‘Then, when we have seen the two large churches yonder, what shall we do
next?’ said I.
He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his chin
timidly; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had broken on
his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my forbearance that was perfectly
irresistible:
‘We can take a little turn about the town, Signore!’ (Si può far ’un
píccolo gíro della citta).
It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the proposal, so we
set off together in great good-humour. In the relief of his mind, he
opened his heart, and gave up as much of Mantua as a Cicerone could.
‘One must eat,’ he said; ‘but, bah! it was a dull place, without doubt!’
He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea—a noble
church—and of an inclosed portion of the pavement, about which tapers
were burning, and a few people kneeling, and under which is said to be
preserved the Sangreal of the old Romances. This church disposed of, and
another after it (the cathedral of San Pietro), we went to the Museum,
which was shut up. ‘It was all the same,’ he said. ‘Bah! There was not
much inside!’ Then, we went to see the Piazza del Diavolo, built by the
Devil (for no particular purpose) in a single night; then, the Piazza
Virgiliana; then, the statue of Virgil—_our_ Poet, my little friend said,
plucking up a spirit, for the moment, and putting his hat a little on one
side. Then, we went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which a
picture-gallery was approached. The moment the gate of this retreat was
opened, some five hundred geese came waddling round us, stretching out
their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous manner, as if they were
ejaculating, ‘Oh! here’s somebody come to see the Pictures! Don’t go up!
Don’t go up!’ While we went up, they waited very quietly about the door
in a crowd, cackling to one another occasionally, in a subdued tone; but
the instant we appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and
setting up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, ‘What, you would
go, would you! What do you think of it! How do you like it!’ they
attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, derisively, into
Mantua.
The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these, Pork to the
learned Pig. What a gallery it was! I would take their opinion on a
question of art, in preference to the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus ignominiouly
escorted thither, my little friend was plainly reduced to the ‘píccolo
gíro,’ or little circuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. But my
suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Tè (of which I had heard a
great deal, as a strange wild place) imparted new life to him, and away
we went.
The secret of the length of Midas’s ears, would have been more
extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the reeds,
had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough to have
published it to all the world. The Palazzo Tè stands in a swamp, among
this sort of vegetation; and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever
saw.
Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Not for its dampness,
though it is very damp. Nor for its desolate condition, though it is as
desolate and neglected as house can be. But chiefly for the
unaccountable nightmares with which its interior has been decorated
(among other subjects of more delicate execution), by Giulio Romano.
There is a leering Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and there are
dozens of Giants (Titans warring with Jove) on the walls of another room,
so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how any man
can have imagined such creatures. In the chamber in which they abound,
these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every kind of
distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering under the weight
of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins; upheaving
masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath; vainly striving to
sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their heads;
and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and demoniacal
destruction. The figures are immensely large, and exaggerated to the
utmost pitch of uncouthness; the colouring is harsh and disagreeable; and
the whole effect more like (I should imagine) a violent rush of blood to
the head of the spectator, than any real picture set before him by the
hand of an artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by a
sickly-looking woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say, to the
bad air of the marshes; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she
were too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her to
death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, among the reeds
and rushes, with the mists hovering about outside, and stalking round and
round it continually.
Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, some
suppressed church: now used for a warehouse, now for nothing at all: all
as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of tumbling down bodily.
The marshy town was so intensely dull and flat, that the dirt upon it
seemed not to have come there in the ordinary course, but to have settled
and mantled on its surface as on standing water. And yet there were some
business-dealings going on, and some profits realising; for there were
arcades full of Jews, where those extraordinary people were sitting
outside their shops, contemplating their stores of stuffs, and woollens,
and bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets: and looking, in all respects, as
wary and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch, London.
Having selected a Vetturíno from among the neighbouring Christians, who
agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to start, next
morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned to the Golden Lion,
and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a narrow passage between two
bedsteads: confronted by a smoky fire, and backed up by a chest of
drawers. At six o’clock next morning, we were jingling in the dark
through the wet cold mist that enshrouded the town; and, before noon, the
driver (a native of Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began
_to ask the way_ to Milan.
It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now one of the
most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the landlord of the
miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly custom) was distributing
infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women and children, whose
rags were fluttering in the wind and rain outside his door, where they
were gathered to receive his charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and
rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all that day and the next;
the first sleeping-place being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick
churches, and immensely high tower, the Torrazzo—to say nothing of its
violins, of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days;
and the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and rain,
and marshy ground: and through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong in the
faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to be found
but in their own country, until we entered the paved streets of Milan.
The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed Cathedral
might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that could be seen of it
at that time. But as we halted to refresh, for a few days then, and
returned to Milan again next summer, I had ample opportunities of seeing
the glorious structure in all its majesty and beauty.
All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it! There are many
good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo has—if I may
quote Mrs. Primrose on such a subject—‘my warm heart.’ A charitable
doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this, not in any
spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous abuses in
the Romish church, I honour his memory. I honour it none the less,
because he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder
him at the altar: in acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false
and hypocritical brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of
San Carlo Borromeo as it shielded him! A reforming Pope would need a
little shielding, even now.
The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is
preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, as
any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there, flash and
gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skilful
hands, and representing the principal events in the life of the saint.
Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass
slowly removes the front of the altar; and, within it, in a gorgeous
shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled
mummy of a man: the pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant
with diamonds, emeralds, rubies: every costly and magnificent gem. The
shrunken heap of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more
pitiful than if it lay upon a dung-hill. There is not a ray of
imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock
the dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk in the rich
vestments seems only a provision from the worms that spin, for the behoof
of worms that propagate in sepulchres.
In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any other in the
world: the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci—with a door cut through it
by the intelligent Dominican friars, to facilitate their operations at
dinner-time.
I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and have no
other means of judging of a picture than as I see it resembling and
refining upon nature, and presenting graceful combinations of forms and
colours. I am, therefore, no authority whatever, in reference to the
‘touch’ of this or that master; though I know very well (as anybody may,
who chooses to think about the matter) that few very great masters can
possibly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one-half of the
pictures that bear their names, and that are recognised by many aspirants
to a reputation for taste, as undoubted originals. But this, by the way.
Of the Last Supper, I would simply observe, that in its beautiful
composition and arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful picture;
and that, in its original colouring, or in its original expression of any
single face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it has
sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so
retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that many of the
heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of paint and plaster
sticking upon them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression.
Where the original artist set that impress of his genius on a face,
which, almost in a line or touch, separated him from meaner painters and
made him what he was, succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across
seams and cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand; and putting
in some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched and
spoiled the work. This is so well established as an historical fact,
that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for having
observed an English gentleman before the picture, who was at great pains
to fall into what I may describe as mild convulsions, at certain minute
details of expression which are not left in it. Whereas, it would be
comfortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive at a
general understanding that it cannot fail to have been a work of
extraordinary merit, once: when, with so few of its original beauties
remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet sufficient to
sustain it, as a piece replete with interest and dignity.
We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a fine city it
is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess the characteristic
qualities of many towns far less important in themselves. The Corso,
where the Milanese gentry ride up and down in carriages, and rather than
not do which, they would half starve themselves at home, is a most noble
public promenade, shaded by long avenues of trees. In the splendid
theatre of La Scala, there was a ballet of action performed after the
opera, under the title of Prometheus: in the beginning of which, some
hundred or two of men and women represented our mortal race before the
refinements of the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth
to soften them. I never saw anything more effective. Generally
speaking, the pantomimic action of the Italians is more remarkable for
its sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate expression, but,
in this case, the drooping monotony: the weary, miserable, listless,
moping life: the sordid passions and desires of human creatures,
destitute of those elevating influences to which we owe so much, and to
whose promoters we render so little: were expressed in a manner really
powerful and affecting. I should have thought it almost impossible to
present such an idea so strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech.
Milan soon lay behind us, at five o’clock in the morning; and before the
golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire was lost in the blue
sky, the Alps, stupendously confused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds
and snow, were towering in our path.
Still, we continued to advance toward them until nightfall; and, all day
long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting shapes, as the road
displayed them in different points of view. The beautiful day was just
declining, when we came upon the Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands.
For however fanciful and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it
still is beautiful. Anything springing out of that blue water, with that
scenery around it, must be.
It was ten o’clock at night when we got to Domo d’Ossola, at the foot of
the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon was shining brightly, and there
was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no time for going to bed, or
going anywhere but on. So, we got a little carriage, after some delay,
and began the ascent.
It was late in November; and the snow lying four or five feet thick in
the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new drift was already
deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and
the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms,
and its sudden turns into the shining of the moon and its incessant roar
of falling water, rendered the journey more and more sublime at every
step.
Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in the
moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after a time
emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome, where the moon
shone bright and high. By degrees, the roar of water grew louder; and
the stupendous track, after crossing the torrent by a bridge, struck in
between two massive perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the
moonlight, and only left a few stars shining in the narrow strip of sky
above. Then, even this was lost, in the thick darkness of a cavern in
the rock, through which the way was pierced; the terrible cataract
thundering and roaring close below it, and its foam and spray hanging, in
a mist, about the entrance. Emerging from this cave, and coming again
into the moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted
upward, through the Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description,
with smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and almost
meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way, higher and
higher all night, without a moment’s weariness: lost in the contemplation
of the black rocks, the tremendous heights and depths, the fields of
smooth snow lying, in the clefts and hollows, and the fierce torrents
thundering headlong down the deep abyss.
Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind was blowing
fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden
house in this solitude: round which the wind was howling dismally,
catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away: we got some
breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove,
and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter
storms. A sledge being then made ready, and four horses harnessed to it,
we went, ploughing, through the snow. Still upward, but now in the cold
light of morning, and with the great white desert on which we travelled,
plain and clear.
We were well upon the summit of the mountain: and had before us the rude
cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude above the sea: when the
light of the rising sun, struck, all at once, upon the waste of snow, and
turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur of the scene was then at its
height.
[Picture: The Chiffonier]
As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded by
Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and knapsacks, who
had rested there last night: attended by a Monk or two, their hospitable
entertainers, trudging slowly forward with them, for company’s sake. It
was pleasant to give them good morning, and pretty, looking back a long
way after them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating presently,
when one of our horses stumbled and fell, whether or no they should
return and help us. But he was soon up again, with the assistance of a
rough waggoner whose team had stuck fast there too; and when we had
helped him out of his difficulty, in return, we left him slowly ploughing
towards them, and went slowly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a
steep precipice, among the mountain pines.
Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to descend;
passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched galleries, hung
with clusters of dripping icicles; under and over foaming waterfalls;
near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter against sudden danger;
through caverns over whose arched roofs the avalanches slide, in spring,
and bury themselves in the unknown gulf beneath. Down, over lofty
bridges, and through horrible ravines: a little shifting speck in the
vast desolation of ice and snow, and monstrous granite rocks; down
through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the torrent
plunging madly down, among the riven blocks of rock, into the level
country, far below. Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between an
upward and a downward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and
softer scenery, until there lay before us, glittering like gold or silver
in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes
and church-spires of a Swiss town.
The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my business,
consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as possible, I will
not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the Swiss villages, clustered
at the feet of Giant mountains, looked like playthings; or how confusedly
the houses were heaped and piled together; or how there were very narrow
streets to shut the howling winds out in the winter-time; and broken
bridges, which the impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had
swept away. Or how there were peasant women here, with great round fur
caps: looking, when they peeped out of casements and only their heads
were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of
London; or how the town of Vevey, lying on the smooth lake of Geneva, was
beautiful to see; or how the statue of Saint Peter in the street at
Fribourg, grasps the largest key that ever was beheld; or how Fribourg is
illustrious for its two suspension bridges, and its grand cathedral
organ.
Or how, between that town and Bâle, the road meandered among thriving
villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging thatched roofs, and low
protruding windows, glazed with small round panes of glass like
crown-pieces; or how, in every little Swiss homestead, with its cart or
waggon carefully stowed away beside the house, its little garden, stock
of poultry, and groups of red-cheeked children, there was an air of
comfort, very new and very pleasant after Italy; or how the dresses of
the women changed again, and there were no more sword-bearers to be seen;
and fair white stomachers, and great black, fan-shaped, gauzy-looking
caps, prevailed instead.
Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with snow, and
lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, was delightful; or
how, below the windows of the great hotel of the Three Kings at Bâle, the
swollen Rhine ran fast and green; or how, at Strasbourg, it was quite as
fast but not as green: and was said to be foggy lower down: and, at that
late time of the year, was a far less certain means of progress, than the
highway road to Paris.
Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathedral, and
its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, made a little
gallery of quaint and interesting views; or how a crowd was gathered
inside the cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical clock in
motion, striking twelve. How, when it struck twelve, a whole army of
puppets went through many ingenious evolutions; and, among them, a huge
puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve times, loud and clear. Or
how it was wonderful to see this cock at great pains to clap its wings,
and strain its throat; but obviously having no connection whatever with
its own voice; which was deep within the clock, a long way down.
Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to the coast, a
little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs of Dover were a
pleasant sight, and England was so wonderfully neat—though dark, and
lacking colour on a winter’s day, it must be conceded.
Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the channel, with
ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in France. Or how the
Malle Poste scrambled through the snow, headlong, drawn in the hilly
parts by any number of stout horses at a canter; or how there were,
outside the Post-office Yard in Paris, before daybreak, extraordinary
adventurers in heaps of rags, groping in the snowy streets with little
rakes, in search of odds and ends.
Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceeding deep,
a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for the next three
hundred miles or so; breaking springs on Sunday nights, and putting out
its two passengers to warm and refresh themselves pending the repairs, in
miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy company, collected about stoves,
were playing cards; the cards being very like themselves—extremely limp
and dirty.
Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of weather; and
steamers were advertised to go, which did not go; or how the good
Steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met such weather that now
she threatened to run into Toulon, and now into Nice, but, the wind
moderating, did neither, but ran on into Genoa harbour instead, where the
familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear. Or how there was a travelling
party on board, of whom one member was very ill in the cabin next to
mine, and being ill was cross, and therefore declined to give up the
Dictionary, which he kept under his pillow; thereby obliging his
companions to come down to him, constantly, to ask what was the Italian
for a lump of sugar—a glass of brandy and water—what’s o’clock? and so
forth: which he always insisted on looking out, with his own sea-sick
eyes, declining to entrust the book to any man alive.
Like GRUMIO, I might have told you, in detail, all this and something
more—but to as little purpose—were I not deterred by the remembrance that
my business is with Italy. Therefore, like GRUMIO’S story, ‘it shall die
in oblivion.’