For perfect quiet and certain inspiration, the poet or artist could hardly choose a more suitable summer roost than any one of the villages that fringe the Lake of Como; while for health the advantages of this neighborhood are unrivalled. It combines the beauty of softened lines and veiled colors that distinguishes Italy with that more bracing atmosphere peculiar to Alpine countries. The lake is there for luxurious midnight expeditions under the Italian sky—romantic glidings in boats which, if neither so graceful nor so mysterious as the gondolas of Venice, are yet picturesque enough in their—only apparent—cumbersomeness; the mountains are there for English pedestrian exercise, for long, delightful, tiring walks over crag and scanty vineyard, and, beyond that, through chestnut woods and cypress clearings, till the limit of bareness begins to warn you of Alpine snows; excellent little hotels are there, hardly spoiled by the many but quickly fleeting guests whom the shabby little black steamboat brings in cargoes three times a day—hotels with clean, dapper bed-rooms and bay windows overlooking the lake—hotels where you can always get plenty of fresh milk and graceful Italian civility. Then there are villas by the score, some to be hired, and many more utterly forlorn and deserted; others well cared for, pleasantly tenanted by happy, unpretending Italian families, and wearing a general air of attractive, half-civilized rusticity. You feel that life must go on very smoothly within their walls; that bright, artless women and children chatter and laugh away their brief summer holiday in those spacious verandas and vine-trellised piazzas; and that conventional restraint is an unknown spirit there. You wish that you had a right to enter such an abode, or money enough to create one for yourself just for three months at a time; then may be you pass by another kind of dwelling, with broad, grass-grown steps meeting the water like those of the palaces of Venice; with a great rusty iron gate and railing showing tarnished remains of heraldic gilding; with a garden now overgrown with weeds, but whose tall hedges of box or ilex suggest the statuesque style of the XVIIth century; with melancholy fountains innocent of water, and Etruscan-shaped stone vases once filled with flowers, and now holding only a little stagnant rainwater; with another flight of gaunt steps leading up to a porch and innumerable stone balconies and terraces notched with half-ruined carvings of the Renaissance; moss and mould everywhere, life nowhere; funereal cypresses mounting guard over mutilated statues of fauns and wood-nymphs; rats and mice peopling in reality the marbled-paved halls of the mansion; and ghosts—in your imagination—pacing up and down the broad, deserted corridors. Then, if you are of a poetic turn of mind, you forget the brightness, the freedom, the laisser-aller of the peopled villas, and wish that you were lord of this vast, melancholy, romantic pile, the natural scene of some stately poem, the fitting frame of some picture like Millais' pathetic "Huguenot Lover," the sure source of an inspiration lofty, noble, vague, and richly proportioned. Everything is on a scale of magnificence, such as suggests only extravagance to our dwarfed notions of the proprieties of life; a modern visitor feels a pigmy in those vast, re-echoing halls; he almost expects some Brobdingnag halberdier in cloth of gold and scarlet to catch him up by the hair as some insect curiosity, or at least to order him out as an impertinent intruder; the great marble staircase seems to be alive with the shades of the noble throngs who, in Spanish doublets, jewelled toques, needle-like swords, and stiff neck-ruffs, used to parade the courtly scene—in fact, he finds himself utterly overwhelmed by the phantoms of a greatness that is dead; swamped by the flood of modern days that has brought in a generation of monkeys to consume their lives in efforts to fill the place of a generation of lions.
Again, the traveller may find other sights among the villas of the Lake of Como—less pleasant sights, too, and jarring on the artist's sense of fitness; as, for instance, when he finds a wealthy and prosaic paterfamilias, of the class who do not know and care less what antiquity means—unless it may mean shabbiness—established in placid and ludicrous possession of some stately abode such as we have named. Of course, this unappreciative being, with his robust wife and chubby olive-branches, is of the great, dominant, self-sufficient Anglo-Saxon race, with its grand physical contempt of everything that is foreign, but its keen national determination to take timely advantage of everything that is cheap. He may be from our own or the other of the Atlantic shores; from the cotton-mills of England or the oil-wells of America; but he will invariably be a man of prosaic and practical tendencies, quite impervious to the romance of his new home, but perfectly alive to its value as a good speculation and an economical venture. You will never find an artist or a scholar thus established; they will be penned up in a white-washed room of some peasant's cottage, or, if lucky members of their craft, in the "best room" of the Signor Curato's little presbytery. They, too, are on the lookout for cheap lodgings; but what is cheap to the careful millionaire is the height of impossible extravagance to the gifted brain-worker. And for our part, if we had to share the home of either of these two classes of lake tourists, we should much prefer a shake-down at the white-washed cottage, with the human counterweight of the artist, than the surroundings of marble halls, spacious, deserted gardens, and ghost-haunted staircases, if balanced by the incongruous presence of the prosperous family before mentioned. What poetic justice is it which sternly forbids the tenantship of such abodes to be interchanged?
Just such a beautiful place—but, luckily, not thus tenanted—is a villa on the Lake of Como, just opposite the sharp end of the tongue of land which, jutting into the lake to the distance of half its length, cuts it into the shape of a Y. We passed it every day on our way to the chapel. It was formerly, if we remember rightly, the pleasure-house of Queen Caroline of England during her exile. No one ever goes there now, and its aspect is as suggestive, as gloomy, as pathetic, as Edgar Poe or Mrs. Radcliffe could have wished. Just beyond it, on the narrow slip of land which runs parallel to the lake at the foot of the abrupt mountains, is a private chapel, built over the family vault of the Marquises of A—— and Counts of S——, an old Savoyard family of great piety and high origin. The land around here is part of their patrimonial estate, and the chapel contains two or three very beautiful monuments of white marble, exquisite in carving and finish, but hardly very Christian in taste.
Further up, and to be reached by a pleasant, rugged path right behind our little hotel, was another church—a village parish church this time, a much more homely and homelike place—served by a gentle old curato. The view over the lake from the jasmine-covered parapet surrounding this church was lovely—so peaceful that it suggested rather the possible surroundings of a holy soul just released from the body than the actual home of a busy, struggling, mortal life.
To heighten the illusion, the moon rose slowly as we descended the same path, and her broad silver shield, as it passed seemingly behind the crags of the mountains on the opposite shore, became momentarily stamped with the irregular outline of dark rocks, simulating to our imagination the turrets and spires of a spectre city. Soon the path of light traced by her rays upon the waters began to shine like the Israelites' guiding pillar in the wilderness, and we felt tempted to try a water-excursion as a fitting ending to our day. The beauty of the scene, as the shadows grew darker and the moonlight more intense, is indescribable. Our silent party in the boat did not even attempt to admire it out loud. The hills, purple-black in the foreground, rising out of the lake as walls of onyx from a crystal floor, grew stone-gray as they receded from sight and mingled their colors with the unearthly white of the Alpine snow-peaks in the far distance. These last seemed as though hung like a bridal wreath between earth and heaven, resting on the dark, undistinguishable masses of the chestnut woods covering the lower spurs. Now and then a bell would ring out in the still night air—a brazen voice rolling from some village belfry—and waking the mountain echoes till its sound died away in a silver murmur, mingling with the plashing of our steady oars, and gently reminding us that our lives had floated one hour nearer to God. But lovely as the scene was by night, it is difficult to call it less lovely by day. Opposite our temporary home was Bellaggio, one of the most frequented of the lake villages—a tiny hamlet of white houses clustered together in a grove of cypresses, and perched on a rocky ledge overlooking the shore. The tall, columnar trees scattered among the houses almost suggested the idea of a peaceful burying-ground, the white cottages from a distance seeming no bad substitutes for marble tombstones. A gray-blue mist—the last Italian beauty that clings to this fairy-like outpost of Italy, invaded by Alpine breezes and watched by craggy sentinels—hangs over the dormant village; the fir-trees of the neighboring villa—the show-place of the lake, the Villa Serbellone—waft their scented breath over its houses, while at its foot lie the hot-houses and orangeries, etc., by which the owner of this beautiful garden property tries to emulate English taste. The Villa Serbellone is almost a tropical marvel; the profusion of flowers; the scent of southern blossoms, cultivated with assiduous care; the ivory-like magnolia, framed in its dark and massive foliage; the starry orange flowers; the pineapple, in its luscious perfection of growth—all denote the sunny land of spontaneous productiveness; while the velvet lawns, emerald-colored and closely shaven; the trim gravel-walks, rolled to the exact point of firmness required in an English garden; the marble vases, overflowing with creepers of carefully chosen and judiciously contrasted shades; and the thousand-and-one dainty little contrivances to make the most of every natural advantage, display the art of that northern land to which its very disadvantages of climate have taught the secret of enhancing every beauty and almost creating new ones by its industry. There is little to distinguish the Lake of Como beyond its beauty of atmosphere and scenery—little or no historical interest, no ruins, castles, or towns with momentous remembrances of troubled times in the past. The churches are plain, and generally in bad taste—in fact, beyond the reach either of gorgeousness or even of simple restoration; for the mountain population and the fishermen of the shore are very poor, and the inhabitants of the lake-side villas only come to Como for the summer. But these poor parishioners have spiritual riches, if not temporal comforts: the faith of the Italian, and the naïve enthusiasm of mountaineers. One day, after landing for a moment during one of our boat excursions, we fell into conversation with an old woman, her brown, wrinkled face lighted up by eyes of the intensest black, sparking with a vigor strangely in harmony rather than in contrast with her age, and her dress, in its picturesque, but we fear uncomfortable dilapidation, quite a study for a painter. She was very devout, and, when she found that we were forestièri, anxiously asked if we were Christians. This reminds us of what happened in the North of Ireland to a Catholic English lady of distinction. Her husband was a Protestant, and she accordingly started alone one day to find the church, which she knew to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the place at which she was temporarily staying. It was not a Sunday. She lost her way, and, meeting an old woman, asked her to set her on the right road for the Catholic "Chapel." The old dame looked very suspiciously at the elegant costume of the questioner, and well knowing, by the accent, that she was foreign to Ireland, asked her in return, with incredulity stamped on every expressive feature: "Shure, she was not a Catholic?" And, indeed, the English convert did not succeed in persuading the old Irishwoman that she was her sister in the faith, until, opening her dress, she showed her the scapular round her neck, and put the rosary into her hand. These marks of orthodoxy quite convinced the staunch old Catholic, and the English lady reached the church at last. Having satisfied herself, with a sort of joyful surprise, on this cardinal point, our Italian friend discoursed very volubly of the Madonna, her own priest and mountain church, and the Pope. We had some beads with us blessed by the Holy Father, and offered her the choice of one of the set. She was reverently delighted with the opportunity, and with many blessings and thanks, as gracefully expressed as a poet could have wished or done himself, she made her selection. How her precious spiritual nearness to the Holy Father, rendered more palpable by the sight of the plain brown rosary, seemed realized in her mind's eye! She kissed the beads again and again in a transport of devotion, and in simple, straight-forward language expressed her love and loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff. There are few women in Italy, high or low, who have not the same feeling for the head of the church; and those who have it not are by no means among the most exemplary wives and mothers.
We were at Como—or rather, on the shores of the lake—in March as well as in June. The spirit of the scene was just a little more dreamy in the former month than even in the latter, chiefly because there were very few tourists, and the steamboats went up and down the lake at longer intervals than in the summer. The great heat showed no signs of its advent; the vegetation was tender and yellow-green, yet not scant; for the hills, whose cold breath tempers the torrid heat of Lombardy, also protect the lake from the biting winds that one is used to associate with the mention of March. It was possible to go out boating and walking even at noon, though the nights were none the less beautiful and inviting; but perhaps, at that time of the year, the loveliest hour was early morning. It was with such a remembrance that we left the lake. After five o'clock Mass, we rowed over to the projecting tongue of mainland that cuts the waters in two, and got into a light open carriage of the country, en route for Milan. The air was delightfully fresh, the sun had just risen, and a rosy, hazy tint lay over everything. It might have been the Bosporus, so tranquil and softened was the scene. Indeed, many travellers have likened this lake to the Bosporus, its narrow, river-like course between the shelving mountains being, they say, quite a reproduction of the oriental marvel, though it does not produce the oriental languor characteristic of the other. Our road for some time lay in a direction in which we could see both branches of the lake; then, swerving to one side, we passed through miniature mountain passes, green meadows with many water-mills, and pretty villages embowered in trees. There was somewhat of northern dampness in the atmosphere, but its effect on the pasturage was certainly satisfactory, the turf in many places being almost worthy of the Emerald Isle. As the hours sped on, our appetite began to make itself felt; we had brought nothing with us, not even sandwiches, and the drive was lengthening beyond our original calculations. The wayside inns were practically useless, the wine was like vinegar, and bread not always forthcoming. At length, at a place where we changed horses for the last time before reaching Milan, and after we had been enjoying the beauties of nature for ten hours on an empty stomach, we found something eatable, though not in a superfluous quantity. Not long after, we were regaling ourselves on a banquet of fish fried in oil, and an adequate supply of bread and butter, served in the irreproachable Milan hotel, once the palace of a fallen family, and where our privato dining-room had formerly been the Sala di Giustézza, in which feudal lords sat dispensing justice to their clan of retainers or hangers-on! And with this, farewell to the queen of Italian lakes!