File:Italian backgrounds (1907) (14597739047).jpg

Identifier: italianbackgroun00wharrich (find matches)
Title: Italian backgrounds
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Art -- Italy Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Charles Scrinber's Sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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travelling-car-riage at the door. No one seemed to know who hadordered it, but we noticed that our luggage was beingstrapped on behind. We took our seats and thedriver turned his horses toward the Spliigen pass. Itwas not the way to Switzerland. We mounted to ice and snow. The savage land-scape led us to the top of the pass and dogged usdown to the miserable Italian custom-house on theother side. Then began the long descent throughsnow-galleries and steep pine-forests, above the lonelygorge of the Madesimo: Switzerland still in everyaspect, but with a promise of Itah^ in the namesof the dreary villages. Visible Italy began with thevalley of the Lira, where, in a wild Salvator Rosalandscape, the beautiful campanile of the jNIadonnaof Gallevaggio rises above embowering walnuts.After that each successive village declared its alle-giance more openly. The huddled stone houses dis-appeared in a wealth of pomegranates and oleanders.Vine-pergolas shaded the doorways, roses and dahlias ( 20 )
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A MIDSUMMER WEEKS DREAM overflowed the terraces of rough masonry, and be-tween the walnut-groves there were melon-patchesand fields of maize. As we approached Chiavenna a thick bloom of heatlay on the motionless foliage, and the mountains hunghke thunder-clouds on the horizon. There was some-thing oppressive, menacing almost, in the still weightof the atmosphere. It seemed to have absorbed allthe ardour of the sun-baked Lombard plain, of theshadeless rice and maize fields stretching away to thesouth of us. But the eye had ample compensation.The familiar town of Chiavenna had grown as fan-tastically picturesque as the background of a fresco.The old houses, with their medallioned doorways ofworn marble; the court-yards bright with flowers andshaded by trellised vines; the white turbulence of theLira, rushing between gardens, balconies and ter-races set at reckless angles above the water—were allthese a part of the town we had so often seen at lessromantic seasons? The general impressi

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