The music of Locarno was on the
quay playing a selection, not from "Madame Angot" itself, but from
something very like it - light, gay, sparkling opera bouffe - to
welcome him. I felt as I had done when I found the matchbox in the
sanctuary bedroom at Graglia: not that I minded it myself, but as
being a little unhappy lest the Bishop might not quite like it.
I do not see how we could welcome a bishop - we will say to a
confirmation - with a band of music at all. Fancy a brass band of
some twenty or thirty ranged round the landing stage at Gravesend
to welcome the Bishop of London, and fancy their playing we will
say "The two Obadiahs," or that horrid song about the swing going a
little bit higher! The Bishop would be very much offended. He
would not go a musical inch beyond the march in "Le Prophete," nor,
willingly, beyond the march in "Athalie." Monsignor Ballerini,
however, never turned a hair; he bowed repeatedly to all round him,
and drove off in a carriage and pair, apparently much pleased with
his reception. We Protestants do not understand, nor take any very
great pains to understand, the Church of Rome. If we did, we
should find it to be in many respects as much in advance of us as
it is behind us in others.
One thing made an impression upon me which haunted me all the time.
On every important space there were advertisements of the
programme, the substance of which I have already given. But
hardly, if at all less noticeable, were two others which rose up
irrepressible upon every prominent space, searching all places with
a subtle penetrative power against which precautions were
powerless. These advertisements were not in Italian but in
English, nevertheless they were neither of them English - but both,
I believe, American. The one was that of the Richmond Gem
cigarette, with the large illustration representing a man in a hat
smoking, so familiar to us here in London. The other was that of
Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machines.
As the Patriarch drove off in the carriage the man in the hat
smoking the Richmond Gem cigarette leered at him, and the woman
working Wheeler & Wilson's sewing machine sewed at him. During the
illuminations the unwonted light threw its glare upon the effigies
of saints and angels, but it illumined also the man in the black
felt hat and the woman with the sewing machine; even during the
artificial apparition of the Virgin Mary herself upon the hill
behind the town, the more they let off fireworks the more clearly
the man in the hat came out upon the walls round the market-place,
and the bland imperturbable woman working at her sewing machine. I
thought to myself that when the man with the hat appeared in the
piazza the Madonna would ere long cease to appear on the hill.
Later on, passing through the town alone, when the people had gone
to rest, I saw many of them lying on the pavement under the arches
fast asleep. A brilliant moon illuminated the market-place; there
was a pleasant sound of falling water from the fountain; the lake
was bathed in splendour, save where it took the reflection of the
mountains - so peaceful and quiet was the night that there was
hardly a rustle in the leaves of the aspens. But whether in
moonlight or in shadow, the busy persistent vibrations that rise in
Anglo-Saxon brains were radiating from every wall, and the man in
the black felt hat and the bland lady with the sewing machine were
there - lying in wait, as a cat over a mouse's hole, to insinuate
themselves into the hearts of the people so soon as they should
wake.
Great numbers came to the festivities. There were special trains
from Biasca and all intermediate stations, and special boats. And
the ugly flat-nosed people came from the Val Verzasca, and the
beautiful people came from the Val Onsernone and the Val Maggia,
and I saw Anna, the curate's housekeeper, from Mesocco, and the old
fresco painter who told me he should like to pay me a visit, and
suggested five o'clock in the morning as the most appropriate and
convenient time. The great procession contained seven or eight
hundred people. From the balcony of the Hotel della Corona I
counted as well as I could and obtained the following result:-
Women 120
Men with white shirts and red capes 85
Men with white shirts and no capes (?)
The music from Intra 30
Men with white shirts and blue capes 25
Men with white shirts and no capes 25
Men with white shirts and green capes 12
Men with white shirts and no capes 36
The music of Locarno 30
Girls in blue, pink, white and yellow,
red, white 50
Choristers 3
Monks 6
Priests 66
Canons 12
His Excellency Paolo Angelo Ballerini,
Patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt,
escorted by the firemen, and his
private cortege of about 20 25
Government ushers (?)
The Grand Council, escorted by 22
soldiers and 6 policemen 28
The clergy without orders 30
583
In the evening, there, sure enough, the apparition of the Blessed
Virgin was. The church of the Madonna was unilluminated and all in
darkness, when on a sudden it sprang out into a blaze, and a great
transparency of the Virgin and child was lit up from behind. Then
the people said, "Oh bel!"
I was myself a little disappointed. It was not a good apparition,
and I think the effect would have been better if it had been
carried up by a small balloon into the sky. It might easily have
been arranged so that the light behind the transparency should die
out before the apparition must fall again, and also that the light
inside the transparency should not be reflected upon the balloon
that lifted it; the whole, therefore, would appear to rise from its
own inherent buoyancy.
