(I) Writers and Travelers on Lago Maggiore: Byron, Newman and Dickens

Literary Memories of Unforgettable Journeys

Lago Maggiore (source)

Lord Byron, the Lost Navigator

As was the case with French and German writers, Italy had always exerted a powerful, unavoidable, and almost irresistible attraction on English authors as well. It was as if their literary destiny could not be fulfilled without visiting Dante’s world and receiving his invisible blessing. And they enthusiastically fulfilled this ritual. The memories preserved in their letters and diaries—even when brief and written in haste—are the visible traces left on their souls by an encounter that cannot be forgotten.

On his final travel out of England, never to return alive again, Lord Byron found time to write to his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. He sent her a letter from Milan, dated October 13, 1816, in which he described his aquatic journey along Lake Maggiore:

My dearest Augusta,

You see I have got to Milan. We came by the Simplon, escaping all perils of precipices and robbers, of which last there was some talk and apprehension, a chain of English carriages having been stopped near Cesto a few weeks ago and handsomely pilfered of various chattels. We were not molested.

The Simplon, as you know, is the most superb of all possible routes;—so I shall not describe it. I also navigated the Lago Maggiore, and went over the Borromean Islands; the latter are fine but too artificial; the lake itself is beautiful, as indeed is the whole country from Geneve hither, and the Alpine part most magnificent.¹

In a style that is unexpectedly reminiscent of Hemingway—although he lived more than a century before the American writer—Byron avoids the pitfalls of clichés and predictable descriptions of the most beautiful part of the journey, which he himself qualifies as “superb.” He awakens his sister’s aesthetic curiosity only to end it abruptly, refusing to follow the natural narrative thread.

When it comes to the Borromean Islands, he performs almost the same stylistic pirouette. By making his Romantic inclination toward wild landscapes, untouched by human hands, manifest, he admires while criticizing—or criticizes while admiring—the islands of Lake Maggiore, which he presents as being “too artificial.” Most likely, this is another manifestation of his modern belief that one can speak of something truly beautiful only, and almost exclusively, a contrario.

A Saint in the Footsteps of Saint Charles: John Henry Newman

Unlike the turbulent Byron, the holy theologian and novelist John Henry Newman left us far less pretentious notes. While during his first journey (1833) to Italy the Protestant Newman had expressed strong reservations toward the country of the popes, the second journey (1846-1847)—this time undertaken by the converted Newman—is full of revelations. The voyage along the same route traveled exactly thirty years earlier by the author of Don Juan is imbued with the spirit of a pilgrim heading toward Rome.

In his personal journal, the note concerning the route along Lago Maggiore is quite telegraphic: “Slept at Brigue a few hours on each side of midnight, and then crossed the Simplon, arriving at Domodossola about 3—thence on to Arona, at midnight, and through the night to Milan where we arrived about 11 a.m.—to the Duomo at once for Mass, lodged at the Hotel Garni—taking meals at a wretched trattoria.”

However, in the letter written in Milan on September 22, 1846, which he sent to his friend and disciple John Dobree Dalgairns, he provides far more details:

From Besançon we started on Wednesday morning—had a most beautiful ride to Lausanne over the Jura mountains; Mont Blanc and the Alps all before us on our right and opposite the lake of Neuchatel. But I must not now describe scenery... It was very delightful to find a little chapel near the summit [of the Simplon] which we entered for a few minutes: there was no light and I think it must have been too great a risk to leave the Blessed Sacrament there, but still it was very cheering; a little further on nearer the top Newman and I stopped at a Crucifix and gained an indulgence I hope which was written up in German on the cross. The Italian side is more beautiful than the other and the descent longer as it seemed, for it was near 4 before we got to Domodossola. From Domo we started in an hour’s time, passed thro’ Saint Charles’s town Arona at midnight, and got to Milan just in time to hear the last mass on Sunday morning in the Duomo.²

The succinct assessment—“the Italian side is more beautiful than the other”—as well as the mention of the city of Saint Charles, Arona, are the only notes recording the passage along the shores of Lago Maggiore. Yet Saint John Henry Newman’s discovery of perennial Italy is a long epic poem, with many stanzas that must be recounted at length, before a fireplace.

A Winter Story and Its Author: Charles Dickens

In 1846, the travel volume entitled Pictures from Italy was published in London. With a simple and transparent title, Charles Dickens announced to his numerous readers that he was offering them his travel notes from the country called by Dante “il bel paese” (Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXXIII, line 80). Unlike Byron and Newman, who describe their entry into Italy, Dickens travels in the opposite direction, from Milan toward Switzerland. We are therefore dealing with his return journey to England. Moreover, he offers us a dickensesque page of literature; his effort to render as vividly as possible the dreamlike landscapes contemplated by moonlight is remarkable:

Milan soon lay behind us, at five o’clock in the morning; and before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously confused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were towering in our path.

Still, we continued to advance towards them until nightfall; and, all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of view. The beautiful day was just declining, when we came upon the Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands. For however fanciful and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful. Anything springing out of that blue water, with that scenery around it, must be.

It was ten o’clock at night when we got to Domo d’Ossola, at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon was shining brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no time for going to bed, or going anywhere but on. So, we got a little carriage, after some delay, and began the ascent.³

In contrast to Byron’s description, Dickens mentions the Borromean Islands—and especially Isola Bella—in order to emphasize their beauty despite the artificial character of their terraces and magnificent buildings. He is captivated by their charm without showing any reserve or restraint. His advance toward the Simplon Pass, under the brilliant light of the moon, reveals Dickens as an incurable, though unsophisticated, Romantic, whose pages we always read and reread with pleasure.

1. Lord Byron, A Self-Portrait. Letters and Diaries, 1798 to 1824, Edited by Peter Quennell, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 361.

2. The letter is quoted in chapter 5—“Milan and Rome (1846-1847)”—of the first volume of Wilfrid Ward’s important biography: Life of Cardinal Newman, London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912, p. 138.

3. Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, London: Published for the author, by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, 1846, pp. 136-137.