A LANDSCAPE PAINTER IN CORSICA.*
'THE interest attaching to Mr. Lear's Italian and Albanian journals will make many readers anxious to accompany him on his tour through Corsica. Whether the effect of this publication will be to create a new field for travel or not, at least it brings all the features of the country before us, and., stimulates rather than sates our curiosity. The magnificent views of forest scenery sketched by Mr. Lear, the dark valleys, the wildernesses of rock, the snowy peaks, the graceful curves and quaint inlets of the -coast, afford a rich and varied treat to the lovers of landscape. Some of us will, and, alas! others must, be contented with Mr. Lear's 'drawings instead of comparing them with the originals, and indeed the drawings give us sufficient pleasure. But those who can spare money and time might do worse than follow in the painter's footsteps. The account given of Corsican travel and accommodation is not 'unattractive. Mr. Lear seems to have met with few discomforts, to have fed well, to have been treated with much civility, and to have found an astonishing amount of cleanliness in parts of the island. It is true that he carried with him his own camp bedstead, which led the hostess of one inn to exclaim that he despised the beds of Corsica, and which suggests a comparison with the King of Prussia. But many of the inns visited by Mr. Lear were above the average to be met with in small Southern towns, and where there was no inn he was sure to be hospitably entertained by some of the residents. He speaks warmly of the courtesy of the Corsi- cans in general, and tells us that as he sat by the road-side draw- ing, everybody who rode past would salute him, one calling out, "We are glad you are making our Corsica known by drawing it ; " another, "Perhaps when you foreigners know us better, you will cease to think us such savages as we are said to be." Profuse were the apologies made at an inn because two of the dishes consisted of sucking pig, and after a stew bad been introduced in the most deferential way as being part of " that black animal," a roast which followed led to the same excuse as being "the hinder part of the same little black beast.', On Mr. Lear asking if they had any good wine, the answer was, "Not any worthy of your merit, but some we hope you may find irinkable." Except at one place, where Mr. Lear arrived in the midst of a great public rejoicing, and found all the inns full • Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica. By Edward Lear. London : Robert °ha Bush. 1870.
and all the world occupied, his experience of Corsican manners was always equally favourable. We do not know what would have been the result of his accepting one introduction that was offered him, and perhaps he was judicious in declining it. The landlord of the hotel at Ajaccio proposed to give him a letter to some of the banditti who were known to live in the woods of the interior, saying, "They are rich, they want nothing, they have plenty of sheep, and do nobody any harm." This was not the opinion of the landlord's wife, and as Mr. Lear did not go out of his way to make their acquaintance, we are left in the dark. But at all events roads are safe, "You may walk from Cape Corso to the Straits of Bonifacio in the undisturbed monotony of security, and all gloomy atmosphere of risk and danger has for years past been dispersed by the broad daylight of French administration and civilization. With old customs and costumes, mystery and murder have alike disappeared from the Corsica of 1868."
As a painter, Mr. Lear naturally regrets the abandonment of picturesque costume, and complains more than once of the mono- tony of the black or dark brown which forms the universal
dress of the inhabitants. His first impressions of Corsica were indeed melancholy. As he approached the island, the weather was damp and overcast, the mountains were clouded, and Ajaccio, with its total want of architectural features and its great warehouse-like buildings, added to the general gloom. Mr. Lear could not but remember that, according to a friend of his who was a naturalist, one of the creatures peculiar to Corsica was the helix tristis, and one of his first remarks is that "the melancholy snail was right when it chose a sympathetic dwelling." However, this feeling does not seem to have lasted long, and Mr. Lear has not imparted any of it to his readers. In a very short time we are absorbed in alternate drawings and de- scriptions of the scenery of Corsica, and we have neither eyes nor thoughts for anything of less engrossing interest. The dark fore- ground of the valley of the Prunelli, with the ranges of hills beyond shading off gradually and growing gradually lighter till they culminate in a snowy summit in the distance ; the robe of green, shot with innumerable crimson flowers which covers all the landscape ; the continual succession of park scenes, groups of large chestnut and venerable ilex, huge granite masses close to the road, and shadowy snow-topped pine-grown heights far away, lead us on to the white citadel and worn rocky creek of Bonifacio at the southern end of the island. Mr. Lear takes us next to the forest of Bavella, which engrosses four of his large plates and some smaller drawings. "The 'pines," he says, in the accompanying description, "are exquisitely beautiful, and unlike any I have ever seen ; perfectly bare and straight to a great height, they seem to rise like giant needles from the deep blue gloom' of the abyss below. Granite rocks of splendid forms are on every side, the spaces between them cushioned with fern, and the tall spires of the pines maritinta shooting out from their sides and crevices Sometimes ivory-white, needle-spiry pine stems, dead and leafless, break the dark yawning chasm of some black abyss far below with a line as of a silver thread ; now a great space of grey mist in the distant hollow depth is crossed by lines of black burned stems ; anon the -high trunk of a solitary tufted tree looks like a kind of giant flower on a tall stalk, and ever above are delicate myriads of far pines, pluming the craggy ledge,' their stems drawn like fine hair against the sky." Passages like these, by the side of the drawings which make the words more vivid, and show us in very truth the fathomless abysses, the dark masses of pine on the mountain-sides, the solitary stems rising from the ravines, recall the Laureate's praise of Mr. Lear's Albanian volume. It may be said as truly of the Journal in Corsica,— .4 With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,— I read, and felt that I was there."
The forests which Mr. Lear sketches are apparently the most distinctive features of Corsican scenery. Bavella, with its mag- nificent avenues closed at the ends by peaks that scarcely overtop the soaring pines, with the black recesses which no ray can pierce, yields in extent to Valdoniello, where the waving tree-tops seem to cluster on the edge of a slope and then to go down into an illimit- able valley. Sorbs and Marmano present but a few clusters of trees, and Aitone, which Mr. Lear says is one of the largest and most varied forests in Corsica, shows only as a mass of closely planted wood. Still, an enthusiast for tree-forms will find as many bits for study in all the drawings as the artist found in the forests themselves. We turn from one plate to the other, and then turn back again, with growing enthusiasm. After all, Bavella carries off the palm. But we must pass on to some of the °the* subjects, and next in rank to the forests we place the wonderful group of rocky pinnacles on the coast near La Eau& Again, we borrow Mr. Lear's words as the only possible description of his picture. "What beautiful variety of form and colouring in these granite—or are they porphyry ?—pillars and crags, so brilliant and gay in comparison with the sober, pallid hues of limestone rocks !
The carriage road—a very good one, and with a parapet through- out on the aide towards the sea—is cut for a considerable distance through the heart of these crags and peaks, along the edge of this savage coast, parts of which are truly splendid. Groups of lofty spires, like cypresses turned into stone, shoot up from the shadowy depths of terrible abysses, or overhang the highway, in one place half blocked up by a mass lately fallen from the heights above ; and as you wind among these strange and wild pinnacles you look between their clusters of ragged columns to the placid Gulf of Porto and the beautiful hill forms on its farther side, forming a succession of pictures, framed by the grim foreground above and below you." The reader ought to compare this passage with Mr.
Lear's drawing, not with any other man's account of the drawing. There is another bit of rocky landscape near Evisa which is good in its way, but nothing can match the coast scene. Corte and Vescovato are striking views of groups of houses, perched aloft, with torrents at their base ; and then we come to the charming Vale of Luri, with its foreground of rock and wood, and the winding stream that lengthens itself out towards the sea, to Avapessa, with its stream deep-set in leafy banks and its graceful heights ; and to the Ponte del Vecchio, with its weird, lonely rocks and its flashing water. We might fairly shut the book after mentioning these drawings, for it would be difficult to find anything that would drive them out of our heads.
Except in his descriptions of scenery, Air. Lear has not made much use of his pen, and he warns us in his preface not to expect more than an ordinary journal of travel. Yet he always writes pleasantly and to the point, telling an occasional anecdote if it is told to him, and noting down general characteristics when they do not interfere with his special study. His preference for solitary journeys, and his avowed inability to talk and work at the same time, no doubt excluded some information, and his drawings are certainly so valuable that we cannot complain of anything that is necessary for their production. We observe that Mr. Lear's visit to the great Spedale forest, which was particularly recommended to him by Prosper Merimde, is barren of illustration, but intro- duces a couple of curious stories. One is about a lunatic who believed that he had swallowed two gendarmes, and that the only remedy was to eat nothing in order that he might starve out the intruders. He persevered in this course till he was almost starved himself, but at last he exclaimed with joy, "They are both dead of hunger," and resumed eating. The other concerns a notable Corsican lady named Columba, who was a prominent character in one of the Vendetta wars. She was once desirous of preventing a hostile family from building a tower which would have commanded her own, and she adopted the following method.
She made a party of her people sit on the ground opposite the tower which was being built, and began a game of cards, while she herself professed to be watching the game and was dancing and dandling her baby. But she had concealed a loaded pistol in the baby's dress, and watching her opportunity she suddenly shot one of the masons on the tower, returning the pistol to its hiding place before she was noticed. Of course there was an outcry from the tower, but the players had their hands full of cards and their guns were lying harmlessly by their aides, while Madame Colomba was pacifying the screaming child with both her hands, so that suspicion was diverted. When two more of the builders had fallen victims to the same stratagem, the work of the tower was deferred sine die. Mr. Lear had these stories from his companion, but while telling them with thorough appre- ciation, he laments that in a pictorial sense the excursion to the Spedale forest proved a failure. We can sympathize with the complaint, though we have had the pleasure of quoting the stories.
Previous page
