On the way to Narni

  

 

 

In "Assisi and Umbria Revisited", Edward Hutton recalled many incidents from his first visit to the area fifty years earlier. In Chapter XIII, entitled "Over the Somma to Narni", he even remembered an incident from his school days.

Through the valleys of oak and ilex I set out from Spoleto, I remember, before the sun was high, on a fair September morning as ever was, for Terni and her fall, which, as it happened, I was never to see; for I had scarcely gone five miles on my way when I was overtaken by rain that meant the end of the summer, for, as they say in Siena, the first rain after the Assumption is the first rain of winter. Was it not of such a tempest that Virgil warned us, so that we might note its coming?

 

But I was heedless; and, taken with the beauty of the way, I had not observed the signs infallible. Not till the murmur of the woods prevailed against the whisper of the summer day did I understand that nature was awake, her heart tumultuous with some passionate remembrance, and she herself singing upon the mountains….

Here he inserted eight lines in the original Latin from one of Virgil's pastoral poems usually called the Georgics.  I give the English translation that he supplied in a footnote.

"Often too there appears in the sky a mighty column of water and clouds--mustered from on high roll up a murky tempest of black showers; down falls the lofty heaven and with its deluge of rain washes away the happy crops and the labors of the oxen. The dykes fill: the deep channelled rivers swell and roar and the sea steams in its heaving. The Father himself in the midnight of storm clouds wields his bolts with flashing hand...."

 

Ah, but I used to know the whole of that Georgic by heart, hammered into me as it was at school, though even then I came to love Virgil, “so musical, so melancholy”, and I remember how at Blundell’s one of my form-masters, if we happened on  a passage of the Aeneid which Virgil had stolen from Homer, never missed the opportunity of sniffling viciously, and “Homer spoiled again” he would say. On one of these occasions I held up my hand and protested, a somewhat unusual thing for a boy to do in those days.

 

     “Yes, sir,” I said, “but-----”

     “Well, boy?”

     “Please, sir, I mean, sir, with what a grace he does it.”

     “That,” said my form-master, “is the most immoral remark I have ever heard in this form. And I might add it is all the worse for the small, the very small, measure of truth there is in it.” 

  

Happy days! But not so happy as that in the rain on the way to Terni.  Through the valley under the storm of rain I went rejoicing; it was one of the great days of my life. I crossed the Somma alone chanting Virgil’s lines. I was drenched to the skin, and the hailstones cut my face like a whip, and the lightning flashed about me. What cared I? The long road hissed before me, and suddenly, as it seemed, under the fury of the storm, was overcome and no longer resisted the invincible rain, but was musical with a million fountains. All nature sighed in the ecstasy of that embrace, and spoke in the  song of the storm of the antique tragedies of the gods. And I alone knew it all as I came down into the sacred groves of ilex in the old and beautiful valley, through which a little river ran boisterous before me.

But that was fifty years ago and today it was raining still, when I am ashamed to say, I crossed the Somma in an autobus and again I did not see the famous falls of which Childe Harold wrote.

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 99-100.

Trevi and the Temple of Clitumnus

  

 

 

In the vicinity of Trevi Edward Hutton visited the Temple of the ancient river god, Clitumnus.* In this brief chapter he quoted the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as Roman authors Pliny and Virgil.

 

 

The way from Foligno to Trevi takes one at once almost into Virgilian country, the valley of the Clitumnus. If the night is spent at Montefalco—not so daring an adventure as it seems—one must drive to Trevi by a way as pleasant as any in the world, following the river as it flows, and crossing both river and railway to climb up to Trevi. But the way by San Martino is beautiful exceedingly, and the torrents after the rain only add to the charm of the road. All travellers have wondered at Trevi since she perched herself on the top of her precipitous hill, and though few of them visited her on her lonely height, she impressed her memory upon them even from a distance….

 

Well, I was tired, too, when I came to Trevi at sunset, and the inn was poor even for an Umbrian albergo. But I forgot the poverty of my room in the relief of being able to sleep; and, indeed, the bed was soft and clean, things common in Italy even in the poorest places….

 

In this Virgilian country, Hutton quoted eight lines from Virgil's second Georgic that mentioned snowy flocks and sacred bulls bathing in the river.

 

The white, the snowy flocks of Clitumnus, where are they now? And the bull that bathed in the sacred stream before it was led the chiefest victim to the temples of the gods, the triumphs of Rome; and those temples, are they quite gone from our world? Let us see.

 

As you set out for Spello, if you are wise enough to go by road--it is but twelve miles--when you have passed a third of the way you come to a tiny Temple high over the stream, which here among the trees and the grass has its source. And it is the Temple of the river god that you look on, in all its little splendour of silence and ruin. At least, I hope it is; but some speak of a Christian building and will not listen to Pliny. But however that may be, it is a place too beautiful for any to pass by. I confess that, following the advice of the younger Pliny, I bathed there beneath the glancing, whispering poplars, and found, as he had said, the water as cold as snow. But in vain, in vain, I looked for the god Clitumnus and could not find him, though Pliny said that he was there, “not naked but adorned with the toga”. And then in the shade, within sound of the beautiful river, I read again in Virgil. Is it not thus one might desire to spend endless days?

But for the traveller by road the sun is ever something of a god; imperious as he is, he commands our days. He was slanting down the sky, reminding me that Spello was still far and I alone, and night would follow him. So I set out at last with regret; and later I came to San Giacomo in Poseta, where I saw some of the finest Lo Spagnas in Italy, especially a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, his masterpiece, though stolen from Filippo Lippi. And so I came to the gates of Spoleto.

 

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*Note. The river is now called the Clitunno and flows into a tributary of the Tiber.

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 67-69.

Christmas Prophesy

 

 

 

Occasionally Edward Hutton would report on discussions he had with Italian friends. On one spring day he visited a friend at a Camaldoli monastery outside of Naples, and found him engaged in a heated discussion with a visiting French professor. They were discussing the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, Hutton's favorite Roman poet, in which the poet, only 40 years before the birth of Christ, had mentioned the birth of a son who would usher in a Golden Age. Here is his account of part of the discussion.

 

Now during the latter part of the discussion that learned professor from Naples whom everyone reveres had arrived on the terrazza unseen by any but myself. We had exchanged glances. He now came forward and was introduced. When he was seated he turned to Dom Costanzo his host and then to the Professor from abroad.

 

“I have heard,” he said, “part of your discussion, and if you permit… It seems to me there are two ways of interpreting this lovely Eclogue of Virgil’s. Looking at in in one way it becomes a supernatural prophecy; looking at it in another way it is merely historical and deals with events of Virgil’s own time. Both ways are right. But those who would interpret the poem simply historically, for the most part modern scholars, would generally deny that there is such a thing as the supernatural and consequently must interpret the poem simply historically or leave it alone. That is surely unfortunate. Nevertheless I think they may be right, not in their prejudice, but in their interpretation, without thereby condemning their opponents as wrong. To say of any verse of Vergil’s that we have got to the bottom of it is dangerous. I think in fact that this poem is a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but I do not think Vergil knew what he was saying. In other words I believe Virgil was supernaturally inspired, but was in himself in ignorance. …”

 

“In any case,” I said, “Vergil has prophesied the Birth of Christ whether he knew it or not, whether he intended it or not, whether he was acquainted with the Messianism of the Jews, or of the time, or not, and whether we like it or not. The Fourth Eclogue as Reinach has said is ‘la premiere en date des oeuvres chretienne’.”

 

“After all,” said the Professor from Naples, “a prophecy is something which is to be fulfilled. Vergil’s poem in its Christian sense has been fulfilled. Moreover a prophesy is largely what one can make of it. Now historically one can make nothing of the fourth Eclogue. What has the birth of a son to Pollio come to? And why should the birth of a son to Pollio bring in a Golden Age? On the other hand the whole of Christian antiquity with the exception of S. Jerome, from Constantine, Lactantius, S. Augustine, Abelard, Dante and Innocent III, to Marsilio Ficino and even to Alexander Pope has accepted the poem as a prophecy that has been fulfilled in the birth of Christ. It is only now, when Christianity and with it the supernatural are denied altogether, that the supernatural content of the poem is passionately and eagerly refuted, rather through hatred and material interpretation of things than for any other reason. If the critics are right then Virgil was wrong. Credo in Virgilium.

 

Does anyone believe that the authors of Ecclesiasticus or of the Song of Songs knew they were prophesying of the Blessed Virgin? Yet assuredly they were, as the whole world for more than a millennium has testified; or that Isaiah had any but at most the vaguest notion that the Puer natus est of whom he chanted was to be the Jesus Parvulus born in a stable at Bethlemen.?

 

A prophecy is to be tested by its fulfillment, and its fulfillment is to be tested by the judicum orbis terrarium. Few are the prophets who understand what they are prophesying."

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 99-100.