DALPE, PRATO, ROSSURA. (FROM CHAPTER III. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)
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Talking of legs, as I went through the main street of Dalpe an old lady
of about sixty-five stopped me, and told me that while gathering her
winter store of firewood she had had the misfortune to hurt her leg. I
was very sorry, but I failed to satisfy her; the more I sympathised in
general terms, the more I felt that something further was expected of me.
I went on trying to do the civil thing, when the old lady cut me short by
saying it would be much better if I were to see the leg at once; so she
showed it me in the street, and there, sure enough, close to the groin
there was a swelling. Again I said how sorry I was, and added that
perhaps she ought to show it to a medical man. "But aren't _you_ a
medical man?" said she in an alarmed manner. "Certainly not, ma'am,"
replied I. "Then why did you let me show you my leg?" said she
indignantly, and pulling her clothes down, the poor old woman began to
hobble off; presently two others joined her, and I heard hearty peals of
laughter as she recounted her story. A stranger visiting these out-of-
the-way villages is almost certain to be mistaken for a doctor. What
business, they say to themselves, can any one else have there, and who in
his senses would dream of visiting them for pleasure? This old lady had
rushed to the usual conclusion, and had been trying to get a little
advice gratis.
* * * * *
The little objects looking like sentry-boxes that go all round Prato
Church contain rough modern frescoes representing, if I remember rightly,
the events attendant upon the crucifixion. These are on a small scale
what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo are on a large one.
Small single oratories are scattered about all over the Canton Ticino,
and indeed everywhere in North Italy, by the road-side, at all halting-
places, and especially at the crest of any more marked ascent, where the
tired wayfarer, probably heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty
word or two if not checked. The people like them, and miss them when
they come to England. They sometimes do what the lower animals do in
confinement when precluded from habits they are accustomed to, and put up
with strange makeshifts by way of substitute. I once saw a poor Ticinese
woman kneeling in prayer before a dentist's show-case in the Hampstead
Road; she doubtless mistook the teeth for the relics of some saint. I am
afraid she was a little like a hen sitting upon a chalk egg, but she
seemed quite contented.
Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough upon chalk eggs at
times? And what would life be but for the power to do so? We do not
sufficiently realise the part which illusion has played in our
development. One of the prime requisites for evolution is a certain
power for adaptation to varying circumstances, that is to say, of
plasticity, bodily and mental. But the power of adaptation is mainly
dependent on the power of thinking certain new things sufficiently like
certain others to which we have been accustomed for us not to be too much
incommoded by the change--upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the new
for the old. The power of fusing ideas (and through ideas, structures)
depends upon the power of _con_fusing them; the power to confuse ideas
that are not very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate
sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which
the mind has upon it. It is this which bars association from sticking to
the letter of its bond; for we are in a hurry to jump to a conclusion on
the first show of plausible pretext, and cut association's statement of
claim short by taking it as read before we have got through half of it.
We "get it into our notes, in fact," as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did in
Pickwick, and having got it once in, we are not going to get it out
again. This breeds fusion and confusion, and from this there come new
developments.
So powerful is the impetus which the mind has continually upon it that we
always, I believe, make an effort to see every new object as a repetition
of the object last before us. Objects are so varied and present
themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule we renounce this effort too
promptly to notice it, but it is always there, and as I have just said,
it is because of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve new
mental and bodily developments. Where the effort is successful, there is
illusion; where nearly successful but not quite, there is a shock and a
sense of being puzzled--more or less, as the case may be; where it so
obviously impossible as not to be pursued, there is no perception of the
effort at all.
Mr. Locke has been greatly praised for his essay upon human
understanding. An essay on human misunderstanding should be no less
interesting and important. Illusion to a small extent is one of the main
causes, if indeed it is not the main cause, of progress, but it must be
upon a small scale. All abortive speculation, whether commercial or
philosophical, is based upon it, and much as we may abuse such
speculation, we are, all of us, its debtors.
* * * * *
I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura
Church: it is dated early in the last century, and is absolutely without
ornament; the flight of steps inside it lead up to the level of the floor
of the church. One lovely summer Sunday morning passing the church
betimes, I saw the people kneeling upon these steps, the church within
being crammed. In the darker light of the porch, they told out against
the sky that showed through the open arch beyond them; far away the eye
rested on the mountains--deep blue, save where the snow still lingered. I
never saw anything more beautiful--and these forsooth are the people whom
so many of us think to better by distributing tracts about Protestantism
among them!
I liked the porch almost best under an aspect which it no longer
presents. One summer an opening was made in the west wall, which was
afterwards closed because the wind blew through it too much and made the
church too cold. While it was open, one could sit on the church steps
and look down through it on to the bottom of the Ticino valley; and
through the windows one could see the slopes about Dalpe and Cornone.
Between the two windows there is a picture of austere old S. Carlo
Borromeo with his hands joined in prayer.
It was at Rossura that I made the acquaintance of a word which I have
since found very largely used throughout North Italy. It is pronounced
"chow" pure and simple, but is written, if written at all, "ciau" or
"ciao," the "a" being kept very broad. I believe the word is derived
from "schiavo," a slave, which became corrupted into "schiao," and
"ciao." It is used with two meanings, both of which, however, are
deducible from the word slave. In its first and more common use it is
simply a salute, either on greeting or taking leave, and means, "I am
your very obedient servant." Thus, if one has been talking to a small
child, its mother will tell it to say "chow" before it goes away, and
will then nod her head and say "chow" herself. The other use is a kind
of pious expletive, intending "I must endure it," "I am the slave of a
higher power." It was in this sense I first heard it at Rossura. A
woman was washing at a fountain while I was eating my lunch. She said
she had lost her daughter in Paris a few weeks earlier. "She was a
beautiful woman," said the bereaved mother, "but--chow. She had great
talents--chow. I had her educated by the nuns of Bellinzona--chow. Her
knowledge of geography was consummate--chow, chow," &c. Here "chow"
means "pazienza," "I have done and said all that I can, and must now bear
it as best I may."
I tried to comfort her, but could do nothing, till at last it occurred to
me to say "chow" too. I did so, and was astonished at the soothing
effect it had upon her. How subtle are the laws that govern consolation!
I suppose they must ultimately be connected with reproduction--the
consoling idea being a kind of small cross which _re-generates_ or _re-
creates_ the sufferer. It is important, therefore, that the new ideas
with which the old are to be crossed should differ from these last
sufficiently to divert the attention, and yet not so much as to cause a
painful shock.
There should be a little shock, or there will be no variation in the new
ideas that are generated, but they will resemble those that preceded
them, and grief will be continued; there must not be too great a shock or
there will be no illusion--no confusion and fusion between the new set of
ideas and the old, and in consequence there will be no result at all, or,
if any, an increase in mental discord. We know very little, however,
upon this subject, and are continually shown to be at fault by finding an
unexpectedly small cross produce a wide diversion of the mental images,
while in other cases a wide one will produce hardly any result. Sometimes
again, a cross which we should have said was much too wide will have an
excellent effect. I did not anticipate, for example, that my saying
"chow" would have done much for the poor woman who had lost her daughter:
the cross did not seem wide enough: she was already, as I thought,
saturated with "chow." I can only account for the effect my application
of it produced by supposing the word to have derived some element of
strangeness and novelty as coming from a foreigner--just as land which
will give a poor crop, if planted with sets from potatoes that have been
grown for three or four years on this same soil, will yet yield
excellently if similar sets be brought from twenty miles off. For the
potato, so far as I have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant,
easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, which if bored, yawns
horribly.
I may say in passing that the tempers of plants have not been
sufficiently studied; and what little opinion we have formed about their
dispositions is for the most part ill formed. The sulkiest tree that I
know is the silver beech. It never forgives a scratch.--There is a tree
in Kensington gardens a little off the west side of the Serpentine with
names cut upon it as long ago as 1717 and 1736, which the tree is as
little able to forgive and forget as though the injury had been done not
ten years since. And the tree is not an aged tree either.