road has seemed to be level all the way, but
henceforth the ascent though gradual is steady. Mesocco Castle looks
very fine as soon as Soazza is passed, and gets finer and finer until it
is actually reached. Here is the upper limit of the chestnuts, which
leave off upon the lower side of Mesocco Castle. A few yards off the
castle on the upper side is the ancient church of S. Cristoforo, with its
huge St. Christopher on the right-hand side of the door. St. Christopher
is a very favourite saint in these parts; people call him S. Cristofano,
and even S. Carpofano. I think it must be in the church of S. Cristoforo
at Mesocco that the frescoes are which Baedeker writes of as being near
Grono. Of these I will speak at length in the next chapter. About half
or three-quarters of a mile higher up the road than the castle is Mesocco
itself.