Bianconi, The King of the Irish Roads

The King of the Irish Roads

The Story of Charles Bianconi

Brian Igoe

Copyright © 2012 by Brian Igoe

Smashwords Edition

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Sums of money are referred to constantly in this book. As a VERY approximate guide, using the retail price index, in 1800 £1 would be worth around £55 (€65, $84) today, 2012), and remained at around that level until the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. So Daniel O’Connell’s earnings of £8,000 that year would equate to around £440,000 today. By 1820 that £1 would have been some £70 (€80, $107) today. It remained around that until the end of the book, and in fact until around 1890 when inflation again set in.  

Contents

Chapter 1. The Beginning

Chapter 2. The Pedler

Chapter 3. The Carman

Chapter 4. The Mayor

Chapter 5. The Landlord

Chapter 6. The End of the Line

Historical Note

Sources.

Chapter 1. The Beginning.

September in Lombardia, in Northern Italy, can be surprisingly hot, especially around the beautiful Lake Como, even though it was close to the mountains. September 1786 was no exception. It was on just such a surprisingly hot day, the 24th day of the month, that Maria Caterina Bianconi was brought to bed of a beautiful baby boy. Her spirits soared with the birds singing outside the window. There was not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind to remind one that the autumn was approaching. This was her second baby, her second boy, and she felt sure with such omens attending his birth he would grow up to be a great man. So many of the men in her family were, she thought, great men. Might he be a Banker? Or a Priest, perhaps, like his uncle? A Bishop, even?

Her husband Pietro, it had to be said, was not so deeply religious. Certainly, he went to Mass on Sunday with the rest, but it was more a social obligation than a religious devotion in his case. He was happier in the little taverna across the square. Which is where he had gone after assuring himself that both his wife and the infant had survived and were well. As custom dictated, he was buying drinks for everyone there, all friends, some better friends than others. Most, like him, were involved in silk.

A toast he cried, to my new son, my second son, may he live for a thousand years!

A thousand years they chorused, and lifted their glasses, full of the regional rosé, the Chiaretto.

Will he be a Priest, like his mother’s family’s men? asked one.

I doubt it. He’s my son too, you know! More likely follow me on the farm, I’d think.

Pietro was also the second son in his family, which was why he was here in Tregolo instead of being the Padrone of the Casa Bianconi in Caglio where his elder brother now lived.

They christened him Joachim I Giuseppe. At first it looked as though I, as he was called, would take to farming. His father Pietro farmed his own property, owned a silk mill, and acted as agent for a large estate. I delighted in watching the silk mill in action, and quickly grasped the fundamentals. It was only a small mill, powered by one old man walking round and round on a sort of treadmill inside, but Pietro was proud of it, and I was fascinated. He loved the horses too, and was intrigued by the displays of the peacocks, for Lombardy teemed with peacocks, and still does. He was perfectly happy on the Bianconi land, and quite content to be a farmer. Or a soldier perhaps. Soldiers were to be seen parading in the town squares on market days, marching with their pipes and drums. A farmer or a soldier then.

But his Grandmother had other ideas. The Bianconi tribe were ruled, there was no other word, by Grandmother Bianconi. A widow, she sat in her high-backed wing Chair in the Casa Bianconi in Caglio, and ruled. Indeed Pietro was often glad that as only the second son, he was not expected to live there too. She was a very determined old lady, and in truth Pietro was rather frightened of her still. Your eldest, Giovanni, shall be a soldier, she said. I here shall be a priest. And that seemed to be the end of it. His mother was a Mazza. A Mazza of Monza, one of the wealthy merchant families of Lombardy who seemed to breed Priests. Her brother Giosué was to instruct him.

So, when he was ten years old, he was sent to live with Grandmother Bianconi. This was a traumatic event, for he missed his parents, he missed his animals, and even more he missed his old friends. He did find one new friend, a stable-boy called Paolo, a youth of about his own age who came to dote on him. He was instructed by the Dottore Giosuè Mazza, a priest of course. The Dottore was an honoured man in Holy Mother Church, and was Provost of Asso, the next commune to Caglio where the Casa Bianconi stood. He was also an intensely interesting man. He had written a history of the region. He was an amateur bee keeper. He collected precious ivories. And he was a man of great good looks and great charm, like so many of the family. And perhaps above all, he was a cheerful man. So young I, the September baby, was now exposed not only to an atmosphere of incense and prayer, but to one of happiness, culture and diversity. He also came to know well, and love, the ancient Church of St John the Babtist, a haven of peace especially in midsummer. And he revered, and in a way loved, his Uncle, the Dottore.

Even his Grandmother, that great matriarch, mellowed once he was under her roof. In the evenings she would sometimes ask him to bring to her one of the great books in her library, and she would read to him the history of their lands and their family, how the Bianconi family came from Bavaria six hundred years before and how after many adventures one branch settled here, in Caglio. She would then show him the coat of arms with which the family had been ennobled five hundred years ago. She would show him the motto, ‘Cassis tutissima Virtus’.

Do you know what that means? she would ask. I was always tempted to invent something about blackcurrants (cassis), but never dared.

That means, she went on literally, ‘virtue is the safest helmet’. In other words, always be honest, I, and then you need fear nothing. I would enjoy being read to until the end of his days. And he was always totally and antiseptically honest.

He was also sent to school. The school was the same one as his father and the Dottore had attended, run by the Reverend Abbé Radicali. But although the Dottore was a studious person, and although the Abbé was a studious person, Joachim I Giuseppe Bianconi was not a studious person. He was enthusiastic, enthusiastic to a fault, but not on the subject of book learning. He was enthusiastic about almost everything else. Girls, football, pranks.

He was not cut out to be a priest. He was religious, genuinely and devoutly religious, but he felt no calling to the Priesthood. He realised it. The good Abbé realised it. The Dottore realised it. Even his Grandmother, reluctantly, eventually, realised it. And his father had never wanted him to be a Priest in the first place. Girls, he thought, were a much healthier preoccupation. And girls were clearly the most important of his enthusiasms. One little girl in particular, Giovanna Vandroni, was often to be seen with him. He called her ‘Vanna’.

Pietro Bianconi had one unusual passion for a farmer – he painted, usually in oils. He painted a picture of I around this time, in Alpine costume and wearing a sheepskin jacket, with the woolly side out, and a leather hat with a tall peacock’s feather and a coloured ribbon, very tipico in the area. It is the earliest surviving portrait of I, and perhaps explains whence his later love of art originated.

By 1802, when I was fifteen years old, France had just signed a peace treaty with England. The whole of Europe knew it was just an interval in the long running struggle between these two great nations. France had annexed Lombardy and created of it and it’s neighbours ‘the Cisalpine Republic’ in 1796, and Napoleon’s conscription agents were abroad there, looking for recruits. Conscription was a real danger, and to purchase immunity was expensive. Apart from that, his father preferred that he sow his wild oats somewhere else and far away, like England. His attachment to Vanna was very obvious, and very serious. She seemed to mean even more to the young boy than horses, which were an abiding passion. The risks were obvious, and Vanna was far too well born for the risks to be taken. The scandal would be perhaps terminal for the Bianconi family.

So an arrangement was made with a certain Andrea Faroni, a dealer in prints, who was bound for England. It was a commercial transaction, but a common enough one. I