Part 48 (1/2)

”Millet's picture of the Angelus sold for 700,000 francs. Now that,”

he said, ”is genius.”

After which I was very civil to him.

At Bellinzona a man told me that one of the two towers was built by the Visconti and the other by Julius Caesar, a hundred years earlier.

So, poor old Mrs. Barratt at Langar could conceive no longer time than a hundred years. The Trojan war did not last ten years, but ten years was as big a lie as Homer knew.

We went over the Albula Pa.s.s to St. Moritz in two diligences and could not settle which was tonic and which was dominant; but the carriage behind us was the relative minor.

There was a picture in the dining-room but we could not get near enough to see it; we thought it must be either Christ disputing with the Doctors or Louis XVI saying farewell to his family--or something of that sort.

The Sacro Monte at Varese

The Sacro Monte is a kind of ecclesiastical Rosherville Gardens, eminently the place to spend a happy day.

The processions were best at the last part of the ascent; there were pilgrims, all decked out with coloured feathers, and priests and banners and music and crimson and gold and white and glittering bra.s.s against the cloudless blue sky. The old priest sat at his open window to receive the offerings of the devout as they pa.s.sed, but he did not seem to get more than a few bambini modelled in wax. Perhaps he was used to it. And the band played the barocco music on the barocco little piazza and we were all barocco together. It was as though the clergymen at Ladywell had given out that, instead of having service as usual, the congregation would go in procession to the Crystal Palace with all their traps, and that the band had been practising ”Wait till the clouds roll by” for some time, and on Sunday, as a great treat, they should have it.

The Pope has issued an order saying he will not have ma.s.ses written like operas. It is no use. The Pope can do much, but he will not be able to get contrapuntal music into Varese. He will not be able to get anything more solemn than La Fille de Madame Angot into Varese.

As for fugues--! I would as soon take an English bishop to the Surrey pantomime as to the Sacro Monte on a festa.

Then the pilgrims went into the shadow of a great rock behind the sanctuary, spread themselves out over the gra.s.s and dined.

The Albergo Grotta Crimea

The entrance to this hotel at Chiavenna is through a covered court- yard; steps lead up to the roof of the court-yard, which is a terrace where one dines in fine weather. A great tree grows in the court- yard below, its trunk pierces the floor of the terrace, and its branches shade the open-air dining-room. The walls of the house are painted in fresco, with a check pattern like the late Lord Brougham's trousers, and there are also pictures. One represents Mendelssohn.

He is not called Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs. He is in the costume of a dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a cigar and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook.

{261} Down below is a fresco of a man sitting on a barrel with a gla.s.s in his hand. A more absolutely worldly minded, uncultured individual it would be impossible to conceive. When I saw these frescoes I knew I should get along all right and not be over-charged.

Public Opinion

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

These Notes

I make them under the impression that I may use them in my books, but I never do unless I happen to remember them at the right time. When I wrote ”Ramblings in Cheapside” [in the Universal Review, reprinted in Essays on Life, Art and Science] the preceding note about Public Opinion would have come in admirably; it was in my pocket, in my little black note-book, but I forgot all about it till I came to post my pocket-book into my note-book.

The Wife of Bath

There are Canterbury Pilgrims every Sunday in summer who start from close to the old Tabard, only they go by the South-Eastern Railway and come back the same day for five s.h.i.+llings. And, what is more, they are just the same sort of people. If they do not go to Canterbury they go by the Clacton Belle to Clacton-on-Sea. There is not a Sunday the whole summer through but you may find all Chaucer's pilgrims, man and woman for man and woman, on board the Lord of the Isles or the Clacton Belle. Why, I have seen the Wife of Bath on the Lord of the Isles myself. She was eating her luncheon off an Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday, which was spread out upon her knees. Whether it was I who had had too much beer or she I cannot tell, G.o.d knoweth; and whether or no I was caught up into Paradise, again I cannot tell; but I certainly did hear unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, and that not above fourteen years ago but the very last Sunday that ever was. The Wife of Bath heard them too, but she never turned a hair. Luckily I had my detective camera with me, so I snapped her there and then. She put her hand up to her mouth at that very moment and rather spoiled herself, but not much. [1891.]