Thus did I break--but by a direct command--the last and dearest of my
vows, and as the train rumbled off, I took luxury in the rolling
wheels.
I thought of that other medieval and papistical pilgrim hobbling along
rather than 'take advantage of any wheeled thing', and I laughed at
him. Now if Moroso-Malodoroso or any other Non-Aryan, Antichristian,
over-inductive, statistical, brittle-minded man and scientist, sees
anything remarkable in one self laughing at another self, let me tell
him and all such for their wide-eyed edification and astonishment that
I knew a man once that had fifty-six selves (there would have been
fifty-seven, but for the poet in him that died young)--he could evolve
them at will, and they were very useful to lend to the parish priest
when he wished to make up a respectable Procession on Holy-days. And I
knew another man that could make himself so tall as to look over the
heads of the scientists as a pine-tree looks over grasses, and again
so small as to discern very clearly the thick coating or dust of
wicked pride that covers them up in a fine impenetrable coat. So much
for the moderns.
The train rolled on. I noticed Lombardy out of the windows. It is
flat. I listened to the talk of the crowded peasants in the train. I
did not understand it. I twice leaned out to see if Milan were not
standing up before me out of the plain, but I saw nothing. Then I fell
asleep, and when I woke suddenly it was because we were in the
terminus of that noble great town, which I then set out to traverse in
search of my necessary money and sustenance. It was yet but early in
the afternoon.
What a magnificent city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone,
and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are
swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are
brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a
very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to
help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and
humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers,
good pavements, and all that man requires to fulfil him, soul and
body; cafes, arcades, mutoscopes, and every sign of the perfect state.
And the whole centres in a splendid open square, in the midst of which
is the cathedral, which is justly the most renowned in the world.
My pilgrimage is to Rome, my business is with lonely places, hills,
and the recollection of the spirit. It would be waste to describe at
length this mighty capital. The mists and the woods, the snows and the
interminable way, had left me ill-suited for the place, and I was
ashamed. I sat outside a cafe, opposite the cathedral, watching its
pinnacles of light; but I was ashamed. Perhaps I did the master a hurt
by sitting there in his fine great cafe, unkempt, in such clothes,
like a tramp; but he was courteous in spite of his riches, and I
ordered a very expensive drink for him also, in order to make amends.
I showed him my sketches, and told him of my adventures in French, and
he was kind enough to sit opposite me, and to take that drink with me.
He talked French quite easily, as it seems do all such men in the
principal towns of north Italy. Still, the broad day shamed me, and
only when darkness came did I feel at ease.
I wandered in the streets till I saw a small eating shop, and there I
took a good meal. But when one is living the life of the poor, one
sees how hard are the great cities. Everything was dearer, and worse,
than in the simple countrysides. The innkeeper and his wife were
kindly, but their eyes showed that they had often to suspect men. They
gave me a bed, but it was a franc and more, and I had to pay before
going upstairs to it. The walls were mildewed, the place ramshackle
and evil, the rickety bed not clean, the door broken and warped, and
that night I was oppressed with the vision of poverty. Dirt and
clamour and inhuman conditions surrounded me. Yet the people meant
well.
With the first light I got up quietly, glad to find the street again
and the air. I stood in the crypt of the cathedral to hear the
Ambrosian Mass, and it was (as I had expected) like any other, save
for a kind of second _lavabo_ before the Elevation. To read the
distorted stupidity of the north one might have imagined that in the
Ambrosian ritual the priest put a _non_ before the _credo,_ and
_nec's_ at each clause of it, and renounced his baptismal vows at the
_kyrie;_ but the Milanese are Catholics like any others, and the
northern historians are either liars or ignorant men. And I know three
that are both together.
Then I set out down the long street that leads south out of Milan, and
was soon in the dull and sordid suburb of the Piacenzan way. The sky
was grey, the air chilly, and in a little while--alas!--it rained.
Lombardy is an alluvial plain.
That is the pretty way of putting it. The truth is more vivid if you
say that Lombardy is as flat as a marsh, and that it is made up of
mud. Of course this mud dries when the sun shines on it, but mud it is
and mud it will remain; and that day, as the rain began falling, mud
it rapidly revealed itself to be; and the more did it seem to be mud
when one saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from the last day's
heat.
Lombardy has no forests, but any amount of groups of trees; moreover
(what is very remarkable), it is all cultivated in fields more or less
square. These fields have ditches round them, full of mud and water
running slowly, and some of them are themselves under water in order
to cultivate rice. All these fields have a few trees bordering them,
apart from the standing clumps; but these trees are not very high.
There are no open views in Lombardy, and Lombardy is all the same.
Irregular large farmsteads stand at random all up and down the
country; no square mile of Lombardy is empty. There are many, many
little villages; many straggling small towns about seven to eight
miles apart, and a great number of large towns from thirty to fifty
miles apart. Indeed, this very road to Piacenza, which the rain now
covered with a veil of despair, was among the longest stretches
between any two large towns, although it was less than fifty miles.
On the map, before coming to this desolate place, there seemed a
straighter and a better way to Rome than this great road. There is a
river called the Lambro, which comes east of Milan and cuts the
Piacenzan road at a place called Melegnano. It seemed to lead straight
down to a point on the Po, a little above Piacenza. This stream one
could follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the Po get a boat or
ferry, and see on the other side the famous Trebbia, where Hannibal
conquered and Joubert fell, and so make straight on for the Apennine.
Since it is always said in books that Lombardy is a furnace in summer,
and that whole great armies have died of the heat there, this river
bank would make a fine refuge. Clear and delicious water, more limpid
than glass, would reflect and echo the restless poplars, and would
make tolerable or even pleasing the excessive summer. Not so. It was a
northern mind judging by northern things that came to this conclusion.
There is not in all Lombardy a clear stream, but every river and brook
is rolling mud. In the rain, not heat, but a damp and penetrating
chill was the danger. There is no walking on the banks of the rivers;
they are cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow.
Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton) writes, be master of his
fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a
lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.
Nevertheless, though it was apparent that I should have to follow the
main road for a while, I determined to make at last to the right of
it, and to pass through a place called 'Old Lodi', for I reasoned
thus: 'Lodi is the famous town. How much more interesting must Old
Lodi be which is the mothertown of Lodi?' Also, Old Lodi brought me
back again on the straight line to Rome, and I foolishly thought it
might be possible to hear there of some straight path down the Lambro
(for that river still possessed me somewhat).
Therefore, after hours and hours of trudging miserably along the wide
highway in the wretched and searching rain, after splashing through
tortuous Melegnano, and not even stopping to wonder if it was the
place of the battle, after noting in despair the impossible Lambro, I
came, caring for nothing, to the place where a secondary road branches
off to the right over a level crossing and makes for Lodi Vecchio.
It was not nearly midday, but I had walked perhaps fifteen miles, and
had only rested once in a miserable Trattoria. In less than three
miles I came to that unkempt and lengthy village, founded upon dirt
and living in misery, and through the quiet, cold, persistent rain I
splashed up the main street. I passed wretched, shivering dogs and
mournful fowls that took a poor refuge against walls; passed a sad
horse that hung its head in the wet and stood waiting for a master,
till at last I reached the open square where the church stood, then I
knew that I had seen all Old Lodi had to offer me. So, going into an
eating-house, or inn, opposite the church, I found a girl and her
mother serving, and I saluted them, but there was no fire, and my
heart sank to the level of that room, which was, I am sure, no more
than fifty-four degrees.
Why should the less gracious part of a pilgrimage be specially
remembered? In life were remember joy best--that is what makes us sad
by contrast; pain somewhat, especially if it is acute; but dulness
never. And a book--which has it in its own power to choose and to
emphasize--has no business to record dulness. What did I at Lodi
Vecchio? I ate; I dried my clothes before a tepid stove in a kitchen.
I tried to make myself understood by the girl and her mother. I sat at
a window and drew the ugly church on principle. Oh, the vile sketch!
Worthy of that Lombard plain, which they had told me was so full of
wonderful things. I gave up all hope of by-roads, and I determined to
push back obliquely to the highway again--obliquely in order to save
time! Nepios!
These 'by-roads' of the map turned out in real life to be all manner
of abominable tracks. Some few were metalled, some were cart-ruts
merely, some were open lanes of rank grass; and along most there went
a horrible ditch, and in many fields the standing water proclaimed
desolation. IN so far as I can be said to have had a way at all, I
lost it. I could not ask my way because my only ultimate goal was
Piacenza, and that was far off. I did not know the name of any place
between. Two or three groups of houses I passed, and sometimes church
towers glimmered through the rain. I passed a larger and wider road
than the rest, but obviously not my road; I pressed on and passed
another; and by this time, having ploughed up Lombardy for some four
hours, I was utterly lost. I no longer felt the north, and, for all I
knew, I might be going backwards. The only certain thing was that I
was somewhere in the belt between the highroad and the Lambro, and
that was little enough to know at the close of such a day. Grown
desperate, I clamoured within my mind for a miracle; and it was not
long before I saw a little bent man sitting on a crazy cart and going
ahead of me at a pace much slower than a walk--the pace of a horse
crawling. I caught him up, and, doubting much whether he would
understand a word, I said to him repeatedly--
_'La granda via? La via a Piacenza?'_
He shook his head as though to indicate that this filthy lane was not
the road. Just as I had despaired of learning anything, he pointed
with his arm away to the right, perpendicularly to the road we were
on, and nodded. He moved his hand up and down. I had been going north!
On getting this sign I did not wait for a cross road, but jumped the
little ditch and pushed through long grass, across further ditches,
along the side of patches of growing corn, heedless of the huge weight
on my boots and of the oozing ground, till I saw against the rainy sky
a line of telegraph poles. For the first time since they were made the
sight of them gave a man joy. There was a long stagnant pond full of
reeds between me and the railroad; but, as I outflanked it, I came
upon a road that crossed the railway at a level and led me into the
great Piacenzan way. Almost immediately appeared a village. It was a
hole called Secugnano, and there I entered a house where a bush
hanging above the door promised entertainment, and an old hobbling
woman gave me food and drink and a bed. The night had fallen, and upon
the roof above me I could hear the steady rain.
The next morning--Heaven preserve the world from evil!--it was still
raining.
LECTOR. It does not seem to me that this part of your book is very
entertaining.
AUCTOR. I know that; but what am I to do?
LECTOR. Why, what was the next point in the pilgrimage that was even
tolerably noteworthy?
AUCTOR. I suppose the Bridge of Boats.
LECTOR. And how far on was that?
AUCTOR. About fourteen miles, more or less... I passed through a town
with a name as long as my arm, and I suppose the Bridge of Boats must
have been nine miles on after that.
LECTOR. And it rained all the time, and there was mud?
AUCTOR. Precisely.
LECTOR. Well, then, let us skip it and tell stories.
AUCTOR. With all my heart. And since you are such a good judge of
literary poignancy, do you begin.
LECTOR. I will, and I draw my inspiration from your style.
Once upon a time there was a man who was born in Croydon, and whose
name was Charles Amieson Blake. He went to Rugby at twelve and left it
at seventeen. He fell in love twice and then went to Cambridge till he
was twenty-three. Having left Cambridge he fell in love more mildly,
and was put by his father into a government office, where he began at
_180_ pounds a year. At thirty-five he was earning 500 pounds a year,
and perquisites made 750 pounds a year. He met a pleasant lady and
fell in love quite a little compared with the other times. She had 250
pounds a year. That made _1000_ pounds a year. They married and had
three children--Richard, Amy, and Cornelia. He rose to a high
government position, was knighted, retired at sixty-three, and died at
sixty-seven. He is buried at Kensal Green...
AUCTOR. Thank you, Lector, that is a very good story. It is simple and
full of plain human touches. You know how to deal with the facts of
everyday life... It requires a master-hand. Tell me, Lector, had this
man any adventures?
LECTOR. None that I know of.
AUCTOR. Had he opinions?
LECTOR. Yes. I forgot to tell you he was a Unionist. He spoke two
foreign languages badly. He often went abroad to Assisi, Florence, and
Boulogne... He left 7,623 pounds 6s. 8d., and a house and garden at
Sutton. His wife lives there still.
AUCTOR. Oh!
LECTOR. It is the human story... the daily task!
AUCTOR. Very true, my dear Lector... the common lot... Now let me
tell my story. It is about the Hole that could not be Filled Up.