Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843/Part 1/Letter 6
LETTER VI.
The morning after our arrival we began to consider where and how we should live for the next two months. Two of my companions went by the steamer to Como, for money; and I remained with the other, to arrange our future plans. We at once decided not to remove to Bellaggio, but to remain on this side of the Lake. One chief motive is, that the steamer stops each day at Cadenabbia; and our communication with the world is, therefore, regular and facile. We looked for lodgings in the neighbouring village of Tremezzo, and found several, not bad, nor very dear; though rather more so than we expected. But this was not our difficulty. There were five of us, including my maid, to be provided for. We must have food: we must have a cook. I knew that, in a strange place, it requires at least a month, and even more, to get into its ways, and to obviate a little the liabilities to being cheated. But we are only going to stay six weeks or two months; and the annoyance attendant on my initiation into housekeeping will scarcely be ended before my acquired knowledge will have become useless. The host of the inn declared we must have everything from his house, or, by steamboat, from Como: he insinuated we should be better off at his hotel. At first, we turned a deaf ear; then we listened; then we discussed: in brief, we finally settled to remain at the Albergo Grande. We have one large salon; four small bedrooms contiguous, for three of us and my maid, and one up stairs: we are provided with breakfast, dinner, and tea; the whole (rooms included) for seven francs a-head for the masters, four for the servant. This was reasonable enough; and we agreed for a month on these terms. Thus I am delivered from all household cares; which otherwise, in our position, might prove harassing enough.
These arrangements being quickly made, our manner of life has fallen at once into a regular train. All the morning, our students are at work. I have selected a nook of the salon, where I have established my embroidery-frame, books, and desk. I mean to read a great deal of Italian; as I have ever found it pleasant to embue oneself with the language and literature of the country in which one is residing. Reading much Italian, one learns almost to think in that language, and to converse more freely. At twelve, the steamer arrives from Como; which is the great event of our day. At two, we dine; but it is five, usually, before the sun permits us to go out. During his visit to Como, P went over to the neighbouring village of Caratte, where lives a boat-builder, who studied his trade at Venice. All the boats of the country are flat-bottomed. P has selected one with a keel, which he is now impatiently expecting.
Descriptions with difficulty convey definite impressions, and any picture or print of our part of the lake will better than my words describe the scenery around us. The Albergo Grande della Cadenabbia is built at the foot of mountains, close to the water. In front of the house there is a good bridle-road, which extends to each extremity of the lake. One door of the house opens on an avenue of acacias, which skirts the water, and leads to the side-gate of the Villa Sommariva.
Continuing the road towards Como, we come to the villages of Tremezzo and Bolvedro, with frequent villas interspersed, their terraced gardens climbing the mountain’s side. In the opposite direction towards Colico, we have the village of Cadenabbia itself, with a silk-mill: but after that, the road, until we reach the town of Menaggio, is more solitary. In parts, the path runs close upon the lake, with only a sort of beach intervening, sprinkled with fragments of rock and shadowed by olive-trees. Menaggio is three miles distant; it is the largest town in our vicinity, and properly our post-town, though our letters are usually directed to Como, and a boatman fetches them and posts ours, three times a-week, with great fidelity.
High mountains rise behind, their lower terraces bearing olives, vines, and Indian corn; midway clothed by chesnut woods; bare, rugged, sublime, at their summits. The waters of the lake are spread before; the villa-studded promontory of Bellaggio being immediately opposite, and further off the shores of the other branch of the lake, with the town of Varenna, sheltered by gigantic mountains. Highest among them is the Resegone, so frequently mentioned by Manzoni in the Promessi Sposi, with its summit jagged like a saw. Indeed, all these Alps are in shape more abrupt and fantastic than any I ever saw.
I wish I could by my imperfect words bring before you not only the grander features, but every minute peculiarity, every varying hue, of this matchless scene. The progress of each day brings with it its appropriate change. When I rise in the morning and look out, our own side is bathed in sunshine, and we see the opposite mountains raising their blade masses in sharp relief against the eastern sky, while dark shadows are flung by the abrupt precipices on the fair lake beneath. This very scene glows in sunshine later in the day, till at evening the shadows climb up, first darkening the banks, and slowly ascending till they leave exposed the naked summits alone, which are long gladdened by the golden radiance of the sinking sun, till the bright rays disappear, and, cold and gray, the granite peaks stand pointing to the stars, which one by one gather above.
Here then we are in peace, with a feeling of being settled for a year, instead of two months. The inn is kept by the brothers Brentani, who form a sort of patriarchal family. There is, in the first place, an old mother, who evidently possesses great sway in the family, and a loud voice, but with whom we have nothing to do, except to return her salutation when we meet. The eldest brother, Giovanni, a tall stout man, attends to the accounts. He is married. Peppina, his wife, is of good parentage, but being left an orphan in childhood, lost her all through the rascality of guardians during the troubled times of Napoleon’s wars and downfall. She waits on us; she is hard-working, good-humoured, and endowed with all the innate courtesy which forms, together with their simplicity of manner, the charm of the Italians. Luigi, the next brother, who welcomed us from the steamboat, is put forward to do the honours, as the beau of the establishment. He has all the airs of one, when each day he goes to receive guests from the steamer, with his white, low-crowned hat, and velvet jacket, his slim figure, and light mustachios; he waits on us also. Then there is Battista, who acts as cook: Bernardo, who seems as a sort of under-waiter: and Paolo, or Piccol, as he is usually called, to his great disdain, a handsome lad, who runs about, and does everything: these are all brothers. There is a woman besides, to clean rooms, and a scullion or two: all the family work hard. Poor Battista says his only ambition is to get a good night’s sleep; he is up early and down late, has grown infinitely thin upon it. Bernardo nourishes the ambition of going to England—the frequent resort of the natives of the lake of Como—and try, as others of the villages about had done, to make a fortune. My young companions are great pets in the house. You can be on excellent terms with this class of people in Italy without their ever forgetting themselves: there is no intrusiveness, no improper familiarity, but perfect ease joined to respect and ready service. For the rest, they of course are not particularly addicted to truth, and may perhaps cheat if strongly tempted, and, I dare say, their morals are not quite correct. But in all their doings, as yet, they keep their compact with us faithfully, taking extreme pains to serve us to our liking; far from having the slightest cause of complaint, we have every reason to praise.
We begin to feel settled, but to-day a strange and disagreeable incident occurred. Peppina came in with wild looks, to say that a madman—an Englishman—had arrived by the steamer, and was frightening everybody with a pistol.
It seems that two gentlemen had landed from the steamer, and had proceeded, as was the wont of visitors, to the Villa Sommariva, to look over it. One was an Italian, the other an Englishman, who spoke Italian perfectly. Suddenly, as they reached the gate of the Villa which opened on the road, the Englishman said to the Italian, “Are you not afraid of being set upon? Are you not afraid of being assassinated?” The other, who had come from Milan with him, and was not otherwise acquainted, and had no idea of his malady, replied, “No, why should he?” “Do you not know that we are watched, and there is treachery everywhere about us?” “No,” said the other, “and if there were, you have as much cause to be frightened as I.” But I am armed,” said the madman, “this is loaded,” and he drew a pistol from his pocket, and still more excited by the sight of the weapon, began to shriek “Tradimento! Tradimento! Alla Villa Sommariva! Tradimento!” His companion, frightened enough, ran off and alarmed the inn and village, and as Englishmen, my companions were summoned to see if they could do anything with their countryman.
There he stood on the steps before the gate of the villa leading down to the lake, shrieking “Tradimento;” he kept every one at bay with his pistol, which was cocked, capped, and ready. Some people from across the lake tried to land at the steps to visit the villa, but he soon made them row away; the inhabitants around all flocked, hiding behind trees and peeping from coverts. He was well content to talk or to be spoken to in Italian or English, but no one must approach; and his position, standing on a semicircular flight of steps leading down to the lake, was sufficiently impregnable: it gave him the whole command of the road in front, and no one could outflank, or come behind him. After three or four hours, however, he grew less watchful. As the people talked to him, he allowed them insensibly to approach nearer, till one fellow getting behind, threw up his arm with the pistol, and then throwing his arms round him, took him prisoner. His pistol was double-loaded. But with all his madness he was aware, that if he had fired it, his power was at an end; and this latent sanity saved, perhaps a life.
He was brought to the hotel, and a dismal day my friends have passed watching over him. Poor fellow! he is quite mad. He had given English lessons at Milan for some years, and earned a sufficient livelihood. His insanity has taken the turn of believing, that the Austrian police want to poison him. He said he never went to the theatre but a police officer was behind, who scattered a poisonous powder over him. He will not take any food in consequence; neither touch bread nor water. My maid took him a cup of tea made by herself, and, to her great indignation, he refused it, as poisoned. He tried to escape several times. First, he made friends with his countrymen; but when he found that they watched him, he turned to the Italians, calling us, according to the phrase of the country, “non Cristiani,” and begging them to save him. He had sixteen napoleons with him. It seems that the doctor who attended him (he was without relations or English friends) had advised him to go to England, had put him into the diligence for Como, introducing him to a Milanese in the vehicle, without mentioning his malady, and thus he was delivered over to the miserable wanderings of his mind. A doctor had been sent for from Menaggio at the first moment; of course, he could do nothing. With difficulty he was induced to go to bed; he was thoroughly persuaded he should be murdered in the night, and his expostulations on the subject were shocking and ghastly enough. The next morning, having taken an aversion to all those with whom he had been friendly the preceding day, he consented to go back to Milan, under the escort of a police officer. I saw him as he got into the boat; he was a spare man, with an adust, withered face and unquiet eye; but not otherwise remarkable. We heard that at Como he selected a pear from the bottom of a basket in the market place, and ate it; it was the first food that had passed his lips since he left Milan, two days before.
In our hotel are an English gentleman and lady, with whom the adventure of the madman brought us acquainted. Mr. And Mrs. F had been spending the last two years in Italy; they are passed middle life: he is a scholar and a gentlemanly man; he has printed a volume of poetry, and aims at connoisseurship in pictures. She appears one of those dear, gentle, sensible, warm-hearted women, the salt of the earth. Her acquaintance, alone as I am with my son, and his youthful friends, promises to be a great resource to me.
This evening P’s little boat has come; small, indeed, it is. In shape it is something of a sea boat, and it has a keel, and a tiny sail; but it is too small to convey a feeling of safety. I look at it and shudder. I can bring no help, except constant watchfulness; and many an anxious hour it will cause me to pass. Do not call me a grumbler. A tragedy has darkened my life: I endeavour, in vain, to cast aside the fears which are its offspring; they haunt me perpetually, and make too large and too sad a portion of my daily life.
The arrival of the boat, you see, has dashed my spirits, so I break off.—Adieu.