Conjuring up the ghosts of Musso and the Revd Dr Vesey Stanhope
PAUL JOHNSON
Sheep may be more useful animals to mankind than goats, but they are less interesting. I have been watching eight goats on a sunny meadow high above Lake Como: Big Billy, Little Billy, Top Nanny, Middle Nanny and Doormat, plus their three kids, one obviously male. Goats positively enjoy breaking rules. They are not supposed to be here at all, which adds to their enjoyment of the rich provender. Big Billy's head, with its wicked horns, orange eyes blazing in the sunlight, and fierce black heard, is satanic; you can see why mediaeval artists used goats to represent the Devil. I notice he has worked his clapperbell in E-flat round to the side of his neck so that it doesn't sound; but the others are not so clever. The goats were scared of me at first, seeing me as an authority figure. But the little pink-and-grey tower which dominates the meadow, and from which you can see up and down the lake for 50 miles, is specially reserved for painters, and the goats soon realise that I am a harmless artist, and now they come close, hoping to nibble my paints or crunch up my brushes.
Other wildlife is more furtive. There are few birds, for the Italians shoot and eat them, even the smallest. But a great raptor, an eagle by the size of him, carries out a regular midday patrol from his nest across the lake. He is a bold, bronze beauty. There are little red squirrels — much prettier and more active than our grey sort — one of which hangs around my tower, knowing that careless picnics are sometimes held there. Weasels too are to be seen, and wild cats, I believe, though they are nocturnal. Rabbits abound but they keep a low profile, knowing that, not five miles away, there is a famous restaurant specialising in rabbit dishes.
You don't need to kill warm. furry creatures to live off the land in these hanging woods and high meadows. Mother Earth is infinite in her bounty, and this is a vegetarian's paradise. The glittering sheen of the olive trees tells you the crop will soon be ripe, and it comes in a dozen different varieties. There are wild figs, small but oh-so-luscious. The grapes on the vines which grow profusely in this civilised wilderness are ripening. If you look hard enough there are little pears and apples to be gathered. Particularly delicious are the countless stalks of wild asparagus which grow in the meadow, alongside edible greenery of every kind, enough to make a daily salad, each one different for a month. I know a lady, born in these parts, who was taught by her nurse, a peasant girl who had known hard times, how to look for the food nature provides here — chestnuts, walnuts and hazels, berries of a dozen sorts, including huge versions of what I would call bilberries, and spectacular loganberries. There are wild strawberries too, and even more mouth-watering raspberries. Mushrooms abound at this time of year, some so tasty they can be relished raw, and some so rare they fetch princely sums in the Milan markets.
Thus nourished, the artist can turn to the recording of the blissful lakescape. I must have done at least 100 pictures of it, at different seasons, at every time of day from rosy sunrise to inky twilight, and in weather ranging from pure vapour and pearly mist, through voluptuous sun to sulphurous tension, breaking into cataclysmic storms which overfill the thousands of streams draining into the lake in a few desperate minutes. These cataracts and hurricanos create alarming water-spouts and whirlpools, bringing tons of cliff crashing down, and muddy, rock-filled torrents which sweep the road into the abyss.
As a rule, however, it is only the colours which move and change, but they do so all the time. The limestone cliffs, like Salisbury Cathedral (which is why Turner and Constable loved it so dearly), reflect the minutest change in time and weather, varying from deepest indigo at dawn to red-gold on the high peaks at sunset, when the lake and its lower hills are already in darkness. I have 60 different colours in my four paintboxes, and have used them all in feverish attempts to capture the glowing hues before they transvest themselves yet again. Then, too, there is the perennial problem of green. Neither nature nor science has yet produced a satisfactory green — one reason why the grand couturiers like Dior and Balenciaga would never use it, except in olive, lime or pale apple shades. Turner would not use it either, saying bluntly, 'Can't afford it.' He used yellows or blues instead. Yet green is the predominant colour around the lake, and comes in 25 distinct varieties, at my computation, and scores of sub-shades. What to do? I have not Turner's well-grounded confidence in his ability to dictate to nature, so I sweat away at my greens, muttering and swearing to myself, rather as John Singer Sargent did when creating his spectacular watercolours: 'Thunder and damnation! This is a mug's game.' So it is, but a lovely game too, the most satisfying of all human occupations to my mind, granted a certain minimal skill.
So high above the lake, figures can scarcely be seen. Humanity and living movement — what artists call staffage — are provided by the ferry boats which scurry purposefully between the score of little towns bordering Coma How can one not love their exact regularities amid the discreet chaos of nature? They keep perfect time, waiting for no one when the second-hand touches the magic figure of departure. Mussolini would have been proud of them; was, probably, because they continued to function even during the last days of his puppet Salo Republic when he, a hunted fugitive, deserted by his Nazi protectors, trudged on foot up Lake Como in a desperate attempt to make the Swiss frontier. At his side was the lachrymose Clara Petacci, last of his 350 mistresses (by his own count), still begging him for non-existent jobs for
members of her clamorous family a typical Italian scene. The communists caught up with them a little further up the lake from my tower, at Dongo, and murdered them both.
However, on the shores of Como, I do not think of Musso. I see it rather in its Victorian heyday, when the English made the most of their strong sterling by renting villas along its shores and living a sunny, languid existence. My thoughts turn to Barchester Towers and the Revd Dr Vesey Stanhope, the well-connected but idle pluralist who lived with his difficult family for a dozen years on Como, originally to cure a sore throat, leaving curates to attend to his duties. The officious new Bishop of Barchester, Dr Proudie, drags him back to work, thereby allowing his offspring to set the novel's machinery into furious motion. From my tower it seems as though nothing has changed since those happy times, when English ladies went for drives along the lakeside in their carrozze and returned to their arboraceous villas to cultivate their rose gardens. The ferries go a little faster, maybe, and are smokeless; and there is a waspish police helicopter which imposes on-the-spot fines on speedboats that break the noise-level rules, making ten times as much racket in the process — another characteristic Italian touch. But in essentials, in its art and beauty, nothing has changed since the Revd Vesey Stanhope's day, making it still one of the most delectable spots on God's earth. But I must break off: Big Bad Billy has just pinched my India rubber.
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