Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 15, No 10
Articles in this issue
- L. V. Bertarelli's first instalment on the neglected Ferrovia dell'Appennino Centrale, 134 km of metre-gauge single track from Arezzo over the Passo dello Scopetone to Sansepolcro, Città di Castello, Umbertide and Gubbio, joining the State lines at Fossato di Vico; he tours Arezzo's Duomo, Pieve and Museo Civico and Sansepolcro's Piero della Francesca Resurrection.
- Silio Carpazi on the Italian October: the Milanese workers' mock 'vendemmia' at suburban osterie of Gorla and Sesto, the Roman ottobrate at the Castelli with Frascati wine and mandolins, the old Testaccio games with their live piglet rolled down the hill, Naples' own ottobrata, and the emigrant ships that make October 'the most desperate of all tourisms'.
- Comandante G. Roncagli, secretary-general of the Società Geografica Italiana, weighs Frederick Albert Cook's claim of 21 April 1908 against Robert Edwin Peary's of 6 April 1909, tracing three centuries of polar attempts from the Cabots and Davis to Hudson and Baffin, and explaining how a sextant sun-altitude fixes latitude — the numbers both men must yet produce.
- The Touring's tourism-law department for October 1909, carrying the new Italian customs-tariff law on cycles and cars and the French law on requisitioning motor vehicles in war.
- The law of August 1909 makes permanent the customs tariffs on motor cars, velocipedes and motorcycles that the law of 15 July 1906 had applied provisionally for three years, ending the uncertainty; the rates are those printed in the T.C.I.'s Annuario dell'Automobilismo, ciclismo e trasporti moderni.
- I. B. reports the French law of 21 January 1909, promoted by the army commission with deputy Gervais as rapporteur, setting up annual January censuses and April inspections to classify and requisition private cars in wartime; Italy fielded barely a hundred vehicles at the recent manoeuvres against an estimated 4,000 needed.
- P. L. Rambaldi crosses the new path through the Pale di San Martino from the Alpinisti Tridentini's Rifugio Rosetta above San Martino di Castrozza to the Venice section's Rifugio Mulaz (2550 m) in about four hours, led by Giuseppe Zecchini, the Primiero guide who traced it, past Val dei Cantoni, Val Grande and the Focobòn.
- The Touring asks the many members moving house at the year's end to notify the new address early and exactly, so the Rivista and the other periodical publications follow them; the quickest way is to return the printed address label endorsed "Per cambio d'indirizzo".
- Italo Bonardi argues that the 300-million-lire foreign-visitor trade rests on Italy's art, and catalogues the losses: Raphael's Castiglione and Bella Giardiniera in the Louvre, Ariosto's portrait sold to London's National Gallery for a million and a half, Botticelli's Villa Lemmi frescoes at 46,000 lire in 1882, the Grimani Marco Agrippa nearly shipped from Venice.
- Bergeret climbs to St Benedict's abbey, founded in 519, and finds the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pile a disappointment beside the legend — barrack-like wings, a rococo sacristy — redeemed only by the new sanctuary's Beuronese pre-Raphaelite paintings and mosaics, and by a register signed among others by Ernest Renan.
- Three plates of Argus photographs from the Brescia air meeting: Glenn Curtiss taking the speed prize, Louis Blériot at his hangar, Henry Rougier setting the world altitude record, Calderara's Wright biplane winning the Corriere della Sera prize, the dirigible Zodiac, Anzani and the Cobianchi machine, with the King, Prince Borghese and Gabriele D'Annunzio among the crowd.
- The library department reviews Enrico Bertarelli's India, prefaced by Ferdinando Martini and sold at 10 lire for the Galbiate asylum, Pierre Marge's 4,000-km Le tour de l'Espagne en automobile, François Peyrey's Les oiseaux artificiels with a preface by Santos Dumont, Adolfo Venturi's La Basilica di Assisi and Corti and Laeng's guide to the Alpi di Val Grosina.
- Cav. ing. Vittorio Sella tells the Rivista that his photographs from the Duke of the Abruzzi's Karakoram expedition will not be ready until November, and meanwhile lends views of Kangchenjunga (8580 m) from the south-west and a 7,000 m peak of its western buttresses, taken years earlier in Sikkim-Nepal.
- News photographs for October 1909: the aviator Eugène Lefèvre killed on 7 September and Captain Ferber on 22 September, the République airship disaster of 25 September that killed Captain Marchal, Santos Dumont's flight from Saint-Cyr to Vidouville, Gerbi winning the 'XX Settembre' road race into Rome, and the balloon Verne, whose crew under pilot C. Usuelli were arrested as spies at Villach.
- Snapshots from the Thames docks, translated from Country Life: the loading at Tilbury, a barge under 200 barrels of oil, the iron lighters running in line like a military squadron, cattle landed at Deptford from the Atlantic trade, and the port seen through winter fog as 'a dark nightmare'.
- The library column resumes on the yellow pages with the 1909 yearbooks of the Automobile Clubs of Milan, Italy and Switzerland, Lodovico Piccioli's annotated forestry laws, Conty's guides to the Loire and to Holland's motor routes, Martinez's Baedeker of Argentina, Romolo Putelli's churches of Valcamonica and the degli Angeli sisters' poem Icaria.
- The Touring asks members to send the 1910 subscription early — 6 lire in Italy, 8 abroad — by cartolina-vaglia quoting the membership number, and notes that the branch offices are authorised to take renewals as well as new enrolments.
- The Direzione presses every member to recruit in families, schools, public bodies, the army and the clergy so the club reaches 100,000 in the year, and to convert to life membership at 90 lire (115 abroad) or five-year at 30 lire (40 abroad), which brings the complete 58 sheets of the 1:250,000 Carta d'Italia and the 1910 Agenda.
- Fifty-four prizes drawn among members who recruit ten new subscribers: an Atala luxury bicycle from G. Gatti, a Senior touring machine on Polak tyres from Bonzi e Marchi, a Frera 1909 with the three-speed B.S.A. hub, Pirelli covers, Aquilas lamps, Gillette razors, Fernet Branca and Strega.
- The Annuari editors appeal to consuls, members and the trade to return the commercial and industrial questionnaire and the proposal form bound into this issue, so the 1910 edition can carry fuller and more exact addresses for dealers and owners of motor cars and motor boats.
- The Touring's administrative department for October 1909, opening the month's lists of newly appointed consuls, medical and legal correspondents and of members joining on five-year and benefactor terms.
- New Touring consuls for the month: Temistocle Mattioli at Aquila, Giuseppe Ceriotti at Busto Arsizio, Gino Jori at Carrara, Oscar Pratolongo at Cogne, Vittorio Cerutti at Malesco, dott. Fausto Orestano at Palermo, dott. Edoardo Taussig at San Francisco and Riccardo Raffo at Tacna.
- New medical correspondents of the club: dott. Giuseppe Chiappe at Cogoleto, dott. Mario Conti at Cornigliano, dott. Annibale Squarcia at Malesco, dott. Franco Saracchi at Milan, dott. Giulio Gabetti at Recoaro, dott. Giovanni Perilli at S. Pietro Avellana and dott. Egidio Calvini at San Remo.
- One new legal correspondent enrolled for the month: avv. Adolfo De Martini of Bologna.
- The roll of members taking the five-year subscription, from avv. Alessandro Abbove of Milan and the Principe di Camporeale of Palermo through the Deputazioni Provinciali of Belluno and Livorno, the Istituto Tecnico Superiore of Milan and the Ministero di Agricoltura in Rome, to marchesa Elena Incisa di Camerana and members writing from Buenos Ayres, São Paulo and Iquique.
- Twelve members honoured for recruiting: prof. Michele Arnaldi of Macerata, Leo Dadone of S. Maria a Vico, rag. Zeno Flamia of Vinovo, Erminio Fogliata of Mulhausen, Clemente Gandini of Genoa, Carlo Garbarino of Tacna, ing. Valentino Giorgetti of Osimo, Riccardo Isotta of Baceno, Giulio Riva of Milan and dott. Cesare Zecca of Virle Treponti.
- The Touring announces a new shield-shaped badge for members' motor cars and motor boats, made in solid silver with coloured enamels at 20 lire or silver-plated with the same enamels at 9.
- The legal-advice department prints two motoring judgments of 1909: the Sampierdarena magistrate on parliamentary immunity from traffic prosecutions, and the Pallanza magistrate on driving without the tax disc.
- Judge Fantinelli, acting pretore of Sampierdarena, ruled on 20 July 1909 that a motoring prosecution against on. Ettore Candiani — the Touring's Capo console Generale and deputy for Milan's third college, defended by the club's head of legal section avv. Bortolo Belotti — cannot proceed without the Chamber's authorisation under article 45 of the Statuto.
- The pretore of Pallanza, on 24 May 1909, acquitted Emanuele Zervudachi of Oggebbio, stopped in piazza Garibaldi with car 41-160 carrying no tax plate: having instructed ing. Bottini to complete every formality and been assured all was in order, he lacked the will to break the law, so no offence existed.
- The roads department prints ing. cav. uff. Italo Vandone's reply to ing. Toller's open letter of the September number, on how Milan's provincial administration trains its cantonieri: pay from 65 to 95 lire a month, recruitment only from the 24 fixed-subsidy labourers working beside the 240 cantonieri, and a disciplinary board on which the roadmen themselves sit.
- The Direzione asks consuls and the sporting and local-improvement societies staging touring meets or races before the year's end to give notice in good time so propaganda pamphlets and prospectuses can be sent for distribution, and suggests offering T.C.I. memberships as individual prizes.
- Members proposed to the T.C.I. between 1 and 31 July 1909, opening with life members from Alvignano, Chardonne sur Vevey, Como, Genoa, Legnano, Milan, Padua, Palermo, São Paulo and Villa Maria, then annual candidates province by province from Alessandria to the colonies and the Americas.
- Membership stood at 73,730 annual members — 73,009 at 15 August, less 114 resignations, untraceable and defaulting members, plus 835 new enrolments — with 2,874 life members, 76,664 in all.