Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

The day has been spent in driving, walking, and climbing hills, yet we seem to feel no fatigue, so invigorating is this air, "mountain air, sheathed in Italian sunshine," as Mrs. Browning aptly described it. Vallombrosa is three thousand feet above Florence—small wonder that we have been ascending skyward since we drove away from Pelago this morning!

Zelphine's pet project was to stop over night at the hermitage of Il Paradisino, which is on a rock more than two hundred feet above the old monastery of Vallombrosa; but here again Katharine's common sense stood us in good stead. The inn at Il Paradisino is, she says, wretchedly kept, so we have adopted her plan and are spending the night here in comfort. We climbed up to the hermitage and chapel this evening for the sunset view of the valley of the Arno, in which Florence lies. In the far distance we could see the strangely indented line of the mountains of Carrara, with Mount Cimone, and other remote peaks of the Apennines.

Zelphine found a copy of Mrs. Browning's letters chez Vieusseux, that good friend of all English-speaking travellers. We have brought the first volume with us, and are thus enjoying, in Mrs. Browning's good company, the charms of this region which she described so vividly.

Although we did not set out from Pelago at four in the morning, nor journey in a sledge drawn by white oxen, but in a carriage, even in this less picturesque conveyance we felt that we were ascending the heights of Paradise, and were awed into silence by the rugged grandeur of the scenery, the hills with their heads among the clouds, the dense pine forests and the beech and chestnut woods hanging from the mountain sides. We were at times reminded of Switzerland, although some of our fellow-travellers found a stronger likeness to Norway in the black ravines, gurgling waters, and mountain torrents; but alas and alas! as we drew near the summit, instead of Milton's

"Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view,"

we found that most of the fine trees which once adorned the ascent had been ruthlessly destroyed. They tell us that a public-spirited and beauty-loving Englishman offered to pay a fair price for some of the goodliest trees if they might only be left standing in their places; but the offer was refused, and the vandalism continues. How you will mourn these noble trees when you come here!—feeling, as you do, that the wanton destruction of trees is a crime near to that of homicide in the category of sins. Yet, in the midst of this wholesale destruction, a school has been established for the training of foresters. It is to be hoped that this Foresteria, which occupies the old monastery buildings, may disseminate so much light that in the future trees may be preserved as well as planted. We were told that thousands of trees had been planted within a short time.

With the suppression of the monastery many of the characteristic features of Vallombrosa have disappeared, and so we may not see the place as the Brownings saw it when they came here in the summer of 1847. Do you remember how they were ingloriously expelled from the monastery at the end of five days, as Mrs. Browning says, "by a little holy abbot with a red face, who was given to sanctity and had set his face against women"? We could well understand what it would have been to those lovers of nature to spend two months, as they had planned, in the midst of the majestic beauty of this mountain paradise. We long inexpressibly to stay a week here and then take a couple of days for La Verna, where again one comes upon footprints of St. Francis and his brothers, but we all learned from our school copybooks that "time and tide wait for no man," and we have promised to be in Florence to-morrow night to meet Bertha and Mrs. Robins, who are to join us in a trip to the Certosa on the following day. Zelphine and I make solemn vows, as we have done in many other entrancing spots, that we will return to Vallombrosa some day and stay as long as we wish. These resolves comfort us, and yet—and yet—do we ever have "the time and the place and the loved one all together," especially the time? To-morrow we shall be up betimes to enjoy the early morning view from Il Paradisino, with the clouds rolling away beneath our feet to show us once again the dome of our beloved Santa Maria del Fiore above the shoulder of a hill, a sight which it is worth while climbing mountains to see, and if the day is fine, and here days usually are fine, we may even catch a glimpse of the glistening sea beyond Florence and its hills.

Pension C., Florence, May 12th.

We found Ludovico's cards on our return from Vallombrosa. He had come quite unexpectedly on military business, so he says, for of course he returned later in the evening and we had a long talk with him. He proposes to act as our guide here, as in the old Roman days, and is planning a number of delightful excursions for us. As the sun is very hot now we are glad to spend our mornings in the galleries and churches, which are delightfully cool.