History of the hamlet and the writer D. H. Lawrence

During continuous travellingOrazio Cervi around the towns of faranay Enland and keeping tight to the memories of his home land the dream of a "villa in victorian style"arase home in the Serra district just as he had dreamt of for many years when he was an emigrant.

When he was only sixteen he left in northern Europe. While he was performing as a street actor he was noticed for his slender posed as a model for London artists amongst these was the sculputor Thornycroft. The friendship between the model of Picinisco and the sculptor continued even after the former moved back to Comino land.

Through this strong bond in the summer of 1919 Thornycroft asked his friend Orazio to offer hospitality to his daughter Rosalinda and her children as they wished for a holiday on the Latium slope.

Orazio expressed his hesitation as he knew that his abode rose in a rather precarious place for a family with children. Thornycroft entrusted his faithful close friend D. H. Lawrence, who was soon due to leave for Italy, the task of visiting these places described as beeing so unhospitable and he was then to refer to Rosalinda. In search of "extraordinary primordial landscapes" the eglish writer and his wife Frieda reached Picinisco around the first ten days of December.

It being their third trip to Italy Orazio offered hospitality to the young married couple. The suggestive scenary of the boundless and uncertain mountains, the immaculate peaks, the sunny green of the alpine pastures enchanted the englishThornycroft - The Mower novelist who recovered "amongst the magnificent stars so bright" the inspiration to finish the novel "The Lost Girl".

Orazio was referred to as Pancrazio in the novel would later become a place in the novel, the landscape of Picinisco in the chapters XIV and XV would then be the background of the love story between the protagonists Alvina and Ciccio.

On the 16th December Lawrence wrote "We threaded our way trough uneven boulders till we came to the river not very wide but rushing fast and freezing. We cross over on a long slender plank. Then we took a difficult rocky track ascending between the banks.

On the ground floor the house is made up of a kitchen wich is more like a cavern, the other rooms are to store wine, one for storage and one for corn. Upstairs there are three bedroom and a kind of barn, for corn cobs, beds and a stone floor... We have to cook food on the fire and we have to lean our food on our knees and eat sitting on a settle in front of the fire of this gloomy kitchen. I think you would kike it here but what about the children? It is impossible! There is not even the shadow of a bathroom...".

Rosalinda received the long awaited answer from her writer friend. Unfortunately she had to change the destination of her holiday. The occasion of a task of investigation became a muse of inspiration for an attentive and critical observer.

Lawrence made this uncontaminated world, discovered by chance, his own and he depicted it with exceptional rapture in his novel. A true testimony of the reality of Comino in the early twentieth century. Orazio's victorian villa is today known as Casa Lawrence.

The minute descriptions of the places, the rooms and the forniture quoted in "The Lost Girl" have allowed an accurate restoration of the structure of Casa Lawrence carried out by the Pacitti family, in respect and defence of the scenary that the english writer and his wife were presented with in a cold December night at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Today Lawrence House is a place to visit and also a farm holiday site. It is possible to taste the typical Comino cuisine, savour, the delicacies that the farm suggests and it is possible to practice recreative activities.