The Colma, the walk along the crest of the hill
by the farm, and the view over Lombardy, and that is all. If one
goes far down one is haunted by the recollection that when one is
tired in the evening one will have all one's climbing to do, and,
beautiful as the upper parts of the Monte Generoso are, there is
little for a painter there except to study cattle, goats, and
clouds. I recommend a traveller, therefore, by all means to spend
a day or two at the hotel on the Monte Generoso, but to make his
longer sojourn down below at Mendrisio, the walks and excursions
from which are endless, and all of them beautiful.
Among the best of these is the ascent of the Monte Bisbino, which
can be easily made in a day from Mendrisio; I found no difficulty
in doing it on foot all the way there and back a few years ago, but
I now prefer to take a trap as far as Sagno, and do the rest of the
journey on foot, returning to the trap in the evening. Every one
who knows North Italy knows the Monte Bisbino. It is a high
pyramidal mountain with what seems a little white chapel on the top
that glistens like a star when the sun is full upon it. From Como
it is seen most plainly, but it is distinguishable over a very
large part of Lombardy when the sun is right; it is frequently
ascended from Como and Cernobbio, but I believe the easiest way of
getting up it is to start from Mendrisio with a trap as far as
Sagno.
A mile and a half or so after leaving Mendrisio there is a village
called Castello on the left. Here, a little off the road on the
right hand, there is the small church of S. Cristoforo, of great
antiquity, containing the remains of some early frescoes, I should
think of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century.
As usual, people have scratched their names on the frescoes. We
found one name "Battista," with the date "1485" against it. It is
a mistake to hold that the English scribble their names about more
than other people. The Italians like doing this just as well as we
do. Let the reader go to Varallo, for example, and note the names
scratched up from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the
present day, on the walls of the chapel containing the Crucifixion.
Indeed, the Italians seem to have begun the habit long before we
did, for we very rarely find names scratched on English buildings
so long ago as the fifteenth century, whereas in Italy they are
common. The earliest I can call to mind in England at this moment
(of course, excepting the names written in the Beauchamp Tower) is
on the church porch at Harlington, where there is a name cut and
dated in one of the early years of the seventeenth century. I
never even in Italy saw a name scratched on a wall with an earlier
date than 1480.
Why is it, I wonder, that these little bits of soul-fossil as it
were, touch us so much when we come across them? A fossil does not
touch us - while a fly in amber does. Why should a fly in amber
interest us and give us a slightly solemn feeling for a moment,
when the fossil of a megatherium bores us? I give it up; but few
of us can see the lightest trifle scratched off casually and idly
long ago, without liking it better than almost any great thing of
the same, or ever so much earlier date, done with purpose and
intention that it should remain. So when we left S. Cristoforo it
was not the old church, nor the frescoes, but the name of the idle
fellow who had scratched his name "Battista . . . 1485," that we
carried away with us. A little bit of old world life and entire
want of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber.
In the Val Sesia, several years ago, I bought some tobacco that was
wrapped up for me in a yellow old MS. which I in due course
examined. It was dated 1797, and was a leaf from the book in which
a tanner used to enter the skins which his customers brought him to
be tanned.
"October 24," he writes, "I received from Signora Silvestre, called
the widow, the skin of a goat branded in the neck. - (I am not to
give it up unless they give me proof that she is the rightful
owner.) Mem. I delivered it to Mr. Peter Job (Signor Pietro
Giobbe).
"October 27. - I receive two small skins of a goat, very thin and
branded in the neck, from Giuseppe Gianote of Campertogno.
"October 29. - I receive three skins of a chamois from Signor
Antonio Cinere of Alagna, branded in the neck." Then there is a
subsequent entry written small. "I receive also a little gray
marmot's skin weighing thirty ounces."
I am sorry I did not get a sheet with the tanner's name. I am sure
he was an excellent person, and might have been trusted with any
number of skins, branded or unbranded. It is nearly a hundred
years ago since that little gray marmot's skin was tanned in the
Val Sesia; but the wretch will not lie quiet in his grave; he
walks, and has haunted me once a month or so any time this ten
years past. I will see if I cannot lay him by prevailing on him to
haunt some one or other of my readers.
CHAPTER XX - Sanctuary on Monte Bisbino
But to return to S. Cristoforo.
