A trip to Vallombrosa - a Tuscan nostalgia

Tuscan landscape – once tasted, never forgotten.

I have been reading The Hills of Tuscany – a new life in an old land by Ferenc Máté. It’s a familiar story – the tribulations and adventures of an American and his Irish partner who escape their frantic city lives to settle in a crumbling old Tuscan farmhouse. We all read Peter Mayle’s A Year In Provence, Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, and (the best of them all by a long shot), Eric Newby’s A Small Place in Italy. This literary genre might best be described as “domestic adventures in a strange land” as the stories tend to follow a similar trajectory: the discovery of the tumble-down idyll, the frustrating but amusing difficulties with purchase and settling in, the growing friendship with the eccentric but lovable locals, and finally the happy assimilation into paradise.

I enjoyed Ferenc Máté's book. He is witty, reflective and observant and writes beautifully, especially about the Tuscan landscape. Early in the book we read where he and his lady are visiting a rural Cathedral:

…. we had been shivering in the rain of Sweden, the cold of Finland, and the damp of Brittany, and in more than a month this was the first time we were warm. We … went around to the small church garden, sat on a low stone wall, and like dreamers through the centuries before us, gazed out over the countryside below.

A sea of hills rolled to the horizon, covered by odd-shaped, lovingly kept vineyards and olive groves, orchards and fields: a freshly plowed field here, a bit of corn there, some hay, some woods, some pasture, all odd sizes, all open and unfenced. The plots were defined by the curve of a stream, or the crook of a hill, or the fold of a hollow, with boundaries of poplars or a ditch or nothing. Old stone houses were huddled on knolls surrounded by their cypresses, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. On a ridge, in a wood, a monastery stood with a square steeple, and beyond it a tiny hamlet on a hilltop. Everything was small—to the measure of man. And over it all reigned the gentle Tuscan light, and silence, and a calm.

As I was reading this, something struck a chord of memory. Surely, I knew of that monastery with the square steeple and the tiny hamlet beyond, or at least one very like it. Then it came to me, and I remembered a story I wrote years ago, called A trip to Vallombrosa, one of those stories that disappeared into the ether soon after being written, read only by my wife and two loyal friends. And I remembered Vallombrosa, the once-Benedictine monastery, later the Royal Italian Forestry School, and these days again a monastery … and how I came to discover this nostalgic and romantic story.

It came about this way.

Leafing through an old journal in the library one day, I came across a fascinating article on 19th century forestry education in Italy. OK, OK, it was fascinating to me … but string along, it picks up.

Although written over 120 years ago, the article appealed not simply because (as some might think) it reinforced my sorrow about the lamentable state of forestry education in Australia these days, but because it was so enjoyable in its own right.

The writer was Dr Hugh Cleghorn, a medical practitioner from St Andrews, Scotland, but also a keen forester, and (at the time of writing) President of the Scottish Aboricultural Society.

Hugh Cleghorn when President of the Scottish Arboricultural Society

Dr Cleghorn was an interesting man. He was born in Madras in India, and educated in Scotland, a graduate of the medical school at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to being a medico, he was an accomplished botanist, worked as a forester and spent many years as a colonial administrator. He was one of the pioneers of forestry in India, becoming (before the advent of the Raj) the Conservator of Forests for the state of Madras. Here he established forest conservation and management systems that were later adopted by the Indian Forest Service for the whole of India. On retirement he returned to the UK and became (among other things) the Laird of a large estate in Scotland, renowned for its well-managed forests and woodlands.

The article written by Dr Cleghorn that caught my eye was published in the Transactions of the Scottish Aboricultural Society Volume 3 (Number 2) of 1876 and was then later reprinted in The Indian Forester of the same year. Forestry education had become a subject of great interest in India at that time, with the Forest Service aiming to train its recruits in their own Forestry School, to be established at Dehra Dun. Although now living in Scotland, Dr Cleghorn was asked by the Indian government (by this time the British Raj) to review and report on forestry education in Italy, a potential model that India might adopt. Government-run forestry was still in its infancy in Italy but already had an excellent reputation and Italy’s needs were seen as comparable to those of India. Dr Cleghorn agreed to investigate and set off on a special trip to the famous Royal Italian Forestry School at Vallombrosa. This lovely name, incidentally, roughly translates as ‘shady valley’.

Dr Cleghorn opens the account of his trip to Vallombrosa with the hope that “a short account of its history, and of a visit paid to it, may prove interesting”. It certainly did for me, reading it all these years later. His report, on which the article is based, undoubtedly helped to provide a sound blueprint for the Dehra Dun forestry school in India.

The article commences with a brief summation of the history of Italy. This is important as it provides the context in which a former Benedictine monastery came to be an educational institution. In summary:

After the collapse of the Roman Empire and up until the Renaissance, Italy was a country of small independent states, principalities, and kingdoms. In the early 19th century, a nationalist movement developed and led to unification. In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy was proclaimed King of Italy. At this time, the new national government took over many of the old monasteries, including Vallombrosa, for civic use.

He also describes the status of forest conservation in Italy at that time, a picture with strong parallels to India:

 Italy, like other lands bordering the Mediterranean, has suffered from wasteful denudation of her formerly wooded tracts, to the detriment of the climate, to the poverty of the country, and to the marring of her beauty.

However, he points out, Italy is well in advance of her adjoining countries, having set herself the task of repairing the damage done in previous centuries.  Despite the fact that ...

.... the woodlands have long been looked upon by the people as common property in which they were free to pasture their herds, and from which they might [freely] help themselves to wood …

… in the mid-19th century, forest laws and a Forest Code were passed. Most importantly (from the point of view of this story) the Royal Forestry School at Vallombrosa was created to train forest officers so that they could administer and enforce the new forest laws and expand and care for the forests of Italy.

Cleghorn’s description of his visit to Vallombrosa contains the sort of detail that Charles Dickens would not have thought over the top. and which I found endearing. We read that he left the Hotel de L’Europe, Florence on the 14th of May, 1875 “after an early breakfast”. He then proceeded by the Arezzo Railway as far as Pontassieve, where he engaged “a light, one-horse vehicle for 14 lire”, the driver being a “good-humoured rustic”.

Their way climbed up through hill country with dense avenues of cypress and rows of mulberry trees fringing fertile fields, vineyards and orchards. At his first destination, the Castle of Peterno, he was met by a young forestry officer, who was to be his guide, and following “a luncheon of wine, cheese and bread”, they transferred to “a two-wheeled country cart pulled by two large white bullocks”.

After a steep ascent through dense and shady woodlands of chestnut, pine and fir, they reached the 11th century monastery of Vallombrosa, now the Royal Italian Forestry School.

An artist’s depiction of Vallombrosa Abbey in 1036, plantations of silver fir already in evidence

 Dr Cleghorn was pleased to comment here that Vallombrosa Abbey had been famed for centuries as a place of learning, piety and natural beauty (as was, in his view, befitting a forestry school), and had often been celebrated by poets and philosophers, including Dante, Milton, Wordsworth and Shelley.

Here is Milton in Paradise Lost:

“Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks

In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades

High over-arched, embower...”

And later

“...................And overhead up grew,

Insuperable height of loftiest shade,

Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm.

A sylvan scene; and as the ranks ascend

Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning recalled of Milton “He sang of Paradise and smiled, remembering Vallombrosa”, while Wordsworth in his poem At Vallombrosa wrote that he:

…… longed in thy shadiest wood

To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!’

Dr Cleghorn (more prosaically) exclaimed: “a more magnificent scene is not to be found in Italy”.

He describes the old monastery, which formerly housed a hundred Benedictine monks, as a “stately and commanding edifice without pretentions to architectural beauty” and although the snow lies deep for three months of the year, it has a delightful climate as it is sheltered by “great masses of wood”. Above the convent is a hermitage called Il Paradisaso, situated on the point of a precipitous rock “whence the eye can trace the River Arno winding through the fertile plains of Tuscany.” From the highest peak, it was said, both the Mediterranean and the Adriatic can be seen.

According to Cleghorn, the extensive forest of silver fir surrounding the old monastery was part of an even more extensive forest below the crest of the Apennines, stretching from Florence to Rome, and is “an example of successful reproduction of this tree on a large scale, continued for centuries entirely by planting”. Over the centuries the Benedictine monks had taken a great interest in their forests, managing them with care, and extending them by large scale planting of fir seedlings.

The Forestry School at Vallombrosa

The monastery at Vallombrosa was taken over by the Italian government in the early 1860s, the monks ejected, and the buildings designated for civic use. The Royal Forestry School was founded there in 1869, following a visit to the former monastery by a senior Italian bureaucrat, Commendatore Caranti. Caranti was Italy’s premier engineer and an influential public figure. Amongst other things he was the head of the body that constructed and administered the Cavour Canal, described as “the most mature and complex accomplishment among all the works performed by man on the irrigation network of Italy”.

Architectual beauty and engineering utility: a combined bridge, weir and lock on the Cavour Canal

Caranti had fallen greatly under the influence of George Marsh [Endnote 1], an early American conservationist and then-American Ambassador to Italy. Indeed, Caranti was so imbued by Marsh’s philosophy and so impressed by the beauty and quality of the surrounding forests at Vallombrosa, that he conceived the idea of “providing in them for the technical instruction of the forest employees of the Kingdom”. Over a very short time, he was able to bring his idea to fruition. Staff were appointed and the Royal Forestry School opened for business.

By the time of Dr Cleghorn’s visit in 1875 the institution was in full flight, and comprised a library, a chemical laboratory, a meteorological observatory, aboricultural, forest inventory and topographical survey equipment, a nursery, two arboreta, a museum and a wood technology department. There was a Director and five Professors, each appointed by the King, and overall responsibility rested with the Minister of Agriculture.

A modern view of Vallombrosa, with the Hermitage beyond. This view is probably little changed from how it looked when it housed the Royal Italian Forestry School

 The students

Dr Cleghorn informs us that the pupils at the school at any time numbered 60, and they fell into two categories. There were those we would today call 'cadets' who aspired to service with the Italian government’s Forest Service, and then there were independent students from private forest estates. To gain entry, all were required to present a certificate to establish that they were over 18 and under 22 years of age, a second certificate signifying that they were of good conduct, and a third to demonstrate that they were of good health and strong constitution.

I was fascinated to read that prospective students were required to pass a preliminary examination before entry. This covered the language and history of Italy, geography, natural history, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics and chemistry. This almost exactly mirrors the qualifications I had to meet to enter university and study forestry in Western Australia in 1959. I had been required to pass the matriculation exams in English, French, Maths A (arithmetic and algebra), Maths B (geometry, trigonometry and calculus), Chemistry and Physics. I also passed an additional subject, English Literature, and studied, but did not sit for the exam in Economics. Had I not been unable to speak Italian, and ignorant of Italian history, I think I would have just about gained entry to the Royal Italian Forestry School …

The daily life of a forestry student at Vallombrosa would not, I fancy, appeal to a modern university student. Dr Cleghorn tells us that the students assembled every morning at 6 am “at the call of a trumpet”. They were served only two meals a day, breakfast at 11 am and dinner at 6 pm. The hours of instruction were 7 to 11 am and 1 to 6 pm. At 9 pm, all students must have retired to their rooms. At all times they were required to wear the uniform of a Forest Guard, with “oak twigs of gold lace on the collar and on the cap”.

The syllabus is set out in some detail by Dr Cleghorn, and it warms the cockles of an old Australian forester. Similar to the way I was myself trained, the first part is mainly devoted to basic science and the latter to the practical details of forest management [Endnote 2 ... trigger warning: this will be of interest only to elderly foresters like me].

Two aspects of the Vallombrosa syllabus differed from my forestry studies nearly a century later. The first was the emphasis on languages, the students at Vallombrosa being required to study and become fluent in German and French. This was essential in those days because most forestry texts and current literature emanated from Franch or Germany. The second was the absence of bushfire science and management, which was a significant part of my forestry training. Even though I have been there, I needed to check the atlas to remind myself that Florence is on a latitude similar to the southern-most tip of the South Island of New Zealand. Bushfires are not as high a priority in such climes.

However, the course appeared to me to be comprehensive and sensible, and would have produced well-rounded, practical foresters. I liked the fact that in addition to their coursework the students each were allocated a small section of the nursery, and were required to “dig, water and prepare the soil, sow seeds and perform all the needful operations with his own hands” to raise a crop of seedlings for transplantation to the field. Moreover, sections of the adjoining forest were set aside for the students to 'manage' according to forestry principles.

Another aspect of the course that rang a bell was that there were numerous field excursions. This had been a feature of the course I undertook at the Australian Forestry School, our field trips taking us all over eastern Australia to look at, and often to participate in a variety of forestry operations. The students at Vallombrosa, Dr Cleghorn observes:

“make frequent excursions, some with the Professor of natural history for the collection and classification [of plants]; some with the Professors of mathematics and surveying when they make plans of the surrounding lands [and] calculate the amount of timber.”

 In 1871 an excursion was made to Naples “to visit the International Exhibition of Timbers Used in Ship-building.” How I would have loved to have been on that field trip!

Thanks to Dr Cleghorn we know that every six months, the students were subjected to examinations, and at the conclusion of the third year there was a final examination. In the light of the results, the Director and his staff would declare a passing student “approved unanimously”, or “approved unanimously with commendation”. According to Cleghorn, vacancies in the Italian Forest Service were reserved exclusively for successful graduates from Vallombrosa.

The article concludes with a comment on the school’s Director, who deeply impressed Dr Cleghorn with his ability, learning and administrative talent, and an acknowledgement that his duties as Director required tact, vigilance and perseverance. Cleghorn concludes:

 I am sure that if the Italian government give [the School’s Director] the support he deserves, the result of his labours, so far achieved, will bring much honour to the nation, and lasting benefit to the country.

Vallombrosa today

What of Vallombrosa and the Royal Forestry School today? In 1912 the forestry school was moved to Florence and transformed into the Istituto Superiore Forestale Nazionale; in 1924 this became the Istituto Superiore Agrario e Forestale, and in 1936 the Faculty of Agrarian Science. To complete a pattern familiar to Australian foresters, in 1983 it then became the Department of Environmental Science. Step by step, forestry basically disappeared as a stand-alone discipline and has never re-appeared. I have not looked up the current syllabus, knowing that it will depress me.

In another sad parallel with the Australian situation, the old forestry school’s famous collections also fell into decline. In 1880, the collection at Vallombrosa included two hundred and fifty examples of 121 different kinds of forestry instruments, as well as models of equipment used in the forest. The library contained over 50,000 books, including ancient and modern texts on forestry technology, dendrology, silviculture, and entomology. All of these collections have been steadily broken up and dispersed.

Today, Vallombrosa Abbey is again a monastery, a place for spiritual retreat and a conference centre, run by the Catholic Church. There is a museum and guided walks through the surrounding forests. The complex is popular for day visits from Florence.

Silver fir forest at Vallombrosa, planted perhaps by students of the Italian Forestry School over a century ago.

Final reflection

I know almost nothing about the status of forestry in Italy today, and I have not been to Vallombrosa, but Ellen and I once spent some time in Florence and lovingly explored the surrounding Tuscan countryside. It is mostly intensely cultivated, but there are also pine woods and fine stands of chestnut, beech and oak seen throughout the region, and the highlands of the Apennines have some beautiful forests of fir and spruce. These appeared to me to be well-managed for multiple use, suggesting that the work of the Royal Italian Forestry School at Vallombrosa was not in vain, and did indeed, as Dr Cleghorn foretold, bring “honour to the nation and lasting benefit to the country”.

I was also pleased to read in Ferenc Mátés book [Endnote 3] that even in modern times:

… in Tuscany one does not cut trees – no even one’s own – without the forester’s permission.  Each little wood is carefully marked on the region’s maps and is not to be reduced in area for any reason, although once every twelve years one can thin the stands. Thinning means leaving a tree standing every few metres, so that after thinning, the woods still look like woods … this strict law has helped keep Tuscany beautiful to this day …

Reading this I could not help but think of the amateurish attitude of our environmental authority in Western Australia, who continue to regard forest thinning as forest clearing, preventing land owners from using their trees and improving the beauty of the forest at the same time.

The Forestry School at Dehra Dun in India, whose formation and syllabus were no doubt influenced by Cleghorn and the example of Vallombrosa, has a proud history and is today one of the few traditional forestry schools still training foresters anywhere in the world. One can only hope that, in the same way that India provided an example to Australia in the reservation and protection of forests in the 19th Century, so perhaps in the future it might guide us in forestry education.

I am not holding my breath. Australian forests are loved by everyone, and revered by environmentalists, but almost nothing is done anymore in terms of active conservation and management, indeed the latter is discouraged. The guiding principle seems to be to lock them away and leave them to Mother Nature (forgetting that Mother Nature can be red in tooth and claw). The national forestry school at Canberra which I attended in the early 1960s has long been shut down. It seems to me that the Italian government of the 1860s was more long-sighted when it came to forest conservation than the Australian government today.

But having said all that, what a pleasure to be transported back (in nostalgic memory) by Dr Cleghorn and Ferenc Máté to the glorious Tuscan countryside and its remarkable abbeys, hill towns and farmhouses, and its lovely woods and fields. A highlight of our Tuscan exploration in 1998 was the little walled hilltop town of San Gimignano, with its cluster of bell towers and twisting cobbled streets. It was a cool, drizzly day, but every now and again the sun would break through and glisten on the massive stone towers.

One day in San Gimignano …

We were walking down one of those steep cobbled streets that day when we passed a beautiful little medieval stone building with a sign in English saying Apartment for Sale. The temptation was almost irresistible, and had we not resisted it, instead of writing about forestry education, I would probably today be writing a charming and romanticised memoir of the trials and tribulations of the purchase, our interactions with the lovable but eccentric locals, and our eventual assimilation into Tuscan Italy ... never to be heard of again.

Endnotes

1.      George Perkins Marsh was  an American lawyer and, diplomat considered to be America's first conservationist. He was US Ambassador to Italy for 22 years. In 1864, Marsh wrote an influential book Man and Nature.  In it, he argued that deforestation led to desertification. Referring to the clearing of once-lush lands surrounding the Mediterranean, he asserted "the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon." He was a champion of reforestation of degraded land and active forest management, and he strongly supported the Royal Forestry School, there being nothing like it in the USA at the time. He loved Vallombrosa and eventually died there in 1882.

2.      The syllabus as reported by Dr Cleghorn was:

First year:

Mathematics: including algebra, trigonometry and geometry.

Chemistry: organic and inorganic, with experiments.

Natural history: botany, systematic and vegetable [plant] physiology

Forestry: Theoretic and practical

Languages: German and French, with reading, writing and translation of forestry literature

Second year:

Applied mathematics: differential and integral calculus, conic sections, measuring of heights of trees and cubic contents, plan drawing, valuation surveys

Climatology and forest meteorology

Natural history: botany, dendrology, forest entomology, geology and mineralogy

Forest economy: history of forest science, practical silviculture, seasoning of timber etc

Languages: Italian, German and French

Third year

Applied mathematics:  growth of trees, mensuration, civil architecture, hydraulics

Forest Administration: Statistics of woods, classification of forests, planting of dunes and marshes

Forest law and jurisprudence: communal rights, pastoral rights etc

Political and national economics

Languages: French, German and Italian.

3.      The reference is: Ferenc Máté (2010): The Hills of Tuscany – a new life in an old land. Harper Collins Publishers, London UK.