Umbrian Pilgrimage

I

THE railway, creature of the common sense of the nineteenth century, is not everywhere triumphant. Like the nouveaux riches, it sometimes succeeds only by pretending to be unaware that the old established order of things ignores it completely. Everywhere in Italy the trains go tooting down the valleys, bustling with importance on their way from Florence, perhaps, to Rome, while the ancient feudal cities, — cities that watched the men of the Renaissance (and before them the Romans) drain these very valleys and lay out the low roads which now the railroad follows, — still remembering the centuries of swamp and malaria that intervened, the old cities stand aloof on their high hills.

Monterchi, in Umbria, is such a town: it draws itself up as though to prove its proud antiquity on a little Romanesque hill far across the valley from the railway station. When I dropped off the snorting narrow-gauge train that Sunday morning, I saw it shilling in the eastern sky like an enchanted city. And since one bridges the distance between the ubiquitous present and the inviolable past only by a conscious humility, — and since, furthermore, there was no conveyance visible, — I prepared to continue my pilgrimage on foot. Leaving my suitcase and my raincoat in care of the station master, who agreed with me that rain was impossible, I set off down the road.

It was a brilliant, fresh June morning, flooded with sunshine. Never had Italy been so luxuriant; after the dignified severity of the Tuscan landscape, Umbria seemed all a leafy bower. The June grass and early wheat had just been cut, and the country looked like a great park. No one was at work on this Sunday morning among the sheaves piled on the tawny ground; the stillness, like the dewy freshness, was astonishing and grateful in crowded Italy.

Actually there is nothing on earth more delightful than walking toward a hill town. One sees it from a great distance, even several days’ walk away. Like a shining parable of pilgrimage the visible goal dominates one’s existence, holding the evening sun long after the road is dark. At first it looms incredibly remote, mysterious, still luring one on; and then as the towers and walls gradually take form, without quite losing its aspect of a celestial city, it grows in earthly charm. Then the donkeys can be seen mincing up to the arched gateway, and the washing waves hospitably at the windows.

Sweet indeed are the delights of pilgrimage! Let pedants argue, if they will, that works of art should be concentrated in large cities where they may be studied and appreciated by the greatest number of earnest citizens — all the instincts of humanity are against them. Human nature loves a holiday, and what could be a better excuse for a holiday than a favorite picture off in Umbria? Travel is better for such an end, and the picture itself is dignified, it is set in relief, by the journey. Over the hills and along the road one thinks of it, while it takes on a more vivid life in the mind. One finds the church where the artist worked, and the people for whom he painted — though it may have been five hundred years ago. The picture is no longer a museum piece; it takes its place in real life. One sees it at home, in its own country, to think of it ever after in its perfect frame of vines and flowering fields.

This time I had come to see the ‘Madonna del Parto’ by Piero della Francesca. My friends had promised me that, next to the ‘Resurrection’ in Borgo San Sepolcro, it was his greatest picture — a promise which might wing one’s heels to a shrine much more lonely and remote than Monterchi. And indeed, for my part, it seemed to me right and pleasant that one of the masterpieces of the world should be lodged in a forgotten town three miles’ walk from a branch railway. In such a situation there was a hint of the mystery of genius, that spectacular birthright which so often disguises itself in rags and sells pencils on a city street.

I had reached the little stream which in perfect feudal form circled the hill where the town perched. But the camposanto was not up the hill; it was a few steps down the road to the left. I found it easily, following a grassy path, starred with chicory, across the field. The house which leaned against the graveyard wall was quite silent; but as I reached the gate a crowd of curly-haired children came leaping down from the meadow, calling to their mother. At sight of me, a signorina sola, they stopped, struck dumb, like little animals.

In the kitchen I found the mother, a large, interested woman, just at the delicate point of rolling out the thin dough for noodles. Yes, she said brightly, — and with a fine sense of dramatic pause, — one needed a permission from the town hall to see the Madonna. Of course, I was alone — and it was Sunday and the Municipio was n’t functioning — I was a stranger, a foreigner, even, and it was a very fine day — in short, if I would be so good as to wait for her pasta, she would let me in. When she had finished, she covered the board and led me through a bedroom to the little chapel, where I was left in charge of the twins.

II

Real beauty, splendid art, is always startling, whatever one’s preparation. It is not merely difficult, it is impossible to report the effect of a masterpiece. As many photographs as I had seen of this Madonna, as much as I had read in her praise, I had not expected such dignity and such quiet, or such exquisite delicacy of color. How beautifully calm it was! There was a fine appropriateness in coming to such a picture on a serene Sunday morning in June, and finding it alone in the tiny whitewashed chapel of a village graveyard. I felt in the setting and in the people around me the same balance of humility and dignity which illumined the picture. At one minute it seemed to be only a woman great with child — until one saw the angels in their celestial robes holding back the curtains from the Queen of Heaven, until one realized in her face that basic nobility which mysteriously resides in human beings. It was a great picture — a picture of definite presence, which one found it hard to leave and would never forget. I stayed for a long time, watching its silvery radiance and admiring the magnificent head of the Virgin.

All this time the twins sat on the altar step, rolling an enormous white candle between them, and confiding to me a continuous stream of whispered, lisping Italian, not a syllable of which I understood. They were as sweet as babies could be, with their heavy black curls and big eyes, and their shy engaging gestures. Any number of handsome brothers came to peek at me before I left, and to grin at their mother’s inviting me to dinner. That invitation I declined regretfully with, I trust, the same courtesy in which it was offered. Already I felt pleasantly that this was proving itself a pilgrimage into life, as well as art, where one discovered pretty babies and remarkable mothers as well as Madonnas.

But naturally it is impossible to see a town above one, a little town complete to battlements and church bells, without going up. The road was steep; as I panted up to the sound of the chimes, I realized what a splendid protection against merely human foes a steep hill can be. Only travel can teach one such things as this; for an idea which gets into the shin bones and there aches has a reality that printer’s ink will never counterfeit.

In a mood for receiving inspiration, therefore, I rounded a corner and found the people. Here, on the irregular grassy piazza which crowned the village, a few steps above the church and just below the old city wall, was the Sunday fair. A fitting supplement to the sobriety of Sunday devotions, carts and booths offered all the temptation of earthly possessions. They were laden with bright-colored things, silks and fruit and aluminum pans, chains of coral, house slippers, brooms. Yielding to the atmosphere of indulgence, I bought myself such an Umbrian cotton kerchief as I had long coveted, the very kind all the women wear in the fields. Out of the whole scale of brown, from ruddy chestnut to gold-umber, I chose at last a fine large square which, if worn in the sun and washed in the river, would in time come to a perfect saffron.

Then I went over to the church, on the general principle that one always looks into a church in Italy. It was half new and half old, the tower had come down in an earthquake, and the great bells still hung out on wooden frames on the bare ground beside the door. But within there was nothing to be seen, — neither art nor people, — only a half-burned candle blowing in the draft.

III

When I came to the door again, the scene had changed completely. The market was a marvelous mad confusion of people, shouting and demolishing; the once remote wind raced through the piazza flapping cloth and throwing over glassware, and the sky was already dark with purple-blue clouds. I thought of my raincoat in the railway station; it seemed a very silly thought. But wandering brings, if nothing else, alertness to the mind; I realized at once that I had been yearning to buy a large green country umbrella — and here was the market!

The umbrella man was wildly stowing bolts of calico into a tip cart, but he stopped to devote himself to me with the interest of a specialist. I asked after the green umbrellas with the crook handles, — those satisfying, beautiful, adequate umbrellas that will shelter a horse, — umbrellas which are as appropriate to open country as the chic small novelties of Paris are to crowded streets. In answer he brought out from under the booth a little brown umbrella, which he offered me for seventeen lire. I looked at it. It was brown, but it had silk stripes in blue, red, and purple, and the handle was a sunset immortalized in celluloid — an umbrella which he described lovingly as ‘di tutti colori .’ No, I said firmly, I preferred the green one. But this, he insisted, was an umbrella for a signorina (wickedly implying the abyss of provincialism into which the purchase of a green umbrella would plunge me). Nevertheless, I would take the green one, and what did it cost? He put me off for a few minutes more, dwelling upon the elegance of the small umbrella, its fantasy, its chic, its appropriateness to me (with crafty insinuation of my own elegance, chic, et cetera). When I refused to be won, however, he put a dignified stop to our conversation, and showed me once and for all who was master of the situation. As a matter of fact, he said, he had promised all five of these green umbrellas to a friend of his in Borgo San Sepolcro, and he was to deliver them this evening. They were sold. One bows to the inevitable as to a god. I paid fifteen lire and went off swinging my elegant morsel, wishing it a trifle less elegant and a touch larger.

Almost at once it began to rain very hard, a slanting, pelting rain. I took refuge in the church, with two countrywomen and a perambulator holding what seemed to be a lace cushion stuffed with a baby. The women, on their knees together, whispered and laughed, while I stood in the doorway to watch the last scuttling flight of the market, and said good-morning to the priest as politely as possible, in the hope that he would invite me to dinner. But he was young and looked frightened.

Just as I was considering whether or not to stand in the shadow and get myself locked in the church at twelve o’clock with at least a roof over my head, the sun came out. Clouds were still blowing down the sky, trailing their shadows after them over the plain, but they had lost their evil aspect, and the sky between was blue and clear. So with a light heart — such is the charm of sunlight in Italy — I sallied forth to buy a handful of plums, cheese, and a half loaf of black bread for my lunch. Then I started through the gate back down the hill.

I had just reached the stream at the foot when a young woman watching me from her doorway beckoned me in. She was quite right, it was sprinkling again, though I had been pretending not to notice.

As we stood on the step watching the shower, she observed me in a quick, birdlike way — a pretty, bright-eyed young woman in a curiously stylish dress of flowered cotton. She too had traveled, she said. She had been even to Arezzo to buy her furniture, and had stayed overnight with her husband’s aunt. I took it that, for all the stimulus of metropolitan gayety, she was happy enough to be back here where life was more intimate. And in the summer, as she pointed out, there was often the cinema on a Saturday night; Nostro Diice sent it, and they turned it on the smooth-plastered outside wall of the church, everyone bringing his own chair to the Piazza. I was very touched to hear of this; that the Duce should, in his power, remember a place as far away and insignificant as Monterchi made him seem for a moment almost like the Heavenly Father.

But the rain was over, and I set out again. The pleasant young woman assured me that she would have liked to ask me to dinner; but she was newly married, she said, and, as her husband was out just then, she could n’t be sure that he would approve. And she gave me a last sympathetic, inquiring look, wondering whether I should be able to understand these things, not being a married woman.

However, it did n’t matter, for the rain was over. The clouds had been hurried across to the horizon, the sky was clear as glass, innocent and blue, and the sun was almost too warm. I had half a mind to walk on down the road to the next town, which gleamed in the mellow distance on its own conical hill. But noon will have its way — I was hungry, and the sun was hot.

Beyond the town then, on the way back toward the station, I found a pleasant field and sat down in the angle of a cruciform shock of grain to eat my bread and cheese.

IV

The day, the fare, the lingering impression of the beautiful picture and the friendly people, had all combined to bring a mood of singular felicity. It seemed to me for the moment that in this earth and shining sky, in the firm delicious cheese and the benevolent warmth of the sun, there was more than enough to satisfy the human heart. I began to meditate upon the simple life.

Now envy of the simple life is probably the finest pleasure of sophistication. It is, indeed, a pleasure which only the sophisticated know; for living simply is quite another thing from prizing that simplicity. Peasants can never love their life as we do; as Dorothy Osborne said, ‘they want nothing to make them the happiest People in the world, but the Knoledge that they are soe.’ And yet — into what antitheses will thought not lead one — is it not just this blindness, this peace from self-examination, which we envy? A complete and blissful submersion in the act of living, a near communion with the earth, and unprotesting communication with men — it is for such things that we self-conscious beings hunger. To live on milk and berries and sunlight, working hard, without a thought, and sleeping soundly, without a dream; to take the bitterness and the pain and the joy alike as simply and as tolerantly as sunlight and rain. There are moments when one feels that an unconsidcred life is the only one worth living.

Yes, I mused, even though we know it for a mirage, nostalgia for this larger, easier life is in our bones. It is a spiritual impulse, not in any way to be associated with income or education. It has nothing to do with the adoption of pleasant elements from the life of the people — that taste which gives us peasant crockery, candlelight, and lentil porridge. No, all of that is art, and this is, on the contrary, iconoclasm. It is a revolt against the very idea of a rational scheme of life. From the beginning of time there have always been authors to declare that shepherds, or milkmaids, or tinkers, or hoboes lead the only good life. It is this melancholy which seizes the great Russian characters, an all but mystical rejection of what civilization means. This is perhaps the seed of all revolutionary impulses in the human heart — and yet, perhaps, at bottom it is only a homesickness for the free days of childhood, when it was never necessary to give a thought to the conduct of life. Don’t we all, in some way, keep that remorseful preference for things which come without the intricate intervention of reason, the very feeling which made Saint Francis praise his dinner: ‘And this is why I look upon it as a great treasure, because man has no hand in it, but all has been given us by divine providence, as we clearly see in this bread of charity, in this fair table of stone, and in this clear fountain.’

But life is too complicated to be held for more than a moment within a single desire. Every bite of my country bread made me realize that simplicity is lost with the first illuminating glimpse of comparative values. For this bread was dark, bitter, and unsalted; it told me I was a stranger; it was not merely food to me, but black bread of Monterchi, in Umbria. I was glad to find a cake of chocolate in my purse. And what could be more sophisticated or more exotic than chocolate in an Umbrian cornfield! My mind raced backward through white factories, past wharves where tall masts swayed in the sun, over the sea and into the green light of the jungle where thin black men glided from tree to tree. My natural history might not be unimpeachable, but at least I realized clearly that a life too simple to include chocolate would never do for me. I was caught, willy-nilly, in the complex of civilization, and must make the best of it.

In such musing I finished my plums and my biscuits, and leaned against the stack thinking of less and less. The sun was warm, the hay smelled sweet, and only occasionally did a far-away voice sound through the stillness. Even the hills before me were remote beyond a wide valley floor piled with cut grain. Crickets droned in the grass, as though this were an interval at the play, and they tuning up for the next act in the passing of time. I was not asleep, but I was extremely contented, and quite, quite blank.

V

From this abstraction I was recalled by a simple sensory observation. It was sprinkling again. I watched the hills dissolve in mist, pulled myself in under the overhanging straw in the angle of the stack, and crossed my fingers devoutly. I hoped the shower would pass quickly; meanwhile I was glad to be so snug.

It did n’t pass. With a cold northerly breath it beat down upon my little thatch. Luckily I was in the lee of the stack; I opened the foolish little umbrella as a lean-to, to catch the shed of the hay, but I cursed its size less tolerantly than before. Thunder cracked around me like the Day of Judgment. Peeping out, I could see the sheet of rain which had obscured the hills moving steadily across the valley. The sky grew darker and darker, cleft with malignant lightning. I noted, as the one good point of my umbrella, that it was entirely wooden, and not, therefore, so perfectly devised as a lightning conductor. There was nothing to do, meanwhile, but to fold myself into the smallest and closest shape possible in the cleft of the stack.

Then, suddenly, the rain — not these passing, fitful showers, but the very conquering demon of summer storm — struck the field. Light was blotted out; the world was dark as midsummer midnight. The earth shook with thunder, it trembled with lightning. The straw, which had begun by protecting me, now poured its entire shed down my neck. I tied my new kerchief around my shoulders, put my hat in my purse and sat on that, and simply endured the flood, like a stone. But the field was already worse than mud, a thick desperate sticky morass. I stood up, bracing myself against the hay, holding my symbolic umbrella over my soaking form. And still the rain fell — fell with such force that the whole surface of the ground was dotted with fountains a foot high. I could not see even the nearest stack, a yard or so away. Yet, wet as I was, I laughed, for there was something exquisitely ridiculous in the feeling that at last I was very near to the elements — and the Simple Life.

After a little the lords of the storm decided for an interlude of hail — fortunately no larger than lemon drops. Then the wind died down, and the sky began to clear. It was still raining hard — though by contrast it seemed tranquillity — when I started back to the road, at last convinced that the field was no place for me. I was completely soaked. My silk skirt, my crepe blouse, every bit of clothing down to my skin, was drenched and dripping. My hair clung in matted locks to my head. My face dripped. My purse dripped blue. The kerchief, true to Umbria, dripped yellow. Like my umbrella, I was rapidly becoming di tutti colori. And by the time I had crossed the soft field to the road, my shoes were lumps of gray-yellow mud. Never, never, in a long experience of unfortunate wettings, had I been as wet as this.

On the road again, I looked up to see two fascinated men watching me from the upper window of a farmhouse. I was as wet as I could be, and I was very cold, but it was less fear of pneumonia than my sense of the conventions which led me to go over and knock at the open door. I felt that I must explain myself, ally myself again with civilized society. For I was keenly aware that no one should have been out in such a storm; that no one would conceivably eat lunch alone under a haystack; that, indeed, a signor ina had no business to be sola.

All of this was apparent in the air with which the man and woman within the house gazed at me. I was very polite. In my best Tuscan I uttered all the delicate and noble sentiments which are required. I was very wet, in short, and hopelessly bizarre-looking, but if they would grant me the inexpressible favor to stand in their doorway until the storm had passed . . . It seemed to me that I talked for as much as five minutes while they stared, the woman obviously hostile, the man merely bewildered; for it is the custom in Italian to talk until you are interrupted. Meantime I was warming my shivering bones at the hearth. Finally the man recovered himself enough to say, ‘Accommodate yourself, Signorina,‘ several times over. After this he moved his hat to the back of his head and continued to stare.

It was a single square room with a ladder leading up to the second-story loft where I had seen the two men. In one corner loomed a great high bed. Opposite it, beside the door, was the open hearth, where a fire smouldered and a copper kettle rocked cosily. There was a table, on which stood a few heavy white dishes, and there was a kind of earthen sink, with little glazed pots and pitchers hanging over it — and there was nothing else. Everything was clean, but dingy and very rude. The people, too, were rude. A startled, suspicious look for the moment spoiled the easy blankness of their faces. Here, indeed, were my peasants, these earthbound people. I shall never forget the tension of those first few moments when we stood almost at bay, staring at each other.

Just then a boy came hurrying in with a bicycle, and the two young men came down from the loft. It was an illuminating glimpse of peasant society. The man and his wife had never set eyes on the boy with the bicycle, either. But he accounted for himself immediately by saying that he was Piero’s Giuseppe from beyond Monterchi, and that he lived on the estate of So-and-so. Where did I come from, they asked me. I was on my way from Monterchi to the station, I replied. Oh, staying with the Contessa? No, I said, just going to see Our Lady of the Cemetery. ‘Ah,’ said the woman, crossing herself (and these were her first words), ‘Nostra Donna benedetta . . . she is beautiful, eh?‘ I was touched by this, and explained that I had come from Florence (‘Fancy, from Florence!’ they muttered) and even from America — which was only a little aside from the truth — to see the picture. They regarded me in awed silence. The man asked me to sit down — as though I must be weary after such a journey. No, thank you, I ‘said, I was too wet. ‘Yes, that’s true!’ cried the woman with great spirit. After that she smiled at me; I think I had only then convinced her that I was a woman or even a human being.

The young men, however, were more sophisticated. They had been often to Borgo, and to Arezzo. One of them had been to Rome. One of them had a cousin in Nuova York. We conversed quite amicably; indeed, it is worthy of note that one may converse intelligently, pleasantly, and impersonally with any Italian, of whatever station, in whatever situation. Suddenly one of them noticed that the sun was shining! My peasants were by this time warmed to a slow hospitality. I set off followed by their good wishes, their invitation to return again ‘in drier weather,’ and even their blessing.

I was still wet and bedraggled, but the sun was warm, and, refusing the very gallant offer of the boy’s bicycle, I set off at a fine pace, determined to reach the station and my raincoat before another cloudburst. Oh, blessed Italian sun! If I had been so wet in England, it would have taken me all summer to dry — indeed, 1 might never have been dry in my life again. As it was, in twenty minutes or so the sun had done its work. I was not only warm, but toasted straight through, as dry as a stick. I waved my hat and my kerchief and my hundred-lire note and my ticket in turn as I walked. I waded in a clean little brook to wash off my shoes; the road had already drained, and even my feet were almost respectable by the time I approached the station. By a special miracle the water had taken out the wrinkles but left the pleats in my skirt, and my blouse seemed only freshened. But in spite of this happy outcome, and though I knew there were two full hours before train time, I had no other desire than to gain the security of the station master’s white fence.

VI

A tubby blond man with gray hair, the station master was weeding his zinnias. How had I survived the rain, he called out gayly. I had taken it all, I replied in the apt Italian idiom. He leaned back on his heels. No! he cried. Per Bacco! I must come in and sit down. So 1 came around through the little gate, but I was not to sit down until his daughter had dusted the bench.

Resourceful and urbane from his continual contact with the procession of life on the railroad, the station master had a real gift for hospitality. Everything must be done to make me comfortable. And everything was done, with an enthusiasm which brought not only comfort but lively pleasure. I had but to apologize for my muddy shoes and a brisk conversation brought a blacking brush flying from the upstairs window. Luigi, creeping back from his play to scrutinize the delicious novelty which Providence had sent to his house, set himself to brush them with as merry a courtesy as one would wish from a boy of ten. Did I care for plums? Luigi would climb the plum tree and bring me some absolutely unbruised. Then — did I care for music? Rosa was dispatched to ask the neighbors if they would please play the gramophone at the open window. All the village children gathered around and were introduced and favored by me with the educational pictures from my chocolate. I admired all the babies, Luigi pointing out to me the particular excellencies of each one. So we talked on through the afternoon, sitting in the sunshine.

The two daughters, Maria and Rosa, were pretty, slender, dark-haired girls with gold lockets and lovely manners. What impressed me was their poise. Certainly it. was an equivocal situation.

I had swooped down among them, not only a foreigner, but a very odd young lady, wearing a blouse from Constantinople, a hat from London, and no raincoat. Yet they entertained me with as much ease as if we had all three been fine ladies properly introduced in a Florentine drawing-room. They demanded nothing, they showed no surprise or shyness; we talked and laughed as unconstrainedly ’as if we had grown up in the convent together.’ For they had the quiet self-possession which is the greatest of gifts: their respect for themselves made them respect others.

All in all, they were the most considerate hosts in t he world, this family living above a railway station in the hills of Umbria. And they needed to be, for I was tired now — tired out by experiences. Was it all one day, I asked myself vaguely, as I looked back over the series of violent storms and quick friendships? Was this really I sitting on a white bench staring across a railroad track at a bare hillside? The signore appeared with a glass of fresh spring water. How had he known I was thirsty?

I was suddenly filled with a great affection for the little yard of flowers, for the two dainty girls with their gold lockets, and for the sympathetic little man. The strains of ‘Parigi, O Cara’ floated from the open window over the garden where the little plums hung in the tree, over the beehives and the well. I shan’t forget this, I thought happily.

But at that moment the signora appeared at the upper window and threw out a squawking chicken with goodnatured scolding. And then we heard the whistle, that windy, high whistle of a narrow-gauge train, behind the hill. Luigi, in a last burst of courtesy, presented me with an enormous daisy for my buttonhole. The signore, even in the midst of his official duties, managed to say a word to the engineer about my safety. Everyone lined up on the platform to wave me off. I felt that I was saying good-bye to lifelong friends, and stood waving my handkerchief until we had rounded the bend.

Then, as the train puffed on through the splendid landscape of valleys and wooded hills, I opened my suitcase and took out Proust. It was good to be moving fast again. To-morrow I should remember these friends with affection, and recall with delight the unforgettable glimpse of the Madonna del Parto. But meanwhile my energy for human contacts burned low; I hardly glanced at the baggy men around me. And my eye was a little weary, too, of the color green; the magnificent emptiness of nature palled. ‘After the pilgrimage, rest.’ It was good, after all, to get away from the bucolic and return to a subtler and a self-contained life.