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St. Bonaventure College
| St. Bonaventure, N. Y.

NAPLES

AGENTS IN AMERICA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 Firrx Avenur, New York

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2024

https://archive.org/details/naples0000sybi

PERGOLA

In the summer villa of Doctor Munthé, above Ana-
capri. The villa is built on the site of an old Roman
dwelling.

SeNALPL ES: :-
PAINTED BY AUGUSTINE
FITZGERALD - DESCRIBED
BY SYBIL FITZGERALD:
PUBLISHED BY ADAM @&
CHARLES BLACK:LONDON

ST, BONAVENTURE LISRAR)

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Published Fune 1904

1057 6a

Preface

Tuese pages, illustrated and written during a long
summer round the Bay of Naples, are not only
connected with the recollection of the country itself,
but with the pleasant memory of many a kind sug-
gestion and much help from Neapolitan friends whose
names we mention here in grateful recognition,—
Signora Mathilde Serao, Duca and Duchessa Dusmet
de Smours, and Signor Salvatore di Giacomo. Many
of the gardens painted in this book are also remi-
niscent of the kind hospitality and courtesy of their
proprietors.

May 1904.

Contents

CHAPTER i]

Naples. : g j : 3 : F : : I

CHAPTER II

Napies—Tue Muszeum—Caro pi Monte , : f 20

CHAPTER: II

Past anp PresEnT—Santa Lucia, ETC. . : é ‘ 4I

CHAPTER LV

THe Neaporiran CuaracTer—THe Lotrery—Camorra, etc. 64

CHAP ICE REY

To THE West or Nap.es é 4 E ; : 82

CHAPTER Vi

From Napres To CasTELLAMARE : ’ A : : 101

CHAPTER Vil

PomPeEll . : ; A : , 4 3 : ge a
vil

SorRENTO

AMALFI

PagesTUM .

Iscuia

Capri

Contents

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER Ix

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPGE FR -Xi1

vill

200

218

List of Illustrations

a Pergola. =... : : > . : ‘ . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

. The “Gridone,”’ leading up from the Via Chiaia
. Naples, from the Parco Grifeo -
. Rock Pines in the Grounds of the Villa Floridiana, on

the Vomero, Naples.

. Woman Knitting, Neapolitan Type

. Porto Capuana, Naples

. A Singer in the Tarantella .

. On the Marina, Naples

. Dancer of the Tarantella at Sorrento .

. Lemonade-Sellers of Naples

. Vegetable Shop, Naples ; :
. The Park of the Palace of Spates above Naples
. Corporal of the Bersaglieri, Naples

. The Fountain of Papparella in the Villa Nazionale of

Naples

. Church of S. Croce, roe : -
. A Balia (Nurse) in the Villa Nazionale, Naples :
. Street Scene, the Marina, Naples

ix

2

4

List of Illustrations

FACING PAGE

. Types of Peasantry, Naples
. A Fruit-Seller, Naples 5 ‘ : :
. A Corner in the Garden of Lord eee Villa,

Posillipo

. A Terrace in the Villa Aen

. Venus’s Bath, Caserta

. The Villa Gallotti, Posillipo

. Old Pavilion of the Lago di Fusaro

. Torre del Greco

. Camaldoli, above Naples

. View taken from the Grounds of the Villa Antonietta,

Quisisana

. On a House Top, Sorrento.

. Ruined Castle of Lattere on the Hills above Gragnano
. House of the Faun, Pompeii

. House of the Drunker Faun, Pompeii

. House of Olconius, Pompeii

. The Villa Crawford .

. Evening near Massa, Peninsula of Sorrento .

. Old Garden Gateway, Sorrento .

. Capri

. Street Scene in Sorrento

. In the Grounds of Marion Crawford’s Villa, Sorrento .
. Portrait of Tarantella Dancer with Castanets

. The Villa Crawford, Sorrento

. On the Road to Massa

. A Garden Terrace, Sorrento

. Clock Tower of Sorrento

60
64

70
74
80
82
84
86
88

go

92

94

96

98
100
102
104
106
108
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120

122

oy
45+
46.
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48.

49

50.
Le
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53-
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57°
58.
59-
60.
61.
62.
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64.
65.
66.
G7.
68.
69.
70.
aA.

List of Illustrations

FACING PAGE

Garden of the Princess Gortchakow’s Villa at Sorrento 124

Fountain in Sorrento . , : : ; kz 8
Beach of the Fishing Village of Puolo : ‘ wt EEsO
Olive Grove near Massa. : : : : one Ese
Street of Positano. ‘ ¢ ‘ : é rice
Amalfiin Summer . : : : ; ; . 140
Amalfi. ‘ : ; ; : ; : Cee 9:
Cathedral of Amalfi. : ‘ : . oo 146
Terrace of the Cappucini Hotel, Amalfi. ; a ERO
The Street of Atrani. : : : , ee RS
Garden in the Villa Palumbo, Ravello ; ; ye ESO
Cathedral of Ravello . : ; 2 So eS
Garden of the Palazzo Ruffolo, R Ravello : : 162
Terrace of the Palazzo Ruffolo, Ravello ; 5 . 164
Pulpit of S. Giovanni del Toro, Ravello. : - 168
Old Tower on the Shore of Maiori . ; ‘ Se 19k)
Cetara : : : - : é , : be ET 4
Vietri A : : , ‘ ‘ : a ato
The Basilica of Paestum . : : : : EE LSO
Temple of Poseidon, Paestum . ‘ s : 21 $2
Basilica of Paestum . z : ; ; : too
On the Road to Forio ; ‘ ; : 6 5 hele!
Castle of the Pescara, Ischia F é : : ee Hie
The Torrione, Forio, Ischia : 3 : A == 94
In the Villa Maresca . : : : : : 3 rks
Forio, Ischia . 5 4 ‘ ‘ : 200
View of Forio, Island of Ischia . ; é : Mey
Church of S. Pietro, Ischia ; ; : : 06

xi

72.
73+
74-
75:
76.

loa

AGES
78.

79:
80.

List of [lustrations

FACING PAGE

A Street in Casamicciola, Ischia . : : S A
Evening upon the Beach of the Marina of Ischia .
Peasants under the Vines, Casamicciola, Ischia

Street in Capri .

Peasant Girl of Capri

Village Road of Caprili, Capri

Fisher Girl of Capri .

In the Villa Munthé, Anacapri

Villa Dubuffe

The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed by the
Carl Hentschel Colcurtype Process,

Xil

210
P17
216
218
222
224
228
230
234

NAPLES

CEESP DERI

NAPLES

“Out sont nés le maccaroni

Et la musique.”
ALrFrep DE Musser.

Napxies and the province lying round it may be
regarded as an epitome of Art and Nature. Here
“winter is a word, and the commonest objects are as
lovely as the rarest.’’ Yet, in comparison with the
mass of literature and art produced under the influence
of Central Italy, little has been inspired by the South.
There is, as it were, an invisible borderland across Italy,
dividing the country loved by our modern poets,
painters, and sculptors, from the land loved by the
ancient Greeks. It is another world, and almost
another race inhabit it. Its loveliness has grown with
time into a proverb, and no longer inspires to song as
of old. ‘The ideal of Nature exceeds that of man,”
wrote Hans Andersen years ago, when he found him-
self in this fairy world of his dreams. It is justly said
that a visit to Italy has been the turning-point in many
I I

Naples

lives, and certainly great careers of the last century bear
out the assertion. Since that golden age of poetry
when Shelley and Keats, Landor and the Brownings,
Ruskin and a whole world of gifted travellers, poured
into Italy, the North of Europe has felt a passionate
attraction towards the South. And if the intellectual
charm of Naples is more illusive than that of Rome or
of Florence, its beauty, at least, has no rival. There is
something in the soft and limpid loveliness of the Bay
of Naples that may well appeal to our Northern races
with the intensity of a passion. I do not mean to
include the life there—the life of the great, sordid
“Paris” of Italy, which, with its depths of poverty,
vice, and misery, lies like a great shadow in this world
of sunshine—but only speak of the natural scenery,
which embraces even these dark things with such tender-
ness. It is a beauty which the hand of man cannot
destroy. ‘The midland sea is as blue, the curves of the
bay are as sweeping, as in the days when lovers of Nature
heard there the voices and the songs of their Gods.

To approach Naples to the best advantage, you must
go by sea. A wide view is before us of the headlands,
softened by distance, and of the harbour, which lies like
a great opal reflecting colours and sunshine as glowing
as those of the East, and yet far softer. There is some-
thing Homeric in the setting of this cluster of sea-washed
towns, extending in a wide half-circle from Posillipo
to Sorrento. In the near background rises the most
celebrated volcano in the world, purple Vesuvius, whose
ravelled cloud extends across the heavens. No longer

2

THE “GRIDONE,” LEADING UP FROM
THE VIA CHIAIA

The popular flower market of Naples.

Naples

does the luxuriant growth of the South clothe the summit
with the vineyards of long ago, when gardens crept up to
the very mouth of the crater, when mossy grass encircled
it as with a velvet belt, and the rose-coloured homes
of the inhabitants clustered round its knees as closely as
they had clustered in the thoughtless days of Pompeiian
splendour. The molten lava upon its sides has taken
weird and fantastic shapes, which have been likened to a
confused mass of fallen horses and riders contorted upon
a field of battle. One hardy flower still lingers there—
“Ta qual null’ altro allegra arbor né fiore

Tuoi cespi solitari in torno spargi,

Odorata ginestra.” }
So wrote the greatest of Italy’s nineteenth-century poets
before the snowy cloud above the mountain had again
darkened to blood-red, and before again its fiery tongue
had licked away the persistent trace of vegetation. Well
may the sleep of Vesuvius be likened to ‘some great
trance, the ages coming and going all the while.”

The eruption of 1631 produced much Neapolitan
literature, poetical and scientific. The following is a
free translation of one of the three somewhat over-
wrought poems on Vesuvius which were written at that
time by Gian Battista Basile, author of the Pentamerone,
whose works are now very rare :—

“With strenuous throb of fire and mighty aim,
The earth is furrowed as by a monstrous plough ;

1 “ Where no other laughing tree or flower
Encircles thy lonely growth,
Perfumed genet.”

3

Naples

Gathered to its breast the fire seeds now
Gush forth in fervent rivers of liquid flame.
Thence to fertilise, the swift hours bear
Their amplitude of ashes to the shore

Where the Tyrrhenian sea receives once more
A wasted harvest of profound despair.

But, e’en though mortals suffer vital harm,
Great Vesuvius, exhausted in its turn,

Knows no relief for all those wounds that burn
Beneath the settling cinders, white and calm ;
Nor from the stupor of its fiery breath

Can rend apart Hell’s images,—and Death.”

The splendid harbour of Naples seems entitled by
Nature to be a greater shipping port than it is. But
the Neapolitan is often his own enemy, and, in spite
of the efforts of his country towards advance, is not
sufficiently lavish in his labour. He is content to live
on a crust of bread rather than better himself. Misery
in this blazing sunshine loses more than half its horrors,
and much of the pity given to the poor is wasted.
A lady told me that one day, while walking along the
shore, she saw a ragged and half-starved man lying
on the sand. Thinking that he would be only too
thankful to earn a few soldi, she asked him to carry
her box and camp-stool for her.

“Grazie, Signora, ma ho gia mangiato oggi,” was
the answer.

Similarly, I have been told of an Italian baker who
happened to make a certain biscuit which gradually
became a kind of “Sally Lunn” in popularity among
the foreign residents. It brought him an_ increased

4

NAPLES, FROM THE PARCO GRIFEO

Naples

clientele, and his fortune as a baker seemed assured ;
but one fine day the delightful little cakes were not
forthcoming, and why?

“ Alas, Signora, I had to cease making the dolci: so
many ladies wanted them !”

But poverty has brought out much that is sympathetic
in the character of the Neapolitans. A great traveller,
who had profoundly studied human nature in many
parts of the world, said that if he were to find himself
alone, starving, and without a penny, he would prefer
of all places to find himself in the slums of Naples.
So high an opinion had he formed of this apparently
degraded but kindly people. One starving man will
share his wretched meal of bread and an onion with
another, and both will laugh and joke the while, as
if it were a meal fit fora king. Misery never deadens
their sense of life and amusement ; and so ungovernable
is their love of pleasure, they will pawn or sell their
last possession to go to a Festa. A woman will sell
her bed to buy a worthy dress in which to appear at
her daughter’s wedding, or for a first communion ; and
to bury their dead with pomp the people will resort
to the last and most touching sacrifices. Their sense
of honour is often as keen as ours, though different in
kind—for the knife is ever ready to play a part in it.
““They belong, indeed, to the country that uses the
knife.” Brothers will defend their sisters’ virtue, and
husbands their wives’ good name, at the cost of their
lives, and a wrong committed against their women is
avenged to the death. Their natures are so passionate

5

Naples

that only too easily does tragedy enter into their life ;
but, fortunately or unfortunately, they soon forget.
Unlike the Sicilians, the Neapolitan poor are a people
without memories. If to-day be sunny, why remember
that yesterday was dark with clouds?

But, if they are among the most passionate of
people, they are also the least sentimental, mixing up
their love affairs and their money questions with
an ingenuousness which would embarrass the most
practical bourgeoisie of other countries. The young
girl hastens to value her betrothal ring, so that she
may purchase a gift in return of not more than a
third of its value, that being considered sufficient.
The deliberation with which gifts are made robs
them of any poetry they might have, and the dot is
even more openly discussed in Naples than in Paris.
The feeling for money is a very curious study here,
and it is sometimes hard to detect how far it is purely
practical. To hide the lack of it, or to indulge
the love of show, the poor people have recourse to
absurd measures. The wedding presents are often
merely lent for the occasion ; perhaps even the jewels
are hired from shops. At one time families owned
carriage doors painted with their arms, which were
fitted into hired vehicles. In one of the Neapolitan
dialect plays, one of the characters is made to say,

“Take away my honour, but leave me my purse!”

Whether or not this expresses the sentiment of certain
classes in Naples, all I can say is that the people seem

Naples

to me remarkably generous, and generosity among the
poor is proverbial.

Out of his own country, and far from the corrupt
influence of the Camorra, which undermines energy
and independence, the Neapolitan is a hard-working
man. In every country in the world he may be traced,
and no great works are ever completed to which Italian
labour does not contribute. But out of their country,
as in it, the Italian labourer is always underpaid.
Because he can manage to subsist on cheaper food
and less meat than the workman of another land, he
is obliged to gain less in proportion. The injustice
of such treatment is obvious. Abstinence from drink
has never lessened a man’s wages in England or else-
where; but the Italian labourer must pay for his
frugality.

The last time we visited Naples we decided to put
up at Bertolini’s new Palace Hotel, which is on the
highest point, overlooking the whole town. For
charm of position it is perhaps unique in all Europe.
The rocky height on which it stands has been tunnelled
by the shaft of a lift which carries its visitors up
through the solid rock into the hotel itself, hundreds
of feet above—a remarkable feat of engineering. The
drive rapidly takes us out of the teeming and breath-
less town—out of streets which might have been laid,
for all the modern comfort they provide, with the
clumsy stones which paved Pompeii. Leaving on our
right the eccentric grey castle which has lately sprung
upon the amazed eyes of all who know Naples, from

7

Naples

the solid rock, we follow a winding road towards the
Parco Griffeo, passing by the private gardens of many
villas into which we can just glimpse. They are
filled with aloes, acacia trees, palms, and roses; wild
geraniums bloom on the road. From the terrace ot
the hotel a splendid panorama is at our feet. The
great sordid city, encircled by its five castles, lies half-
hidden from our view. Far away the white and rose-
tinted villas of Posillipo glitter in the sun, and almost
lost in the blue haze of the sea lie the dream-like islands
of Ischia and Capri. I know not what there is in the lines
of the headlands and the contours of the islands that
continually reminds one of the great Greek wanderer.

Above the hotel on the Vomero is situated the
beautiful Villa Floridiana, presented by Ferdinand I.
to Lucia Migliaccio, a Sicilian widow. A _ beautiful,
and, I believe, unique, miniature of this lady is seen in
the Filangieri Museum, in which she is represented
wearing a red turban and sash, with a face pensively
gentle. Ferdinand must have had a strong infatuation
for her. She was over forty when he married her,
clandestinely, and the funeral services for his dead
Queen were still going on in the churches. Perhaps
he was glad at last to have a wife genuinely feminine,
and not, as his former spouse had been, ‘il suolo uomo
del regno di Napoli.”

The villa was fitted up with most extravagant
luxury. It possessed a theatre, a coffee-house, even a
tiny temple ; the whole of the grounds were alive with

birds, among them swans and pheasants, while deer and
8

ROCK’ PINES IN THE GROUNDS OF
THE VILLA FLORIDIANA, ON THE
VOMERO, NAPLES

One of the most celebrated of all the Neapolitan
villas,

Naples

even wild animals filled the park. This exotic char-
acter has, of course, vanished, and the beautiful
villa is now the property of a foreigner. The view
from the terrace, like all the views from the Vomero,
has something singularly tranquil in it, and it is
a spot which has ever been peculiarly attractive to
Neapolitans.

Near the Floridiana, and once a part of it, stands
the pretty Villa Lucia, which, like so many bits of the
Parco Griffeo, has passed into private hands. It is
said to have changed hands on one occasion because
the wife of the owner wearied of having “une cuvette
bleu”’ eternally under her eyes. In its garden may
still be seen the marble fountain with an allegorical
group composed of a figure poising a garland on Love.
Through the hole of the garland the sun-ray passes,
and marks constantly the date of the marriage of the
king and the Floridia.

Here, far above the town itself, the air is decidedly
purer than on the sea-shore, and the breeze is ex-
quisitely scented. In the evening the view is surpass-
ingly beautiful. To the west is the afterglow of the
sunset, and the light of the rising moon spreads a silver
halo round the crest of Vesuvius, where a red glow
of flame throbs from time to time towards the sky.
The city below is like a vast sea of electric stars. Here
is one shooting down the hill, and passing away beneath
us—the electric tram which follows the curve of the
Corso. Beyond lies the dark sea upon which the
moonlight will soon be trembling.

2 9

Naples |

“O, balmy nights of Naples! is it but wayward indulgence,
If for a few swift moments the revelling heart is oblivious
For thy fair sake of St. Peter, of e’en the divine Pantheon,
Ay, and of Monte Mario? And thou, O Villa Pamphili,
E’en thy fountains of crystal, thy laurel-dimmed paths are

forgotten.” }

But for those who wish to study the life and ways
of the people the Corso is too far away from the town,
and too far from the picturesque life of the fishermen,
who are a great feature of Naples, and of all the little
fishing towns along the shore. Crowds of idlers, lean-
ing over the sea wall, seem never weary of watching
the hauling in of the nets, which are very large and
stretch far out to sea. Sometimes as many as twenty
men will be hauling the same rope, and the operation
seems to go on for hours; but I myself have never
“been in at the finish.” If interested, the loiterers
looking on will often lend a hand, and the scene is
full of animation. These fishermen are as dark as the
Pompeiian bronzes in their Naples Museum, and a
breath of the sculpturesque spirit of antiquity seems
to touch us in looking at them. But the genius such
forms once inspired seems asleep. The artistic char-
acter of a race undergoes changes as inexplicable as
its political development. ‘O, com’ é€ bello!” says
the poorest peasant before any beautiful object, and no
doubt the sense of beauty is as alert in these southern
races as in the Greco-Roman workmen of the Roman
Empire. But the sacred fire of creative enthusiasm is

1 Translated from the German of Von Platen.
Io

WOMAN KNITTING, NEAPOLITAN TYPE

it
. wh .

a7

Naples

extinguished. The tradition of the past overshadows
the production of the present.

The unity of Italy has given her youth only in name
and in political combinations ; but her traditions, social
and artistic, seem to fetter her to the past, and are more
of an obstacle than an assistance to her progress. At
least, this is the impression strongly borne in upon one
from personal contact with the artists of the country
and the representatives of its social life. Thus, a
country follows mysteriously a law of evolution, the
secret of which has always defied the critic of art as well
as the historian.

The word “ decadence,”’ which is generally used to
cover the period of a decline in art, is here inadequate.
We have only to turn into the Museum of Naples to
discover chef d’wuvres of sculpture which were produced
in the distinctly decadent age of the Roman Empire.
In Italy there is now a distinct national advance in
which the commercial conditions of the country are
steadily improving, while science is flourishing and
education becoming more general; yet this period is
almost sterile of artistic production. Morelli may be
named as a true and great exception ; but he stands
alone. An admirer of the “‘ genie de la race Latine”’ can
scarcely believe in its ultimate extinction. But it is a
curious fact that the glorious days of Greek and Roman
art (as of still more ancient periods) were days of slavery ;
and one is tempted to ask whether times of comparative
liberty have not proved its death-warrant. Be this as
it may, we must not forget that in the south of Italy

II

Naples

languor and weakness of morale go hand in hand with
acuteness and intellectual activity. The lower as well
as the upper classes are naturally intelligent; and
while the north of Italy is superior in moral qualities
and steadiness, the Neapolitans are, by dint of their
intelligence, and perhaps unscrupulousness, making them.
selves a strong political factor in modern Italy.

Crispi may be taken as the most brilliant type of what
the South Italian may rise to. In spite of the attacks
of many enemies, and in spite of his latter-day un-
popularity, he was for many years not only the strongest
statesman in Italy, but he succeeded in voicing the
Nationalist aspirations of his whole country. Had he
kept up with the times more resolutely, his power might
have been far greater. But his ideas (to quote from
one who knew him intimately) remained at the same
point for the last twenty years of his life. In his con-
versation it was remarked that the names of the younger
generation, however brilliant and promising, were passed
over, while those of the compatriots of his own youth
were continually on his lips. As though fossilised in
his prime, Crispi remained a great man; but he grew
no greater.

This influence of the South in politics is viewed with
disfavour by the central Italians. They feel, with a
certain justice, that the country, unified by the minds
and the robust integrity of Cavour, Mazzini, Minghetti,
and the other great leaders of the Risorgimento, is
falling under the influence and the corruption of the
South. Hence I have noticed an intense acrimony

12

Naples

towards the Neapolitan in the minds of many of the
Piedmontese and Tuscans, an acrimony which is returned
with interest. The unity of Italy does not seem to have
amalgamated the races of the North and South any
more than has been the case in Austria-Hungary.

This supports the assertion that the moral slackness
of the South does not go hand in hand with intellectual
decay.

The Neapolitan is said to be able to conquer the
difficulties of reading and writing in three months !
Taine, in his critical work on Naples, says: “Il n’y a
| pas de race plus fine, plus prompte 4 saisir et a deviner
toutes les idées. Le paysan, enrichi et éclairé, deviendra
plus libéral.’”” These words were written before the
unity of Italy. The Camorra itself is an extraordinary
instance of misdirected intelligence. How any brain
can control the countless threads of intrigue in this
society is a mystery. The ramifications of this body
completely undermine the foundations of law and order,
and have made an effective secret-service system under
the ostensible regime of justice and municipal govern-
ment. Not very long ago the tourist season in Naples
was threatened by rumours of several cases of plague in
the town. Asa matter of fact, there was no truth in
the report. Being for the moment in need of funds,
the Camorra endeavoured to levy blackmail on the hotel-
keepers ; but they met with a decided refusal. A few
days afterwards the newspapers were filled with reports
of an outbreak of plague, much to the damage of the
hotels. Is it not curious that a large proportion of the

13

Naples

governing intellect of Italy should have its origin in
a town where such a condition of corruption exists ?
But secret societies have always played a great part in
Italian history, and no doubt always will.

The stranger would hardly guess at these facts, which
lie hidden beneath a smiling surface, beneath the volatile
and buoyant spirit of the inhabitants. And herein,
perhaps, we have the real charm of Naples! In its vivid
contrast of light and shade, of misery and well-being,
of languor and buoyancy, there is the continual triumph
of the sun over the shadow,—in appearance at all events.
The Sun God seems ever transfixing the serpent with
his glittering shafts, and the luxuriant beauty of this land
spreads a golden veil over the misery of its inhabitants.

“© Natura cortese,
Son questi i doni tuoi,
Questi i deletti sono
Che tu porgi ai mortali,” !

Here where the leaves of the trees laugh and gentle
breezes whisper through their branches, the drowsy
toiler in the sun seems half unburdened of his care.

In Naples the same changes which have transformed
Milan, and are transforming Florence, are at work.
All artists must deplore them, for they mean the sup-
planting of the old and picturesque by the purely useful
and banal. Where once narrow houses with roof-

1 “QO, gracious nature,
These are thy gifts,
These are the delights,
That thou givest to mortals,”

14

PORTO CAPUANA, NAPLES

One of the old gates of the town.

Naples

gardens, jutting corners, and quaintly constructed arches
and stairs, broke the line of the narrow streets, are now
seen rows of high modern buildings. Electric trams
run through the streets, and much of the local colour is
gradually retreating to the older quarters of the town.
In the last ten years this inevitable change has been
creeping into all the smaller towns from Naples to
Castellamare. Soon there will be a tramway along one
of the most beautiful drives in the world—from
Castellamare to Sorrento.

Hand in hand with progress we find curiously
obsolete customs. In hired vehicles the horses are not
driven with a bit. A small bar is fixed over the nose,
and the rein is attached to it. This custom, however
provincial it may appear, seems to give excellent results.
The horse is quite under the control of the driver, and
can drink with ease. I have often asked myself whether
this primitive system may not have some advantage.

The natives’ general love of display is vividly seen in
the trappings of their horses. What must be intended
as an ornament, a thing like an enormous duster, is
attached to the animal’s head. The tinkling of many
bells relieves the monotony of the poor beast’s life,
and the cracking of whips no doubt relieves it more.
The decoration of the mules is still yet more bizarre.
On the back of the animal—and again for apparently
decorative effect,—rises an enormous brass column, sur-
mounted by a tuft of fur and adorned with brass nails.
Between the ears and over the nose hangs a mass of soft
light fur and red tassels. I know of no instance in

15

Naples

which so much unnecessary trouble has been taken for
artistic effect. To see a long line of mules passing
along the white and dusty roads, tinkling with many
bells and gay with this fantastic blazonry, is to fancy
oneself in the days of the Mamelukes—such a touch of
Eastern magnificence is in the simple scene. The mules
pass us, not only with the jingling of bells, but also with
the drivers’ snatches of light-hearted song, the gay songs
of Piedigrotta. It seems as if these popular canzonetti
were a key to the people’s character. Every year a
competition is held for them at the fete of the Madonna
of Piedigrotta, and a prize awarded to the most success-
ful composer. Imagine this scene on a starlit autumn
night, the sea bright as polished crystal. Not a single
cloud is in the sky, save that beautiful column rising like a
stone pine above Vesuvius. The city and all around the
bay is a glitter of lights. On the roads, white with dust,
not less than some twenty thousand gaily-dressed men,
women, and children are moving along, tired, overheated,
but light-heartedly happy. It is the night of their
greatest Festa, a festa which will last with song and
dance far into the cool morning hours! Over this mass
of human beings, with their dark and laughing faces,
play the coloured lights which the boys carry and wave
about on long sticks. Other lads carry poles garlanded
with delicious fruit and gay with paper flowers. Some-
times the light gleams on the bright copper boilers which
men bear cleverly poised in baskets on their heads: the
vessels hold that great delicacy for the poor—snail soup !
Along the sides of the road, especially round the Grand
16

Naples

Hotel, are piled small mountains of water melons and
Indian figs. It is a wonderful scene, and almost terrific
is the noise! Thousands of men and_ boys are playing
on their curious musical instruments,—tin trumpets,
wooden hammers, and large shells—which produce a
strange booming roar. And stranger still is the instru-
ment called the putipz, which gives an almost unearthly
sound. This consists of an open terra-cotta jar, with
sheep skin tightened over it, and a hole drilled in the
skin, through which a stick is worked up and down.
Where could this instrument have originated, if not in
the East ?

At midnight begins the procession of decorated
carts full of dressed-up men and women. One by one
these carts pause, and the occupants in turn sing their
new Piedigrotta songs. The seething crowds listen
critically, approving or condemning ; and early in the
morning, while yet the stars are in the sky, the prizes
are awarded to the composers whose songs have been
adjudged the best.

Song and dance must be heard and seen together to
be fully appreciated. The blue sky must be overhead ;
the radiant sea must be in the background; the faces
of the singers must be olive-tinted and dark-eyed !
Alas, the real tarantella dance-music and song are
becoming spoiled by the critical taste of foreigners, who
too often judge by the musical standard of their own
countries. Could they be superseded by a higher
music, this would not be so regrettable ; but a bird’s
note cannot be changed, and in these Piedigrotta songs

3 t7:

Naples

a delicate national vein is heard, which, becoming
extinct, would be followed by nothing but imitations
from other countries. For long past there has existed
here in the South a school of song which is quite
unique; into it any introduction of orchestration is
fatal. The mandolin, the guitar, the castanets,—these
are their natural instruments; and, strange as it may
seem to critics, the rich and untrained voice, when
accompanied only by these simple instruments, has a
wild charm of its own, quickly lost in the midst of a
more complicated orchestra. The violin, badly or
indifferently played, has done more to destroy the
charm of the native melodies than anything I know of.

The music and songs of the tarantella are rarely
heard in Naples now, save by visitors at the hotels.
Absurd bands of men and women, overdressed, and
with exasperatingly sharp voices, still entertain them
of an evening. But listening to noisy stamping on
parquet floors in overheated rooms, hearing the native
songs accompanied by the town orchestra, is highly
ridiculous. Only at Sorrento the tarantella still keeps
something of its old charm. Of an evening the dancers
take their places in the open courtyard of the hotel.
Their background is a garden of orange and lemon
trees and flowers, the breath of which perfumes the air
deliciously. The stars twinkle in the dark blue sky, and
the whole scene is lovely and poetical. The women are
dressed in bright costumes of red and green, with white
muslin aprons. Beads of glass are round their necks ;

gold and coral gleam in their ears. The figures are
18

A SINGER IN THE TARANTELLA

Naples

glittering in a semi-obscurity as they move against the
dark trees. The castanets resound in the air, and we
are carried away by the laughing music. A distinctly
humorous element crops out in many of the songs, written,
of course, in dialect. In one the braying (and even the
kicking) of the ass is imitated with drollery ; in others
a sadder and more plaintive note is struck, reminding
one forcibly of the far-off, Arab origin of all the
dances, which spread from Spain to Italy hundreds of
years ago. Never do we hear the cheaply sentimental
note; and as to the comic songs, although coarse and
often full of double meanings, they have not the
common vulgarity of our music-halls. Happily, the
songs that are born among the people in any country,
songs which are national in their origin, are always free
from this element of our modern civilisation.

Le

CELA PAREGR i
NAPLES—THE MUSEUM—CAPO DI MONTE

I REMEMBER Well the first time we walked through the
Toledo. It was a beautiful day early in the spring.
Wishing to see something of the life of the people,
we had lunched at Gambrinus, a really characteristic
restaurant in the very heart of the town. Though not
frequented by the deau monde of Naples, it is full of
local colour. The walls are panelled with paintings by
Neapolitan artists, boldly painted in, and some full of
merit. In all are seen the charming tints of landscape
and figure in Capri and Sorrento. We took a small
table close to the window—somewhat to our sorrow, for
many hungry little faces looked in at us all through the
meal. We ordered the typical Neapolitan menu, which
is always ready. First came the historic macaroni, here
called “ pasta,” on which the people seem almost wholly
nourished, though in the days of Boccaccio and Petrarch
it was an amusing novelty. This was followed by a
plat of ‘fritto mista,” which looks and tastes delicious.
What it is made of only the Neapolitan knows, and he
will not tell. Who shall say of this dish, when found

20

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

in the smaller cafés, whether it be cat, or dog, or rabbit ?
All I know is that dogs have a mysterious way of dis-
appearing hereabouts: the secret you must ask of the
Camorra. A friend of ours, possessor of a valuable dog,
and aware of this peculiarity, determined to take the
matter courageously into his own hands. Fortunately,
he knew the “Capo,” the President, of this strange
society, and went to him for assistance,

“T have,” he said, “‘a beautiful dog, to whom I am
devoted. When I walk about the streets of Naples I
have to keep him always on the chain and literally
never take my eyes off him. May I appeal to your
kindness to assure me of the animal’s safety?”

He was listened to kindly. A careful note was
taken of the dog’s appearance and of its owner’s
address.

“You need have no further anxiety,” said this
quaint official of the underground world of Naples.
And our friend now walks light-heartedly through the
crowded streets of the town, and the dog runs wherever
he pleases in safety.

But this is a digression. A fiasco of the light wine
of Capri is before us sparkling in the mid-day sun: we
are in the land of Bacchus, the natural garden of vine-
yards. These wines are too strong for foreigners like
ourselves, and must be diluted with water. Many
varieties bear soft Italian names—Vesuvio, Falerno,
Lacrima Cristi, and so on.

After luncheon we wandered into the Toledo. Few
of the foreigners walk in this street: the shops of

21

Naples

tortoise-shell, of lace, or of coral, which most attract
them, are found nearer the sea-front. On this lovely
spring day the whole of the Neapolitan world seemed
out-of-doors. Such a day the Italian loves—when the
sun is not yet too hot and the deep shadows have lost
the chill of winter.

“ How little they care,
While the weather holds fair,
What Europe may do with to-day.”

The street is full of open fiacres, and in and out
from under the very wheels run the flower-sellers with
their large bouquets of stiffly-wired spring blossoms.
These they toss into the carriages, and adroitly catch
again if pitched out by irritated occupants. The
drivers have the greatest difficulty in keeping off the
small street arabs who cling to the backs of the
vehicles, and in steering a course through the foot
passengers, who walk anywhere rather than on the
narrow pavements. The noise of the cracking whips
and rattling of wheels over the uneven pavements is so
uniformly deafening that one ceases to remark it.

There is a natural love and need of bright colour
in this people. The soft tones that harmonise with
our northern climate would appear faded against their
brilliant sky. Their background is as often blue and
gold as ours is grey. The poor women wear gaudy
handkerchiefs around their necks ; the bodice and the
skirt are invariably of different tints. The well-to-do
also are fond of showy effect. Indeed, the Neapolitan

22

peter tF

ON THE MARINA, NAPLES

A drink and lemon booth. The vendors drive a
brisk trade all the year round. The older booths
were made of painted wood, but are now being
replaced by more elaborate ones of polished marble.

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

women have a style of dress distinctly different from
that of Central Italy. The large picture hats are
never out of fashion, any more than the little dark
curls worn on either side of the olive-tinted brow.
They prefer light colours as decidedly as the Roman
lady prefers black. I have known soberly dressed
Englishwomen who, after a few years’ stay in Naples,
have adopted colours that would dismay their oldest
and dearest friends at home!

Now and then through the street crowd bearded
monks pass us with arms folded under wide sleeves.
Sometimes we pass a lemon stand, hung with fresh
branches of mandarins and oranges and laden with
glittering cans of iced water. Round it stands a
group of thirsty men and boys. The Neapolitans are
feverish in blood, and the harsh wine of their country
does not slacken their thirst as do the cool fruit drinks.

At every step we are pursued by beggars—men,
women, and children. I remember an English tourist
who, in exasperation, mustered up all the Italian he
knew, and, turning upon his tormentors, exclaimed
loudly, ‘“‘ Vado, vado, a Diavolo!” This had a re-
markable effect upon the superstitious people. Instead
of having said what he had intended,—which, no
doubt, the reader can divine,—he had angrily stated
his intention of going to His Satanic Majesty himself.

Occasionally, in and out among the crowd, we
recognise the unmistakable gait of a sailor, which
reminds us that we are in a great seaport town, and
that men-of-war are anchored in the harbour. Indeed,

a3

Naples

not far off, near Castellamare, is one of the centres of
naval construction, where frequently is seen a half-built
leviathan in the slips.

The Toledo seems a street without an end. Let
us branch off to the left and follow people into one of
the larger churches. There are few beautiful and
historic interiors, as in Rome or Florence; but they
are interesting to those who would study another side
of Neapolitan character—the devotional. Take a chair
and sit quietly in the shade of a column, and you may
watch the poor steal in to some familiar place before
a shrine, and, after murmuring a few prayers, take up
their burden and go silently away. One man, who
has knelt devoutly before the little Altar laden with
gilt and gauze flowers, will go out and needlessly lash
his cart-horse. Another, perhaps a member of the
Camorra, will leave the confessional and commit some
petty theft. fhe woman who looks up at the effigy
of the Holy Child may lately have deserted her own
infant, as is so common among the poor women of
Naples. Their religion is poetry, not doctrine. They
are intelligent, but not reflective. Their ideas of eternal
punishment and reward are almost medieval, and in
their imagination the terrors of religion play a greater
part than the ethical teachings. Their sensibility to
such impressions may be illustrated by a story culled
from a Neapolitan newspaper the other day. Ai priest,
wishing to work upon his impressionable congregation
during a sermon upon future punishment, filled the
hidden parts of the church with men who groaned in

24

DANCER OF THE TARANTELLA AT
SORRENTO

: | ay ve |
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thes
i
7
i Ly

,

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

anguish and rattled chains at appropriate points. This
proved too much for the listeners. The experiment
succeeded too well. They rushed in terror from the
sacred precincts in a frenzy of religious fear, and many
were injured in the panic which ensued. Inquiry
brought the truth to light, and disgrace fell upon the
too zealous Padre.

The first time I went into a church near Naples I
noticed a coffin in the middle aisle with wreaths of
flowers and lighted candles round it. Approaching, |
saw, to my amazement, that the coffin was unclosed,
and that the waxen face of a dead man was in full
view. ‘The sight of Death is far more impressive than
the mere knowledge that Death is there, and perhaps it
was for this reason that the people were allowed to
wander in and receive into their impressionable natures
the full meaning of “memento mori.” Fewer men
than women are seen in the churches,—as, indeed, is
the case elsewhere in Italy. Among the younger
generation and the student class free-thinking is not
uncommon.

Let us say a few words about the University of
Naples, one of the three important “ accademie” which
were the outcome of the intellectual movement of the
Renaissance. This University makes the town a centre
of learning as well as one of mere pleasure. Perhaps few
of the travellers who pass through the throngs of careless
idlers in the Toledo, or of the indolent pleasure-seekers
in the Corso, realise that over a thousand students. are
working in their midst, that foreign men of learning

4 25

FRIEDSAM LIBRARY/RESOURCE CENTER

Naples

and science are engaged in lecture rooms and labora-
tories, and that there is here one of the most import-
ant institutions for zoological study. Such, however,
is the case. Naples is a cradle of scientific research.
What a gorgeous environment of Nature and Art!
Yet much of this is lost on the youth of the South.
Intense consciousness of the beauty and historic sentiment
of the South is a trait, rather, of our northern nature.
Such books as Hans Andersen’s Improvisatore and
Lamartine’s Gaaziella are the creations of northern
races. One seeks in vain in current Italian literature
for the charming appreciations of Savage Landor or for
such exquisite descriptions as Symonds and Ruskin
have given us. Italians themselves assert that no writer
has described the beauty of Italy as perfectly as
d’ Annunzio ; but a study of his superb imagery shows
the influence of the North underlying it—the influence
of that English school which has made a poetry of the
“‘word-painting ’’ of landscape and architecture. To
the rising generation of students this poverty in their
modern literature means little. Beauty is all around
them, and is too intimate a part of their life to require
a language. All that the University student asks is
that life be cheap and enjoyable. He realises the
beauty of his native land only when far from it, and
homesick, with a homesickness which is said to surpass
that of other countries.

Imagine the days of vacation that can be passed at
Capri and Ischia, or at Rome, which lies so near!

Soon, it is said, an electric railway, which will rivet
26

ou
a at our ~e

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

still more closely these great cities, is to be made. A
new road, geographically shorter than the present one,
and reducing the six-hours’ distance to three, is being
surveyed. This is a subject for the enthusiasm of the
youth of Naples, and who shall say that such enthusiasm
is misplaced ? It is the Italian’s strength that he is all
for modern movement and advance—for the “time of
day,” as our Cockneys at home would say. Surrounded
though he is by so much that is behind the times, his
ideal is for the latest invention, the fastest train, the
newest methods of science. The magnificent ruins in
which he was born pass unnoticed. His aspirations are
those of a young people growing as rapidly as children
grow amid the relics and the mouldering loveliness of a
past which has no voice for them.

“ Above the graves of buried men
The grass hath leave to grow”;

and often does it strike one, when wandering in the
South, with what determined hopefulness new homes,
new centres, new and flourishing vineyards, have sprung
up over the ruins of buried towns. Talk to the Italian
of progress in any form, but not of the poetry and fetters
of long ago, not of the vanished glories of Paestum
and Girgenti,—these find no response. But eagerly
will he discuss the material advancement of his country
—its rapid train service and its commercial prosperity.
To him life is the more vital since it has come so late ;
strides must be taken where others walk. So there is
no time to pause, to look back and to dream. We

2]

Naples

have, it is true, one dreamy friend, who is continually
searching for what he calls the “Soul” of the Italian
people ; but such a mood must be explained by his
over-study of the Pre-Raphaelite period. Is it possible
that the Soul itself be Pre-Raphaelite? At all events,
we may say, with the celebrated ecclesiastic, that here,
as in the country of his missions, all save the spirit of
man is divine.

There is in the spring weather a softness which
fills the heart with a great craving for I-know-not-
what Pantheistic ideal. When day by day passes with
perfection of warmth and sunlight, when the breezes
gently stir the blue expanse of sea and sky, when a
light violet mist softens the outlines of Ischia and
Capri, we seem almost forced to turn to the days of
Paganism, when each glade, each rivulet, had a soul
embodied in a deity.

But the reader must not suppose, from these re-
marks made on a lovely day, that the climate here is a
continual blaze of sunshine. Unfortunately this is not
the case. In spring and autumn there are two seasons
of heavy rain. And how entirely all is changed in
Naples on a rainy day! The streets that looked so
gay in the sun, or were bathed in luminous shadow,
become uniformly grey. Even Vesuvius is shrouded
in mist, and the damp cold seems by contrast far more
intense than it really is. Soon the streets are deserted,
for the Neapolitan does not love rain—or, perhaps,
water in any form. To the tourist this weather is
extremely trying. At home he is independent of it ;

28

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

but hotel life in bad weather is depressing. At a
moment like this we cannot do better than stroll
through the great Museum. We must take one of
the light carriages, and be jolted over the unspeakable
pavement; but we leave the sordid and chilling
realities of outdoor life behind us when we penetrate
to the glorious vision of antiquity within its walls.

A general survey of this Museum gives an im-
pression distinctly different from that given by any other
in the world. It is the only collection I know of in
which the Gods of Greece and of Rome seem really
to hover about their effigies. A mysterious paganism
pervades the atmosphere. All seems real, vital, present,
—not locked away in the lumber rooms of the past, as
is so often felt elsewhere. Perhaps the nearness of
origin has something to do with this sensation ; perhaps
the surrounding landscape has attuned the mind to acloser
grasp. However this may be, I think that every lover
of Greek and Roman poetry will agree in recognising a
subtle and indefinable charm in this beautiful collection.
Great marble Gods gaze placidly at us, as though only
spellbound and waiting for the touch of some Pygmalion
to breathe again and to speak. One is quickly lost in
reverie, and can almost fancy that ambrosial perfumes
have penetrated through the grimy walls. What
majestic repose is in the quiet limbs of these Gods and
Goddesses, and what an antithesis to the restless turmoil
and hurry of our own day! May not this explain how
the real secret of sculpture has been lost ? How can an
age like our own—with its railways, telephones, and

29

Naples

motor-cars—find an embodiment in an art which is the
perfection of magnificent calm ?

Turn to Psyche with the divine intellectual brow.
Of what does she dream? ‘The eyes speak of profound
dreamland ; the head, delicately poised on exquisite
shoulders, seems to embody the most perfect blending
in marble of physical and psychical beauty. She has
well been named Psyche,—for it is indeed the statue
of a soul, and no sculptor may hope to go further.

I love the wild and twisted forms of the fauns, with
heads garlanded in berries and vines. One of them
holds a lovely laughing child astride upon his shoulders.
The position is the same as that in which children are
held to-day in the East. The faun, stepping lightly,
clashes cymbals in each hand, and, turning his head,
greets the child’s delighted eye with a smile. It isa smile
in which may be read the whole genesis of the myths
of the woodlands and the streams. Indeed, thronging
memories of the singers of the woods and the waters
awake in us before many of these marble groups. To
what poet in chief shall we attribute our associations ?
Is it Theocritus, the “singer of the field and fold,”
the bard whose sweet words are fresh with the air of
the sunny slopes of Sicily, the wild-cactus leaves, and
the goats feeding from them? Or may it be, perhaps,
the majestic echoes of Pindar that touch us when
standing before the form of a hero or athlete whose
limbs seem still to tremble from the glory of some
Olympian contest? Perhaps, after all, it is to our
Homeric memories that we owe the most. Every

30 |

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

statue seems to be in one sense or another Homeric—
in its simplicity or in its fibre. In all this art there is
something epic.

And what glories of more recent art! Pass among
the bronzes of those so-called decadent days. Here
the achievement of a perfected artistic ideal is evident,
and how little do these bronzes, full of fiery force,
reflect the spirit of decline! Here the religious ideal
is no more found: it has given place to forms real-
istic and grotesque in their powerful characterisation
of Nature. A dwarfed and knotted Silenus staggers
under the weight of a candelabra which he holds in his
right arm. The muscles of his diminutive stature are
strained and tense in a masterpiece of natural poise.
A drunken faun reels backward, balancing an enormous
wine-skin, his face a play of tipsy joviality. We can
almost see the sunshine warm upon the figure, and the
sense of movement fills it with breath. I know not
what delicate psychology of spirit has enabled the
creators of these types to extract from such simple
material such perfect artistic achievement. These art
treasures may be classed in the same category as the
priceless gems of antiquity, where in a minute cameo
colossal effects are produced, and breadth of treatment
is tempered by exquisite refinement of proportion.
And in these bronzes now before us there is an acute
realism as modern as that which artists seek for in
our own day, and with it a technical excellence which
perhaps will never be surpassed.

So, in this epitome of antiquity in the Naples

31

Naples

Museum, we have passed through the whole scale of
possible performance in sculpture—from echoes of
stone-bound almost Egyptian Gods of the awakening
days of Greek art, to the hyper-refined conceits of a
period when “l’art pour l’art”’ had placed the sculptor
on the throne and the shrine of his art in the erewhile
temple of the Gods.

These bronzes lead us insensibly from thoughts on
art and religion to the details in the daily life of the
Pompeiians. Here are a hundred-and-one utensils and
objects of decoration that ministered to their common
wants and pleasures. Far away in the past, they yet
seem near to us as we recognise so many familiar
objects similar to those used in our daily life. Here
are the mirrors and the little toilette articles that the
ladies used in their boudoirs—

“ Dear dead women, with such hair too,
What’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms?”

The jewels they wore are laid away in the glass
cases, much as they may have been laid away in their
wearers’ jewel boxes. The little lamps that lighted
their apartments still swing from the branching cande-
labra. The money box, the tiny Gods, the lares and
penates of their long-extinguished hearths, the amulet,
the talisman, the cineric urn,—all these details are
gathered together and affect us strangely. Perhaps the
most pathetic are the toys of the children, reminding
us of the eternal springtime of life—the child life which
is always growing out of death.

ae

VEGETABLE SHOP, NAPLES

scaaeeiiiiaaduaaiiieeaee

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a

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

From the pictures on their walls we know that love
played a great part in this degenerate age. A sort
of troubadour element of song and dance is seen in
many of them. But of the love affairs of the ladies of
the Roman Empire we know nothing. No realistic
novel has come down to us, no intimate history of
their lives. The correct and lifeless inventions of
Becker’s Gallus and Charicles cannot revive them.
The beautiful and languid forms of Alma-Tadema’s
historic intellect are but fancies. All that belonged
to them we have—their horses’ bits and harness,
the worn chariot-wheel, the mosaics upon which they
walked, even the loaves discovered intact in the baker’s
tiny “ boutique.” But the secret of their lives is lost.

Bulwer’s Last Days of Pompeii has always been a
favourite book of mine. The characters are vital and
human, and in it the lifeless streets of Pompeii seem again
to be filled with a pleasure-loving throng. Bulwer
has given us a picture of a fashionable watering-place
of the ancients, when the wealthy citizen of Rome vied
with his neighbour in the luxury of his habits and in the
critical delicacy of his taste. The sentiment of the
dialogue, the pathos of the romantic situations, are real
and human, and no other attempt, however scholarly,
has brought the dead past so vividly before us. But
to those who care to search for it there is more of the
breath of life in this collection of intimate objects in the
Museum rooms than in the pages of any modern writer
of romance or history. The art which man produces
every day is a mirror in which he himself is reflected —

5 33

Naples

his strength, his aspirations, and his limitations. As
has been eloquently pointed out by Ruskin and Morris,
the real history of man in any period is written by him-
self in what his own hands have made, and not in the
records of governments and dynasties.

On leaving these beautiful relics a last thought strikes
us of the keen sense of beauty of that period, and the
buoyant enjoyment of life of which we have lost the
secret. Wealth no longer gives us all we want, and
does a sunny climate as often make us gay?

In a country so endowed by all the loveliness of
Nature, where colour is so rich, and the life of the
people is naturally so free and artistic, one might have
supposed that in the palmy days of Italian painting a
great school, comparable to that of Venice, might have
flourished here. Such was not the case. To what
extent political conditions affected art at Naples at that
time—that is too intricate a question to discuss here.
Let us see, at all events, what time has saved from the
wreck of other schools in this Museum. It is, indeed,
a curious jumble, this collection of pictures! In the
eyes of the cicerone of Italy it has little value, since it
contains few works of the highest order, and much that
is spurious or of doubtful authorship. A veritable
collection of odds and ends, drift-wood from the great
centuries, when even obscure and nameless work has
a fine savour of its own for the lover of painting and
antiquity. The mere amateur will find little to interest
him ; but there are wonderful pearls among the débris.

Take, for example, Guido Reni’s “‘Atalanta’s Race.”

34

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

Rarely have I seen any mention made of this masterpiece
of the once popular and admired but now somewhat
abused old master. This beautiful painting seems a
sort of dream picture of the beauties of the Gods we
have just been surveying—of their beauty as it might
have existed in some great mural decoration in Rome
or Pompeii, destroyed ere it reached us. There is
something purely Pompeiian in the contours of the
magnificent figures, silhouetted simply in exquisite poise
against the darkened background. In it are delicately
united the murally decorative spirit of Pompeii and the
more perfected realism of the sixteenth century. The
lovely figure of Atalanta, clad as the Artemis of the
Greeks, turns back in the whirl of the race to gather up
the golden apple, just fallen from the hand of Milanion.
The swift movement in the man’s figure has no modern
hurry in it—only sublime calm. It is the gait of a God,
not that of a mortal. Hialf-close the eyes, and imagine
that those figures are flying past you : in another moment
they will have swept out of the picture! The com-
position is a tour de force of rhythmical movement, and
a model of restraint in artistic expression. Apart from
this, the faces are so beautiful! I wonder if more
modern art has ever given us a purer Grecian profile
than in the face of this Atalanta ?

The Danae of Titian is perhaps the only bit of colour
here sufficiently gorgeous to rival the tints of Nature
without, and there is a beautiful Velasquez, a picture
that might well symbolise the laughing life of Naples.
In it a semi-nude Bacchus crowned with vine-leaves is

35

Naples

surrounded by jesting peasants. Redolent of keen
animal life are their broadly smiling faces : a marvellous
picture, this.

Grouped in front of all the pictures of interest are
seated copyists in the midst of their paraphernalia of
easels, high stools, and ladders. Sometimes there are so
many that it is very difficult to approach the pictures at all.
On the arrival of any visitor they endeavour to attract
attention to their copies, any of which they are only too
thankful to sell for the smallest sum. The faces of some
of these artists, who seem to spend their whole day in
the cold galleries, are thin and pathetic. All uncon-
sciously they give us a glimpse into the painful poverty
of artist life in Naples. They are wonderfully courteous
to strangers, and will often help in searching for pictures.

During last year the entire Museum was laboriously
cleared out and renovated, and certainly it needed it
badly. The management of the place has of late years
given rise to many an angry discussion as to the care-
lessness of the directors and the economising of funds
needed for its proper maintenance. Some years ago the
Museum of Berlin acquired an object of great value
which should certainly have found its way into the Naples
Museum. An Etruscan inscription, found in the
Campagna, was first offered for purchase here; but it
was judged false, because two specimens offered by the
same vendor were found to be spurious, and the third
was not even examined.

Adjoining the Museum is a splendid National Library,
large, airy, and carefully catalogued. In it is the largest
36

Pa

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

Salle in Italy, containing all the original volumes of the
Bourbon collection, and having its stupendous ceiling
frescoed with the portraits of the Royal family. Some
time ago this ceiling threatened to fall, and for upwards
of ten years the hall had to be closed, until the other day
the Government finally decided to dole out the necessary
funds for its restoration, since the ceiling itself refused
to collapse, and so settle the question.

Naples is rich in collections of great value. Not far
from the Museum stands the splendid Palazzo Filan-
gieri, containing an exquisitely arranged collection of
historic objects, chiefly of the Bourbon period. The
Museum itself is, I believe, the oldest thirteenth-century
building in Naples, and when it was about to be pulled
down to make way for the new street and tram-line
Prince Filangieri, at his own expense, removed it brick
by brick from one side of the road to the other. It is
kept very differently from the Museo Nazionale, and is
like a carefully inhabited palace, contrasting with the
neglected squalor of many an interior laden with
valuables in Naples. The old guardian, who sits in his
tiny cubicle, and in the winter months roasts small
scented apples over his sca/dino, often unconsciously
perfumes the lofty rooms with their sweet aroma.

Outside the Museum we find our eager vetturino
on the look-out for us, and screaming and cracking of
whips bring us rudely down from dreams of other days.
I wonder whether the Pompeiian drivers used such
expressive language to their horses as do the Neapolitan
drivers of to-day! Or were the noble chariot steeds

37

Naples

of the ancients, high-mettled descendants of the breeds
introduced by Pyrrhus and Hannibal, treated with more
respect and less ignorance ?

“In the kingdom of Naples I have observed more
horses of high blood than in any other quarter of Italy,”
remarks the Boccaccio of Landor’s imagination ; and
the hero of one of Boccaccio’s novelli is described as
coming to Naples to make purchases, having heard that
there was a good market for horses in the city. And
it is much the same in the present day. Magnificent
carriage-horses are seen on the sea drive, while even many
of the smaller rapid cab-horses have a fiery step worthy
of a better breed.

It is difficult to understand the humour of the
Neapolitan cabmen. A lady who was being per-
sistently followed by a pertinacious cab-driver said to
him, ‘“ But why should I take a carriage? I had a
very bad horse yesterday : so to-day I prefer to walk.”
He answered, with a twinkle of the eye, as of a man
who launches his best Jon mot: “Signora, is your
thumb as long as your index? Is it as long as your
other fingers? Then, why should this horse resemble
the one you took yesterday?” Laughter from the
loiterers greeted this remark, showing that it appealed
to their idea of the ridiculous, which so often seems
unreasonably keener than ours.

If we follow the road up the hill, past the Naples
Museum, it will lead to the palace of Capo di Monte.
On this beautiful site Charles III. founded his famous
porcelain fabrique, and in the palace may still be seen

38

THE PARK OF THE PALACE OF CAPODI-
MONTE, ABOVE NAPLES

Autumn.

Naples—The Museum—Capo di Monte

a room lined entirely with flowered pottery, as pretty
as it would be uninhabitable. Charles III. had married,
in 1738, the daughter of the king of Poland, and she
brought with her a quantity of china from the famous
fabrique of Meissen. This seemed to give an impulse
to industry in and around Naples. At that time the
fabrication of porcelain was a secret possessed only
by a young alchemist named Frederick Béttger, who
worked under the protection of the Elector of Saxony.
He had re-discovered it from deep study of Chinese
pottery, and jealously guarded it for the king. It
became the fashion among kings and princes to become
patrons of porcelain factories, and Charles also deter-
mined to indulge the taste. Fixing upon the site of
Capo di Monte for his works, after only two months the
building was completed, for the king never permitted
his building projects to be dawdled over. He even
built the church of S. Gennaro, opposite, for the use of
the workers.

When he found himself obliged, in 1759, to go
to Spain, Charles broke up the fabrique he had so
delighted in, took with him all the materials, and
before embarking ordered all the furnaces and offices
to be destroyed, so that not a trace of his secret should
remain. But this jealous egotism brought him little
success. He never succeeded in Madrid with his
pottery, which would not resist the heat: the cups
cracked when filled with hot liquids. A large collec-
tion of the porcelain may be seen in the palace, very
flowery and often in bad taste, but yet with a strong

39

Naples

character of its own. His later mark, R F, stood for
Real fabrique,—not for Rex Ferdinandus, as French
writers assure us. In 1805 the works entirely ceased,
and the French and new Governments conceded the
fabrique to private industry. In 1834 it seemed to
acquire a new lease of life; but the awful cholera of
two years later threw all industries aside, and so ended
the history of the porcelain of Naples,

The palace of Capo di Monte is built over cata-
combs and said to be somewhat damp, but the park
is beautiful. Go there on an autumn day, when the
avenues fade away in the distance, when the trees are
turning to russet red, and the crisp falling leaves flutter
gently in the breeze. In the silence is heard the
whistle of the gamekeepers, calling the pheasants to
be fed, and now and then a grey-garbed figure with
slouching hat and shouldered gun saunters down the
vast paths. This enormous park is said to have been
inspired by English style ; but, since the English and
French pleasure-grounds themselves originated in Italy,
Capo di Monte is, as it were, but a revival of the
Italian style, on an enormous scale.

40

CORPORAL OF THE BERSAGLIERI,
NAPLES

CHAPTER III
PAST AND PRESENT—SANTA LUCIA, ETC.

WiTHIn the last quarter of a century the face of
Napies has completely changed. It has changed, not
slowly and subtly, as in other old towns, but as if a
feverish desire to obliterate the past, as well as to re-
model the present, possessed its inhabitants. A city
of magnificent hideousness has sprung up, and Naples,
once coloured with all the varied styles of the
Renaissance, and full of the fine patrician palaces of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has now grown
into a colourless map of shadeless streets and un-
broken house fronts. The sanitation of the city,
not its beautifying, has been the sole object ; and the
modernising of Naples has been carried out without
respecting the natural beauty and character that the life
of many centuries had stamped it with. That this is felt
by the cultivated Neapolitan himself the monthly publi-
cation of Napoli Nobilissimo bears expressive witness.’ —

But the appearance of wealth and well-being about
the new quarters as compared with the period previous

1 This paper was started some twelve years ago by Salvatore di Giacomo,
and is one of the best periodicals of its kind in Italy. :

6 41

Naples

to the ’Sventrimento is really wonderful. The shops are
handsome, and the streets wide. The hired horses and
carriages are infinitely better than of old. The beggars
earn, I am told, upwards of five francs daily during the
season. Perhaps because they no longer beg on horse-
back, as Stendhal boldly asserts that they did in his day !
Each year those who would see the heart of Naples
as it still is must pierce farther into the old quarters,
where Poverty reigns more supremely than in any other
city in the world. That great menagerie of human
beings and four-footed animals, who overcrowd the
old Vicoli, and about which so much has been written
since Mr. Gladstone penned his scathing letters, is now
steadily retreating from the shore, which from time
immemorial has been its rightful pasturage. With this
movement are vanishing the multi-colours, the historic
squalor, the “ picturesque smells” of Old Naples. If
the artist grieves tnat his field has been hopelessly white-
washed, the tourist ought to, and probably does, feel sheer
gratitude. It is far more on his account than on account
of the inhabitants that Naples has been modernised.
But it is surely a pity that the new life of the city
includes changed names for historic streets. It is as if,
with the unity of the country, all traces of past foreign
governments and incidents were to be erased. The
old largi, vicoli, traversi, are haunted with the names
of the past. Whychange them? Here is the traversa
Cellini, reminding us that Benvenuto Cellini was in
Naples in 1532, flying from Rome after one of his
many knife adventures. Here is the via named after
42

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

Giovanni della Porta, that quaint genius to whom no
other monument exists. And so on, all over the
complex geography of the city. And the Via Toledo,
one of the oldest streets in Italy, has been christened
anew as if it dated from yesterday. Yet it was the
pride of the city, wide and handsome for over a mile,
when the Corso of Rome was as narrow as a back
street of to-day ; when the Calsaioli in Florence was
a lane; when the great Boulevards of Paris, and
the rue Impériale of Lyon were unconstructed. Its
existence, too, is as a milestone in the history of Old
Naples, for till then there was no street worthy of the
name in the kingdom of the Anjous. When Don
Pedro first arrived in Naples, horrified at the miserable
condition of the roads in his new royaume, he determined
to build one worthy of his great name. lLevying a new
and perhaps somewhat cruel excise tax ‘di un tornese a
rotolo sucose da magnare”’ in spite of thetumultuous pro-
test ot the people, he had his way and the street grew.

“ , . where such had ne’er been dreamt
Or even thought of, now the sight
Of noble palaces and swiftly built
Bid feet pause with delight,
And all with one accord the words repeat,
Toledo’s new and splendid street,” ?

1 «| . onde non fui pensato,
Né si penso giammai, hora si vede
Erte palazzi e presto edificato,
Che di lieta veder ne fermo il piede,
E si noma da ognun, senza altro viete,
La nove e bella strada di Tolete.”

ss)

Naples

wrote the Sappho of that day, Laura Terracina, in her
flowery appreciation of Don Pedro and his many
works.

Since then the Toledo has been the heart of the
gaiety of Neapolitan life, the kaleidoscope of all its
human movement and colour. Madame de Genlis,
in the eighteenth century, likened it to the rue St.
Honoré, which is certainly one of the noisiest streets in
the world. It was improved in the time of Murat,
during whose energetic but too brief rule the Piazza
Ferdinando, which closes the Toledo, was enlarged.
Since then the pretentious Galleria Umberto, modelled
on the same plan as the galleries of Milan and of
Florence, has still further changed this end of the
street. The gallery covers the site of -the old
Largo del Castello, where once stood the Locanda
del Signor Monsoni, at which Goethe stopped in
4787.

The sunny and dusty Piazza Plebiscite, with all the
parts about it, is full of interest, though not a single
feature of the days prior to Charles III. remains un-
changed. A statue marked the centre, where now stands
the fountain. The Via Chiaia did not exist. On the
right, where to-day stands a magasin de nouveautés,
“La piccolo Guagagna,” stood the once famous Café
Europa, where Altavilla, the author of a hundred
comedies, wrote his play of that name. Opposite
it, where now is seen Gambrinus, stood the warehouse
of one Savarese, patronised by Ferdinand II.; and there,
on the Giorno dello Struscio, the king used to come to

44

THE FOUNTAIN OF PAPPARELLA IN
THE VILLA NAZIONALE OF NAPLES

The enormous granite bowl came originally from
Paestum.

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

take refreshments. On Thursday and Friday in Holy
Week the Via Toledo is reserved for foot passengers,
who swarm there in vast numbers. The sweeping of
the women’s silk dresses, which they let drag in the
dust, gave rise long ago to the now historic name of
‘“‘Struscio.” In the evening, between five and six, the
crowd becomes “smarter.” Private carriages fill the
narrow street; the pavements are packed with Nea-
politan ladies and their escorts; Cafliesh, the popular
cake shop, is filled to overflowing. What strikes the
foreigner is the freedom with which the men make
audible remarks about, or stare at, the women. It is
a fashion, rather than any deliberate rudeness. A very
pretty Frenchwoman, walking down the Toledo with
her husband, was so persistently annoyed by an army
officer following and staring at her, that her infuri-
ated husband suddenly took some coppers from his
pocket and flung them at the admirer. The un-
fortunate man was deeply chagrined, having supposed
that his behaviour was doing the lady the greatest
honour.

Across the Piazza stands the Palazzo Reale, which
the first Bourbon king restored, decorating it with
frescoes and arabesques from his new toy, Pompeii.
In the facade of this palace may be read the whole
history of Naples, for from its niches not a single
Neapolitan looks down from among the statues of the
many sovereigns. Looking up at the windows, it is
natural to remember that it has been the haunt of
fleeing and returning sovereigns, and to recall the-days

45

Naples

when a brilliant French court occupied it, the passion
for French titles giving it the ill-omened name of the
Tuileries. The last two Neapolitan kings shared the
same nickname of ‘‘ Bomba”—the only instance, I think,
of a nom de nique inherited.

There is an older palace at the back of the Piazza ;
but nobody remarks it now. Its towers have sunk,
and it is but an empty shell, full, not indeed of ghosts
(for ghosts are extremely rare all over Italy), but of
horrors—skeletons and ghastly legends. Yet the
Castel Nuovo was one of the great achievements of
the Anjous. In it was the famous chapel built in the
Gothic style they introduced, and which was completed
by Robert the Wise, the only king of Naples to whom
a beneficent title has clung. There, between 1329 and
1332, Giotto is said to have painted his frescoes while
the king delighted in watching him at work, listening
to his talk. Not a trace now remains of the bright
genius which once glorified this chapel, said to have
been the most beautiful of the time. That Giotto
really worked there one may reasonably doubt ; still,
the official list of items for the painting of the
ceiling during that period were paid to “Zotto di
Firenze.”

Close on the back of the Royal Palace stands San
Carlo, the result of a Nero-like determination to build
the biggest theatre in the world. It sprang up within
three months, as if under the touch of a magic wand,
a ‘Coliseum of modern times” (as some one called
it), the opening of which roused theatre-going to a

46

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

passion, Under the porticoes is still occasionally seen
the figure of one of the public writers who since the
days of Goethe have been so familiar a feature in Naples.
There he sits, often under a tattered umbrella, with his
century-old paraphernalia before him. It is an institution
which disappears slowly. Schools are still compulsory
only in name; and though army education has lessened
illiteracy, and the lottery encourages a knowledge of
figures, the very poor are as ignorant of reading and
writing as in the days when Ferdinand declared “ mon
peuple n’a pas besoin de penser.”

In the centre of the Piazza Plebiscite stands the
great fountain opened by Humbert in 1885, which
may be looked upon as the crowning monument of
modern Naples. If the ghosts of past generations
were to revisit their native town, they would surely
pause before this simple marble basin. It marks the
boundary between the night and the dawn of its
history—between the days of epidemic and disease,
of terrible and enforced squalor, of fetid water supply,
and to-day, when the water of Naples can hold its own
with the classic springs of Rome. To the Neapolitans
of our time it is a reminder of the courage and energy
of the king in promoting sanitation when the cholera
had laid bare all the hideous secrets of the city. He
was a benefactor in the widest sense of the word as
well as king, and would gladly have been the former
only, as is proved by the many stories of his simple
tastes. “Ah,” said Humbert one day to Madame
Serao, “how gladly would I accept a journalist’s” life

47

Naples

were I not king!” The authoress not unnaturally
answered, “Were I not a journalist, your Majesty, J
would not refuse to be king!”

With the erection of San Carlo, the building of
royal palaces about the kingdom (for which the
Tuileries at Versailles had revived the fashion), the
opening of the Via Chiaia and the Via Chiatamone,
which became the principal haunts for the elegant
alberghi of that day (as they still are), the journey
to Naples became more than ever the fashion. There
was much to attract at that time. Vesuvius was gain-
ing a second celebrity with a series of active and
beautiful eruptions, and with the discovery of those
cities it had long ago destroyed. The days of blood-
shed preceding the advent of the Bourbons was followed
by a hopeful lull. The Academy was thronged with
foreigners, and a revival of art and learning seemed
to throb through the unfortunate city. Of all periods
of Neapolitan history this is one of the most fascinating,
bringing with it as it did all the wit, the beauty, and the
learning of foreign countries. Alfieri came hither in
his prime, and with his ardent dreams of a future Italy ;
Goethe philosophised; Angelica Kauffmann tried to
paint unsympathetic royalties with as graceful a touch
as the subjects allowed; Madame Piozzi wrote her
raptures of “dear, delightful Naples” ; a whole world
of travellers rejoiced in its beauty.

The Bourbons were a poor lot, but the last chapters
of Neapolitan court life belong to them, and court
life covers a multitude of sins. In spite of all the

48

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

bloodshed that closed the century, in spite of the
enslaving feudalism, the poverty and ignorance of the
plebe, the reckless misadministration of justice, and
the instability of the throne, there was a wave of hope
and promise running through the intellectual life of
Naples, which gave it a glow, a colour, a vigour, of
which the Unity seems to have robbed it. The city
has remained, even in its united prosperity, a deserted
kingdom. Even the visits of the king, whose birth
and youth belong to Naples, have become rarer and
rarer.

“The unity of Italy has enriched the towns of the
north and taken nothing from them,” said a Neapolitan
whose father had fought in the Bourbon army, while
his father-in-law was the last representative of the king
in Sicily ; “but, for the right to call ourselves Italian,
the Neapolitan has given up his kingdom and all he
had.”

“Naples est la seule capitale de I’Italie; toutes
les autres villes sont des Lyons enfermés,” wrote
Stendhal.

It is but a step from the Piazza and the modern life
of the city to the old steps of the Pallonetta, which lead
straight from the rich quarter down into the poorest.
These steps form one of the most striking pictures of
the old native form of street building ; but they are
doomed to disappear with the fishing population which
once crowded about them. ‘The bay that washed the
house walls below has long been filled up, and with
incredible swiftness the great houses and hotels of the

7 49

Naples

Via Lucia have arisen. Beyond the Pallonetta large
tenement houses are now seen, built nominally as
sanitary homes for the Lucians, but practically so far
above their heads in price that the best-off among them
could not pay a third of what is asked.

“Yes; Santa Lucia will have its new houses; but
the Lucians will not change their manner of life. And,
what is worse, driven away from the sea, they will feel
yet more bitterly the suffering which is the destiny to
which the poor are born.”

That a strange pathos hangs about the destruction
of S. Lucia few will deny. In the gradual civilisation
of cities, progress has been slow, almost unfelt, in
piercing into the fetid hearts of overcrowded quarters
and leaving them pure and healthy. Time has gradu-
ally thrown down the useless and put in its place what
the life of the day requires. But in this case resolution
and action went hand in hand. The terrible epidemic
of cholera, the flight of all foreigners, and the utter
poverty which followed, awakened the whole country
to the truth that the condition of Naples had become a
question of national importance. No time could be
lost, and the demolishing of this among other crowded
centres of a remote past has been carried out within a
few years. But in the case of S. Lucia the pickaxe
had to be directed at human as well as stone foundations.
With the destruction of their homes, a whole race,
distinct and proud, has been undermined, for, as the
poet has truly said, the Lucians will not live else-
where.

50

ri
ee

aby:
a

nw

i

y

Daas <a ‘

'
al

f
BES

ee eo
pees Sesh te!

ay Sa
A Pies S10 3

CHURCH OF S. CROCE, NAPLES

In the vast piazza in front of it the rag markets are
held, and a great trade is done in old shoe soles.

moh

»

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

“Santa Lucia! That romantic name which once
made those of the most distant shores, of far-off
countries, tremble deliciously and dream and think!
Lamartine, Dumas, De Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Dickens,
Théophile Gautier, and other rare spirits pronounced with
emotion those two words which evoke in their tender
memories visions of the smiling sea, the clear sunrise,
the purple afterglow, sparkling moonlight, emerald
reflections, the scraping of soft guitars, the suggestive
tinkling of mandolines. O sweet Naples, O blessed
soil! Still over all the world the wandering minstrels
sing to them in the taverns, the restaurants, under the
windows of the inns, on board ship in distant ports.
And hundreds of lips repeat in chorus, with a passion
which makes the hair rise,

“¢ Mare si lucido
Lido si caro
Scordar fa i triboli
Al marinaio
Venite al agile
Barchetta mia
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia.’” }

This song, which seems so purely Neapolitan, was
written by a Frenchman, De Lauziere. Curiously
enough, of the two popular songs of Naples, “Santa
Lucia” and “Bella Napoli,” one was by a foreigner,
while the author of the other is unknown.

Whether the Bourbon tax on the shade of trees had

1 Santa Lucia, by Ferdinando Russo.

51

Naples

anything to do with the past century’s steady destruc-
tion of parks in and about Naples, I know not; but
certainly the city, which was once a series of vast
gardens reaching from S. Elmo down to the shore,
cannot now boast of a single fine park. Turning
from the Via Lucia to the sea, we reach the narrow
and stunted Villa—as the public gardens are called,
with a lingering tradition of Roman days. It 1s
all that remains of the thick and beautiful wood
up to the verge of which the waves washed. Near
it a great rock rose from the sea, known as the
“‘Scuoglio di Messer Leonardo,” of which the old
song says :

“O, how often towards the fall of evening
Together with thoughtless comrades did we go,
Above the rock of Messer Leonardo
To feast upon the cockles from below.” !

In the garden stands the beautiful Aquarium, the
only quiet spot amid the terrific noise of Naples. It
was founded some thirty years ago by Anton Dorhn,
who won lasting honour by his splendid work, and
the institution is supported by the joint contributions of
several governments. It is a distinctly cosmopolitan
school. All the exquisite contents of the tanks come
from the Bay of Naples itself, and it is said that many

1 “QO, quante vota, la sera, a lu tardo
Le ’vemo a spasso cu tanta zetelle
*"Ncopp’ a li scuoglio de mess¢ Lunardo
E la faciamo spuonele e patelle.”

52

sobre

| aa
aye a? +,
e ‘

‘i

A BALIA (NURSE) IN THE VILLA
NAZIONALE, NAPLES

The public gardens are the rendezvous of all the
children and gorgeously dressed nurses on Sunday
afternoons.

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

years’ research would not exhaust the fauna of this one
branch of the Mediterranean.

The Villa is a pleasant and amusing spot to loiter in,
always cool, evenin summer. On certain days the band
performs, and on the marble seats sit rows of gorgeously
dressed balias, some of whom possess costumes quite
Titianesque in splendour. The children’s parents never
seem very far off ; for the Neapolitans are a domestic
people—particularly the men. It is interesting to note
the great difference of type between the various classes,
a difference which is as noticeable in figure as in face.
The bourgeoisie are ill-formed, fat, and heavy, even in
youth ; the noblesse have types as slender, as nervous,
as in the North.

A small café stands among the trees, and a crowd
may sometimes be noticed listening with rapt attention
to a Neapolitan story-teller, a genuine relic of the days
of Boccaccio, whose tales are quite as romantic and
highly flavoured. His language, of course, is pure
dialect. At the culminating point of the story, when
every listener is hanging upon the next word, he abruptly
pauses and passes his plate round. Dirty, unkempt,
and often totally unlettered as he is, his gestures are
those of the born actor, the natural gift of the country
that produced Silvio Fiorillo, the possible creator of
the Punchinello,—of the land, too, which has pro-
duced, with one Italian exception, the best collec-
tion of Fairy Tales in Europe—the now-forgotten
Pentamerone.

Outside the rails of the Villa lies the fine drive, the

53

Naples

Via Carraccioli, with its hideous border of hotels. Its
name reminds us of an incident which the Neapolitan
has not forgotten, and when the descendants of a great
name visited Naples they were received with coolness.

It seems to be the fashion among the youth of Naples
to drive absurd little carriages drawn by diminutive
ponies or donkeys. Only persons of the poorer classes,
or an occasional group of urchins, wretched little
scunnizzi, on the watch for cigarette ends, pass on
foot. On the féte-days, when the small bourgeoisie
indulge in hired victorias, they never recognise their
pedestrian friends.

Beyond the noisy rush of carriages lies the turquoise
sea, a continual delight to the eye and to the senses.
““On ne travaille pas a bord de la mer; on n’y pense
pas méme. On réve.” How true it is! On the left,
dimly through the trees rises the shadowy form of
Vesuvius, about which, I believe, something of the old
mediaeval belief in the nether world still lingers in
Naples. Else why is it the only feature of their
country about which the native poets never or rarely
write? During the last great eruption a frate said
to a friend of ours, as he gazed across the bay at
the burning mountain, — i

“ Dicono che non esiste l’ Inferno! Allora di dove
vien tutto questo fuoco ?”’

Far out to sea, like a dim-coloured plover’s egg, lies
the Castel del Ovo, fastened to the shore by a narrow
breakwater. Virgil was said to have founded Naples
upon eggs, as a magical charm for its protection, and

54

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

this legendary derivation may have had some share in
the naming of the castle. Round it, in the summer
nights, the eels are speared by the light of torches.
The subject has inspired one of the most graceful of di
Giacomo’s Poems of a Monastery—the poem of the young
acolyte who has taken upon himself a vain vocation :—

“ Under the Castle del Ovo
The spearing of eels gleams bright,
And the dim-skinned fishermen light
Their torches of fiery glow
Where the prow of the barque dips low
To search the depths of the night.

“ But the all subtle sea
Lets not its depths divine,
Lets no heaven wholly shine
Through its profundity ;
And this convent seems to me
Deep as the soundless brine.

“For when I gaze around
I see men on every side
Who seem to escape me—to hide,
To be dumb, or to make no sound !
And I think, even I, ah me!
Such depths for my life have found.” !

Unconsciously this may express the new sentiment of
our time, in a city whose two hundred monasteries have
dwindled down since Ferdinand suppressed the richest
to the lingering few of to-day.

Whilst the monastic life is more limited than it was
a century ago, the old religious festivals and ceremonies

1 From the dialect of [7 Monasterio, di Giacomo.

55

Naples

have changed not a whit. Still does the blood of
S. Gennaro, S. Stefano, S. Giovanno Battista, S. Panta-
leone, and S. Patricia liquefy yearly as in the sixteenth
century, while that of Carafa, Founder of Holy Works,
and of Don Placido Baccher in the Gésu Vecchio remain
ever liquid. The old orders of the Misericordia are
seen continually in the streets, from the aristocratic
order of S. Ferdinando, which in snowy garments
follows the coffins of the upper class, to the humbler
societies who officiate for the poor. But, talking of
funerals, I doubt whether the large affiches bearing the
name of the deceased, which for a certain sum may be
hung above the doors of the church, were customary
a century ago. Surely the medieval spirit would
have been shocked at the sight of flaring advert-
isements pasted upon the pillars of many of the
churches ?

Naples is a city of historic and pauperising charities.
“Tl n’y a qu’a Naples, la charité est dans le sang”’;
and vast sums are spent in helping those who will not
help themselves. But these charities lie far from the
new quarter we have visited. The oldest of all, but
one, is that of the Annunciation, of which the tourist
probably knows little, save that a certain hole in the
wall through which abandoned children used to be
thrust is now closed. But a visit to the building,
though not exactly cheerful, is interesting. Among the
inmates may be seen the last sufferer of that closed-
up hole, a girl who remembers being thrust through
into the revolving case at the age ot seven. The

56

THERTE

f t ah ens . ’ \
re aay CN OD wile oy hogan
; Bhoyly res,

4

STREET SCENE, THE MARINA, NAPLES

The fruit and vegetables of the town are sold almost
entirely on hand-carts about the streets.

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

number of infants in this home is quite appalling.
Hundreds and hundreds of half-starved babes line the
enormous rooms, with one mourrice to every five. No
child leaves the precincts of the building before eight
years of age. The parents may then claim their off-
spring, a large percentage of whom have zot been born
out of wedlock; but the greater number are never
claimed, and remain in the home to master a handicraft.
Sometimes some devout youth, in gratitude for an
answered prayer, makes a vow to the Virgin to marry
one of the humble daughters dedicated to her care.
Then the girl on whom such rare fortune smiles goes
out into the world of narrow streets and struggling
homes with a dot of a hundred francs, which she
usually lavishes upon the first feast she has ever
enjoyed.

Among the new five-story houses which are rising
all over Naples, the old palaces or churches of the
Renaissance seem out of place now; but a few corners
are left to show us dimly what an exterior or interior
in the time of the Anjous was like. The little chapel
of S. Pietro dei Minuti, in the Duomo, is perhaps
the interior the most intact, in spite of restorations ;
while the church of S. Maria di Donna Regina (not
far from the Duomo), which, passed over by the guide
books, is therefore also ignored by the average tourist,
is literally filled with treasures of the past. About the
church of S. Lorenzo hangs, we know, the peculiar
interest of Fiammetta’s image, telling us that even
Naples, the dissolute city of Boccaccio’s day, was

8 57

Naples

capable of producing one of the five mystic types of
the platonic worship of women. In an age when
morals were utterly lax, the ideals who inspired pure
and lasting love stand out with sharp distinctness.
Boccaccio, like Petrarch, first saw his lady in a church.
Like Laura, she was the older of the two, was married,
and in both cases the details of their lives are unknown.
Did Boccaccio really love, or did he but dream another’s
dream? Weshall never know; but, whether flesh and
blood or only spirit, the type remains to Naples along
with its one other typical figure of a woman—Queen
Joanna, the Neapolitan Semiramide.

“¢Grassa né magra, bella, el vizo tendo,”

These two opposite types have one link in common, in
that no authenticated statue or portrait of either has
come down to us.

We are in the Syren’s city ; and it is interesting to
know that, ages past, before the church was built, the
colossal head now known as the Capo di Napoli,
which tradition claims to have belonged to the Syren
Partenope, was discovered here. It now stands in
the Via Eligio, transformed under the inevitable white-
wash of the Risanimento, and with a new nose. So
often has that nose been broken and mended that an
element of the ridiculous has clung to it, and any large-
headed and ili-featured person gives rise to the ex-
pression, “‘ Me pare donna Marianna a capo ’1 Napoli.”

A few of the finer palaces still keep their primitive
forms—such as the Palazzo dei Carafa, in the Via

58

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

Biagio, and, not far from it, that of Capua, conte di
Altavilla ;—and not all were built by foreigners, for
there were a few Neapolitan architects, though even
those are sometimes wrongly termed Florentine. In
those days Florentine and Siennese painters and archi-
tects were so common in Naples that the native crafts-
man was overshadowed. There is, perhaps, only one
case of a Neapolitan artist of that time in Tuscany—a
certain Giovanni di Pietro, one of whose frescoes may
be seen in Pisa.

Every one has remarked the extraordinary facade
of S. Gésu, which, in spite of its latter-day usage, keeps
the stern and princely atmosphere of a palace. It
belonged to the Prince of Salerno, who made himself
a great favourite by giving splendid dramatic entertain-
ments,—for there was no public theatre in the middle
ages. Only in the seventeenth century was a regular
theatre instituted ; under the Spanish rule half of all
profits from dramatic entertainments was given to the
hospitals.

Naples is now full of theatres—from the Florentine,
where Duse acted as a girl in Goldoni’s comedies, to
the Mercadante, where Scarpetta acts in his own plays:
almost the only actor Naples has produced in the last
decade,—but the drama is not of a high order, and
even that “fanciful folly’’ which, Disraeli says, finds
its way into their extemporary comedy is singularly
lacking.

The streets in the direction of S. Gésu and Basso
Porto lead into many a poor vicolo, which the

59

Naples

sventrimento has not yet reached, and where the cholera
once played havoc—or, stranger still, passed over !

“This is the Fondaco Verde of Basso Porto ;
They say ’tis going to be enlarged at last,
After so long! Well, ’tis a good idea
To let fresh air into that breathless past.

“In this alley, ill-paved, tortuous,
Where the very sun’s rays are denied,
During the cholera, two years ago,
Only one died, they say, only one died!

“Impossible! So, if for an instant,
Within its misery lost, you would have sworn.
Only one dead? Yes, but a hundred born.

“«¢ And this greasy, ever-screaming mass,
Augment, increase, until to hundreds grown
No alley this ; a rank field, ploughed and sown.” !

Here it is, in these poor streets, that the links between
the Naples of yesterday and that of to-day are found—
links that will not be broken, though so many of the
old landmarks of the city have gone. De Falco,
Celano, and the old guides who centuries ago conducted
foreigners through their beloved city, might no longer
find their way about ; the character in Dumas’s book
who could find his way all over Naples in the shade
would be at a loss amid the stretches of dazzling
squares and streets. But the old traits and customs
remain. Still is the number of four-footed animals
vaster in proportion to the population than in any
other city in the world; still are man and beast

1 Translated from the Neapolitan of di Giacomo:

60

we

TYPES OF PEASANTRY, NAPLES

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

decorated with horns of coral and silver; the Nea-
politan’s right hand is constantly in the position of
the charm pointing downwards. The screaming and
gesticulations of the plebe are as distracting as ever.
The street may be wider; but it is still their home,
and there they sit and work, or sleep, or perform their
toilet with unblushing publicity, spitting right and left
the while. Only at night do they retreat into their
dark houses, or to eat their fattening diet of macaroni
and chestnut-meal soup. Coffee is said to be drunk
in greater quantity in Naples than in any other European
city. The street is the kitchen, however, rich in colour
and smell, for the Neapolitan only cares to eat what
he has seen cooked. Nothing in its way is more strik-
ing than the autumn cuisine. The roasting of chestnuts
is world-wide ; but where else are they offered for sale
in bouquets, each chestnut spiked upon a short stick ?
In the middle of a pavement, driving foot passengers
into the road, is placed a great stove with a glow of
ruddy light about it. On the red-hot wires the gorgeous
pepperoni are dancing, roasting for winter consumption.
The street itself is often blocked with hand-carts of
Indian figs, pomegranates, and mummified packets of
grapes, swathed in a lemon leaf, and then again in dried
and crackling vine leaves. The scene is beautiful ; the
dirt, the impure air, and the wretched poverty of the
figures around one are incapable of spoiling it. Here
is one of the last of the macaroni shops, where the
spaghetti is ot devoured to earn soldi, but from sheer,
absorbing hunger. Near it stands a barber’s shop.
61

Naples

The barber practises bleeding with leeches as of old,
and has written over his shop door the absurd in-
scription—“ Fabbrica di Mignetti che si applicano a
domicile,”’—literally, ‘‘ Fabrique of leeches which may
be applied to the domicile.” We are in a hopeless
confusion of past and present. The corricolo has dis-
appeared, the lazzaroni are extinct ; but the spirit of
driving and of begging are unchanged, and I am
inclined to think that they never will change. Kind-
ness to animals seems as much a characteristic of race
as of teaching, and begging in a tradeless city becomes
a trade like any other.

All around, in the midst of deafening noise and the
greatest misery, the gaiety of the Neapolitans is more
striking than anything else. They are the gayest
people in the world, as they have ever been—the same
who inspired these words of Sainte-Beuve’s: “II faut
rire avant que le bonheur vient, 2 peur de mourir sans
avoir ri.”

But it is the great modern Naples, not the old, that
attracts the mass of travellers, and the impression borne *
in upon one after an effort to become acquainted with
its objects of interest is really unique. We are in a
city where almost nothing older than the last half
century is purely Neapolitan. Everything that arrests
the eye in its architecture, or about which legends cling,
is foreign. What were they in the past, this people
whose dead tell us so little? whose monuments are of
usurpers, whose churches show the arms of Spanish

families, whose nobility has almost dwindled away,
62

Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.

whose only history has been one of enslavement in
their own country? It matters little now, perhaps.
The future certainly is doubly powerful where there
has been no developed past, and there is a certain
fascination in watching a people naturally so quick
cosmopolising themselves and transforming their country
with such rapidity.

63

CHAPTER ALY

THE NEAPOLITAN CHARACTER—THE LOTTERY—
CAMORRA, ETC.

Tue Neapolitans are a fanciful and imaginative people ;
and about this imaginative quality, at once the charm
and the curse of the South, there is something almost
volcanic in its intensity and in its vagaries. It can be
traced in every path of life, in every line of work. What
is the lottery but an instance of it? How often has
this subject been dwelt upon and considered from the
point of view of an incurable passion for gambling, a
corroding vice, which a by no means blameless Govern-
ment has not discouraged! It might be nearer the truth
to regard it as the outcome of a people’s fantastic
imagination. ‘They are the followers of phantoms, the
dreamers of vain dreams. They are slaves of poverty
whose exalted hopes of freedom buoy them up with the
strength to live. The poorest among the very poor are
those who hope the most, since they have the most to
gain, and to the last day of their miserable lives this
hope never fails them.

From earliest times the lottery was always used as a

64

“2

A FRUIT SELLER, NAPLE

a a he

: . A. ’
ire Tee

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

means of supplying the country’s exchequer ; the excuse
offered for making use of such a system being that, as
the spirit of gambling a/ways exists, it should be given
a legal outlet. Originating in Spain, the lottery spread
and rooted itself over Italy, and was once in the sixteenth
century adopted even in England as a source of revenue.
But with the progress of civilised ideas its abolition was
inevitable ; and that it should still linger in Italy, a
system no longer of our time and civilisation, is one of
the ills which (to use an expression of Villari’s) “eat
into the country’s spine.”

It has been said that were the Government, in whose
hands it has been since the Unity, to suppress the lottery,
a revolution would ensue; yet when the French abolished
theirs, in 1836, the act was followed by an increase of
savings, money banks, etc. No: the Italian Government
depends upon and encourages the evil, and if there is
the least falling-off in the lottery gains in Naples it
exclaims with horror, ‘What! are they so poor now
that they cannot even play?”

If there is one method more than another (apart
from the interference of the fattened Government) which
suggests itself as a possible remedy for the evil, it is that
of the influence of the Church. But here arises a new
difficulty ; for the lottery is looked upon as being under
the special protection of the priests, and there is an
erroneous belief that it was founded by Ignatius Loyola
himself. Thousands of players habitually stake on the
Virgin’s numbers, those who win returning thanks as
devoutly as the losers curse their favourite Madonna.

9 65

Naples

Dr. Newman maintained the thesis that the profane
oaths used habitually by Italians proved that the objects
of devotion were ever present in their minds: if this
be so, their gambling is inextricably mixed up with
their hopes of heaven,—but another instance of their
imaginative hopefulness.

Most novel-readers of to-day have read Mathilde
Serao’s powerful work, J/ Paese di Coccagna. But books
treating of a country’s evils are generally more popular
with foreigners than with the inhabitants themselves,
and the lesson it sought to convey has had no result
whatever in Naples itself. As an effort to bring it
home more realistically to all classes, Madame Serao
consented to the dramatising of her work, without, I
believe, profit to herself. The result was a strange one,
and throws a high light upon the Neapolitan character.
The entire audience enthusiastically wrote down the
numbers played by the fictitious gamblers on the stage,
and rushed off by hundreds to stake them in that week’s
lottery. The numbers all came out, and the play had
a success such as had never been dreamt of by the
authoress.

The strange workings of fate in the Lotto are in
harmony with the fantastic history of Naples. In one
case its story is interwoven by a mere twist of fortune
with those days of cholera which transformed it into a
great “ Mourning City.” In 1884, towards the close of
the hot August of that year, a few cases of cholera made
their appearance ; but they were so carefully isolated
that the trouble seemed held in check. On the last

66

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

Saturday of the month a sudden wave of delight swept
over hundreds of the poor, who had, as usual, risked
their all in that week’s lottery. It was not a big gain,
—only a few francs each, a “piccolo guadagno,” as
they call it ;—but it broke the long strain of perpetual
disappointment. The drawing of the numbers, as every-
body knows, is gone through on the last day of the
week, and there is all the idle morrow on which to
waste, if not to venture again, the trifle gained. So
this vast horde of wretched poor caroused that night
and all the next day on a surfeit of unaccustomed
food—the over-ripe fruit and vegetables of the hot
town. A week later there were five hundred cases
of cholera, and no longer a hope of arresting the awful
disease.

As the week closes, statistics show a distinct increase
in petty theft, especially among the servant classes.
They will steal far more readily to play in the Lotto
than to spend directly upon themselves. Indeed, the
vice of gambling is at the root of a vast quantity of
thefts and petty crimes which are roughly classed as
camorristic. Think of the temptation! Impossible
to go out without passing a Banco Lotto, with its five
flaming red, blue, and green numbers, ticketed up
outside,—for each bureau makes its own guess at lucky
numbers for the next draw. Habitués, however, often
play persistently for years upon the same numbers.

The fortunes of chance are certainly a more curious
study in the Italian lottery than even in the frantic
play of Monte Carlo. ‘The statistics point to a kind of

67

Naples

permanent luck in certain towns over others, quite
apart from the population and the sums ventured—
chances far beyond even a system. They point out,
too, the phenomenon that it is the seaport towns that
are most prone to play, and on the whole with the
least success. Fortune smiles on Rome and Palermo ;
but towards Naples, whose vast masses of poor venture
their centimes with such unchanging hopefulness, she is
far more capricious.

The strange coincidences of fate meet us right and
left. A money-lender in the Rete File was robbed in
broad daylight. His safe happened to be unlocked for
the moment, and all its contents were taken and he
himself so severely wounded by the gang that he was
left for dead. When he came to, and realised that
he was ruined, in despair the wretched man turned to
his dictionary of lottery numbers, and put the few
francs remaining to him on the three numbers corre-
sponding to an attempt at murder, theft, and unlocked
safe. He won, and recovered every penny lost by his
misadventure.

It seems natural enough, in speaking of the lottery,
to touch also on the other great evil of Naples, the
Camorra. Like the lottery, it is an evil imported from
Spain, that country to which Naples seems to owe
everything rooted in it, good, bad, indifferent. The
Camorra is said to be a direct imitation of a secret
society there, the Guardaba, founded in 1417 at Toledo
by Spanish brigands and galley slaves, which spread so
easily over the South that one cannot but think that the

68

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

Neapolitans were only too well prepared to imbibe its
principles. The full meaning of the word “Camorra”
(or ‘Honoured Society,” as the Camorristi call it) is
probably known only by the Neapolitans themselves,
those who benefit and those who suffer from it. Its
object is, roughly speaking, to protect criminals, and
to benefit in common from their thefts. It is, of course,
a paradox to speak of this society as secret. The
police know all its members, and, alas! find it only
too wise to preserve friendly relations with them. Its
ranks are recruited from among mere youths of. the
lower class, who too easily fall under its evil influence,
and can never afterwards free themselves. Nearly all
the cab-drivers of Naples are under the control of the
“Capo Camorristi’’ (as the head of the Camorra is
styled), and they are easily identified by the square cut
of their hair over the ears.

This society may change its name in time, and lose
something of its power; but I question whether it will
ever be entirely swept out of Naples. It is in the
blood of this apparently ground-down people to assert
themselves and govern in some form or other. It
seems to be the opinion among foreigners of to-day
who have lived long in Naples that no Camorra as a
society now exists. They say that the word has become
a mere term to express all acts of dishonesty, private or
political. The Neapolitans themselves, the bourgeoisie,
tell another story, and I recall the words of the great
historian of Naples: “Italy may indeed continue as
entirely free, may have her Budgets as perfectly balanced

69

Naples

as she choose, and yet may remain a nation destitute
of moral significance. She requires, then, a new ideal,
and that ideal cannot be other than social justice, which
she should apply before it is demanded. The man
who lives in the midst of slavery, side by side with
the poor and disinherited, without reacting against the
causes of that slavery and that misery, is a man
unworthy of his own freedom, and must sink inevitably
into moral degradation. In such a case, the Camorra,
the Mafia, the brigandage will always exist, and will eat
into the marrow of the country’s spine.” ?

It would be somewhat bold for any foreigner to
assert that he knows, or completely understands, the
Neapolitan people. To know any people well there
must ‘be, perhaps, some foundation of sympathy or
tastes in common; but the foreigner’s sympathy for
the Neapolitan people may be said to be very small.
Their absolute incapacity to express fact or opinion
tersely is alone a barrier. An Englishwoman, herself
married to a Neapolitan, holds the amusing theory that
the language of the South is so constructed that it is
almost impossible to form a sentence without a dubious
meaning. Every word slips into the next ; every word
is but half pronounced.

Is it a language that will ever die out, and with its
disappearance would the Neapolitan himself undergo
a change? I can hardly imagine the one without the
other, and confess to a secret liking for that illusive
dialect that can express at once so little and so much—

1 Villari.
70

be

¥
es

A CORNER IN THE GARDEN OF LORD
ROSEBERY’S VILLA, POSILLIPO

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

a language which, if the voice be soft, is so musical and
passionate, as one may perhaps venture to say that all
Italian dialects are. It has, too, its own literature, its
many dictionaries, even its grammars. It is the chosen
language for the modern poetry and for the drama of
Naples ; but, alas, few others than the natives them-
selves can understand it, and it is as Sanscrit to the
Roman and the Tuscan. Compare the styles of those
Neapolitan writers who use both dialect and Italian, and
one is more than ever impressed with the natural fitness
of the former for expressing their peculiar types of mind.

Of the dialect poetry much could be written.
Comparing it with the work of Pascarelli, whose
exquisite sonnets in Roman dialect are well known,
Mathilde Serao claims that both the Neapolitan poets
of to-day, Russo and di Giacomo, touch depths of
passion that the Roman writer knows not. But I should
be rather inclined to say that their passionate feelings
were of a different order, verging on a quickly exhausted
violence, and therefore easier to express than the far
more reserved feelings of the North.

A distinct vein of melancholy may be traced in the
Neapolitan literature of to-day. Some trace it back
to the Revolution; but in the prose works of di
Giacomo at least the influence of the French school
can be detected. It is in his poetry that he touches
a purely original vein, showing a profound knowledge
of the complex human nature around him. This
poet, still a young man, writes his prose in Italian
and his poetry in dialect. The one, therefore, has been

71

Naples

translated, and has spread into France ; but the other,
in which his true talent lies, is, so far, too little known.

As far as the Neapolitan drama goes, most clearly
can the French influence be traced there, but in a diluted
and impoverished form. The theatres of Naples seem
to me at a very low ebb. The playwright-actor,
Scarpetta, is not strong enough to revive it to full
life; but he has instilled into it his quaint humour,
bold and confident acting, and immensely improved
scenic display. His plays treat of the bourgeoisie,
who are easier to parody than the noblesse, but some-
what tiresome in the very truthful nature in which he
depicts them. The one really original work to which
Scarpetta can lay claim as an author is the piece
entitled La Miseria e Nobilta. There is in it a
macaroni scene which would alone endear it to the
Neapolitan mind. But one is struck in all dialect
plays here by the quantity of talking, compared with
the dramatic movement. The voices of the Neapolitan
actors, when not actually screaming, are so strangely
monotonous, their enunciation so rapid and restless,
that attention is apt to flag. The history of Scarpetta
himself is striking enough. By sheer energy he has
risen from poverty to wealth. He is the owner of
several palaces and villas, from which extravagance
has from time to time driven him. Up on the
Vomero may be seen the villa on which Scarpetta had
written the gay inscription, “Qui rido io.” But a
temporary change of fortune changed it suddenly into
‘Qui ridiamo noi,” when the bailiffs occupied it.

72

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

Scarpetta’s popularity in Naples is immense, and
there popularity means success, for in Naples every-
thing is “popular” in the way of art and literature.
Poet and writer, artist and sculptor, poor as they too
often are, must seek to be appreciated by the mass,
since there seems to be no distinctly critical and
intellectual centre in Naples, as there is in Paris or
Rome,—no stern but beneficial ideal for the arts as
understood by the few. Has Naples ever produced
an art critic? I hardly think so. The few exceptions
who stand apart from the popular celebrities of the
city are those who carry their work abroad and find
there a correct level for it in the criticism of other
countries. One of the sculptors best known abroad
is Iarace, who has really great power and a fertile
imagination. In his studio on the Corso may now be
seen a cast of a famous statue representing the con-
version of St. Augustine by his mother, a work full
of profound subtlety of treatment and an exquisitely
refined invention. As an example of the ruinous
effects of Neapolitan popularity I might instance a
well-known and brilliant sculptor who struck a popular
note some years ago, which the foreign critic might
well pronounce to have been his death-blow as far as
further production went. An exquisite little bust of
a girl’s head so struck the people’s fancy that the
artist seems now to spend his time in turning out
endless copies of it! It pays. That is the great
thing.

There is another quality which is dangerous to the

10 73

Naples

just appreciation of gifts. That is the Neapolitan’s
praise of everything of his own country. He rarely
compares it with foreign work ; feeling, perhaps, that
the more roughly handled are his countrymen and
their capacities, the more he must stand up for them.
And this habit. is more unfortunate than may be at
first imagined. Not only does it affect his appreciation
of the arts: it also blinds his judgment in politics and
detracts from the value of his opinions. He will
stand up for the justly attacked as frankly as for the
wrongly abused, feeling (with some justice, but no
excuse) that in his united country he has by far the
hardest struggle to keep in the political running morally
and intellectually.

The Mattino is a most remarkable case of journalistic
enterprise which is popular through its own merits.
Its editor, Scarfoglio, had the inspiration of founding in
Naples a journal ot which the literary scope and standard
were to be on an altogether higher plane of excellence
than anything of the kind in the country. Taking it
out of the atmosphere of petty local gossip, he boldly
wrote over the heads of the people who composed his
reading public. His collaborators objected on the
ground that it was useless to write articles of a sort that
were not demanded by the mass who were likely to sub-
scribe to the paper. But Scarfoglio was firm in his
determination to uphold his standards. ‘They will
come to us in time,” he said. ‘ We shall not go down
to them.” Success favoured his enterprise. His power
of political polemics was so great, and the management

74

Aiea
AIh Si .

A TERRACE IN THE VILLA ROSEBERY

This villa was formerly known as the Villa de la
Hante.

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& a 5 = ay) Ve Hig

a i,

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The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

of the journal so efficient, that he soon made his paper
a powerful organ, raising it to a position unique in
South Italy. Scarfoglio is a man singularly gifted with
the power of political invective, a terrible adversary,
whose philippics fall unsparingly on whosoever may
cross his path. During the period when his gifted wife
collaborated with him, the Maztino was in the hands of
perhaps the two ablest writers in their separate lines
in all Italy. As indicating the manner in which he
tempts the public taste away from the usual feuilleton, I
may mention that during our stay in Naples last summer,
he was giving a translation of “Tristram and Iseult.”
He is a great authority on Provengal literature.

The material difference between the upper and the
lower classes is wider in this country than in any other,
and the same may be said of their tastes. Music is
loved far more by the plebe than by the noblesse. It
used to be a common saying that the upper classes went
to see and not to hear the opera, and that this is still the
case a single visit to San Carlo in the height of the season
will suffice to prove. ‘The talking is incessant, and the
fashion of paying visits from box to box shows in what
spirit the music is regarded. It is still the excuse for
a réunion, precisely as it was in the days of Charles III.
The Italians keep the passion for first nights which so
struck Stendhal, and the least wealthy will gladly pay
exaggerated prices for a seat. These first nights are
the occasion of jealous competition among the ladies of
the audience as to who should receive the most visits
from their friends. :

75

Naples

Even as an accomplishment music is little taught now,
and as a serious study is quite neglected. But the South
is the very home of light song and melody ; and as long
as only the heart is touched and the ear charmed, as long
as no profound feelings are roused, and a too intellectual
attention called’ upon, all classes delight in music with
an abandon quite unknown elsewhere. It is very much
the same with their native poetry, which is full of
‘religion, de la tendresse, et de l’amour,” but often
lacks depths of thought and sustained feeling. Perhaps
it is from the absence of these qualities that the enchanting
talent for improvising arose, “‘ qui séduit parfois la pensée,
mais ne la satisfait point,” and leaves not a trace behind.
But during the last fifty years this transitory form of art
has diminished, the last improviser of real merit being,
I believe, the beautiful Marchesa Palomba.

And the Naples salons of to-day? Read the
descriptions by Stendhal. They are as true as if the
ink on the charming and chosen words were still wet.
The social gatherings are as grandiose as when the
Neapolitan noblesse adorned their own court. The
apparence of court life is still in their very blood.
Redolent of the past in so many ways, the illusion is
enhanced by that characteristic of old times—dirty
and ill-kept streets, reaching the very doors within
which lofty and carpeted stairs lead to the great salons.
The entertainments are strictly formal. Few are the
afternoon calls ; there is none of the delightful informal
society of other towns—no dropping in to tea, no

finding friends unawares. And it is curious to see
76

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

in this great city so small a remnant of the ancient
families who all know one another, and have so often
intermarried, yet, for the most part, meet ceremoniously.
This comes not from a lack of hospitality, but from
old tradition which is so deeply rooted here. To keep
open house has never been the custom in Italy, and
whatever is true of Italian society in general is equally
true of Naples, with the difference that many of its
social customs have perhaps been less changed by
foreign influences. For though foreigners pour through
this city, and hospitality, real and gracious, is offered
them—though they are received with “une politesse
parfaite, comme cing cents étrangers ont été avant moi,
comme deux cents seront recus l’année prochaine’? —
the foreign element leaves, one might almost say, no
trace behind. The Neapolitan world changes slowly.
It intermarries but little with other countries. It is
enveloped still—so it impressed us—with the courtly
but now fictitious legends of the past. Many of the
noblesse are poor; but they have a deeply-rooted
pride, and the worship of money without birth, which
characterises other parts of Italy, is more restrained in
Naples.

“The nouveaux riches have money, it is true,” said
a Neapolitan to me; “but can they have finesse? Ah,
no: that is ours!”

I longed to discuss the value of freshly-made money
from the purely practical point of view, balancing its
tremendous power, its modernising influences, its frank
vulgarity, against this pride of birth that will not

iid)

Naples

permit a fresh start in life without losing prestige ; but
I feared to insist. And this reminds us that round
many of the old and splendid palaces of Naples a
peculiar gloom seems to hang to-day. Only a few
of them have remained in the hands of the rightful
family owners. It has often struck me that these
great ancestral dwellings have had a profound influence
on the social life of Italy. Here are a people born
(as it were) with a palace on their backs, from which
they cannot be torn without an apparently vital injury.
For, as I have said, money-making is contrary to the
accepted creed of the Neapolitan noble. He cherishes
no reviving hope of being able in time to redeem his
home, no ambitious determination to set his shoulder
to the wheel and wrest his halls from the detested
bourgeoisie into whose hands everything sacred seems
to fall. Poverty is hard enough to struggle against ;
but tradition and poverty together are well-nigh
insurmountable.

The Neapolitan families of to-day, whose palace
homes have fallen into the hands of the parvenus, find
dwellings elsewhere; but do they ever find homes?
Their social life is still so entirely a growth of tradition
that for the moment the impoverished noblesse seem
paralysed. This is keenly noticeable in Naples, and
the fact that the rich bourgeoisie are parsimonious and
entertain but little (while even if they did keep open
house the noblesse would never dream of entering)
makes the society of to-day somewhat complex.

It is now so peculiarly admissible to discuss from
78

The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

mere impressions: the characteristics of unfamiliar
countries that I may add that to the foreigner the
nature of the Neapolitan youth is curiously striking.
He seems to lack all vigour, all enthusiaam—to mature
before he has dreamed the glorious and ambitious
dreams that youth has the right to revel in. If he
is poor—the best opening, after all, for talent—he is
ashamed to work. If he is the heir to estates, they
hamper him, or he them, for he brings to their manage-
ment an indolent and often obsolete knowledge.
Neapolitans require wonderfully little to amuse them
in society, and stand far less in that constant need of
fresh entertainment which is the burden of all Saxon
hostesses. Their own light and insouciant conversation
is sufficient to amuse them, and an evening reception
will pass easily without a single song. Sometimes
beautiful faces are seen among the women, the fine
dark eyes being their chief beauty. Many wear the
latest. Parisian clothes, and among the upper classes
are seen slim and exquisite figures. They have a
charming manner—not exactly naive, but full of natural
ease. ‘Their tastes and many of their opinions strike
us at first as being wonderfully modern; but beneath
the surface they are not yet in harmony with the
changed tenor of thought. | Society is still narrowed
intellectually as of old by the standpoint from which
the men regard the women, a standpoint so low that
for a woman to be originally gifted and liberal in her
ideas is a fact incapable of arousing the least apprecia-
tion among her entourage. Among this class of women
79

Naples

—a growing one now—there may be traced a restless
discontent with the stagnation of ideas around them ;
but this is still accompanied by a passionate attachment
to their country, and a nostalgia when away from it,
which binds them closely to the spot.

All Neapolitan women, frivolous or serious, are
devoted to their children, and delight frankly in their
large families. Men who look little over twenty have
often several children, and a large share of the conversa-
tion in the salons is devoted to this subject, which is not
exactly intellectual, while the presence of children at meals
is often a serious restraint. Among the younger women
fresh ideas are appearing. A more finished education
is theirs ; they speak several languages ; and though, as
I once heard a well-known artist remark, ‘“‘ women learn
languages, but have nothing to say in them,” it makes
them less dependent than of old, and infinitely more
pleasing, given that their sphere is still only to please.
They have also developed a love of out-door life—a real
emancipation in itself. Butin Naples everything novel,
however harmless, has to fight against narrow pre-
judice, and a pleasure expressed in an out-door walk
is as easily as not misinterpreted into a questionable
“‘ rendezvous.”

Once away from Naples, as we rolled northward and
traversed the plains and the snow-covered mountains,
the souvenir of this light and listless city, of the bon-
hommie and the hospitality of the friends we had
left behind, touched more than one responsive chord.

Contrasted with the sterner North, it was like a mirage
80

VENUS’ BATH

A corner of the fantastic and rococo park of Caserta.

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The Neapolitan Character, Etc.

of a lighter world than ours; and it seemed hard to
realise, as we looked from our carriage window at the
bleak moraines of the St. Gothard, that so short a time
before we were lunching on some sunny garden terrace
with orange-trees and palms about us and a gentle
autumn breeze fanning our cheeks. The ringing laugh
of the contadini is still in our ears, and the languor of
the South follows us from afar! -

II 81

CHAPTEREY
TO THE WEST OF NAPLES

“ How changed is Nature from the Time antique !
The world we see to-day is dumb and cold ;
It has no word for us. Not thus of old
It won heart worship from the enamoured Greek.”
E. C. Lerroy.

Napttss lies like a shield between the land of Homer
and of Virgil, of dim traditions and earth-bound
mysteries, and the land of whose history Vesuvius has
silently kept the record. One side is thickly peopled,
and villages have sprung up one above the other.
Westward, on the contrary, gardens have taken the
place of dwellings, vineyards have spread over ruins,
and a semi-solitude in many a spot has changed the
old character of the coast-line. It has slipped back
(as it were) from the once luxurious life of the Romans
into a tacit sympathy with Homeric legend. The
lakes, the dead craters, the steaming breath of sulphur,
the hollow passages and re-echoing caverns,—these
still hold their own in the midst of a wild Nature only
partially disturbed by tourists.

82

THE VILLA GALLOTTI, POSILLIPO

An exquisite park, in which stand summer and winter
villas. A tablet on the wall of the former records the
date of the sojourn here of the German Emperor.

To the West of Naples

This road, which, after branching off towards
Fuorigrotta, is so curiously different in character from
the country to the east of Naples, is far more enjoyed by
those who have some previous knowledge of its history.
There is about it a monotony that requires the touch
of story ; and to instil interest in the humble villages
of our day the guide-books have to draw largely on
their Greco-Roman origins, surfeiting the reader on
the names of the great degenerate Roman age which
so delighted in this peculiar scenery.

But the sea road from Naples to Posillipo is as gay
and delightful as can be, bordered by many a crowded
osteria, brightly painted and vine-clad, and by little wine-
shops cut into the soft tufa rock and decorated with the
withered and meaningless bough which is now all that
remains of the old-time ivy branch sacred to Bacchus.
We pass along the only really clean road in Naples, the
fine sea-drive leading from the Villa Nazionale past
Piedigrotta and on beyond Pozzuoli. Though this is
the fashionable promenade for the Neapolitan of every
class, it is infested with beggars, deformed and horrible
to witness, who seem literally to glory in the misery
they thrust under the eyes of every passer-by.

Here at random is one wretched case. We sawa
boy in rags which held together simply because they were
more or less incrusted into the body. His head was
bleeding profusely from a blow, and he was yelling with
mingled pain and the thirst for revenge. A crowd
collected, of course ; and we paused to see what could

be done, when to our relief two sisters of the. poor
83

Naples

appeared upon the scene. They also paused, and
listened reflectively to the boy’s screams.

“He should certainly bind up his head with cold
water,”’ said one.

“But, Sister, the water might be full of microbes,”
protested the other.

‘We had better leave him alone,” said both; and
they went off. In despair we took the child into the
nearest pharmacy ; but, at the sight of such an object
of filth, the chemist, nearly fainting, hurriedly turned
him out with a direction to go to the Piedigrotta
Hospital. By this time we felt quite ill enough to go
there ourselves !

A man with both legs bound up like those of a
mummy used to sit at a safe corner for many hours
every day. One evening a charitable stranger threw
him a few soldi as he passed. Looking back, he saw
the man loosen his bandages, roll them up under his
arm, and unstiffen his legs, before walking away.

“So you aren’t lame at all, my friend?” said the
amused stranger. ‘Do you think it is an honest way of
earning your living, sitting there and doing nothing ?”’

‘* Nothing, indeed!” growled the man in astonish-
ment. ‘You, Signore, would not think it nothing
to sit in one position all day long with these dirty
bandages round your legs!”

Certainly, the scenes of poverty follow us from one
end of Naples to the other, but where, even here, did
Taine see those unfortunate poor who could afford only
one shoe to walk about in?

84

OLD PAVILION OF THE LAGO DI
FUSARO

Built by the Bourbons, and now falling into decay.

To the West of Naples

The church of Piedigrotta, which lies to our right
before we reach the Grotto itself, is extremely old in
its history. Boccaccio, in a letter written to a friend
from Naples, swears by “the Madonna di Piedigrotta,”
showing that it must have been a common enough term
in the fourteenth century. The name itself may have
arisen from the lowness of the near Grotto, which
admitted at one time foot passengers only.

But it was not until Charles III.’s time that the
famous Parade, which may be seen represented in two
pictures of the eighteenth century in the Museum of
San Martino, was instituted. It lasted on and off till
1860, when, I believe, Garibaldi intervened and its
character was changed. The poetic feature of the
great Festa belongs, however, to a time only about
half a century ago. Until 1835, at least, nothing
approaching a chorus had existed; and the sudden
birth of it in that year is sufficiently illustrative of the
wild enthusiasm of the Neapolitan people, and the way
in which a small incident will arouse it.

There lived at that time a certain Don Rafaello
Sacco, born in 1787, who had grown up in the very
midst of the horrors of the closing century. He
loved to improvise light verse; but the writing of
poetry was no more a lucrative business in those days
than it is now in Naples, where the two best-known
and most popular poets cannot draw a livelihood from
their works. So Sacco took to the study of optics,
and became celebrated for the invention of a machine
directed towards discovering forgeries in stamps; seals,

85

Naples

signatures, and so on, though from time to time he
still improvised and cherished his poetic ambitions.
One evening (it was in August 1835) he announced
to his friends that he had written a new song, which
Donizetti had put to music. There happened to be
at that time a tenor enjoying a great furore in the
Teatro Nuovo, who was paying court to a lady. To
the house of this lady Sacco repaired one evening
with the tenor and other comrades, to indulge in a
little music. The great singer sang love-song after
love-song with his eyes sentimentally fixed upon his
hostess, and when he had exhausted his repertoire it
was suggested that Sacco’s little song should be tried.
It was called ‘Te voglio bene assaie,” and as the last
notes died away the audience rose, beside themselves
with delight. Over and over again the song was sung.
All present joined excitedly in the chorus, and those who
passed in the strect stopped and took part. In the
early hours of the morning it was still being sung by
men, women, and children as though a resistless frenzy
had seized the populace, and over and over again the
words of the chorus echoed through the streets :

“Quanno so fatto cennere,
Fanno me chiagnarraie,
Te voglio bene assaie
E tu non pienzaa me,”

1 « When ashes and dust I shall be,
Let fall on my tomb a tear,
You who to me are so dear
Yet give not a thought to me.”

86

TORRE DEL GRECO

This white and glittering town has an almost orientai
character.

To the West of Naples

Thus was born the first song of Piedigrotta, and no
other has ever had so great a success, though in 1863
Perullo, a young and shortlived poet, had almost an
equal triumph with a song which reached even Paris.
Tosti, Costa, Denza, and many others have composed
Piedigrotta music; but the poetic character of the
Festa has now become a mere farce.’

Following the sea-line, we soon leave on our right
the grotto of Posillipo marked at either end by a poet’s
tomb. Far above it is the little “‘ Columbaia,”’ too often
described to need repetition. ‘‘Si vous avez jamais vu
un bout de muraille ruinée, c’est la méme chose.” But
it is the magic of the name which naturally holds those
who visit the spot for the first time,—the name of the
great Augustine poet who first lightened the gloom of
the Homeric legend, introduced into the parts we are
visiting the doves of Venus and the vision of the Golden
Bough, and filled the Elysian fields with the immortal
spirits of the good made happy. About no grave, surely,
has such frantic worship hovered. He was the sage,
the wizard before whose tomb Christian and Pagan alike
prostrated themselves. From his #xeid the future was
consulted. At one time, indeed, this work was held far
less as the work of a poet than as that of a magician, and
when opened at random, where the finger touched the
page—there was the oracular response. From the very
day he died legends collected round the name of Virgil.
No doubt this originally sprang from the subjects of which
his works treated, the knowledge he gave of the Sibyl’s

1 See article by di Giacomo in L’ Idlustraxione Italiana, October 1899.

87

Naples

Cave and of the Sibylline books; while the exaggerated
legends which accumulated about his memory in the
Dark Ages point to the especial estimate which the people
of those times formed of all science and learning. Strabo,
Plato, all the writers of the great past developed with
them into beings endowed with superhuman gifts.

At the farther end of the Grotto is the tomb of
Leopardi, a great poet to whom Italy has never done
full justice, perhaps because he lived in that magic age,
between 1815 and 1850, which produced so great a
wealth of poetry of various countries that its poets almost
overshadowed one another. Dusty and dark as is the
passage which divides these two tombs, it is a great
improvement on the old grotto of Virgil’s magic which
was so pitch-black that only by shouting “Alla
montagna” or “Alla marina”’ did the waggons avoid
bumping into one another. There is still much of the
mysterious in these old grottoes and caverns of past ages
when the passing through a hole or rock signified the
new birth.

The grand ruin of Donna Anna Caraffa is a striking
sight on the road to Posillipo. It seems literally to hang
over the water. Parts of it indeed threatened to topple
into the sea some years ago, and the poor fisher-folk
who inhabited crannies of it were advised to leave. It
has been patched up and restored to the happy fate
which sooner or later overtakes the historic buildings
of the past, and is now a pleasant hotel. Beyond it
lies villa after villa, a perfect wealth of beautiful private
properties, making this one of the most delightful drives

88

rhe |

range & iii

RINE 3
eae

CAMALDOLI, ABOVE NAPLES

An old seat within the precincts of the convent.
Autumn sunset.

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To the West of Naples

about Naples. The Gallotti property is perhaps one
of the most typical of the real Italian garden which
is still free from foreign influence. About it lingers
the peculiar sentiment which the Italian of past days
breathed into his environs—something at once austere
and romantic which has disappeared with his increasingly
cosmopolitan tastes. What is romance? In the present
day, when we have it no longer yet feel it so intensely,
the very word seems to express all that our age has lost.
It is a revelation to turn sharply from a noisy and dusty
world, from a hot and sun-beaten road, into so en-
chanted a pleasure-ground as this. Every step leading
down the hill past the winter villa into the cool shade
of the sea-bound terrace and verandahs of summer
opens vista after vista of silent beauty. It seems like a
fairy world ; and when, from behind bars let into the
moss-grown rock-side, we saw a yellow panther glaring
at us with serpentinely twisted head, it seemed more
natural than strange—as natural as though Circe, tall
and straight, had bid us quaff a cool draught from her
cup on that warm autumn day.

Beyond this garden a road on the right leads down
to the Villa de la Hante, now the property of Lord
Rosebery. This lies within a garden of quite another
character and with a totally different kind of beauty.
It is as full of flowers as of trees. There are even
carpets of spring flowers under their shade, and the
smooth paths themselves are as velvet under the feet.
The grounds seem to have grown (as it were) towards
every point of view of the lovely bay, as a sunflower

12 89

Naples

grows towards the sun. There are endless vistas on
straggling heights where a stone seat or bench invites
the dreamer. It is, in fact, a very spot to dream in ;
the very antithesis in its spirit to unrest.

The road now winds somewhat inland, and comes
out opposite to the little island of Nisida, five miles
from Pozzuoli, and composed, like the hills of Posillipo,
of tufa. It is, according to a brilliant writer of to-day,
the peacock’s eye in this land of craters or round eyes.
It is the long-shaped island not very near or very far
from the abode of the Cyclops, covered with woods and
wild goats and barren of men and human traces, where
Odysseus found a pleasant harbour. In Roman days it
was the isle of mystery and retreat, where a few rich
families had their summer villas and enjoyed the chase.

The beautiful hazy isle follows us now all round the
bay of Baiz past Bagnoli, which was, I believe, the birth-
place of one of the many reputed inventors of the ther-
mometer, Sebastian Bartolo. The shore about here was
considered for a long period so malarious that when the
dwellings of the Chiaja fisher-folk were judged too
great an eyesore for the Corso, and a large building was
erected for them here, such a fiat of certain death
aroused popular indignation and the building was never
completed.

In Bagnoli lived, too, a certain Monseigneur Sanfelice,
who revived the taste for constructing the manger at
Christmas time. It was a fashion which started in the
time of Charles III. and only died out half a century ago.
All the noble families of his reign delighted in it, while

go

Bi LY
f

VIEW TAKEN FROM THE GROUNDS OF
THE VILLA ANTONIETTA, QUISISANA

Now known as the Hotel du Parc.

To the West of Naples

the Queen herself used to make the shepherds’ garments
in the palace of Caserta. The fashion even influenced
art, and not a few among the sculptors and painters
of the time are better known by their mangers and cattle
than by their other works."

Pozzuoli—a town which seems thrust by the Solfatara
on to the very edge of the sea, and faces across the bay
the site where Baiz stood, “the pride and the shame of
Ancient Rome ’”’—occupies a large slice of space in the
guide-books. The modern traveller in Italy is, as
Ruskin points out, often called upon to admire what he
cannot enjoy, and of no spot are the words truer than
they are of this. A few miles farther on we turn to the
right by the lake of Lucrinus and drive to the grassy
sward near the lake of Avernus.

This spot has quite lost its classic disrepute, and
a stone border circling it holds in check the waters
which once rendered the fields about so malarious. It
looks now more like a great artificial pond than the
mirror of centuries. On a warm summer day, when the
insects are buzzing and butterflies fluttering about its
edge, when the sun is shining brilliantly over the lake and
catching the soft reflections of the ruined baths on the
farther side, there is about it much the same sentiment,
half poetic, half artificial, which is often felt in a private

1 In February of this year a very curious Italian créche of the 18th
century was sold at the Hétel Drouot in Paris. It contained about 175
little Neapolitan dolls, of which the heads, modelled in terra-cotta and
painted, were masterpieces of delicate workmanship. Unfortunately, no

amateur was found to purchase it, and the dolls were finally sold eSparely
fetching in all a total of 1525 francs.

gi

Naples

park. But the dim grotto of Avernus leading from
the edge of the water into the heart of the mountain
is still sufficiently pregnant in spirit of the past, though
the sensation of following an ink-black and dust-charged
passage by the light of smoking torches blends a large
share of the purely disagreeable with the mysterious.
Sometimes we feel that in visiting these gloomy caverns
of other ages we may perhaps catch a faint echo from
the secrets of antiquity ; but I question whether we
ever succeed. The poetry of the powers of darkness
is lost to us of to-day. Darkness was ever the colour
that ignorance took in the past, and science and dis-
covery have now thrown such head-lights upon the
mysterious sides of Nature that we are less susceptible
than of old to the thraldom of them. For my part,
I rejoice that our age is one when the wisdom acquired
by the wise is no longer “ wisdom learnt with dread.”
The Grotto oi the Cumean Sibyl, linked by mytho-
logical tradition to the nether world, is certainly one of
the most impressive of all the features of this region.
Following a little country road overgrown with grass
and common flowers beneath the ruined Acropolis of
Cumez, pushing one’s way through weeds and tangled
greenery up to the tiny entrance overhung with trailing
boughs, one is scarcely prepared for the weird grandeur
of the cavernous depths within. Surely no more striking
embodiment of the myth of the descent into Hades can
be found in Nature: the contrast from the gorgeous
sunshine to the monstrous damp shadows of this giant
vault may have something to do with the profound
92

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ON A HOUSE TOP, SORRENTO

A few among the old women still spin with Homeric
simplicity.

To the West of Naples

sensation produced by the sudden plunge from light
into mysterious gloom. Imagine a vast tunnel of
crumbling stone, lofty as the main aisle of some Gothic
cathedral which the ages had rudely shattered. Running
along for a space, a lower tunnel continues the way ;
and far above may be seen a second story, or rather
where once an upper floor existed. Through the
narrow passage we again reach a wider space, and so
on, indefinitely, until the road sinks into semi-darkness,
and, almost overpowered by the sensation of heavy
blackness all around, we pause and half wonder whether
indeed the toils of the nether world are not really at
hand to engulf us. Occasionally narrow slits in the
rock far above let a faint glimmer of dusty light reach
us, and now and then we come upon extraordinary
flights of stairs and shattered remnants of the hundred
portals. The effect is worthy of the imagination of a
Gustave Doré in some inspired moment. What other
spot could have created the grand picture in the 4uneid
of the frenzied Sibyl in her wind-swept abode? How
the dark, shadowy walls seem impregnated with vatic
utterances! while the dim path seems surely to descend
to Stygian waters.

Out we come at last into the kindly sunshine. We
rub our eyes, and the gloom of a moment ago sinks
back into the impossible past. But we realise more
clearly and fully that we are in the midst of the land of
Homer, on the ground which answers so perfectly as
the boundary of the living world and the confines of
the infernal regions. Yet this Grotto of the Sibyl was

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once, according to the earliest Christian author who,
after Virgil’s time, mentions the Cumean Oracle, as
highly polished and as richly beautiful as a basilica.
We have seen but the shell, empty now save for the
mystery which still fills it.

Besides the tombs found lately in the neighbour-
hood of Cumz, which are thought to be purely
Hellenic, an object of quite especial interest was
found here not very long ago. Mr. Stevens came upon
a tomb containing a tortoise-shell disc, a unique object
which experts believe to have served as a polished
mirror. No tortoise-shell of ancient days has ever been
discovered before. Indeed not, I believe, until quite
well into the Middle Ages have any objects made of it
come down to us. Its whole history is obscure, nor do
Pliny’s remarks enlighten us very much.

We are now in the very midst of the great craters
of the Phlegrean fields, known to the early navigators
as the land of the Round Eyes. They stretch along
the whole route from Naples to Cumz, some rising
above us, others sinking into hollow lakes. The brilliant
if fantastic writer who has lately published in France a
delightful work on this coast} has instilled quite a fresh
interest into the Homeric land by his new and plausible
theories. Boldly putting aside the accepted conclusions
of the last century that the two great poems of the Ziad
and the Odyssey were the creations of several poets who
had gathered their materials from the same cycle of
legends, Monsieur Bérard gives his reasons for believing

1 Les Phéniciens et ? Odyssée, by Victor Bérard.
94

RUINED CASTLE OF LATTERE ON THE
HILLS ABOVE GRAGNANO

The hill crowned by this splendid ruin overlooks the
entire plain of Pompeii.

To the West of Naples

that the Greek Homer was the sole author, while
Odysseus, the great navigator, was himself a Phenician.
For the Greeks, he argues, travelled but little in those
days, a thousand years before Christ, while the Phenicians
were of course the great sailors of the world, spread-
ing the stories and legends of their birthplace to far-off
lands, and thus providing the vast material from which
Homeric descriptions are drawn. The idea that the
Greek mind could be so exquisitely visionary as to blend
into their great legends purely imaginative and almost
fantastic scenery, is contrary to his conception of their
character, and is a view (he thinks) detracting from the
value of the poems, which can be fully understood only
by those who, accepting the Homeric geography as exact
in every detail, realise that since the days of antiquity
the mariner’s route is still all unchanged, and that the
names and terms through which the Odyssean voyage
has been transmitted to us are in sense identical still.
To illustrate this view, Monsieur Bérard traces
Phenician roots in the Greek names lingering round the
Italian coast from Capri to Antium. In the Cape of
the Vulture, between Cumz and Gaeta, he finds the
secret of the genealogy of Circe, daughter of Kyrkos, a
bird sacred to Apollo, and of Perse, a word which in
Greek would have no apparent meaning, but in Semitic
signifies a bird of prey and has been translated “eagle
of the sea.” Then, again, the strange drug, “ Moly,”
which Hermes gave to Odysseus, black at its root and
with a flower like milk, and so hard to uproot that only
the Gods succeeded, has itself a Semitic name which
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Naples

translates into the Atriplex halinum peculiar to the
Mediterranean coasts and probably unknown to Greece.
Its flower is pale, the root clinging and difficult to
unearth. Monsieur Bérard tried in vain to pull up
even the smallest of its roots. ‘Les dieux seuls, qui
peuvent tout, en sont capables.”’

But the writer’s comparison of the “ floating isle’
with the island of Stromboli, because the latter threw
up masses of débris from its crater, which floated about
the seas, seems somewhat fantastic.

Though the idea that this land genuinely stimulated
the descriptions in Homer is not by any means a new
one, I believe that Monsieur Bérard is the first to find
a connection between its peculiar features and the
characters themselves in the Odyssey. The links
between the strange physiognomy of this country and
its equally strange names are most entertaining. Inland
we see the extinct crater of the Solfatara, which is as the
round eye of the Cyclops, from the lids and eyebrows
of which the vapour of the burning pupil mounted.
Then, too, not far off may be seen Mount Gaurus, a
transcription in Greek of the Semitic word signifying
blind. The Gaurus was the blind eye!

The whole scenery is dotted with round eyes like a
photograph of the moon—eyes, long blind, that once
must have flashed with living fire! These extinct ruins
of Nature are in keeping with the almost defiant works
of the Roman decadence which for a brief period amazed
the world. While the rude forces of the lower world
held their own inland, the Romans ever behaved as it

g6

>

HOUSE OF THE FAUN, POMPEII

To the West of Naples

they intended to hold the ravaging of the sea for all
time in check. Harbours, temples, gigantic fishponds,
and magnificent villas rose (as it were) from the very
water and defied the waves. They were buildings that
mocked at all sense of repose, and their very ruins still
inspire us with a curious unrest.

Perhaps the loveliest bit of Nature about the winding
road is found on the way to Baie. Through the sunny
vineyards, past the green-clad coasts, we look down into
the blue sea where the rose petals were once scattered
at the great Roman festivals as if gently to persuade it
to keep its many secrets. On one side of us lies the
little dead sea, and on the other the port of Misena,
while beyond stretches the low sandy beach to Gaeta.
Or turning from the coast, we reach the long, shallow
stretch of water of the Lake of Fusaro. Here, in the
little osteria overlooking the lake, we stopped for a
hurried meal under the shade of the trees. The oysters
may have lost their classic flavour, but they are still
fresh. Large or small, highly flavoured or not, the
oyster is the queen among shellfish. “Le poisson est
fin,” as I once remember a maitre d’hétel saying with
real enthusiasm in Paris; ‘mais l’huitre est fine.”
Untranslatable nuance! A white wine, with a sourness
far from peculiar to wines of these parts of Italy, is
offered with the oysters.

The little inn is kept by a family literally hung over
with charms against the evil eye. For years the padrone
had boasted of his fine health and physique without
having recourse to their protective charm ; but the day

13 97

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came when a severe illness made him bitterly regret his
want of tact, and he now seeks to make up for past
negligence by the wearing of the biggest horn that could
be found.

We wandered through the pretty and now wild
grounds, and found them full of the sristesse of neglect.
Great palm-trees, parched with the sun of June, were
dying in their beds ; flowers trailed over the paths and
were crushed underfoot. All looked utterly deserted, and
the Pavilion rising out of the transparent lake was more
like a mirage of past years than anything tangible. But
the air—how sweet and fresh it was! What temptation
to linger there and forget the shadeless road and the little
dusty white vehicles awaiting us! In all this country
spots like this strike one as a species of oasis in a hot
volcanic expanse. ‘This sightseeing about the Phlegrean
fields is ever an exhausting excursion crushed into one
day, leaving on the mind a most confusing impression
of heat and shadelessness, of dormant nature, of
vistas of living beauty, and of irritating struggles with
guides, cabs, beggars, and distances ; until in the cool
evening we are finally driven back by the swift little
horses, “fins, diligents, malins et plein de feu,” as an
eighteenth-century writer described their race,—back
into the appalling noise of Naples, through which we
can no longer hear

“«. . . like ocean on a western beach

The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”

If we go back by the Fuorigrotta road we pass the turn
98

os Aaa

sit

HOUSE OF THE DRUNKEN FAUN,
POMPEII

An attempt has been made of late to plant gardens
decorating the peristilium with flowers as of old.

To the West of Naples

which leads to the far-off Camaldoli, the most exquisite
of all the environs of Naples. Its sixteenth-century
monastery was built for the Camaldulian order, one of
the lesser in importance of the monastic eleventh-century
communities. The Camaldulian rule was that of S.
Benedict, and their buildings were never built nearer than
five leagues from a city, while they sought solitary and
often barren heights to congregate on. But this spot is
thickly clad with trees to the very gates of the monastery,
and the air blowing about it is sweet and scented.
Lucky are those who are able to make this charming
excursion and picnic on the garden terrace of the
Veduta Pagliana, from which a splendid view may be
had.

The monastery itself is entered through a lovely
cloister, at the end of which stands a quaint shrine, a
medley of strange once-gaudy colours toned by time
into harmony. After passing a door on the right, the
spacious garden is reached, and a glimpse is obtained
of the lonely monastic life led by the ten fathers who
linger here. Each monk has a tiny cabin, built of white
plaster and roofed with light red tiles, and about each
cabin is a small garden of vegetables which the occupant
cultivates himself, since this is part of the prescribed
routine of life. Beyond is a lovely terrace which over-
looks the whole bay of Baiz and embraces a panorama
of the entire coast.

A chat with one of the fathers gave an idea of the
peaceful atmosphere which is theirs. ‘When I was a
young man,” said he, “I had a great enthusiasm for

99

Naples

painting, and intended to devote my life to it. I
studied in the Academy of S. Luke, in Rome, until, at
the age of about thirty, the desire seized me to enter the
cloistered life. Since then I have lived in this spot, and
I scarcely ever hear from my old friends and relations or
from the outer world.”

“Do you never regret the sacrifice of all your artistic
ambitions ?”

“No,” he said: “I am supremely happy here, and
would not alter my life in any way.”

Certainly, standing in the shade of the widespreading
trees on the verge of the beautiful terrace, and watch-
ing the sun sink like a globe of fire into the distant
expanse so far beneath one’s feet, we feel the restful
spirit of the Lotus-eater envelop us,

“On the hills like Gods together
Careless of mankind.”

But even here the breath of a Pagan land is taking
possession of us.

Must there not have existed, in those dark ages
when the monastic life grew into such especial favour,
some hidden vein of the sentiment of the beauty of
landscape among its followers, some cult of the Beautiful
quite as real in its way as anything of our own times?

Too

Tarihi ae

HOUSE OF OLCONIUS, POMPEII

Pea a cA

a.

CHAPTER VI
FROM NAPLES TO CASTELLAMARE

One hot day early in June we drove from Naples to
Castellamare. The heat and the dust seemed to be more
bearable in an open carriage than in the hot compart-
ment of the railway train. It is wiser, too, not to trust
implicitly in this oldest train service in Italy. It should
be treated as an interesting but antique relic of the days
of Ferdinand II., who opened the line by travelling
with the Queen in a splendid royal car lined with red
damask and uncovered. The last time we travelled on
this line the engine broke down completely, and, unlike
the proverbial three-legged horse of Naples, had to be
tugged instead of driven to its goal.

In spite of jolting roads and indescribable noise, the
kaleidoscopic scenery of the towns on the way is rich
in human interest and variety. On this particular day the
Festa of Monte Vergine was drawing to a close, and
hundreds and hundreds of pilgrim-laden carriages—
victorias, bagarini, brakes, and char-d-bancs—tore past
us at an inconceivable rate. Most of the drivers were
running races regardlessly of any one’s safety, lashing

101

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their wretched horses, and addressing them with untold
insolence. The jingling and gleaming of fantastic
trappings, the noise and the appalling dust, were
enough, as they once said, to rouse the dead under
the pavement in the Church of S. Anna.?

The singing and shouting of the pilgrims, and the
waving of their long poles hung with dancing ribbons
and souvenirs, made a wild and nerve-breaking scene.
Our own horses took to the same breakneck pace.
“Piano, piano,” we cried. “Think of your poor
horses.”

“Non avra paura, signore. They are accustomed
to the whip. Iam not one of those who ill-treat their
beasts. I treat them far better than I do my wife.”
With this consoling information, we dashed on into the
mad cavalcade pouring towards us on either side.

The whole scene, brilliant though it be with colour
and life, is too utterly reckless to impress foreigners
agreeably. All Neapolitan festivals have a singular
mixture of childish enjoyment and racy disregard of
life and safety in general, and what with mad driving
and excited tempers these great occasions never end
without tragedy of some kind.

It seems to be the smart thing in this fée for the
men to make up parties of four, and to dress themselves
and the driver in clothes of the same colour, with
hat and gaudy necktie exactly alike. Many of these

1 The ugly Church of S. Anna, which contained the marvellous statue
of the saint, to whom the fisher-folk all over Naples once prayed, was
burned down in 1885.

102

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af ay F mtn

THE VILLA CRAWFORD

As seen from the grounds of Il Pizzo.

From Naples to Castellamare

turn-outs passed us, most of them in grays and fawns to
dissimulate some of the dust; but on this third day
men and women were all alike, so thickly powdered
with it that clothes, hair, and face were perfectly gray, »
presenting a truly ghastly appearance. The heat, too,
was great, and the dust had changed to paste on many
hot faces. The women make the pilgrimage hatless ;
but the well-to-do have fastened to their vehicles
basket trunks containing two changes of costume, since
the real /uxe of this extraordinary fét obliges a new
toilette, each more gorgeous than the other, on the
three successive days. Both men and women make
elaborate preparations and ablutions for the occasion,
washing all traces of oil or pomade from the hair, since
grease in any form is disagreeable to the Madonna.
Nor must greasy substances, such as bacon or loin of
veal, be carried up the mountain-side in the luncheon
baskets or in the pockets of the pilgrims; and those
who would feast on sausages and the oily food dear
to the Neapolitan, must consume it at the foot of the
ascent.

It would be interesting, as an Italian writer points
out, to discover the origin of mountain heights for the
Madonna’s shrine, and the reason why her Son chooses
ever the plain in which to erect His House, spots easy
of access and within reach of all modern conveyances.
In this particular instance the mountain height as a
shrine dates back to classic times, since this church of
Montevergine covers the site of a temple to Cybele,
the mother of the gods. :

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Naples

With a sense of relief, we gradually left the throngs
of hunted horses and unrecognisable occupants behind,
and rattled along through S. Iorio, which lies about
half-way between Naples and Portici, and was once a
favourite summer resort of the Neapolitans. The
gardens of the palaces then stretched right down to the
sea ; but long ago the railway ruthlessly divided them.
Instead of the perfume of flowers, an overpowering
odour of tanyards fills the air. But as we pass along
the hot and dusty high road with the tram-line
following it, vistas of gardens and of orange groves are
seen through the open doors and courtyards of the
houses.

Portici is dirty and uninteresting. Its tall houses
look old and dark, and it is difficult to imagine the
place even as it was in the days of the Bourbons, who
did so much for it. What with factories of every kind,
the royal buildings which sprang up under their rule
are sold or transformed, or about to change hands.
The Villa Favourita, of so many eighteenth-century
memories, is now divided into two dwellings, in private
hands. It was in 1768 that it was first opened with a
splendid féte in honour of Marie Caroline—a fér at
which the Emperor of Austria himself was present.
When, soon afterwards, it became the property of the
King, it was known as the “‘ Favourita,” to remind the
Queen, perhaps, of the imperial villa of that name at
Schénbrunn.

The beautiful Pauline Bonaparte stayed here in
1814, when her brother was prisoner at Elba. But

104

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EVENING NEAR MASSA, PENINSULA OF
SORRENTO

From Naples to Castellamare

charming as was the villa and its lovely grounds, its
position, directly beneath Vesuvius, was a somewhat
strange choice for those days, when eruptions of a
serious nature were not infrequent. Lady Morgan
describes in her Jtalie how the lava seemed literally
to enter the very windows !

It was in this villa, in 1879, that the unfortunate
Ismail was allowed to take up his residence, and the
entire building was reconstructed to suit him and _ his
harem. All kinds of legends sprang up of the wild
and oriental luxury of his life. The courtyard was said
~ to be strewn with sand imported from the desert and
still hot with the African sun! Yet his harem consisted
of only three wives, and far from living in contented
happiness during his seven years’ seclusion there, Ismail
was probably counting the hours until he could regain
his kingdom and leave his exile for ever.

I am told that it is intended to erect a Colonial
Museum, with Zoological Gardens, in the Palace of
Portici. That is a project of the Duca d’ Andria, who
is well known for his interest in public works. Were
it carried out, it might instil a new life into the town.

This palace was built in 1738, the year after the
terrible eruption had destroyed so much in Portici and
Torre del Greco. No town displays a history of more
temerity than Portici in its defiance of menacing danger.
When the young King was warned that he was choosing a
strangely unsafe spot for his ‘‘ Fontainebleau,” his answer
showed that he had already digested the favourite phrase
of his new people: ‘“Iddio, Maria Immaculata, ec San

14 105

Naples

Gennaro, ci ponseranno!” So built it was; and ten
years later his son, the worthless Ferdinand, was born
in it.

Down by the shore all is busy, dirty, and over-
crowded, but truly characteristic of old Portici. It is
the “Granatielle” of which the popular cherry song
says—

“T made love to a Portici maid
In the time of the cherries last year—
In the Granatielle, where the sea flows
Lived Rose—Rose the fair, they said.
O sweet time of tears and embraces ;
As large as a cherry each tear,

Each kiss as sweet as a rose !
Cherries! Cherries!” 1

It is but three or four hours’ drive from Naples to
Castellamare ; yet we pass through five towns on the
way. Resina, as all know, stands above Herculaneum,
the first victim of Vesuvius. Under the dirty little
town lie the silent homes of past generations which, so
a German writer affirmed, were built upon a bed of
tufa, precisely like that which destroyed them. It is
now a veritable tomb, from which each year the tourists
break away some fragments of marble skeleton. The
sweet air blows through the Pompeian town, filling it
with life; but here the damp odour of earth, the icy
breath of marble, chills one on the warmest summer
day, and is redolent of death. The excavations remain
much as they were a century ago, and all that will ever
be known of Herculaneum seems already known.

1 Free translation for the Neapolitan ’E Cerase di Giacomo.
106

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From Naples to Castellamare

Torre del Greco is far the most beautiful of the
towns along this road. Here, soon after the noise and
excitement of Montevergine have subsided, begins the
Festa of the Quatro Altare. Preparations for it were
going on in the streets as we passed through the town.
Altars were being erected and decorated with curious
pieces of rough coral. In front of each altar would
be spread a beautiful carpet of green moss and fresh
flowers—a veritable mosaic of Bible designs. All the
labour for the decorations of this Festa is voluntary.
Poor workmen give gladly their spare time for weeks
beforehand to build and ornament the altars, counting
their labour well spent, though all the flower work
of infinite patience will be destroyed in a few minutes
under the feet of the crowd who follow the Procession
of the Holy Sacrament, and the altars which have taken
weeks of labour to erect are ruthlessly torn down the
day after.

Many parts of this town are almost Oriental in
appearance, and so richly picturesque as to outdo
Naples in colour. The coral trade has bound the
coast of Africa and Italy so closely at Torre del Greco
that an undefinable Eastern quality is in the atmosphere.
For centuries it has been the principal and richest centre
of the coral industry on this coast. No doubt it would
have been richer still had there been more organisation
and control among the fishermen of the eighteenth
century ; but quarrels and difficulties were perpetually
arising among them, and money and time wasted in
disputes until Ferdinand IV. started a Consulate to

107

Naples

regulate affairs. It was the Consulate’s duty not only
to settle all differences, but also to determine the
opportune moments for departure to sea, with a view
of lessening somewhat the many dangers of the coral
trade—dangers terribly disproportionate to the risks
run. It is curious to note in the old codice Corallino
and in many of the old travellers’ books of that time
that the fishing-boats were always termed /fe/ukas,
showing close contact with the East.

The story of coral is haunted with fanciful legends
as well as great antiquity. There have been lapses of
centuries between the rise and fall of its popularity as an
ornament. In the golden age of the Greeks it reached
a zenith in fashion; then, from 200 B.c. on towards
the Middle Ages, it seems to have sunk entirely into
the level of amulets. Not till the eighteenth century
was it recognised as animal life; though as far back
as the sixteenth it had been given a sex, the dark red
being termed masculine. It was even believed that
coral assumed a darker tint when worn by men, just
as it is still said to grow pale when worn by any one
in failing health. The difficulty of cutting it gave it
a great value in the past; but this value has lessened
with the decreasing taste for its use, and among the
villages round the coast there are quite poor families
who have quantities of valuable coral in their possession,
for which they can now find no market. But its use
as an amulet is not likely to die out easily, and many
generations of peasant babies are no doubt destined to
cut their teeth upon the old Latin symbol.

108

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CAPRI

View taken from Massa through the olive groves.

From Naples to Castellamare

Beyond “ Annunziata,” which Murat once vainly
endeavoured to name after himself,—now interesting
only as the point at which the train from Castella-
mare usually breaks down—the beautiful Pompeian
plain stretches around. The strawberries were ripe
behind the low walls, and we gathered some as we
passed from the garden of a haggling old peasant.
Between quiet fields, dotted with the bent figures of
women-labourers, and the rose colour of their scattered
dwellings, the white road winds smoothly — hardly
whiter than the dust-covered vegetation on either side.
Sky and sea are deep blue, and Vesuvius melts into the
atmosphere like a vast Parma violet.

The island of Rovigliano, which has been but a dark
spot hardly noticeable in the blue sea, grows now into
clear fantastic shape, and the old tower of the sixteenth
century rises from its black rock like a weird parasite.
At one end, broken off from the island, stands a great
pyramidical stone, which, seen from a certain point of
view, somewhat resembles a mitred bishop swathed in
a voluminous mantle of Roman fashion. The fisher-
folk name it ‘‘S. Catello,” the protective Saint of Stabie,
and believe that those among them who pass the rock
on certain days without reciting a particular oration are
doomed to die within the year.

The island is coloured with legends of warlike and
monastic times. Both fortress and convent, forms of
dwelling which in the Middle Ages were invariably
associated with the darker side of history, have risen
from it. In 1860 the State sold it to a private owner

109

Naples

who turned it into a summer pleasure-ground, as far
as wave-washed rock and ruined tower would allow
of such transformation.

In spite of the ceaseless Festas and the eternal
business of hanging up or pulling down coloured
lamps and flags and gaudy decorations, the town of
Castellamare is uninteresting. All festivals in the
South are precisely the same—made up of fireworks,
a band, and best clothes in which their wearers are
wretched. The women of the country wear all their
jewelry on these great occasions, often displaying quite a
quantity, for the Italian invests his money in gems that
he can count and look after instead of putting his
faith in any bank. In Naples, on the contrary, it is
rare to see women of any class out of doors with jewelry
on; it would be stolen without loss of time.

Impossible to enter Castellamare on any day of the
year that some festival is not in course of creation or
of destruction. One asks oneself how often the same
red, blue, and green flags and rags, hitched up and
down from window to window, will continue to delight
the souls “of this crowd, who seem to have nothing to
do but look on at the day’s preparations, or listen all
night to the preposterous noise of fireworks. How
often during the last summer have we listened to their
spluttering fire across the bay, while Vesuvius was
uttering thunderous low roars, and a brilliant river
of crimson fire ran half-way down its sides towards
the moonlit sea !

This love of pleasure, combined with the exciting

110

STREET SCENE IN SORRENTO

PZ

if]
fi

Tice
“iy

Pps

From Naples to Castellamare

fireworks, seems to have made this one of the most
quarrelsome towns round Naples. The men are
socialistic and disorderly, and the women fight tooth
and nail up those dark side streets which are more
lively in every way than pleasant. So, what with
noise and the odour of crushed beetles peculiar to
its streets, it is with real delight that we reach the
beautiful ascent to Quisisana, up which the air sweetens
and the blue of the sea grows deeper between the
trees. Here we are in a veritable garden of greenery,
chestnuts, olives, stone pines, and flowers! Beautiful
villas spread up the hill; houses of Pompeian red show
between the trees; little alcoves painted bright blue
like the china shrines of the Della Robbias ornament
the peasants’ homes; and up and on winds the once
royal park of the Villa Margherita—up into the
heights where Robert of Anjou, cured of what seemed
an incurable illness, planted a wood in his gratitude.
Beyond a dark avenue gleams the villa itself, red as
a sunset. Is it purely imagination, or does something
royal still hover about it? Impossible to wander through
deserted gardens, through silent rooms, without con-
juring up the human elements that once inspired
them all. A whole gallery of foreign portraits of
sickly kings, in search of medicinal springs and dry
fresh air, rises before the mind’s eye, flitting like
living ghosts about the place. At what date the
charming name of Quisisana was first given to the
villa we know not for certain; but I imagine that
it was not later than the time of the Anjous, and the
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Bourbons did little more than revive it. The following
verses on Quisisana, written in the early part of the
seventeenth century, speak of the title as already of
the past : —

“The lofty shrines, grand deeds of Frankish reign,
I saw upon one side, and far away
The entrance above which was once inscribed,
‘Here life is saved, and health ye may regain.’
How much since then, I mused, of human pride,
Of structure masterly in strength that once
Rose proudly and robustly from our earth,
Before great Time’s voracity has died.
Wistfully musing on these things, above
A face looked down—-so fair, it ravished me.
‘Ah me,’ I cried, ‘what miracle is this,
Amidst these ruins what hidden treasure of Love?’
More wondrous still, I who would restore
My soul—where all find health, now breathe no more.” 3

It is now the Bourbon element which lingers most
perceptibly about this solitary villa. The avenues,
the fine roads, the great terrace with its superb view,
are theirs. Here Ferdinand came with his brilliant
wife— le roi Caroline,” as she styled herself—in those
idle summer days when it was too hot “to shoot at
the birds, dance with the girls, and eat macaroni.”
And we can imagine that the lovely Lady Hamilton,
herself like some bacchante of the past, may have
wandered with the Queen through the glades. But
the fountains that played then under the shade of the

1 Translated from the Neapolitan of Dottor Dominico de Santis,
Naples, 1633.
112

IN THE GROUNDS OF MARION
CRAWFORD’S VILLA

From Naples to Castellamare

trees are now silent, and the steps leading up to them
are overgrown with moss.

Let us step out for a moment on the great terrace
beneath which such a magnificent view lies spread.
From this height Vesuvius exhibits perhaps its finest
aspect from this side of the bay. It has a noble sweep
across the curve of land, and the spirals of smoke curl
far out to sea. Strange that the peaceful character of
Vesuvius should have attracted so little artistic atten-
tion in the past! I know of no attempt ever made, even
a century ago, to figure the mountain dormant. The
famous picture by Wright, painted at the end of the
eighteenth century, was but one among hundreds of
efforts to depict it as ‘“‘awful beyond description.”

In all this view Castellamare includes one rare charm
which is denied to many a lovely town along the coast.
It enjoys the full view of the setting sun, which dips
down into the water across its bay. Night after night
in summer the great globe of fire is washed away
before our eyes, and long after it has sunk below the
sea the afterglow clings round the horizon like some
ineffaceable stain. Far away the island of Capri—
“that huge mound of rock which gathers out of the
sky hues softer than the violet” —sinks into purple
mist. Gradually, as the light fades, and the belt of
towns around the coast—its string of pearls—grows
dim, little lights begin to flicker near the water, and a
necklace of gold gleams in its stead.

The first impression of Castellamare is one of
perpetual spring. The last, if we linger long enough

15 113

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to find it, is rather one of impalpable age, which blends
something of unreality into the surrounding nature.
In spite of the language of this year’s season, the world,
as Norway says in his charming book, seems older here
than elsewhere—older, perhaps, because its historic
past is shattered as well as buried. A date, a fact, a
stone, and the past becomes part of the life we know ;
but Stabie is still the tomb of only legends.

The spirit of excavation is surely one of the most
remarkable characteristics of our day—‘“the making
hue and cry after many a city that has run away, and
by certain marks and token, pursuing to find it.”
Within a few years Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabie,
and Pestum were ‘“discovered’’; and what a curious
renaissance of learning and research was opened with
this spade-digging in the south of Italy, where, till
then, the Italians had been as naturally builders above
ruins as we have now become delvers beneath the soil !
Building above tombs marked with them passionate
attachment to the spot, as may be traced in the history
of the Stabiens. Like human ants, they returned to
reconstruct dwellings out of ruins, to-day out of
yesterday ; and the French traveller of the eighteenth
century who attributed their persevering spirit to the
utter blindness and folly of the human race, failed to
grasp the peculiar atmosphere of this beautiful country
and the Greek love of birthplace which lingers still
among its inhabitants.

On the heights of Quisisana we are in the Faubourg
of all that buried past, and the air that blows from

114

PORTRAIT OF TARANTELLA DANCER
WITH CASTANETS

From Naples to Castellamare

Mont Angelo to the sea, is still as pure as in the days
when it was sought asa haven of health by the Romans.
An atmosphere of classic and royal convalescence from
ancient days down to Tiberius, and on from the time of
the Anjous, seems still to linger about the place. We
can see the whole plain where the great tragedy of 79
was enacted ; mark the spots where, dotted like a milky
way, white with colonnaded villas, and temples to
Minerva, to Hercules, to Diana and Ceres, lay the
doomed cities of the Campania; conjecture the flight
from Pompeii towards the sea, and along the Stabizn
road to the height where we stand, and so to Sorrento.
But, wonderful as it was, perhaps it was not more so
than the scene left behind, when a gray desert of lava
and pumice stones stretched from the mountain to
Castellamare, and amidst that desolation a relief party
landed on the shore beneath, to search for the body of
the brave old admiral. The name of Pliny reminds us
that in the summer of 1899 there were some excavations
that seemed to throw a new light upon his death—light
obviously illusive when compared with the precious
details left to us in the Letters of Pliny the younger.
“In July 1899 certain desultory excavations were
undertaken on the farm of Signor Matrone, between
the river Sarno and the Stabien gate of Pompeii, near
the Molino Fienzo, not for any archeological or scientific
purpose, but in quest of valuables and marketable
objects. The results brought to light include a set of
shops, built in the reticulated style, opening into a
porch or veranda which runs parallel with the* high
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road. One belonged to a wine-seller, a second to a
carpenter, a third to a dealer in fishing implements. A
large court opens behind the shops withan oven in the
middle. The place, in short, shows the characteristics
of a country inn located on the Via Stabiai, near the
mouth of the Sarno, on the main line of retreat of the
panic-stricken Pompeians. Seventy or eighty fugitives
were found apparently smothered while seeking shelter
under the roof of the inn, almost in view of the fleet
from Misena coming to their rescue. The greatest
number fell at the east end of the porch towards the
river, where Pliny’s Lidurna was probably anchored—a
poor and wretched lot of fugitives, carrying away in
their flight only a few coppers.

«Six or seven skeletons were found lying in the court
near the oven—also with no objects of value. But a
party of men and women and children of much higher
rank were overtaken by death in the middle section of
the veranda. Their gold necklaces were still fastened
round their necks ; bracelets still encircled their wrists ;
precious rings still fitted to their fingers.

«Among this group of well-to-do fugitives one seemed
to occupy the place of honour, a person whose skull
betrays a superior intelligence, and of a noble demeanour.
He wore a chain of sixty-four gold rings wound thrice
round the neck, two armille on the right arm, a heavy
signet ring, and a dagger on the left side. This dagger
has a blade of steel. This person was suffocated by the
deadly fumes of the volcano while sitting against the
wall.

116

THE VILLA CRAWFORD, SORRENTO

Early spring, wistaria in full flower.

From Naples to Castellamare

“Excavations were carried on carelessly and no
photos taken. In 1901 Signor Mariano Canizzaro, in
a paper printed for private circulation, suggested that
the skeleton might be that of Pliny the elder himself.
The skeleton was found surrounded by a vast quantity
of household gods and goods, such as tripods, some
modelled in terra-cotta. Unless these objects belonged
to Pompeians (in whose company Pliny probably was
at the time of the catastrophe), we cannot imagine that
the gallant old admiral was rushing to the rescue of the
Pompeians and Herculaneans with a lot of clay figures
in his hands.” ?

Except for the treasures of sculptured and inscribed
fragments buried in the dusty vaults of the cathedral,
nothing older than medizval times is to be seen about
Castellamare. Before the Church of Pozzano, in a
solitary corner, overlooking the water, a cross rises from
a fluted column poised upon a marble altar to Diana,
a tiny relic of those Pagan days that has outlasted
temples and monuments. The emblem of the Goddess,
a garlanded stag, is sculptured on either side, and round
the pedestal are exquisite wreaths of flowers and fruit.
The rose-tipped marble is dented and dulled now, the
toy of the idly busy hands of children.

Below it juts out the old castle of the Middle Ages
from which Castellamare is said to have derived its name.

Medieval times changed the character of this coast
as completely as Christianity and its Churches wiped
away the traces of Paganism. ‘Towers and castles gave

1 R. Lanciani.

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Naples

a warlike appearance to the soft outlines of the rocks
above the sea. They spoke of conflicting races, foreign
influences, a harder struggle for power. The sea and
the land, the mountain and the plain, were at war with
each other, and strongholds watched the water and
campania with distrustful eye. Those days were
comparatively but of yesterday; yet they sometimes
seem to lie far beyond the Greco-Roman days with
which we are in touch in thought and art. The purely -
fighting spirit is hard to transmit from one age to
another ; and the ruined and moss-covered castles of
the Middle Ages belong more entirely to the past than
many a temple now open to the sky. But this castle
of the sea, standing pale and gray amidst the green-grays
of the olives about it, with the snow-white butterflies
of summer fluttering beneath its walls, speaks of more
than the mere strength of stone above stone, of more
than the stern struggle of foreign races and their decay.
About it hovers the great name of him whose life is
summed up in the words, “Stupor Mundi,” the greatest
of all medieval characters. Though Frederick loved
best the Apulian coast and left there the memories of
his life and too early death, a thread of the learning
and culture which has long outlived his wars encircled
the shining bay from Naples to Salerno; and if the
chains of that time, the superstitions, the astrological
fables which then flooded the world, sometimes held
him bound, how natural does all belief in hidden powers
seem around this coast, where the voices of the lower

as well as of the upper world are ever murmuring !
118

7 ne uf nt
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ON THE ROAD TO MASSA

The popular evening drive from Sorrento in the
summer months.

From Naples to Castellamare

So they are mediaeval times which speak in the very
name of Castellamare, and all the older past is undefined ;
yet it is a ‘past which is always present.” There is
hardly a ruin now in the light of day to speak of it ;
but its echoes linger among the classic hills above, which
have watched the eternal changes of that mountain across
the water which the ancients believed changeless.

Among the many beautiful excursions round Castella-
mare is the drive to the Castle of Lettere, of which little
is known, though it is a landmark of evident importance
in its time. To reach it we drive through Gragnano,
whose long street seems to wind for over a mile before
it opens into the country road. Though this town is
within easy reach of Castellamare and the properties of
Neapolitan families lie around, there is something quite
distinct and of the past about its life. The art of
spinning is still to be seen, old women sitting at their
doors distaff in hand. What woman’s work can
compare with it in grace? Was this the reason why in
ancient times, when fair ladies spun for their pleasure, a
stern rural law forbade its use out of doors?

A strong smell of uncooked macaroni fills the air ;
the house doors and even windows are hung with the
lemon-tinted spaghetti—or twine, as it is called. In
drying it deepens to orange colour, and hangs hard and
stiff. It is spread side by side with the drying clothes,
and in and out among the stands of gold fringe goes on
all the street life of the inhabitants. Women are having
their hair dressed ; little girls are busy winding thread
and wool off revolving wheels ; old women with their

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Naples

distaffs, cobblers toiling with bent shoulders, and crowds
of screaming and laughing children are on every side.
If it were not for one thing all would be pleasant
enough to look upon ; but old and young, plain and
good-looking, are afflicted with goitre. Terrible and
disfiguring illness! There is now a French remedy for
goitre in its early stages; but the boon of modern
progress, of modern hygiene, is all unknown in these
poor villages, where the same modes of suffering are
passed on like heirlooms, from one generation to another.
I am told that the disease in Gragnano and in Pimonte,
a little higher up, is as old as its history.

Our carriage was pursued through the long street by
a crowd of begging children, who had evidently received
the most thoughtful attention from previous tourists.
Getting none whatever from us, and very hoarse with
yelling all in vain, one youth finally slung a stone into
the carriage. This roused the sleeping lion. One of
our party, who had chased other game across the South
African veldt, sprang out, and down the street after the
boy, who had taken to his heels like lightning. Every
one was delighted. Faces appeared at the windows ; the
cobblers grinned ; the macaroni-hangers beamed ; there
was a delightful atmosphere of gratitude even for this
small diversion. The boy received his punishment in
the midst of an admiring audience, and we drove on
through a crowd remarkable for its dignified reserve.

As we continued on the way the sound of women’s
voices chanting met us, and a procession of girls, from
a few years old upwards, passed by, all with their hair

120

A GARDEN TERRACE, SORRENTO

From Naples to Castellamare

combed out over their shoulders and floating in the air.
They were on their way to fetch the body of some young
companion, and to bear it to the grave. The procession
was led by the smallest child carrying a crucifix, upon
which they all kept their eyes fixed as they passed down
the street between the swaying gold of the macaroni,
chanting their monotonous prayer. How like is the
music of these parts to the wild droning of Egyptian
song! ‘There is the same restriction of notes, the same
languor, the same sudden barbaric breaking of the voice.

The road to Gragnano is typical of all roads in this
country. Nowhere else are seen such mountains of white
dust. Everything on either side of the road for miles
becomes covered with it. A dark cypress is powdered
over until it is as pale as an olive. The aloes and
cactuses are almost white, and some of the trees remind
one at times of those in a child’s Noah’s ark encrusted
with snow. On a windless day it gives a fantastic,
quaintly beautiful effect. The shadows around are of
the purest azure. The road winds up the gorge, and
soon a bright campanile rises from the trees. Passing
through a village, we leave on the right the road to
Lettere, and keep straight on round the curve until the
great castle bursts upon the sight.

A grand old ruin of the Middle Ages this, of
Spanish and Aragon construction, with its frowning
central towers and battlemented walls. In a corner of
its chapel is a ruined fresco of the “Annunciation.” It
stands above gentle slopes, all vine clad and wooded,
that lead down to the Campania, which lies like a blue

16 I21

Naples

sea far below. The lines of the hills behind us seem to
sink away into eternity. The whole castle is perched
in a dreamy cloudland of its own.

“Golden and rosy over it
The clouds float dreamily.”

There is a peculiar charm in the remains of mountainous
feudal castles in this country, unnoticed elsewhere. The
mountains around Naples are as bold in shape as are
those of Scotland or of Germany, but infinitely softer
and more luxuriant in colouring. There is upon their
sternness a softening touch which seems to lift them into
the sphere of the poetic and ideal.

122

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*

CHAPTER VII
POMPEII

“Once more restored to the pure light of dawn
After the vast oblivion of lost years,
Back from the earth’s voracious sepulchre
The dead Pompeii’s skeleton is drawn—
—Back ’thwart the mournful ages and time’s tears.
And in the silent Forum, still and wide,
Far beyond the shadows of the columns
That, mutilated, lie on every side,
Pilgrims may view the now divided mount
About whose crest eternal vapours glide
Still frowning exquisitely o’er our fears.”
Translated from La Ginestra, Leopardi.

Leavine the train at Annunziata, we drive past Pompeii
itself towards the new centre of Madonna-worship, which
has eclipsed in the last few years all others in its growth
and wealth. A whole colony has sprung up about it.
Prosperous schools have been founded; trades are
encouraged ; the poor are looked after. And all this
is the work of a once poor and obscure notary. There
is a saying in Italy that no Neapolitan lawyer can be
honest. Whether this one in particular sought to
disprove the proverb, I know not; but he has* made
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for himself a name little less than miraculous. The
extraordinary patience with which he saved up his
humble earnings and carried out his ambitious scheme
reads like a romance. The church itself is not large;
but its luxurious ornamentation, rich interior, and
purple lights, the sonorous roll of its superb organ,
and the scent of incense which, unhampered by the
close air of towns, rolls through the open door into
the country street, impress the most callous visitor.
On either side of the altar hang glittering golden
offerings, souvenirs of whatever part of the poor
human body has been cured of its ill. There is none
of the dirt and squalor of so many church interiors
of the South. All is new, gorgeous, intense, idolatrous.
An atmosphere of devout and absorbing faith, of blind
obeisance, is about the church. People are pouring in
and out, none looking at each other, but all with eyes
raised to the dazzling lights above the altar. Strange
beyond words is this exotic growth of worship in the
midst of an old Pagan plain, still haunted with the
temples of the Gods, the tiny open-air and perfect
sculpture of their altars.

The faith here is intensely human. All the vast
sums of money subscribed from America and France
and the richer parts of Italy are given in desperation.
“Save me, my child, my husband, my parent, whoever
it may be ; and all my earthly goods will I part with.”
Such is the spirit of this church, filled to overflowing
with golden offerings, and with crippled and suffering
bodies, and in an atmosphere suffocatingly sad. It isa

124

le th ee

GARDEN OF THE PRINCESS

» GORTCHAKOW’S VILLA AT SORRENTO

Famous for its beautiful palm trees.

Pompeii

joy to turn from it and to find some old and weather-
beaten shrine in the pure air, before which the humble
peasant kneels and mingles his prayers of the soul and
the storm-driven heart. To the church the ills of the
body are taken; to the shrine the ills of the heart,
confusing passionate and unbalanced love with the love
of the pure and saintly. Here is a sunburnt labourer
who leaves his cart and thin, ill-treated horse in the
middle of the road, while he drags off his cap and
falls on his knees before a painted image of the

Madonna.

“Ave Maria! She too bears thy name,
She who has filled my poor heart with despair.
Bitter are the tears she lets me shed,
Infamy ! and little does she care !
“ Full of Grace! Thou knowest, Mother of love,
That those who love as I forget no more.
Give me this mark of thine especial favour,
Into her heart some of these love’s tears pour.
“ Holy Mary! When the night sets in,
When I seek to close my heavy eyes,
Fulfil this prayer . . . let me but fall to sleep.
Never ! Mad am I otherwise.

“‘ In this Hour! . . . Oh, beautiful is she...
But when she boasts that princes, noblemen,
Would die for her as dies the setting sun... .

Our Death. Amen!” }

A lady whose child was lying dangerously ill
addressed all her fervent prayers to the Madonna of
Pompeii. Praying long one day in her room, she heard

1 Translation from the Neapolitan dialect of Sig. di Giacomo.
125

Naples

a loud clatter against the wall, as if the pots and pans
in the neighbouring house had slipped off their nails.
She sprang to her feet with joy. “It is the Madonna’s
voice answering me!” she cried. “I said, ‘If the
_ child recover, make me a sign, Holy Madonna’ ;
_ and as I said the very words, came the answer.” A
~ devout Catholic told me the story, smiling—for among
many such as he the Pompeian worship is not viewed
with entire favour, the money speculation that keeps
it going being well known.

As the amphitheatre of Pompeii lies near the road
leading to the Church of the Madonna, let us wander
into it before visiting the town itself. Whatever it was
in the past, it is most beautiful now, covered by lovely
grass slopes dotted with flowers and alive with butter-
flies and lizards. Without indeed the grandeur that
is found in such buildings elsewhere, or any great
interest (save that its age is said to be greater than
that of such permanent structures in Rome itself),
there is a harmonious blending between its rough
architecture and the natural formation of the site, for
it is scooped out of the hollow of a hill—a large
verdure-lined cup with circles of seats melting away
into the smoothly sloping sides. It seems to have
gathered about it an artificial poetry which certainly
could not have existed about any amphitheatre in the
past. The Roman amphitheatre never aimed at beauty
of architecture—only at brutal solidity. Uninspired
as the Romans were in this instance by the Greek spirit,
they had nothing to work from but their own love

126

Pompeii

of enduring masonry and solid dispiay ; and the beauty
of this, among other amphitheatrical spots, is borrowed
from the lovely hills around and the purple distances
which so exquisitely envelop it.

In the newspapers of July 1862 appeared the
following absurd paragraph :—“‘ At the moment of
the destruction of Pompeii by an eruption of Mount
Vesuvius, a.D. 79, a theatrical representation was
being given in the amphitheatre. A speculator
named Langini, taking advantage of that historical
reminiscence, has just constructed a theatre on the
ruins of Pompeii; and the opening of which new
theatre he announces in the following terms :—‘ After
a lapse of 1800 years, the theatre of the city will be
reopened with La Figla del Reggimento. 1 solicit
from the nobility and gentry a continuance of the
favour constantly bestowed on my predecessor, Marcus
Quintus Martius; and beg to assure them that I
shall make every effort to equal the rare qualities
he displayed during his management.’” The scheme
proved beyond his ambitions.

Driving back along the dusty road, with the flat
green fields on either side, dotted with little painted
dwellings, we approach what seems in the distance to
be a mere settlement of mud huts. Whatever senti-
ments may be roused in some minds by the sight of
this ruined shell of tragically arrested life and pleasure,
it is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the utter banality
of the tourist’s visit. Arriving at what might be the
entrance of an Earl’s Court exhibition (outside it is like

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Naples

a great laundry yard, where the linen of the various
hotels flaps about in the hot air), and having taken the
tickets, and had an old and useless map of the city
palmed off as new, the visitors anxiously inspect the
guides, and try to decide which looks the least rapacious
and the most bearable. ‘Get the fat guide—he is
first-rate,” we had often heard said ; but they were all
fat, for the post of Pompeii is well known as a very
nourishing one. Followed, then, by a guide, and
armed with the map, which the tourist insists upon
spreading out and studying with absorbed interest
at every few steps, we enter the street of the dead
city. Are those the voices of ghosts around, mono-
tonous low voices, chanting in a sing-song tone from
among the tiny ruins? No; only the voices of fellow-
tourists reading aloud their banal Baedekers in the
enchanted ground. Tere, on the left, we turn into
the Temple of Apollo, one of the earliest of the
excavated ruins. Casts of the original statues are
poised on pedestals around, and upon them some half-
dozen kodaks are turned, while a group of impatient
guides wait at the gates. Now on towards the great
Forum, where already in a corner sit a party with their
luncheon basket empty before them, within a magic
circle of orange peel and egg shells. Where is the
poetry of it all?

But there are other ways of seeing Pompeii than
this joining in the great stream of foreigners. Take,
for example, some day of Festa when the quaintly-
dressed peasants from the mountains and the plains

128

FOUNTAIN IN SORRENTO

Typical of the many rose-coloured wall-fountains of
the South.

Pompeii

around come for a day’s sightseeing. The women are
all decked out in gorgeous kerchiefs, their sunburnt
faces and breeze-tossed hair bright with colour; the
men slouch along beside them, carrying the knotted
handkerchiefs containing their humble meal. Many a
handsome face is among them, many a dash of old-time
beauty. They know nothing whatever of Pompeii;
but every moment of the day during which they tread
clumsily on one another’s heels over the still-polished
stones is full of delight to them. Their rough laughter
rings freely through the great Forum and the empty
villas ; but it jars less on the ear than the more artificial
pleasure of our own kind. The natives are a thousand
times more in touch with the past amidst whose ruins
they stand than the most profound archeologist of
our time can ever be. They are the same people in
spirit, in character, as their class was hundreds of years
ago. They are lovers of pleasure, devoted to their
soil, as poor and as hardy, as ignorant and as uncrush-
ably hopeful as were the peasants of the happy plain
about the once living city. Their homes are almost
identical, rose-coloured, with sometimes a light wooden
story above. They are still as paganistic in spirit as
their religion will allow, or rather in spite of it, and
their lives and homes are menaced by the same danger
as that which hung over the Pompeians. How strange
to feel about us in this spot a breath of the gay and still
thoughtless life palpitating through it as of old! What
can the guides and guide-books tell us that is more
living and true? x
17 129

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The actual impression produced by Pompeii as we
see it to-day must be curiously opposite to the effect
originally produced. We see a city of glaring sunshine,
of shadeless streets, of almost uniformly low buildings,
all penetrated with silence. There is hardly a corner
where the sun is not now welcomed. But Pompeii was
once full of deep shade. The very Forum must have
had its awnings, and the narrowness of the thorough-
fares was no doubt accentuated by the upper stories
of the houses, which in many a tiny lane must have
almost met overhead. There is hardly a street across
which we could not easily jump; but, owing to the
fallen walls on either side, the public ways appear
wider now. The houses were indeed, as a writer points
out, constructed very much as birds construct their nests.
The interiors of the dwellings, now so bright and sunny,
were then softly darkened, while the air, which to-day
penetrates so purely through their open and deserted
recesses, must, unless methods of hygiene at that time
were very well developed, have been little pleasanter or
purer in that crowded centre of pleasure than in many
a modern South Italian town. But Pompeii is now a
model of swept and garnished care, which makes one
feel at times as though it was entirely artificial, sur-
rounded as it is by so many of the dirtiest little towns
in the world.

The real sentiment of Pompeii seems to be little
changed, whatever has happened to its outward appear-
ance. It is indescribably gay and insouciant still, and
the most sympathetic student would find it hard to be

130

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A short distance from Sorrento.

Pompeii

depressed here. Whether it is the site itself, or the
moral atmosphere left by the people—who can tell ?—it
is the only ruin in the world over which the joy of life
still hovers ; its streets are the only ones through which
footsteps seem still to pass; it is the one spot where
life has left a complete vitality and a legend of
joyfulness without the confusing changes of Time. I
speak of joyousness in the Pagan sense, as it were—
not to describe an existence more generally painless
than ours, but a time during which the sufferings
of others were certainly less considered and the Gods
delighted in laughing at them. Life that could not
be enjoyed was looked upon as a very worthless
thing. The life of a slave must, therefore, have
seemed peculiarly valueless: what did he know of
the free happiness of living? We in our time have
reached so high a rung of civilisation that each man is
burdened with the sorrows of humanity in general.
His burden does not very sensibly lessen the misery of
the world; but it teaches him to know and to feel.
Thus no doubt it is as much for himself as he is to-day
constituted, as the lost art of viewing life was for the
ancients.

The more one seeks to revive their day in the imagina-
tion, the more does the picture blend in with the climate
and the peculiar character of the surrounding Nature.
The Pompeians were a part of it, in harmony with it like
some painting that only one frame can fit. We, as Taine
says, wander from one city to another and find ourselves
at home everywhere, and leave no Gods behind us.

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The life must have been strangely lazy! There
could have been no traffic to speak of in the narrow
streets. No trades were carried on in the town, no in-
dustries of any kind. All the labour of the town fell
upon the slaves. There could not, therefore, have been
any great /uxe, since slave-labour would have proved
insufficient to administer to it. They must have com-
bined some secret of simplicity in their routine with
their passion for luxury and pleasure, which would no
doubt strike us as very comfortless. Certainly their
homes give us no impression of being other than
decorative asylums for the night or during bad weather.

Passing along the stone-worn streets, we look into
the tiny shops, with their marble counters and sliding
doors. In the counters are seen the holes where were
balanced the amphore, so called from their ear-like
handles on either side. They were the great oil, wine,
and fruit jars which the Romans used as did the Greeks
before them.

Beyond the Forum we see the small baths of Pompeii,
the Balneae which constituted such a favourite luxury of
that time, and in the perfecting of which our own day
seems to have taught us little. Those for men and
women were built side by side, so that one set of furnaces
served for both, and the hot-water cisterns heated both
alike. These baths must have been one of the most
crowded and popular places in the town. The entrance
fees were small, and children were admitted free. In
the first room was performed the anointing with per-
fumed oil, which was afterwards scraped off by slaves

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Pompei

with a sharp strigil. Slaves took charge of the garments
when there was no dressing-room, as was sometimes the
case in the smaller baths. In Pompeii may be seen the
tiny niches where the clothes were laid while the bather
went through all the luxurious processes of the Turkish
bath, “ killing” over the performance as many hours of
the lazy day as he could.

There is no need, and it would be even out of place
here, to describe the villas and buildings of Pompeii ; they
are well known, and a hundred fascinating history-guides
tell us their romantic story. But apart from all know-
ledge of details, there is a real charm in wandering
through Pompeii and enjoying its beauty, which is so
joyous and sunny. It seems to have gained with time.
All that was tawdry and carelessly built has vanished.
If the people of those days collected round them even a
tenth of the useless and trivial objects that now make
an excuse for the spending of money, no trace of them
remains. Only what was purely decorative and artistic,
or of real interest, has come down to us. Sometimes
even these have been beautified. Look at the dancing
faun in the house of that name; what exquisite
tints have coloured it! It is bright with rust, the
patina with which the ages have delighted in paint-
ing bronzes and coins. Dashes of blue and strange
green gleam through the leaves of the little garden
which of late years has been planted with an attempt at
reviving the flower-gardens of the past. Tall poppies
and sunflowers, roses and carnations and a trailing vine,
fill the air with sweetness, and the spot seems but to

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await the musical play of a fountain to break the spell
under which all sleeps.

Everywhere there are quantities of elf-like green
lizards darting about as if continually searching for those
lost races who looked upon them for so long as the
creatures of good fortune instead of, as now, only fair
game to catch by the slender tail. Their bite, according
to Pliny (the inexhaustible Pliny), was fatal in Greece,
but never in Italy. They were the type of divination,
the symbol of Apollo, creatures of light and sight—an
idea which is said to have arisen from the superstition
that when the lizard grew old and blind it felt its way
into the warm sunshine, and there recovered the use of
its sight ; and Leland points out that Raphael painted
his Madonna of the Lizard to illustrate the symbol of
the blind turning towards the true Sun. A lizard with
two tails is still considered a lucky find in some parts
of Italy, and to many a wayfarer from the north the
appearance of these bright and living jewels basking so
joyfully in the warmth still gives an artistic delight which
tempts one to view them as creatures not wholly devoid
of their old tradition.

Another lovely garden is in the Casa dei Vettii,
and here are a great wealth of charming frescoes. It is,
of course, in these mural decorations that so much of
Pompeian interest lies, though, alas! they represented
the art of but a few years, from the date of the first
eruption in 63 to the year 79. ‘These paintings of a de-
cadent age in Rome and Pompeii form the chief source
from which our knowledge of Greek painting is gathered.

134

OLIVE GROVE NEAR MASSA

In the autumn the peasants are seen gathering up the
olives and the hrewood under the trees.

“Ss

¥ uendagines & Fo
os

Pompeii

Though mural decoration came to be regarded in the
Republican period as of a very high rank, and the artists
themselves often belonged to noble families, it was re-
garded in Pliny’s time as belonging to a much lower
plane of art, and the most famous artists painted only
easel pictures, which have succumbed to the centuries.
A large proportion of the wall paintings in Pompeii and
on the Palatine are evidently the work of inferior crafts-
men, and apart from their imperfect technique, they
often exhibit an exaggerated taste in the subject as
well—-the sure portent of a growing decline. Vitruvius
reprobated the custom of representing monsters instead
of real objects, sham architecture instead of the simpler |
style of the time, and the too light and powerless
supports for heavy entablatures which may be traced on
the walls of Pompeii.

Certainly the inequality in the mural work is very
noticeable in this little town. Some of the houses are
decorated with designs exquisitely poetic, while others
are as banal as second-rate wall-papers of to-day. But
nothing has come down to us which can illustrate the
level reached by painting ; and we can only imagine, as
we view the graceful and bright decorations of the walls
around us, on which the sunlight often falls now, what
the great work of the richer towns, such as Neapolis and
Capua, must have been like.

It is curious to note huw small a part the colour blue
plays in these frescoes. We know that it was one
of the rarer and more expensive pigments, and from
the rarity of it here one must conclude that the

+39

Naples

Pompeians could not afford its constant use, or that they
actually preferred the warmer tones of red and yellow.
In the house of Ariadne is seen a corner once brilliant
with the colour of the sky, but faded now. In the
Museum of Naples are lumps of lapis-lazuli, which
when powdered produced a sort of ultramarine tint ;
but many of the lovelier and cheaper shades of blue
drawn from copper soon blacken with exposure, and
this fact no doubt influenced the choice of colours
long ago.

Though so small in actual area, Pompeii can only
be cursorily visited ina day. Many a visit is required
before one can easily find one’s way about its too-
uniformly-laid-out streets, which at first sight look
monotonously still and white. With the love of bright
colour in this country, the outward pallor of Pompeii is
all the more striking, and would certainly amaze the
Pompeians themselves, who lived within and out of
doors in a blaze of happy hues.

Having wandered through the town, we come to a
hillside composed of three layers—cinders, small stones
or J/apilli, and fine white ashes, all soft and yielding
to the spade. Beneath, in its cast of plaster of Paris,
lies concealed the rest of the little town. Some hundred
labourers, supervised by a director, are at work, and we
may watch the progress of the enterprise, which will go
on patiently for another half-century before the excava-
tions are completed—two centuries in all to restore to
the light this pleasure-spot of the past. Pompeii has, I
believe, yielded less of late, though from the spurious

136

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imitations of bronzes, wall-paintings, and so on, which
are quite openly sold by antiquity dealers as having
been stolen from the town (for which reason they seem
to find a ready market), one might imagine that Pompeii
was an inexhaustible mine of treasure, and not, as is the
case, a mine which was already largely despoiled before
the centuries finally concealed it.

Still, one object of great importance was recently
found here—a spirited statuette of Perseus, about twenty
inches high ; a unique object, I believe, as far as ancient
sculpture is concerned. All except weather-resisting
finds are, of course, at once removed to the Museum,
and as each gem is discovered and borne away, some-
thing of the life of Pompeii seems to go with it. Chateau-
briand’s dream was to see the objects in the place where
they were found—to make of Pompeii the most perfect
and living of museums instead of a despoiled tomb.
That was indeed only a dream. Our age is an age of
museums, invaluable but stifling.

Climbing the rough ascent to the fields above—
which the peasants cultivate until, bit by bit, it is
needed for the excavations,—we see the whole city
spread out before us, while Vesuvius, less than a mile
distant, rises beautifully above it. In the distance may
be seen a moving line of ash- and earth-laden waggons
crawling along towards the embankments which have
gradually grown up round Pompeii, rendering it almost
invisible from the plain. Near beneath us gleam the
lately uncovered buildings, white and fresh. Beyond
they have changed to smoke-colour, and beyond-again

18 137

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to grimy black. Think! Some of them have remained
open to the sky and the elements for over a century and
a half. The rain has beaten in; the autumn winds
have buffeted the ruined walls ; thousands upon thou-
sands of tourists have scampered through them. What
has been restored with infinite patience Time is once
more steadily undermining, and with the ages Pompeii
must crumble away beyond all power of resurrection.
It is still the doomed city—unless for a third time
Vesuvius should seek to immortalise it.

Far away inland lies Boscoreale, the seat of so many
valuable finds of late years, which have now passed out
of Italy into foreign museums. There was discovered
the other day the house known as the Villa Pompeiana
di P. Fannio Sinistore, said to be in many ways the
most perfect and interesting yet excavated, and still
more sumptuous than even that other villa so famous
for the beautiful silver table service found in its cellar,
which is now in the Musée du Louvre. It had a farm
attached to it, though the rooms of the house itself
were separate. A date afhxed by a grafito on a
column records a sale by auction, probably of the house
itself, in a.D. 12. The whole plan of the building has
been recovered, and offers, it is said, a good illustration
of Vitruvius’ statement that in pseudo-urban houses the
peristyle often opened directly out of the vestibule.
The wall decorations belong to the second or archi-
tectural style of Pompeian painting, and show some
resemblance to the frescoes in the house of Livia on the

Palatine.
138

Pompei

In regard to the magnificent frescoes found at
Boscoreale, an arrangement was made with the Govern-
ment by which the owner on whose private ground
they were found should part with only a certain pro-
portion of them to the country, while the rest were
exported to Paris, where Messrs. Canissa, antiquity
dealers of the Rue Lafayette, were to treat for their
purchase. The Berlin Museum made a splendid offer
for the lot; but the owner had, unfortunately for him-
self, exaggerated ideas of their market worth, consider-
ing them as far surpassing in value and interest anything
as yet found in or about Pompeii, and the offer was
refused. They were sold by auction a short time ago
for a much smaller sum. The Metropolitan Museum
of New York acquired the bulk of them, and among
others one of peculiar interest as illustrating the building
of the houses of that period, and showing the upper
stories of wood and the little balconies that jutted from
the windows, of which a single example may still be
traced in Pompeii to-day.

The Louvre purchased three of the frescoes, choosing
those which were of archeological interest rather than
those more remarkable for their beauty. Indeed, one
might almost infer from these three specimens, so poor
in colour and design, that they must have been chosen
with a view of also illustrating the bad painting of those
days which decorated the houses of the most wealthy !
One, depicting a genie holding in the left hand a
bowl, is certainly not of an inspired order of art, while
the more decorative friezes make one wonder at such

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work penetrating the sumptuous dwelling in which they
were found. Either the taste of the rich was not always
difficile, or the history of painting in Pompeii itself may
have been a short one, maturing as rapidly as its wines,
and again declining as rapidly. No doubt, too, even
then the advance of Christianity was beginning to
undermine the mythology from which the artists drew
their inspirations. The new religion may have had
something to do with disturbing its expression, just as
the mythological spirit itself penetrated for awhile into
the paintings of holy subjects. New and uncertain
elements must have been upsetting all the painting
of that time, and this mingling of the known and the
unknown has left us but a blurred mirror of the true
fount of art and colour in which to gaze to-day.

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CHAPTER: VII
SORRENTO

“Laughing and happy spot !
Light-hearted and gay ;
If life hath moments of sorrow,
The blue sea takes them away,
Takes—and returns them not.”
De Curtis, (Translated from the Neapolitan.)

Tue drives to Sorrento, to Amalfi, to Salerno, may be
considered as rivals in beauty, since the comparison
of one lovely view of Nature with another seems
indispensable to the modern traveller. The drive from
Castellamare to Sorrento, winding as it does between
terraces of vineyards and orange groves, through the
leaves of which the deep blue sea and sky and the
violet slopes of Vesuvius are continually visible, is
certainly one of the most beautiful in the world.
Surely, while driving along this glittering road on an
afternoon in late spring, it, is impossible to imagine
anything softer in atmosphere, or more dreamlike.
The vegetation is wildly luxuriant. There are green
gorges, vine-clad overhanging rocks, sunny walls with
I4I

Naples

enormous clumps of daisies above, and morning glories
and purple wistaria trailing over them all. The mingled
gold of the orange-trees where the fruit of the past
autumn still gleams among the blossoms of spring
follows the white and dusty road. Far beneath, wash-
ing over the shining rocks, the sea lies like a sapphire,
on which ‘‘a thousand rainbows have been thrown and
broken” ; at moments a breeze sweeps over its surface
and darkens it to wine-colour—the very sea of the
Odyssey.

Every foot of ground that can be reclaimed on the
precipitous slopes is terraced and cultivated. Every-
where around us is the shimmering silver of the olive,
and often a lovely tracery of shadow is thrown upon the
road. Shadows are among the most subtle charms of the
South. In the North they are almost uniformly dark ;
here they are but a transparent lacework, luminous and
variegated. Under the olives lies a purple tint as soft
as the wings of the dove ; and the trembling vine-leaf,
eternally fanning itself, throws a shadow as cool as it is
pale. Paler still is the shade of the fig-tree, so light
that the tree can be planted with impunity among the
vineyards, as the ancients knew. As we pass between
the houses and walls by the way, a clear blue shade lies
across the road like a darkened heaven. Lovely and
full of poetry are these shadows of the South.

It was in the ’forties that this road was built by
Ferdinand the Second, and until now?! no modern con-
trivances have broken into its exquisite remoteness.

1 The electric tramway is to begin working this year.

142

AMALFI

From the terrace of the Cappucini Hotel. Autumn.

Sorrento

No railway has whistled near ; no tramcar, electric or
other, has rushed round its undulating curves. Only
the slow-moving oxen, the patient mule, the small and
rapid mountain horse, and those absurd teams which
combine all three beasts, have beaten up the pumice
dust in clouds along the road. Near Castellamare, in
the gay summer season, the road is lined with light
carriages and red-plumed horses waiting under the
shade of the chestnut trees for the crowds of bathers
on the shore. In spring and autumn tourist parties,
with their luggage strapped on to their vehicles, pass
continually to and fro between Naples and Salerno.
The rate at which the horses fly past is unequalled for
swiftness in any other country I know of. They whirl
along, up hill and down, over the dust-white road
between cliff and sea with a rapidity which would have
horrified Dr. Johnson quite as much as the rolling
gait of a stage coach delighted him. There is, too, a
delightful sense of having found a faint element of old-
time poetry of travel even along a path which, for
the last sixty years, has been beaten by tourists of every
kind. Honeymoon couples, for half a century, have
loved it. Taine felt that where all was so beautiful “la
vie peut redevenir simple comme au temps d’Homéere.”’

Beautiful it must ever be ; but the road itself will lose
one of its greatest charms with the opening tram-line.
Its exquisite stillness will be broken into, and those who
have known this strip of coast and delighted in it will
miss the quality which is hardest to find along the most
noisy of beautiful shores.

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Naples

Above us, winding over the mountains, is the old mule
path which was for centuries the only land link between
Castellamare and Sorrento—a path so beautiful that
every loiterer round this coast should follow it in the
spring, pushing his way at times through overgrown
bushes and brambles alive with yellow and blue butter-
flies ; at times breaking into little stony rock paths, up
or down the ravines, or by streams black with tadpoles,
tiny “sirens of the ditch,” as Tasso calls them. Manya
legend of brigandage once haunted this path, about which
such delicious calm now reigns.

Within the ten miles of coast-line between the two
towns, some seven or eight old Roman towns and fishing
villages overlap one another, or hide almost unnoticed
within the curves of the shore. The most important is
the Roman town of Vico Equesne. In its ex-cathedral
are some of the best paintings of Bonito, an eighteenth-
century artist and native of Castellamare, whose now-
neglected works are scattered all over Naples. Morelli,
I believe, made an effort to rescue some of his works
from oblivion. There are also some sulphur springs,
fitted for modern use, and for nearly a mile the air is
full of their faint fumes, pleasanter than the powerful
odour of the tanneries outside Castellamare. Some of
these springs lie so near the shore that they must surely
have been under water before the sea retreated in 79.
Now we skirt an unbroken succession of enchanting
bays, and a long range of hills sloping down to the sea,
the highest S. Angelo, which, thickly clad with chestnut
trees, is midway towards Sorrento. Many deep curves

144

Sorrento

do we follow inland; yet we come out almost at the
point we entered, distances being curiously deceptive
along the whole coast. Passing over the bridge which
traverses a wide ravine near Meta, the road runs inland
along the side of hills where upwards of thirty terraces
may be counted rising from far below in the green depths
of the gorge to far overhead. At certain parts of
the road little children run to meet us, waving flowers
or orange boughs. Like wood-nymphs they run lightly
through the white dust with their bare feet, laughing
and clamouring for sous. Wearily as this eternal cry
falls on the ear, at least it is a delight to see such sun-
flushed and smiling faces. -In Meta is the house of
Gianbattista della Porta, the inventor of the Camera
Obscura, and the founder of that fantastically named
Academy in Naples, the Ozzosz. The house was traced
a short time past by Signor di Giacomo.

From Meta to the parish of the Trinita, where there
is one of the best examples of Ippolito Borghese’s work
—the Resurrection—we pass through orange groves ;
then comes the little town of S. Agnello, the land of
Giacomo de Castro, many of whose works fill the
neighbouring churches. As the danger limits of
Vesuvius are distanced, S. Gennarius is forgotten and
the more peaceful images of Madonna and Child are
around us. We are on a road of Madonna’s shrines
and legends. They hide under the drooping trellis of
leaves at the corners of sunny walls, or rise high against
the houses under the creepers. Over one white-washed
shrine the ripe oranges tremble under the trees. Over

19 145

Naples

another, marking the turn into a mountain path, roses
and wistaria have twined together a web of flowers ;
and there is yet another, near which the mustard plant
glows like gold, while within it there is a tiny natural
garden. ‘To the stranger, already filled with the tender
charm of this land, these continual and simple signs of
religious feeling seem quite idealistic; but many are the
romantic illusions in Italy which vanish as we delve
beneath its lovely surface. The religion of the poor is
but a debased Paganism without the spontaneous spirit
of Pagan days. These shrines show the worship of not
one Madonna, but of countless local deities, who often
change in popularity as easily as the most trifling fashion,
and an unanswered prayer will rouse a sentiment of
revenge which is often expressed by either totally
neglecting the Madonna’s shrine or locking it up so that
no offerings can reach her. It is the same unreasoning
rage with which the Neapolitans insult the bronze statue
of their patron saint by terming him “ Yellow Face”
when the liquefying of the blood is too slow. Unfor-
tunately, the great Madonna-worship about Naples,
so full of the natural poetry of the people, is often a
means among the dishonest of acquiring money and
confiscating the humble offerings of the poor, as in the
case of the Madonna della Pignasecca. When one of
these frauds was discovered, and all the gifts of the
faithful were found to have been squandered in the
hands of the Camorristi, a Frenchman asked a poor
woman what was the use of money given for such a
purpose. ‘‘Excellenza,”’ she answered, ‘we give to the
146

CATHEDRAL OF AMALFI

Overlooking the busy piazza, the public fountain,
and the fruit market.

Sorrento

Madonna, and the intention in our heart is a good one ;
if others steal the money, what does it matter to us?”
A gentle slope leads down to the sheltered table-
land on which stands Sorrento, the little town without
a history. Travellers pass through it, but know little
or nothing of its past. For them it is the smiling town
where oranges, lemons, and olives have ever flourished.
Yet once it was barren of this later-day “ Agrumi,” ? and
not till the sixteenth century, perhaps, had the growth
of oranges become sufficiently luxuriant to beautify the
hillsides. Among the several sirens up and down
this coast—at Panormus, at Naples, and at Capri,
whence they passed to the rocks that bear their name—
a few haunted Surrentum and its smiling and clear
waters ; but they have left no legends, as their sisters
did. If indeed S. Anthony once preached here, saints
do not make history. Few are the landmarks of the
past: nothing is old, and nothing has been written in
stone. ‘The perishable tufa of which the buildings are
constructed crumbles like dust when touched with the
finger of Time, and when Time might pass it over the
waves of the sea wash them away as surely as they
swept away the little house where Tasso was born, of
which Lamartine wrote: “Quand Vhorizon du matin
était limpide, je voyais briller la maison blanche de
Tasse, suspendue comme un nid de cygne au sommet
d’une falaise de rocher jaune coupé a pic par les flots!”
Greeks and Romans have dwelt here, yet nothing of
their vitality remains, save perhaps a tincture of old
1 « Agrumi”—word comprising all oranges and lemons;

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Naples

blood that may still course through the veins of this
little-changing people, and may still speak in the pro-
verbial beauty of the women, and in the curious in-
sularity of the Sorrentian, which has in it a touch of
the ancients’ contempt for “barbarians” ; or save in
the old foundations of some Roman basilica, on which
the cottages of the poor have been long grafted. Only
a few traditions, a few legends, haunt the little town
which would otherwise seem without a yesterday.

“Napoli bella, Sorrento civile,
Chi 1 S i ae
i venga ammalato a Sorrento si sana,

wrote a native poet with less rhyme than reason ; but
in his simple words are embodied its whole story from
the days of the Romans down to our own times. It is
one of the healthiest of spots, as the brown and richly
tinted faces of the inhabitants bear witness; the children’s
cheeks are as rosy as the coral beads about their necks,
which here they need only wear as ornaments, and not
as charms against the childish fevers which haunted the
Roman children of long ago.

Some sixty years ago travellers who passed this way
rarely lingered long. ‘Sorrento is not much of a
place,” said a well-known writer twenty years ago, and
no doubt it was still less of a place in those earlier days.
There was then but one hotel in Sorrento—the old
Jesuit Convent, the Albergo Cocumella. In 1846 the
Hotel Syréné was opened. Now it is a little town of
many hotels with lovely gardens—gardens which possess
that strange character which is the result of a combina-

148

Sorrento

tion of English flower-beds, Italian fruit-trees, orna-
mental jars, and stone seats. The difference is wide
between the natural orf of the Italian and the
garden of the North in which every flower has been
planted and trained with care. Here the growth of
flowers is a wild thing that will not be tamed. Roses,
violets, trails of hanging wistaria, bloom outside the
garden walls, while within flourish the more-tended
fruit-trees, the figs and pomegranates, peas and asparagus,
pots of basil and sweet lemon: “A poverty of flower
gardens and richness of pots,” as Vernon Lee describes
it. Tull within quite recent years flowers have played
but a small part in the lives of Neapolitan ladies. A
very few have now sought to revive the old Roman
culture of roses, purely for their pleasure—an advance
in itself on the Roman spirit which delighted more in
the reckless destruction of rose-leaves at festivals, or for
their essences, than for aught else. I recall a Neapolitan
lady who cultivates roses with real enthusiasm in her
lovely garden of Naples, but is still looked upon as
eccentric in her taste. Not, perhaps, since Pompeian
days, when the peristylium of the private dwellings
was filled with rare flowers only, and the fruit-trees
of the Aortus existed only on the painted panels closing
them in, has there been a genuine garden about Naples.
When, in the eighteenth century, the French parterre
(a word used originally to describe carpets, and later
flower-beds imitating them in colour and design) was
interspersed with groups of trees and decorated with
statues and ornaments, the fashion spread into the
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Naples

South, where all French tastes were eagerly copied.
But as a rule the Italian garden is still much as Martial
sang to—where the vine gives its cool shade, the
stream its clear water, and vegetables ripen in January
unnipped by frost. Still, Italy more than any country
gives the impression of being full of deserted gardens
or enclosures, where flowers might once have been
trained before the family grounds passed into peasants’
fields. A broken statue, an empty stone vase with
shell-like border, a rusty iron sun-dial fixed upon a wall,
a low stone seat, warm in the neglected expanse where
once shadows were trained—these are often found
within a broken-down wall, or behind the twisted and
fantastic scrolls of some old iron gate, “the gate that
leads to nowhere.”’

I looked through the iron bars of such a gate near
Sorrento. There lay the empty vase ; there stood the
disused well in the midst of a perfect wilderness of
vegetation. Lemons were glittering overhead, and a
child was idly catching at the lizards’ tails in the sun.
Beyond rose a great rococo stone gate, pretentious and
neglected. Nothing did it shut in, and nothing out.
It is a curious fact that in all ruined towns, Fora, or
walls, the gate resists time the longest.

To appreciate to the best advantage the curious
position of Sorrento, between its narrow one-mile
boundary of sea and mountain, turn into one of the long
high-walled and serpentine roads that lead up into the
hills. Every road going inland is the same. Between
high green-stained walls over which orange-trees under

150

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TERRACE OF THE CAPPUCINI HOTEI,
J AMALFI

In full summer.

Sorrento

great tents of matting are visible, the rudely paved
path leads up a gradual incline, silent and deserted.
Like a serpent’s tail it winds on past blue-tiled shrines
and little dark rills of water, on and on, as if for ever.
Then suddenly the wall ends, and the great view which
follows us everywhere round the coast is again spread
before us, and always does it seem new and wonderfully
beautiful. Such a road leads from the market-place up
to Piccolo S. Angelo. Another leads from the high
road down towards the sea and to the gate of the Villa
Crawford, which stands on a jutting ledge of rock over
the water, and is hidden within a lovely garden. Great
twisted trees of wistaria shade the drive, and through
the leaves gleams a snow-white tennis-court with marble
steps leading up to it as to some Greek Gymnasium.

A lovely climb leads to S. Agata ai due Golfi, and so
on to the Deserta, the climax of all the Sorrentine views.
In the Church of S. Agata is an altar of Florentine
work, seventeenth century, in which are inlaid mother-
o’-pearl, lapis-lazuli, and ’giallo rosso e verde antico.

Then, too, how many a little path leads into the
heart of the orange country! The whole history of
Sorrento is blended with the fruit. Think what a joy
was denied to Virgil, who had but the rose, the
immemorial vine, the sea-loving olive (which is said
never to die), to sing to. There was the citron, it is
true, which Pliny and the ancients seem to have con-
fused with the orange; but the citron is in comparison
a sad fruit—more of an antidote to poison than a
delight, more ¢ristis and sardis in its taste than

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Naples

sweet. When was the orange first freely cultivated
round the coast? When did the perfumed “apple”’
first separate itself from all the other apples of strange
medicinal qualities of the days of Theophrastus and the
past? The first distinct mention comes in 1548, with
the Arab invasion, when the sweet Portugali began to
spread, and the Seville oranges reached even England,
and were stuffed with cloves and other spices, to serve
as a fashionable pomander. Yet De Falco, the curious
old sixteenth-century guide (perhaps the first) to Naples,
mentions the orange-trees “‘che d@’ ogni tempo spiriamo
soavi odori per tante bianchi fiori” in the beautiful
gardens of Chiaia. The Aragon kings are said to have
shown a great taste in their time for these trees ; and
later, Don Pedro cultivated them with infinite care in
the royal park. But the tree destined to change the
whole scenery of this coast, and the very destiny of “ce
peuple qui donnera la vie pour une orange,” was still
a quite artificial growth, only the luxurious pleasure of
all the royal palaces of France and Italy. Now Sorrento
is one of the orange centres of Italy. Millions of
oranges pass on the boats to Santa Lucia, and the
yearly blessing of the Agrumi is already merged in
the centuries.

The most casual stranger who lingers at Sorrento
must remark the great difference between the character
of the Sorrentian and that of the Neapolitan. There
is I know not what of primitiveness and naiveté about
the Sorrentians. By this I mean, not that they are
less practical or less interested, but that the traditional

152

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simplicity of a fisher population contrasts with the in-
tellectual corruption of the over-sophisticated Neapolitan.
This is a trait noticeable more or less in all the little
fishing towns along the coast. The fisher-folks are
robust and honest, fine types of healthy and hard-work-
ing men. They have, moreover, a strong individuality
of their own, and a delicate, if intricate, sense of
humour, all the more remarkable because humour plays
so slight a part in the Italian character. The fact that
this little population can intermarry almost entirely
among themselves for so many generations, and
produce such splendid types of physique, is a striking
proof of their vitality. The deformities which fill the
little towns of Italy produce here only a quaint stunted
growth, still healthy and strong, human gargoyles with
a dignity of their own, like the dwarfs of Velasquez.
The women, too, may be said to be even stronger than
the men. The work they do is often harder than
that done by men—and that in spite of the enormous
families they rear. Women, young and quite old,
may be seen toiling along the road to Sorrento beneath
burdens which even a Northern labourer would hesitate
to fasten upon his back. They wear short petticoats,
showing their bare legs, and feet bound with twisted
rags to steady the ankles—a strange sight at first.
They say “Buon giorno” light-heartedly as we pass
them, and the sturdy simplicity of their lives is such
that the problems which preoccupy us do not exist for
them.

Perhaps the Sorrentians occasionally trade somewhat

20 153

Naples

on the stranger’s belief in their native simplicity, and
seem at times to realise that a little cunning among
a sleepy people is refreshing to others. But the people
of this paese are still far above the degradation of
the dishonesty in Naples, where nothing is ever done
except for'money. An offer there to do anything “ for
love”? must be distrusted—as when that Company who
offered to build a home for the Little Sisters of the
Poor (to all appearance so reasonably that it seemed, as
they said, “‘ per amore de Dio”’) built it entirely without
foundations. Unfortunately, there is a begging popula-
tion here—large for so small and so prosperous a place.
Rosy-cheeked and healthy children, and even well-
dressed peasants, will beg audaciously. Beggars infest
all this coast. The tourist evidently does not believe
that it is better that “the lazy should die of hunger
than be fed in idleness.” The Greek and Egyptian
spirit in which idleness was deserving of death would
quite upset the modern travellers’ delight in flinging
coppers into the dust and watching their poorer brethren
scramble for them.

Sorrento is, from its position, which turns towards
the north, an ideal summer resort, although few
foreigners seem to have discovered the fact. They
haunt it during its rainy season, or early in April, when
the snow is still lying unmelted upon the knees of
Vesuvius. The rain falls very heavily in the spring,
and the snow often lies thickly on the higher ranges of
mountains. But on fine spring days no spot could
present a brighter scene. The hotels are crowded;

154

Sorrento

the little streets are full of foreigners, buying tortoise-
shell and useless silk scarves, or bargaining with absurd
ignorance over the prices of inlaid wooden goods, so
closely imitated by painted designs that strangers are
often deceived, considering themselves very clever in
getting for a few francs some object the only value of
which is its imitation of the original. This work is
best seen in the Art School of Sorrento, supervised by
an old Garibaldian soldier and artist. There the work
can be traced through its highly artistic unfinish, when
it closely resembles a Pompeian fresco, to its polished
and popular perfection, when all its artistic quality has
been varnished away.

The time to see the place in its true glory is in the
summer, and during the delightful Italian bathing season,
which often lasts into October. There are vivid de-
scriptions of summer life here in the novels of Mathilde
Serao. Then the tourist season is over, and the villas
round the coast and up in the hills are occupied by
Neapolitan families. The uncertain climate, the torrents
of rain, and the gusty winds, are gone ; days of exquisite
warmth and starlit nights follow each other all through
the summer months, and on into the autumn days, when
the roads are strewn with fallen olives, the yellow
dandelion springs from every rock, and the ruddy
clusters of aloe blossoms are bright against the sky.
Go into the market-place in the morning, and you will
find a spectacle that cannot be surpassed for pictur-
esque charm. Part of this piazza is built over the
great gorge beginning in the hills and descending

155

Naples

rapidly to the sea, and once a roaring torrent must have
dashed down the ravine. The line of the old town
wall of medizval times which once followed it has
now disappeared and has given place to a fine road.
Crumbling ruins are incongruous in Sorrento, and the
hand of man has not been idle in helping to remove
them. On one side of the Piazza the bright plaster
facade of a little rococo church and the pink and yellow
houses glitter in the sun. A splendid sweep of hills
forms the background of this picture. In colour these
hills behind Sorrento run to the deepest blue, and in the
early morning mists great wreaths of clouds hang about
them delightfully, now hiding, now revealing some
distant habitation or rugged mountain precipice ; or,
again, some wild garden of olives and dim tufa rocks.
On the other side the sea gleams through the steep
defile of precipitous rock overgrown with the most
lovely wilderness of creepers, which here run sheer down
tothe shore. All is light and movement in the market.
Mules with shining brass ornaments, and harness which
is literally made up of charms and prophylactics, are
descending from the hills, down the mountain paths.
Rich masses of autumn fruits and vegetables are piled
on the pavement in the square. When the red water-
melons of summer are over, comes the season for the
green and black figs, together with strings of tomatoes,
baskets of the sweet fravole-uva, with its double flavour
of grape and strawberry, and the gorgeous scarlet
peperont. All is massed up together, side by side
with the colour of the medlars and that of the shining
156

i hae rie \

GARDEN IN THE VILLA PALUMBO,
RAVELLO

A mass of flowers in the spring season.

Sorrento

chestnuts. Eager groups of buyers and sellers are
chattering over their merchandise. Oh, this eternal
bargaining of the South! What a zest it gives to the
daily routine of life! I saw a small boy, certainly not
more than ten years of age, trying to sell some half-
dozen coloured handkerchiefs to the girls about the
place. Each girl seized one of the gaudy fichus of
cotton, shook it out of its neat folds, tossed it from
hand to hand among her companions with critical
remarks, and finally offered him three of the six soldi
he had asked. The poor little wretch could not come
down in his price on his own responsibility, and after
twenty minutes of useless haggling the dishevelled hand-
kerchiefs were thrown back to him contemptuously.
During the scene the girls were munching at enormous
loaves of bread, which they held under one arm, tearing
pieces off. At the height of the bargaining a big boy
was busily devouring the loaf from behind the arm of
one of the haggling girls. I felt quite sorry for the
urchin, who looked both hungry and unspeakably weary
of feminine society ; but no doubt these are the early
struggles that form the character of manhood.

Quarrels are rare here ; but when they do occur the
vociferation is endless, and the whole Piazza stands
round and watches with interest. A veritable chorus
of Aristophanes.

Perhaps one of the most picturesque sights from an
artistic point of view is the wide, low fountain in the
Via Tasso, which stands above three shining” and
dripping steps, which the naked-footed children, and

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Naples

the clattering sabots of the men and women, mount and
descend countless times each day. Here the women
wash and fill their great copper mezzini and terra-cotta
bowls, and here the mules and donkeys slake their thirst.
Let us hope that a few among the crowds of tourists
who pass by pause before it and sometimes delight in
its stained and many-tinted walls and beautiful pro-
portions, even though the guide-books have passed it
over. Two dolphins, with tails entwined, pour a con-
tinual jet of water into a marble basin encrusted with
moss and lichens, a veritable fantasy of the Renaissance.

The intense languor of summer life in Sorrento is
less felt perhaps by foreigners than by the Neapolitans
themselves. We are saturated with the energy of a
stiffer climate; but they are a people who have been for
centuries hypnotised by the glittering sea. ‘‘ We turn
our backs to it when we wish to work,” they say ; but
even that is difficult when every window, balcony, and
loggia looks right over the water. During the long
and lazy day the sea-bathing naturally occupies much
time, both for the bathers themselves and for those who
look on, or rather down, at the gay scene in the water
beneath the rocks. Towards evening crowds of children
swarm upon the beach, dashing in and out among the
waves, and shouting with delight. On the warm nights,
too, we bathed by moonlight in water full of phos-
phorescent flame. ‘Through the dark could be seen the
ruddy torches of the fishermen spearing eels, and away
beyond all was the red lava pouring down the side of
Vesuvius. Such scenes are unforgettable, especially for

158

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CATHEDRAL OF RAVELLO

As seen from the terrace of the Villa Palumbo.

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Sorrento

the Northern mind, leaving, as it were, an inextinguish-
able summer in the memory.

“The clear sea-waves are rushing about the coast of Sorrento,

Still do I hear in my dreaming their distant and elf-wild music,

Still see the white foam tossed far beneath at the feet of the city,

Filling the hollow of grottos, of cavernous stony recesses.

The perfume of sweet orange groves rolls down the height of the
mountain,

Rolls down the rocks that the zephyrs float so lightly away from,

Thrust, as it were, from the woods far above too perfumed to
hold them.

Here, when the sea-breath is cool and tempers the radiant sun-
shine,

When we see far across the Bay, Naples, and near it Vesuvius,

We marvel then at the spirit that such a world has created,

A world eternal and wondrous, as wondrous as it is eternal.” !

From no other point is there such an admirable
coup dwil of the Bay of Naples. It dominates the
scene; its long descending lines sweep gradually to
the sea, and vanish insensibly into the clustering towns,
which it seems to thrust almost into the blue water.
No more fairy-like effect could be imagined than the
glitter of distant myriads of white houses shining in
the sunlight, massed thickly upon the shore, but more
scattered as they ascend the first gentle slope of the
mountain towards where the vines of the lacryme
Christi grow out of their bed of ashes. The whole
coast-line which lately we followed in the railway lies
before us. Castellamare, Torre del Annunziata, Torre

del Greco, Portici, and finally Naples itself, shine like

1 Translation from the German of Kopisch.

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Naples

a diadem of pearls round the azure sea. Over all the
dreamy summit of Vesuvius blends its slow volume
of smoke with the cloudland that rests upon it. On
a clear summer night it is equally beautiful and more
mysterious. The town lights of Naples twinkle across
the bay, and seem but a stone’s-throw off. Now and
then a lurid gleam from the crater reminds us of the
sleepless forces of the under-world. I never realised so
well the magnificent description of Etna in the #uxeid,
in which the poet speaks of the mountain as “licking
the stars” (sidera lambit), as when looking across this
bay on such a summer’s night. Here the starlight
is superb, and the red tongue of reflected flame seems
to touch the heavens. A summer’s night at Sorrento
is intoxicating in its charm of sight, of sound, and of
scent. Perfect stillness is over all; the low plashing
of waves at the foot of the cliffs seems mystic and far
away. The air is full of delicate perfume of flowers
and the sweetness of inland country. Except for the
moonlight dancing on the waves, we might fancy our-
selves miles from the shores, for no breath of salt brine
from the tideless sea is in the air. The breezes of
these summer nights are gentle beyond words, and
little effort is it to the imagination to feel the myth-
making spirit of the past fill our belief with the living
personalities of the winds. Was it in one of these
rock-bound caverns beneath us that A®olus held his
court and ruled the coming and going of the Notus
and the Auster? On a night like this Zephyrus alone
is present, caressing us with his gentle breath. The
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Sorrento

waves at our feet are peopled with Nereids and Tritons,
as the air is full of the voice of the living wind. The
great pantheism of antiquity is spread out before us
in the starry vault above; and we think insensibly of
the invocation to the great Huntress :

“The risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the South-west wind and the West wind sing.”

The stone pines murmur as the wind freshens, and
Nature seems indeed to reveal the existence of Gods
everywhere.

Far beneath us the dark waves are washing over
those lava blocks of regular form which often we have
looked down upon through the clear and sunlit water
—the foundations of those vanished summer villas of
the Romans, from which they too looked across the
bay on many such a night.

21 161

CHAPTER IX
AMALFI

‘‘Far beneath us lies as it were an abyss of destruction ;
Step out on yonder terrace, and in the vaporous distance
See low down on the shore round the curves of the bay before us,
Low on its edge by the sea, silhouetted magnificent columns.
Side by side they stand, like a primitive forest of sculpture,
Perfect, Doric, and still. Round the roots only lizards are darting,
And over its vast aisles, now, only the ravens are flying.”

Von Piatren. (Translated from the German.)

Aut travellers have felt that there is sometimes a vague
familiarity about things and places never seen before,
which leaves us in doubt as to whether some delicate
thread of memory that once bound us to a past existence
has not been broken. To each new spot we seem to
bring a new self or an old self that was forgotten.
Whether a place gains more for us through memory
or through the unknown would be hard to say; but
many a traveller to the South of Italy will have felt
this dreamy familiarity following him round the Bay
of Naples to Sorrento. Round the coast to Amalfi,
however, all is new and wild, remaining so even to

those who return again and again. There is, as it
162

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GARDEN OF THE PALAZZO RUFFOLO,
RAVELLO-

Amalfi

were, a changeless strangeness in the majestic rocks
to which time has given the forms of ruined fortresses
of still invincible strength, or the primitive human
outline of monk or prophetess with outstretched hand
half escaping from the stone, like the imprisoned souls
of Rodin. A mere thread breaks the descent from
the heights to the sea, and along that thread of white
road horses and carriages race past with jingling of
bells and lashing of whips, while over the edge of
childishly protective wall we gaze down into the clear-
ness of the water where

“The wind on the warm sea dozes.”

Half-way between Sorrento and Positano are seen
through the aloes and olive groves the Isles of the
Sirens. Tiny and wave-swept as they are, there they
lie unchanged, as far as we can tell, since the days of
antiquity, and the name of the “ Fascinators of men”
has clung to the little archipelago of islets, the longest
of which measures only a quarter of a mile in length.
Why the name of the “Galli” is now used nobody
seems very sure; nor why beings so harmful as the
sirens should ever have had their image converted a
century or two ago into amulets. ‘“Selonc la verité
les Sireines furent 11. meretrix qui decevorent tous
les trespassares et les metrient en poureté,” and only
the wily Ulysses escaped from their death song. Why
then did Dante write

“To volse Ulisse del suo camino vago

Al canto mio”?

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Naples

Positano, which lies midway between Sorrento and
Amalfi, is quaint and delightful. The town itself is
built below the high road, towards the shore, and with a
picturesque piazza and cathedral. On one side of this
piazza stands a little dark pharmacy, a veritable curiosity
shop within, lined with eighteenth-century chairs, and
decorated with shelf above shelf of those rare old
pharmacy jars which collectors love, and which are
every day becoming harder to find. Behind the
counter stood some enormous blue and yellow pots
with seventeenth-century dates on their fat sides, and we
looked at them with covetous eyes. But not for lucre
could these rare specimens be bought. They were heir-
looms which their owner would not have parted with for
any sum of money—a rare characteristic in this country.
“You are not the first to covet these jars,” said the
chemist with pride. ‘In my father’s time an English-
man came here and desired, like you, to possess one, the
duplicate of this before you. He offered a thousand
francs for it, which my father refused; but he gave
the jar to the Englishman because he was his friend.”
The pharmacies of the sixteenth century were always
decorated with porcelain jars, the older ones having a
spout, and all bearing quaint inscriptions upon their
sides. Quite useless though they are in our time, they
have still a lingering utility in such out-of-the-way
spots as this, just as in the modern chemist’s shop the
great globes of coloured glass still remind us of their
primitive use of attracting from afar the attention of
the passers-by.

164

TERRACE OF THE PALAZZO RUFFOLO,
RAVELLO

One of the most romantic ot gardens in Italy.

Amalfi

Leaving Positano behind we find the scenery
becoming grander and more impressive. If it be
possible to enjoy keenly yet solemnly, the beauty of this
coast can be so enjoyed. The voice heard round this
echoing world of rock and sea is far more the rare voice
of Nature, undrowned by the sounds of man, than can
be heard among the orange groves that lie behind its
heights. Not a shrine marks the path of man’s creed,
and the tiny terraces of laborious handiwork seem
trifling and insignificant amid such gorges of stone.
Hardly a goat nibbles at the pale cactus-leaves of
Sicilian memories. There is a loneliness, a stillness, that
harmonises not only with the beauty around but also
with ourselves, and the thoughts that rise as naturally
within us as the moonlight sparkles upon the sea, and for
a moment at least, amid such beauty, the earth-bound
soul is “competent to gain heights that it may not keep.”
Few are those places whose charm can speak twice to us
with the same voice, however eagerly we would hear it
again, yet each time we pass round this drive the same
sense of strangeness, of separateness from the banality of
travel meets us. For travel zs banal in our day, and
even the value of “impressionist” impressions of
travellers is questionable. One writer at least expresses
this opinion in his own Sensations d Italie: “... Je ne
crois aucunement a la valeur des observations de route.
. . . Sensations d’histoire, sensations d’art, sensations de
nature—quand vous avez laissé pendant des semaines
les trois courants déborder, jouer a leur gré sur vous, il
se produit dans votre étre intime un phénomene qui

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Naples

explique pourquoi chaque voyage se termine sur un
changement sécret de votre personne.” Yet, if Nature
speaks to each being with a different voice—if, in describ-
ing her, we ‘write ourselves down whether we will or
not,’’—then first impressions of travel must have some
touch of freshness which, though of no lasting value, is
déja quelque chose.

Certainly there are some impressions true enough
to be re-found each time a spot is revisited, and the
same ones await us ever at Amalfi—the same conviction
of its rare loveliness, and the same disgust for the
degraded Amalfians who quarrel and beg and sleep away
the days of divine sunshine in changeless squalor. It
is difficult to believe that Amalfi was but a short time
ago an active centre of the macaroni trade, so entirely
has it now dwindled away. But we are, as it were, upon
its classic ground, though macaroni in Italy is probably
older than any one knows for a certainty—it may even
have been included among the pasta of Roman days.
It is curious how slowly this food grew into popularity,
and what long and inexplicable lapses of time lie between
its rare mention in the past, while the few authors who
cite it in their works treat it always as more of a novelty
of their time than as being familiar to them. Marlino
Coccaja, one of the most famous of the early sixteenth-
century macaronic poets, describes the dish as rusti-
canum and as if it was but little known, and Skippon,
who travelled all over Italy in the seventeenth century
and frequently commented upon the native food, makes

no remark on this. We know that it was known in
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Amalfi

England in the time of Ben Jonson, though very super-
ficially, since it was again introduced a century later, and
then as a delicate dainty at Almack’s, while the name of
the pasta served as nickname to the absurd gallants who
brought it over. But macaroni has persistently resisted
taking root in England. Rowlandson, an intelligent
traveller of the eighteenth century, was so struck with
its excellence as a staple of nourishment that he urged
its use in our navy—in vain! Macaroni may be
said to have reached its present popularity early in the
last century, and (to quote another old traveller)
Whiteside, when he went to Ischia in the ’forties, says
that he found there nothing but ‘‘ beds and macaroni.”

To return to Amalfi. When we have rounded the
last jutting point and (if it be an early summer evening)
approached it through air literally blazing with fireflies,
the town rises before us, clinging to the rock much as
a cluster of sea-anemones cling to the rocks beneath
the water. Its structure is as fanciful as one of the
weird conceptions of Victor Hugo embodied in his
drawings. Beautiful is it as a vision—a vision to be
remembered only, and not re-found ; for soon the fact
is borne in on us that the real Amalfi is not what
historic memories and sentiment and wayward imagina-
tion had made it seem. What a writer said of it some
fifty years ago is equally true of the present: ‘ Amalfi
is a dirty place; in fact, an Augean stable.” By a
humorous playfulness of fate, the manufacture of soap
is one of its especial trades. But it is one of the
characteristics of small Italian towns that human dirt

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seems to add to instead of detracting from their charm.
Into the beauty of the South all things fit, sad things
and even dirt, though the dirt is not always that of the
ground, which, as Warner says, keeps us pure. There
are corners of Amalfi, up its one climbing street, where
the neglect of ages has gathered together every imagin-
able tint of green, every mysterious shade of colours
too soft for names ; and these dim spots are grateful to
the eye dazzled with the expanse of sea and sky towards
which all Amalfi turns. Here children who seem to
have something really wild and primitive about them
play and quarrel with dogs and cats, not more wild
than themselves, all the long day; or at the sight of a
stranger they will spring away from their play and
beseech for soldi. ‘Moio di fama,” cries a little girl
with rosy face. ‘Moio, moio di fama,” echoes the fat
child she holds in her arms. The begging on every
side is quite terrible. To smile at a child—and how
natural does that seem—without giving it a copper is
an absolute waste of kindness.

“If I remain here much longer I shall beg for soldi
myself,” exclaimed an Englishman; and he hurried
away from Amalfi with real fear and disgust, reminding
us of the story of the prelate sent to clean out one of
the monasteries of the South, who was obliged to throw
up his task and flee for fear of becoming himself as
much lost morally as those around him. “Forgive
them, your Holiness,” he said. ‘It is in the air: I
felt it myself.”

Children usually appear to defy dirt more easily than

168

PULPIT OF SAN GIOVANNI DEL TORO,
RAVELLO

One of the two fine monuments of Byzantine work
to be found here.

Amalfi

older people, or at least not to grow quite so revolting
under it; but in Amalfi even the babies look old and
curiously unchildlike in their neglect. I have seen them
plunged bodily, head downwards, into the fountain of
the Piazza, but apparently more to let them quench
their thirst than from any desire of cleanliness. The
little girls wear their hair, often of a lovely golden
colour, twisted up into a tight roll behind the head, but
never do they look other than utterly and contentedly
squalid. What a contrast is there between the bright
good looks of the Sorrento women and the almost total
lack of beauty among those of Amalfi! All look alike
in their absence of freshness and in a somewhat degraded
type not pleasant to witness. Perhaps the people of all
places that have sunk from a great past into such utter
insignificance strike us as degraded. These people were
once as the children of a beneficent Nature who had
lavished upon them magnificent coast-lines and rich
naval possibilities, and when the sea in a single night
swept into its depths for ever those gifts from which
they may be said to have sprung, they also sank,
morally, into the deep.

It is a relief to turn towards the noble Cathedral,
that fantastic growth of every kind of architecture save
the Greek, enriched from so many ages of art down to the
sweeping coat of paint of our own day, which rises far
above the Piazza with indescribable beauty. Here we
come across the first foreshadowings of the past days of
Paestum, and its devastation will be familiar long before
the ruined grandeur of its temples is before the eyes,

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for tradition as well as historic fact has grafted spoils
into the cathedrals of Amalfi and Salerno. Here, in
the cloisters of S. Andrea, are encased and hidden in
wretched wooden supports those crumbling columns
which once adorned its portico, fitting even into the
structure of Norman and Lombard days, for the
sculpture of the great past still keeps its secret of
perfect harmony.

Perhaps nothing is rarer than to see the riches of
past handiwork on the very spot for which it was
designed, and here, far above us in the Campanili,
“littering like a dragon’s tail,” the purple of the
mountains now lies darkly against those Corinthian
pillars of a later-day Paestum which must long ago
have gleamed like the white stems of flowers in the
midst of the rose-gardens.

In the Piazza at the foot of the Cathedral’s sixty
steps stands the rountain, the heart and pulse of the
little town. The basin is fine, but the centre decoration
of S. Andrea burdened with fish and artificial flowers is
almost uniquely ugly, a strange thing in a land where
lovely fountains abound as they have ever done from
the days when Boccaccio visited this coast and found it
“‘pieno di picciole citta, di giardini, e di Fontane.”
How clearly does the word convey to the mind’s eye
a vision of marble and running water which combine
delightfully together with shining of wet sunshine and
plashing of playful music! No one can visit Italy
without being struck with this. Far back into times
of antiquity the cult for decorative springs existed,

170

ah a

Sie
;

OLD TOWER ON THE SHORE OF MAIORI

One of the many similar defensive constructions of
the middle ages against Saracen pirates.

Amalfi

and we know how the Renaissance, which quaffed so
deeply from the wells of the past, delighted in their
revival. But there is a kind of fountain produced in
the South which is indicative of the natural artistic
feeling of the people: a certain harmonious touch
between the hand of the worker and Nature, which
makes the polished cups and basins seem as if they had
grown of themselves beneath the running streams of
water. As if the people had understood that
“. , . la source dune eau saillante d’un rocher
Est plus douce au passant pour sa soif estancher
(Quand sans art elle coule en sa veine rustique)
Que n’est une fontaine en marbre magnifique,

Par contraincte sortant d’un grand tuyau doré
Au milieu de la cour d’un palais honoré.” 4

Every village of the South is marked by a more
elaborate fountain, which stands as the heart of the life
and ways of the people, and round it a ceaseless stream
of natives passes from morn till night. All the washing
and all the drinking seems done here ; all that strange wild
talk which is as mere gibberish to the stranger, so cease-
less is it and so careless of the hours that pass—all stirs
round the marble heart of this empty shell of the past.
We watch the burning dark faces bending over it, and
the water splashing up and over them, and overflowing
till it trickles far along over the stones to where a
fruit-stall juts from a corner with a blaze of oranges
and tomatoes. How many are the pictures that arrest
the eye on every side! Would that they could remain

1 Ronsard.

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and that too much gazing did not wither the freshness
from these scenes. But travellers bring from other
lands something of the jeétatura in their eyes; or is it
only in their gold?

In the dark shadows under the walls and up the
Cathedral steps men and children lie sleeping, face
downwards, with the flies buzzing over them ; and the
little green lizards, or sometimes even their brown com-
panions of poisonous reputation, creep out of the stones
and bask beside them in the sun. Never do we see a
woman sleeping. A jar upon the head, a child in the arm,
a half-knitted sock on long curved needles between the
fingers,—for them there seems no time for slumber.
The air is full of that weird odour of back streets full of
such infinite variety, and so strong that not even the
breezes of the open sea or the sweet breath of orange
blossom on the terraces above can sweep it away. At
moments it reminds the most stoical of travellers that
one torment in Dante’s hell—a torment which, curiously
enough, has been the least treated of in the ages that
gloated over horrors—really would be beyond endurance.

The scene in Amalfi is ever idle, yet how restless !
Or is it that all idleness appears so, and only the sweat
of man’s brow gives the calm which spreads such a charm
about a country? No calm is there in Amalfi. The
once-quiet medizval cloisters of the Capucini, so familiar
from the photographs “‘con monaco e senza,” are now
as noisy as the street beneath, where the unfortunate
tourist can be seen, followed by a crowd of begging
poor, all making loud personal remarks and laughing

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Amalfi

among themselves at him and at everything. The
Amalfian’s thought is his speech: he has no other.
‘Chi parla semina”’ is the only half of the old proverb
that he seems to understand.

Yet what a spot must this once have been to withdraw
to from the world, whose restlessness is spread far below,
while here nought but the distant and low-toned echo
of it reaches! Surely the cult for monastic life in the
past expresses not only a devout sentiment but also a
deeply-rooted passion for solitude—a belief that in it lay
all the nirvana which disillusioned heart or incomplete
existence could need. It is the very spot from which
the following lines might have been written:—

“Tnto the road I threw this heart of mine
And far up on a mountain have I flown.
There, for Love’s story and its passionate sorrow,
S. Francis took me, poor monk, for his own.
“Tap, tap !—
Who’s there >—
‘Is there one here
Who, down in the street let fall his heart ??
—Maiden, thou wilt not find such person here,
With Mary’s blessing and God’s peace, depart.

“Then chanting to herself the maiden sang,
“O Love, in a monk’s life thou hast no rest!”
And down the mountain-side she bore away
The heart . . . hid ’neath the kerchief on her breast.” ?

Sometimes, in the tormenting street life, the one
policeman who wanders about Amalfi—longing, no
doubt, to lie down on the stones and sleep as so many

1 Translated from the Neapolitan of I/ Monasterio, di Giacomo.

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Naples

of those about him are contentedly doing—takes pity on
the exhausted strangers and beseeches the crowd to be
more “discreto.” I have seen him clasp his hands and
simply implore the children to be reasonable ; but in vain.
This uselessly persuasive manner made me think him a
being rather too kind for his business ; but one day he
showed a severer side. Our driver, who was waiting for
us in the shadow of a wall, was tempted into deserting
his vettura for a moment to go and help a comrade
with a fallen horse. The policeman pounced upon his
carriage, removed the dusty cushions inside, and bore
them rapidly away to some spot from which they could
only be reclaimed with a fine of two lire. But their
owner looked more crestfallen than enraged. The
Amalfians, like certain other races, take harshness and
even blows stoically. ‘Per beata ch’ ella non furon
pesche.”? Our driver shrugged his shoulders and
muttered, ‘“‘ He is but a lazzaroni,” and that is still a
term which covers a multitude of sins.

No: in Amalfi there is no quiet, unless it be,
perhaps, that, wandering on the shore or on the
mountain paths far above the ruined arsenal where
once the galleys of the Republic were kept, we may
find a spot from which we ourselves unnoticed (oh,
rare satisfaction!) can watch the fisherfolk spreading
their dim red nets along the sands, and see the dark
faces of the idlers leaning over the wall above, the
one deep note in their world of Virgin’s colours.
These are the moments when, before its last narrow

1 “Fortunately they are not peaches.”—Old proverb.

174

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Amalfi

strip of beach, Amalfi lets us dream a few of all her
prosperous dreams of the past, and we may picture
the wide shore reaching from here far on to Maiori,
its noble forts, its sheltering arsenal, its array of ships,
many-oared, upon the beautiful horizon, where now
not a single sail whitens the blue. For a moment we
may catch the spirit of the middle ages, as we look
across the bay to where Salerno may be imagined as
preparing assault upon her fiery enemy. Yet all seems
now but a legend, not of the earth but of the quiet
sea: while something in the overhanging and cling-
ing houses, the frowning rocks above and the calm
but eager sea below, still murmurs of the fate which
along these coasts of Italy has planted building above
building as surely as the centuries have built their strata
one above the other. A stony wound in the mountain’s
side, tragedy of quite recent date, seems even now to
await fresh terraces and another smiling dwelling to
reflect the sunshine on its windows and walls, since the
homestead that lies beneath has hidden its face for ever.

The travelling spirit in the South is one of continual
movement, and there are but few spots where lingering
is habitual. Even while driving to Amalfi our vetturino
was eager to discover the exact moment at which we
intended “ moving on” next day. The spirit of repose
has been destroyed by the travellers themselves, and
their determination to see all in a short time has so
penetrated this sympathetic people that they never cease
to remind us of the fact. Perhaps the reason of this
restless spirit lies not only in the superficial character

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of modern travel, but also in the formation of these
fishing towns backed by rocks and bounded by a hot
and shadeless road, of which, with the best intention
in the world, one gets somewhat sick.

As this fine white road passes through Amalfi it
naturally bears the name of the hypothetical Flavio
Gioja, round whose individuality so much contradictory
evidence has collected. In no record of his time or
afterwards can his name be traced, though the two
words forming it are undoubtedly connected with the
mariner’s compass. The Amalfians, borrowing the
loadstone from the Arabs, adapted and spread its use
upon the royal fleet of the Anjous, adorning it with
the royal badge. This badge was used to mark the
north on the compass, and consisted of a golden lily,
a “bright jewel,” the very meaning of the words
“Flavio Gioja.”” But the history of the compass is
legendary. All we know is that its use spread over
Europe from Amalfi.

This, however, does not prevent the descendants
of Flavio Gioja from existing. We know that they
received the bounty of the king a century ago, and
some natives assert that the family still lives in a
village near.

But enough of Amalfi. From the lovely hills above
where Ravello lies hidden, “‘le vent qui vient a travers
la montagne” is calling us with as sweet a breath as
at Sorrento, the breath of spring and its flowers. So,
with luggage-laden carriage and cracking of whip, with
a procession of filthy children flying after us through

176

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The Marina is peculiarly interesting. The overhang-
ing rocks are incrusted with masses of maidenhair fern.

Amalfi

clouds of dust, we pass the shrine of the Stella Maris
“che guide il marinaio con la sua stella,” and, rattling
through Atrani, the twin shadow of Amalfi, we turn
to the left, where the way lies wide and smooth through
the ravine of the Dragone, or Dragon’s Tail, as it might
be called, so brightly does it glitter with emerald scales.
Masses of maidenhair on dripping rocks, fig-leaves thrust
from the very stones, pink orchids and foxgloves, and a
wilderness of common flowers, are above, while beneath
hide the sheltered orange groves and the fast-disappear-
ing flat-roofed houses of the peasants. An old sibyl
crouching beside the roadside rises suddenly at the sight
of a carriage, and with harsh and terrible voice shrieks
a question into the silent gorge; and a lovely echo
murmurs back from another world.

At every turn of the road the air grows purer and
the hills become more deeply green. High up across
the ravine is perched the old town of Scala, which is
said to have once possessed 130 churches, such a
plethora of piety alone accounting for its extinction.
It is curious how invariably these mountain towns kept
their ecclesiastical independence although forming part
of some greater centre, just as Scala and Ravello formed
parts of the inland boundaries of Amalfi and made its
greatness as did the sea-coast towns along its shores.
The brief history of these mountain settlements is full
of fascination, so totally different is it from the old-
world history of Italy, the days when the Greeks chose
lovely plains instead of heights on which to erect their
cities. But in the middle ages, when piracy from the

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Saracens had become a powerful factor, difficulty of
access was the Italian’s idea of safety —impregnable
positions which made even small feudal holdings of
great resisting power. Little wonder is it that these
once powerful but too isolated fortresses soon passed
into decay, when the great families who “ made” the
place, the gentlemen merchants of that time, gradually
deserted their lonely castles, the pivots of endless
quarrels.

As we approach Ravello we see but a little village
with a ruined tower and a Cathedral despoiled of almost
all its old-time beauty. Ravello may be termed the
eagle’s nest of the peninsula. I know of no place
where the sentiment of lofty seclusion and repose is
so enduring. After the jostle, heat, and dust of the
routes by the shore, here we enter an atmosphere that
is at once bracing and full of rest. The glorious gulf
of Salerno lies below, and just above us a cloudland
rests upon the hills ; and how distinctive and delicate is
the charm of those hills! High as we are already,
ravines slope higher still, here and there crested by
some crumbling ruin or by a straggling mountain
village on the white walls of which the sun glitters
from time to time as the clouds part before its face.
The bold gorges are deliciously clothed in verdure, and
here the severity of the mountain forms has every
outline softened by lovely vegetation. Steep descents
to the sea lie on either side, one leading to Amalfi and
the other to Minori. Among the vineyards of Ravello
crumbling walls and Byzantine relics attest the past of

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Amalfi

this beautiful place, and the breeze seems to murmur
with a strange sadness—

“Non sono io quel ch’ un tempo fui.”

The piazza, with its superb view, is bounded on one
side by a wide amphitheatrical stone seat, and opposite
to it rises the white-washed Cathedral, behind whose
green doors are hidden the masterpieces of Barisanus,
said to be unequalled save by the gates of the Baptistery
in Florence. Whatever were the vanished glories of
this Duomo, seldom is it that so supreme a work of art
as yet remains within can be found in so romantic a
position. We are accustomed to view masterpieces of
every kind in the stifling atmosphere of towns and in
the midst of the restless hum of men ; but this is one
of the rare instances to the contrary. Here a priceless
jewel of art is enthroned in a far-away setting of
natural beauty which adds an infinite charm. The
cutting of the jewel is worthy of its setting, and art
does not yield to nature in perfection. The severe
lines of the Byzantine structure are as gorgeous with
glittering mosaic as are the hills around with the mosaic
of nature.

The graceful columns supporting the famous pulpit
rest upon the backs of weird stunted lions, after the
fashion of the times. A dim green mould, time’s
colouring, darkens them beneath. Above is an eagle
spellbound in the stone, as by a lingering touch of
Eastern conventionalism. As I gaze up at it the door
of the Church is open; the lovely purple haze of the

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hills glimmers outside, and air sweet with fragrance of
flowers is wafted around this divine monument. The
stone figures seem to brood, half-conscious of life, and
the wings of the eagle appear to flutter as if it would
fly far from its nest.

In the little church of del Toro stands another of
these fine pulpits, rivalling it closely in beauty ; at the
foot of its delicate columns tiny lions are crawling.

Wise are those who defy the gospel of the drivers
and the guidebooks, and linger at Ravello. The air is
life-giving. We are far above the warm languor of the
shore which tempts to such drowsy enjoyment of life.
There is an energy in the breezes which sweep around
this spot, calling doubly to those who are themselves
energetic and delight in action of mind and body, as
well as in contemplative enjoyment of beauty.

180

’

SUP tO AML WHE) ye

J
+

THE BASILICA OF PAESTUM

On a May morning.

CHAPTER X
PAESTUM

Somer day, perhaps, the lovely shore that lies between
Amaifi and Salerno may become more popular as a
winter resort, for its climate is soft and warm; but
at present it is still only a ground to be driven over,
and even that often under difficulties, the horses at
Amalfi being miserably bad and the drivers them-
selves little better. Its day has not yet dawned, and
the beautiful Hotel del Torre still remains closed
upon its majestic elevation. What a position for a
dwelling! And beneath the rock upon which it
stands there is a long stretch of beach—“ real sand,”
as children say,—the blue water lapping it noiselessly.
Jutting out to sea is one of the many towers of the
South; but the tower of Maiori is almost ruined, a
dark and romantic silhouette on the sun-tipped rock
from which it rises. The waves break softly round
it, and one might almost imagine this one of the last
spots on which the mermaids lingered, as they are
said to have lingered in the belief of the Neapolitans,
far on into the middle ages.
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Maiori is not so poor as Amalfi, and the people are
not so incurably idle. The macaroni trade, which was
once almost entirely Amalfian, seems to have drifted
hither in a small measure. Instead of having rows
of fishing-boats and nets, the shore is often seen com-
pletely spread over with sheets of the fine “spaghetti,”
too fragile to bear hanging out to dry. It looks as
though the gray sands had turned to deeper gold in
the hot sun.

After Maiori is passed the road winds up the
mountain, curving ever in and out till another tower,
the great tower of Cetara, comes in sight. This
stands over a little fishing town, poor, but too
primitive to know the misery of larger towns. Its
inhabitants are still unspoiled by travellers, and are
as industrious as the failing fishing trade allows. It
is to artists that this place is dear,—who have for
ages painted enthusiastically its humble beach and
eccentric tower,—and among the oldest paintings of
the south by foreign painters are found pictures of
Cetara. It is a curious fact that places remind one
of pictures far more often than pictures remind one
of places. ‘Nature,’ as Whistler quaintly said, ‘is
creeping up.” The whole scene is typical of the
days of Claude Lorraine, the days when Nature was
painted from the purely fantastic rather than from
the realistic point of view. For there is something
wildly imaginative in the whole construction of this
densely-crowded shore loaded with wave-washed boats,
with complicated houses piled against the rocks, and

182

TEMPLE OF POSEIDON, PAESTUM

Best preserved of the three temples which adorn
the plain.

Paestum

watched over by the magnificent tower whose edges
catch the gleam of the sun when all else has sunk into
shadow.

Like a mirage is the view of Salerno as it lies low
upon the water’s edge all purple and blended by
distance. But, like a’ mirage, it fades away as we
approach it, and nothing can be more wretched and
colourless than the town itself. It is dreary to a degree,
and whatever interest it has is the reflected charm
of its background, the mountains of Salvator Rosa’s
muse, and of the wondrous temples of Paestum.
The old story of its greatness seems to have no
affinity with this straggling home of drowsy people,
who for centuries looked across their bay at the
grand Doric ruins sinking into their bed of wind-
driven rubbish and earth without producing poet or
artist to rescue them, or any attention of the learned.
For ages the Salernian sailors and fisherfolk used
them as their landmark,—the last use that great
Poseidon bequeathed to his deserted dwellings. To
the casual visitor, at least, the inhabitants seem
poverty-stricken and diseased, while the walk along
the sea and the pretty open garden of shady trees is
crowded with perfectly idle men and women. It is
much the same in the narrow back streets—those
terrible streets where the air is filled with the nauseat-
ing smell of rotting vegetables, which the Neapolitans
have, apparently from time immemorial, loved to
tread into pulp under their feet.

Even the visit to the Cathedral is more of a

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necessary evil than a delight, since it adds to the
hours which one fails not to count in Salerno. This
home of wonderfully preserved glass mosaic, so
delicate that its preservation is one of the mysteries
of time, has lost all its old harmony with its environ-
ment. If we are glad to see it, we are gladder still
to leave it. Fortunately, the delight of the South of
Italy lies greatly in the absence of museums and
church interiors, and in the vast quantity of sun-
pierced ruins open to the sky, which can be enjoyed
without shutting out the freshness of nature. If
museums are as tombs for the precious objects they
enclose, the ruins of this country are alive with a
deathless poetry.

Without having ever fallen into complete decline,
Salerno has little of modern interest about it. Even
its grand old tradition of medicine died out in the last
century, when Villari, an ancestor of the great historian,
lived here during the turbulent days of Ferdinand, and
gained, in his way, a wide reputation. In the days
when the South was cementing the unity of Italy
Salerno woke up a little; but the history of Italy’s
great movement was the movement of its big towns
only, contrasting curiously with the inertia of centuries
in which the smaller centres slept on, only waking up,
after all was over, to grapple with the question of
emigration—a questionable improvement. Yet though
it now belongs to the history of nearly half a century
ago, the memorable night on which Garibaldi made his
triumphant entry into the towns between bands of wild

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Paestum

music and flaring torch-bearers must still be clear in the
memory of the elders who saw the splendid countenance
said to have borne such a striking resemblance to the
busts of Euripides in the Vatican.

A curious old photographer lives in Salerno. He
claims to have the secret of combining groups of the
same person upon a light instead of upon a dark back-
ground. His work has received notice in England.
His walls are covered with examples of stunted peasant
types hideously multiplied to three. All the newly
married and affianced couples visit him, the young girls
arriving in their simple kerchiefs, and submitting, awe-
struck and blushing with pride, while he winds yards of
pearl necklace about their necks, pearls as big and as
hollow as soap-bubbles.

He kindly helped me to develop some films in his
tiny dark room, but they were all fogged, for I discovered
that he had left the door ajar, allowing the light to
come through. I pointed this out to him, but his
answer quite disarmed me: “I left it open, Signora,”
he said, ‘per delicatezza.”

It would be difficult to forget the drive from
Salerno to Cava on a warm evening early in June, or
the fairy-like illumination of countless lucciole through
which the way lies. “Thousands upon thousands of
white lights dance and throb around, till one is caught,
as it were, in a quivering and glittering veil floating
from the slopes above far down into the valley beneath.
Their fire is full of the blending of the Spring with
the Summer, the ripening of the barley and the corn.

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The Italian peasants believe that “the fireflies dancing
above the ripening wheat are so many tiny living lamps
of the sanctuary lit in honour of its future consecration,
and thus offering their anticipatory service of adoration.”

Strange indeed is it that this lovely “companion of
the dew”’ should have escaped the poetic immortalising
of the classic poets. The cicada was not beneath the
notice of Anacreon, and the firefly, identical in so many
ways with the glowworm, was undoubtedly known to
Greeks and Romans of the classic age. This reserve
towards one of the most striking features of a country
points, perhaps, to some early mystic superstition in
connection with the firefly, some conception of witch-
craft which held them silent—not anything so terrifying
as the belief of the Malays that the blood of murdered
men turns into fireflies; yet they may have regarded
the luminous insect as a distinct signal of hidden truths
of the great book of Nature, from every closed page of
which the “strage”’ of the past gathered their craft.
In Leland’s “ Aradia” is given an old conjuration to
Meal, from which I have made a rough translation of
the beautiful Italian original :—

“Whenever, O corn, thou wert pale and green
Within folded ears, the fireflies came
And cast o’er the fields their moonlight flame
That thy growth in the dark might better be seen
And perfection reached that the night might lose.
So also, fireflies, you too belong
To the witches’ cantation, the Fairies’ song,
You belong to the great Sun, every one knows.”

186

a ae i
ity Sie ma
Ate

Ws

‘
’

BASILICA OF PAESTUM

As seen on a May morning.

Paestum

We have noted the silence of classic writers on this
subject. What is no less striking in its way is the
trivial part that this exquisite creature plays in the
poetry of modern days. It is as though Dante’s com-
parison between its wandering light and the circling fire
of lost souls had lent a traditional gloom to its use in
poetry. It is true that among the vast quantity of
poetry written in the early part of the nineteenth
century there are many allusions to the glowworm, and
a few to the firefly, but they belong more to writers
of a secondary order and of a sentimental school.
Mrs. Opie’s ‘“‘Gem of the lone and silent vale,” Mrs.
Hemans’ lines, Owen Meredith’s comparison between
the fireflies and “swarms of loving fancies, through
some rich and pensive mind’”’—these are more fanciful
than inspired. They belong, too, to poetry awakened
by other countries, and not by the phenomena as
blending into the peculiar beauty of Italian landscape.
Even Browning, who so loved every aspect of Italy,
hardly remembers more than that in his boyhood he

“ Plucked the fireflies from the roof above
Bright creeping through the moss they love.”

After a final steep climb, we reach Cava itself, which
seems nothing but a winding street, so heavily arcaded
that light and air are pretty well shut out, and so
narrow and overcrowded that carriages and oxen,
religious processions, weddings, and troops of idlers,
become inextricably entangled. It lies in the midst
of hotels where travellers sleep a night and pass a day,

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driving about through clouds of the thickest dust
that the South is capable of producing. The life of
the private villas is, of course, pleasanter ; for gardens
are an absolute necessity to enjoyment during any stay
in Cava. But if the town is far from attractive, the
country around is unspoiled. It is a strange tameless
landscape, where trees grow gnarled and dark, and
long shadows lie in the valleys, and pyramidical
mountains slope away and above, one beyond the
other, crowned with cross or monastery or sculptured
rock. Wild it is, and a name so coloured with
romance and legend as is that of Salvator Rosa fits
naturally into it. But did he ever paint here? Who
can tell. Did he ever draw his whole inspiration for
any one of his few works which remain to us from a
single view of nature? It was the fashion of his time
to delight in mosaicing together a hundred foreign
spots and fitting them into one, rather with the in-
dividuality of the painter’s taste than with any strict
slavery to Nature. All we know is that his youth
belonged to Naples, and that the earliest and therefore
strongest impressions of his strange mind belonged to
the country round, though the greater part of his
work itself belonged to Rome. But sometimes legends
take as strong a hold in association as do dry facts,
and the name of this one great Neapolitan painter is
in the very air of the mountains as it blows down
to us.

From Cava the railway goes directly to Paestum,
passing through belts of green fields with great patches

188

ON THE ROAD TO FORIO

Quaint wayside shrine overshadowed by oleander trees.

Paestum

of golden flower, and in the background pale low-
lying hills. It is one of the most vivid impressions
that the South can give us—this first view of Paestum
and its three temples, its ruined trinity of vanished
power, all so old that Augustus visited them, even as
we do in our day, as venerable antiquities whose birth
was lost in the centuries. :

A little country road bordered on one side with a
hedge, on the other by rose-tinted walls over which a
single pine throws a shadow and a group of laughing
girls’ faces look down upon the passers-by, leads
from the station to the broad road and the meadows
where the ruins rise into sight. It is a day in May,
one of the first mild days when the sun has distilled
into the air all the sweet warmness of the flowers.
It is the season that poets love, and the artist
finds too illusive for his art, though one at least,
Constable, the lover of fresh greens, made it his
own. On such a day the very blind would rejoice
here, for sight is but one of the senses which Nature
has satisfied. The luxury of the Spring vegetation
round Paestum is beyond all words, seeming to laugh
to scorn the legends of malaria and desolation. Even
the asphodel, ‘bloodless blossom of death,” which
blooms as Spring dies, and is scattered around the
ruins, seems with its pale flower to smile in the
delicious warmth. The quiet of the spot is broken
only by the cawing of the rooks, the low buzz of
insects.

But the large and scented violets of which Shelley

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speaks seem to have disappeared; and the roses of the
Latin poets—where are they? We ask the question
from sheer habit, since every writer on Paestum of our
time asks the same. The twice-blooming flower—often
thrice-blooming—whose euphonious name has fitted
so perfectly into the poetry of every age and land,
and has been more sung to than any other, deserted
the gardens of Paestum—who can tell when? Roses
are the flowers of silence, and mystery and silence are
around the whole story of this Hellenic city.

Yet if any enterprising person undertook to plant
the sweet strong rose de quatre saison here, I fancy
they would grow as thickly as ever.

“ Ah,” said the station-master of Paestum, a quaint
character, “‘what a wretched country this is! Did
you ever see such a lazy people? They are ignorant,
and they despise all agricultural knowledge. I am a
Tuscan, and come from Perugia. If my country .
people had this land, they would make a veritable
garden of Eden out of it.”

“Well,” said I, “what is that convent on the
brow of the hill ?”

“Don’t ask me,” he answered. “I know nothing
about places of that sort. I call all that sort of thing
a shame (vergogna). Jama pagan!”

It seemed that the poor man had lived here some
fifteen years, a constant prey to malaria, which had
evidently undermined his health not more completely
than the relics of pagan days had poisoned his views
of the religious condition of the country.

190

Paestum

We skirted the luxuriant fields, all golden and
purple with blossom, and paused to gaze up at the
ruddy columns of the temple of Neptune. It is the
very spot where the Greeks paused long ago, for here
was the agora of the city. To the left rise the sea-gray
ruins of the “‘ Basilica.””’ What words can justly describe
them? There are moments when the poetry of beauty
becomes, as it were, an atmosphere, and envelops us
with an exquisite breath as we look at beautiful things ;
and here not only is it the sentiment of the past and of
vanished lives, but also the tender poetry of Nature,
that seems to gather into her arms this faded glory
of man’s handiwork as her especial child. There are
temples more massive and more ancient in other lands
which have fallen with the centuries into the semblance
of tombs open to the sky, but with a gentler touch
Nature has transformed the ruins of the Greeks into
wild and lovely gardens. She has thrown her veil of
greenery over the creviced stones, and high against the
capitals of enduring travertine the sun-warmed purple
flowers blossom and die with every year. Into the
empty shell birds have poured their song, and the
winds murmur through it like the waves of the
sea.

The travertine of which the temples are composed
is said to have been drawn from the neighbouring
rivers, the waters of which were alternately sweet, or
bitter and infected, according to the strength of its
various sources.

Forgetting for a while that important business for

IgI

Naples

which hundreds of tourists yearly visit the temples,—
namely, to eat their lunch in the shade of the austere
columns,—let us wander through the bracken to the
steps of the Basilica. This seems to me by far the
most impressive of the three ruins. There is some-
thing sublimely primitive in its vast wilderness of
massive Doric pillars, whose solidity and simplicity of
construction is softened by settled harmony of propor-
tion, like the full chords of some mighty symphony
interpreted by the touch of a subtle musician. Add to
this the gentle hand of time that has filled the chinks
and crannies of stone with flowering blossoms and
many a patch of wild grass, carpeting the aisles with a
starry mosaic of Spring, and some conception may be
had of this wonderful wreck of time, where art and
nature have lavished their tenderest touches.

No other temple is said to present, as in this unique
facade, an unequal number of supports with the result
that a column marks the very centre of the entrance.
Little is known of the temple’s history; and whether
its two aisles marked the double worship of Demeter
and her daughter or not, is still a matter of conjecture
gathered from the statuettes of the goddesses found
scattered around.

Of Poseidonia itself, almost all that is known of its
history is gathered from that one book of knowledge
which the city bequeathed to the archzologist, the
reading of its coins. It is they that tell us beyond all
doubt of its greatness and power, and of how on until
after the Social War it remained the only exception to

192

CASTLE OF DHE PESCARA, ISCHIA

Once the home of Vittoria Colonna.

Paestum

the stern law which forbade all local coinage in Italy
other than that of Rome. Pieces of copper money
bearing the effigies of Augustus and Tiberius, with the
inscription of the authorisation which permitted their
fabrication, are a condensed history in themselves.

Nevertheless, in spite of its early greatness, Poseidonia
is said to have been the first of the chain of Hellenic
colonies round the coast to succumb to Barbarians.
Though the city regained its freedom for a second
time, it was but for a brief period, a faint afterglow of
the glory already set. With the progress of Christianity
we hear more of Paestum, until it was finally and
totally deserted. But never, surely, has a desertion so
complete overtaken a spot of such poetic beauty on the
very border of civilisation.

Though the Basilica has ever seemed to me the most
grandiose of the three ruins of Paestum, the temple of
Poseidonia is, of course, more perfectly preserved, and
has always attracted a greater share of admiration. Its
colour is of a rich golden tone, in striking contrast to
the delicate gray of the adjacent Basilica. The ruddy
tint disclosed by the fallen stucco is very like that of
the temples in Sicily. One cannot help wondering as
to what must have been the original effect of these
three buildings when coloured, as they once were, by the
architects of antiquity. Does the exquisite sense of form
to which these remains testify imply a corresponding
perfection in the sense of colour on the part of their
builders ? One would say from an inspection of the mural
decorations of Pompeii that there, at least, colour .played

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no distinctly subtle part, although always bright and
pleasing. It might truly be said that Pompeian decora-
tions belong to a decadent age ; but at the same time, if
we can judge from the bronzes of Pompeii and Her-
culaneum, the feeling for form was still acute in that
day, proving that the senses of form and colour were
very unequally developed.

Perhaps the most important light that has been
thrown upon this interesting question was the discovery
in Asia Minor of the sarcophagus supposed to have been
the tomb of Alexander the Great, which is now in the
Museum of Constantinople. It is one of the rare
examples in which both colour and form have come
down to us uninjured and blending perfectly. Coloured
sculpture has only of late years awakened interest
among artists. The late Léon Gérome was one of the
few searchers after this lost aspect of Greek art in
antiquity, as the beautifully tinted statues produced
towards the close of his life attest. The discovery of
the masterpiece at Constantinople—a discovery made
by a great friend of his—he regarded as of the first
importance in the history of modern art ; and during the
later years of his life we have heard him express with
enthusiasm his admiration for the powers of the bygone
masters who could “sculpt pictures and paint statues.”
If the effects of the painted sarcophagus is capable of
producing such a profound impression, there seems to
be no reason why the full-blown Greek temples, radiant
in colours of the rainbow, should have been less
delightful to the eye. And surely the prejudice

194

THE TORRIONE, FORIO, ISCHIA

An interesting medizval structure restored as a modern
dwelling by the Neapolitan sculptor, Giovanni Maltese.

Paestum

against this blending of two arts is more the result of
convention than anything more profound.

Well, the moment has come when, as mere hungry
mortals, we seek a shady corner in which to break our
fast. Let us eat with the goats nibbling at the food
and the dreamy lizards watching us with their bright
eyes. A young kid thrusts a too eager nose into the
basket, but a child’s voice calls it away by the laugh-
ing name of Bacchante, and it bounds off over the
grassy wilderness into the burning sunshine. Little by
little the place grows still. ... A narrow file of
figures laden with now empty baskets has vanished in
the direction of the station ; but we linger on far into
the glowing afternoon, resting amid the waving corn,
and watching the ravens soar above their nests, black
against the violet hills. No human being is in sight,
save in the direction of the guardian’s cottage, where
the eternal business of Italian peasant life, the washing
and hanging out of multi-coloured garments, is in
full swing. What a part this lésivage plays in Italy!
Clothes are washed to rags while the body itself is
looked upon as dirt-proof.

Even that tiny centre of life will disappear as the
summer advances. The guard’s house will be closed.
The air, so deliciously sweet to-day, will become laden
with poison, and the peasants for miles around will
retreat with their pale-faced children towards the
mountains. The poor station-master, that strange
pagan character, will stoically fight his malarious foe
with fever-stricken limbs. Even among the sturdy

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Buffalo tribes there will be some who succumb to the
deadly ill.

We drove back to Salerno as the day fell and the
rising breeze began to murmur through the corn. Flat
and smooth winds the road between low-lying fields,
across which the dim temples only fade by degrees from
sight. They still mark for the ordinary tourist the
boundary between the known and the unexplored land.
Beyond them lies that wonderful country of the middle
ages, Apulia and Lucania, where the modern con-
veniences of travel penetrate but slowly. ‘“‘ Les ruines
de l’antique Poseidonia sont comme les Colonnes
d’Hercule que l’on ne dépasse pas dans la direction du
midi,” says Lenormant. Strange indeed is that country
wasted with malarious soil, where even that great God of
Chance, the Lottery, hardly ever smiles. Among all the
countries that piay, Apulia is said to come off the worst.

Now and then we pass herds of buffaloes with
fantastic horns, for we are on the classic ground of the
tribe in Italy. Here they are said to have been first
introduced from Sicily by the Norman kings, spreading
gradually in vast numbers over parts of Calabria and
the Roman Campania, haunting the marshy malarious
lands, where they can stand knee-deep in the water.
Themselves never completely tamable, wherever their
tribe is seen there is something wild and solitary in the
landscape ; and only as the ground becomes drained
and reclaimed do they slowly yield place to their more
homely kindred, the oxen.

We watched them wade in and out of the marshy

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Paestum

ditches, standing at times so stilly amid the straw-tinted
growth about them that they seem to be listening to
the “dreary melody of bedded reeds,” to the sighing
of the breeze through the stalks that Pan would not
suffer to remain idle.

To all who are interested in the progress of Italy,
the sight of the malarious parts of the country awakes
an absorbing problem. The most striking feature of
Southern Italy, from the agricultural point of view, is
the vast extent of marsh land, covering a fifth of the
territory, and almost wholly resisting cultivation. The
‘Pontine marshes and the Maremma are the first witnesses
‘of the deep misery which separates the north from the
south ; but their extent is insignificant in comparison
with the immense stretches of waste land which are com-
‘prised in Campania, Calabria, and Apulia. The ill is at
the root of much of the stagnation of the south, and
the true spirit of agriculture, the healthy struggle with
ground and climate, seems curiously dormant among
the landed proprietors. In Tuscany the owners live
on their lands and personally supervise affairs; but
round Naples the great private farms and pasturage
are neglected to an inconceivable degree. This aristo-
cratic neglect has penetrated to the smaller tenants,
who now often emigrate in large numbers for no other
reason than that their untended land no longer pro-
duces sufficient to pay the usurer.

For forty miles the road winds from Paestum to
Salerno, through a country where habits and costumes
and manner of life are distinctly of past centuries. As

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we drive along under the branches of trees shimmering
in the pale dust like some idyllic dream of Corot’s, the
poetic illusion is deepened by the traces of old times
which meet us on the way. The contadini trudging
along the roadside are dressed in the charming native
costume which figures in the old paintings and prints
of Italy—heirlooms which they are still proud to wear.
These costumes of the past are quite different from
those of Rome and the north. Every little village
about Naples has, or lately had, its own distinctly
native costume, which in a few spots is still seen in all
its primitive gorgeousness. Not far from Naples itself
there is a most interesting and curious bit of country,
where on féte days the women wear, not extra jewelry,
but an additional number of aprons, every apron adding
to their respectability. The aprons are as often as not
mere kerchie‘s, but always of the richest silk and
embroidery. It was not so very long ago—in Dickens’s
time, was it not ?—that quite as unreasonable a fashion
flourished in England, when many waistcoats were worn
one above another.

As we drive along, an old postchaise rattles past with
the arms of a vanished crown painted and faded on the
door. But the most wonderful sight of all comes with
the setting sun, when great gangs of young women
labourers, singing uproariously and waving leafy branches,
drove by in waggon-loads of thirty or more. Here,
as in parts of Greece to-day, all the field labour is still
done by women, and it would be difficult to find ruder
types of health than among these gangs.

198

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IN THE VILLA MARESCA

Near Casamicciola, Ischia, showing antique oil or
wine jars of unusual size.

Paestum

The shrill voices follow us for miles, singing
monotonous songs. There seem to be no distinctive
native canzoni about Paestum, and it is noticeable that
round the two gulfs, as Naples or Salerno is distanced,
the popular melodies of the people grow scarcer. It
is town rather than country life that produces the
Neapolitan music and verse, and the more primitive
countries are comparatively voiceless. ‘‘Quanno se
canto non se pensa male” is somewhat contradictory
round this coast.

If we leave Paestum without seeing a single rose, we
shall find them on this long road leading into Salerno.
There is a garden-wall that stretches along beside it for
what seems over a mile, and over every inch of it the
gay pink roses de quatre saisons are hanging. As if
the shadows of the magnificent stone pines within were
too heavy a vault for their delicate beauty, they escape
over the wall into the bright sunshine and are a delight
to the passer by.

“The garden has spread
All its heart to the rose ;
And its breath—how it blows,
With what perfumes fed :
Is it better to gather

The roses >—no, rather ;
Gaze, gladly, instead!”1

1 From the Neapolitan of Fred. Russo.

se be)

CHAPTER XI
ISCHIA

WE spent a long summer month in Ischia — not as
invalids in search of medicinal baths (for which, far
back into antiquity, the island has been famous), but
for the pure enjoyment of its beauty, of a wilder and
less populated kind than elsewhere about Naples, and
much less visited. It is a veritable wilderness of vine-
yards along which the goatherds drive their timid
beasts, while under the trembling shade figures sit and
plait long ropes of coloured straws from morn till
night. Before coming to Ischia I never realised that
vines were capable of scenting the air with such real
fragrance. They bear here grapes of a deep red (or
“nero,” as it is called), producing a wine so dark that
it is chiefly used as colouring for other wines, finding,
therefore, a very ready market. The unfermented
juice is so rich with body and tannin that it is even
possible to use it as ink. The whole island is more or
less covered with these beautiful vineyards, pale early
in the spring, but black with heavy clusters before the
vintage ; and under their leaves the usually road-bound
200

FORIO, ISCHIA

Behind the town rise the slopes of the extinct volcano
of Epomeo.

Ischia

forestier are free to roam, with a delight in the contact
with nature which the peasant probably never knows.
The tragedy of a quarter of a century ago impover-
ished Ischia, but saved it from the innovating disfigure-
ments of modern life. Of what other spot round the
coast can it be more truly said that hardly a building in it
is ugly—that no appalling hotel stands as a kind of helio-
graph to fascinate all eyes? Of Ischia this may be said
in all truth. The island is wholly and rarely beautiful—
a spot to tarry in with delight and to leave with regret.
Walks off the beaten tracks are not so easy to find
round Naples as might be imagined. In Capri you
must go up hill or down. At Sorrento the lack of
walks is proverbial. At Amalfi hundreds of steep
mountain steps must be faced before a walking level
can be found. But in Ischia not only is there the
ascent of Epomeo to be made, but also the poderes and
woods that clothe the sides of the great mountain are
exquisite haunts for the active pedestrian; nor are they
difficult or fatiguing climbs that require a Teutonic get-
up of alpine hat and feather and heavy stick, as so
many simple walks in Capri seem to need ; rather they
are little country paths under the olive and oak trees
where no soul passes save the woodcutters shunting
felled boughs from ledge to ledge, or a woman singing
to herself and child as she runs lightly past with bare
feet. If we follow the vineyards up the mountain
slopes, caverns are seen cut deep into the rocks, cool
wine-cellars which were at one time in use in many
wine-growing parts of Italy, though the custom has
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Naples

almost disappeared. Here and there in overgrown
paths we come across tangled trails of blackberries as in
an English lane; but nobody plucks them. If the
Greeks in ages past considered them as a preventive for
some of their ailments the Italian peasant to-day
despises them utterly.

Sometimes, after solitary climbing, voices will break
the stillness, and a group is seen seated on the threshold
of some tiny dwelling—a woman plaiting red and green
baskets and fans, surrounded by half a dozen children
and pigs, all laughing and grunting together in the hot
sunshine. This straw work is the great industry of
Ischia, though it is not so fine in quality as the Tuscan
kind. A long golden-tinted straw is used; it bends
pliably over the fingers, and is gathered from a plant
grown in great quantities at Fontana, the village nearest
to Epomeo. The peasants use also the grain as an
article of food, crushing and preparing it in certain
sauces known as “succo di ragout.”’

Before the earthquake of 1883 this straw industry,
the headquarters of which are at Lacco Ameno, was
carried on laboriously and in primitive fashion by only
a few fisherfolk, and for the very smallest gains. But
at that time there happened to be by chance in the
island two ladies whose names are familiar all over
Naples for their beneficent works—Signora Meuricoffre
and the Duchessa di Ravaschieri.1 Determined to

1 The death of this lady took place last summer. Her life was devoted
to philanthropy, and her loss is deeply felt in Naples. A fine portrait-
bust of the Duchessa stands in the Filangieri Museum.

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Ischia

improve and encourage the industry they provided
designs by Neapolitan artists, and took such interest in
the workers and their work that the whole aspect of
the wretched little village was transformed. But the
Italian poor are the hardest people in the world to help.
The strawplaiters of Ischia developed such feuds of
jealousy, such rivalry among themselves, that their
benefactresses finally withdrew in disgust. Since then
the industry has remained stationary, for the people are
too ignorant to develop anything new without help.
Nevertheless, the pretty if somewhat useless articles
turned out find their way to all parts of the world.
The women here plait straw much as women elsewhere
knit, and the vast number of fans for which Ischia has
long been known still justifies the old love song which
uns
“ Not so many fans they plait at Ischia,

Nor strawberries ripe are gathered at Marano,

Nor as many quails fly over Capri,

Nor comes as much sweet buttermilk from Massa,

Nor in the sea as many small fish lie—
As from thy bright eyes wounding arrows fly.”

Many are the quaint songs sung about the island in
a dialect which has a softer intonation than that of
Naples. Up the hillside songs are continually heard,
one voice answering another—a custom which, save at
Procida and a few other places, has vanished from most
of the country about.

Peasant life seems a simple enough thing all over
the world ; but in the South it possesses a charm quite

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Naples

inseparable from the landscape. One is tempted to
look upon it as just a part of the beautiful tree and
plant life around, so perfectly do the Italian peasantry
blend into the scenery of their country. ‘They are, as
it were, impregnated with sunlight and warmth. Their
hair is sun-stained ; their skin sun-browned ; the un-
covered necks of the women are burnt to cherry colour;
their eyes are black as night. Just as in the North
inclement weather makes an outdoor life one of endur-
ance and of effort, in the South constant sunshine has
fitted the peasant to the soil with a simplicity which
makes their lives akin to the growth of southern plants
that ripen rapidly, are made their use of, and die.

How curious it is that round Naples there are spots
which may be said to produce a monotony of types and
of intellect which never change with the changing
times—a sameness which makes one feel that it is indeed
a fiction that attributes to climate a direct influence
upon the imagination. In this volcanic soil are all the
elements which might, one would imagine, produce
excitable and exalted minds; yet it is only as we
approach the foot of Vesuvius and its active fires that
the “types volcanic ” are to be found. Beyond, save in
rare instances, all is monotony, unproductive and dead.

The Ischian, though less sophisticated than even the
Caprian, is a prey to the vice of gambling, and plays with
a persistent regularity which keeps the peasantry in a
condition of abject poverty. Hundreds of francs are
lost weekly by the poor in the Lottery ; and when it
is remembered that this sum is principally subscribed

2.04

VIEW OF FORIO, ISLAND OF ISCHIA

Taken from the Torrione, home of the Neapolitan
sculptor, Giovanni Maltese.

Ischia

by those who earn but a few francs in wages, and have
often large families to support, the misery in which a
large proportion struggle on is easily understood. The
poorer the player, the higher the play—is as a motto
all over the South.

Considering the kind of engrained evils against
which the Italian poor have to contend, one is more
than ever convinced that no change of Government,
no increase of trade and lowering of taxes, no bettered
sanitary conditions, really touch the evils at the root.
Education, and that alone, is needed—not direct
lessons against the folly of the Lottery, against
superstitious faith, against theft and begging and all
the Camorristic practices dear to them, but that simple
compulsory schooling which clears the cobwebs from a
man’s mind and teaches him to think. The educated
classes who play weekly in the Lottery do so, after all,
with their eyes open; but the poor are the victims of
ignorance, their worst foe; and in spite of all the
advertised improvements of Naples—the schools,
charities, and what not—the fact remains that the
poorer working-classes are still bringing up their
families without education of any kind.

The Ischian women seem more intelligent than the
men. They answer questions readily and clearly, and
have good business heads ; but this fact may strike the
stranger just because all the ablest men emigrate now,
and rarely return. It is quite out of the common to find
any women among the peasants who have no husband,
brother, or son abroad. Many of the men go to

2.05

Naples

America or to the Cape. A few even go to over-
crowded London, to hawk goods about the streets and
carry on in fog and cold the traditional life of their
sunny country. ‘You are English, ’gnorsi; but
England may bea little country. My son is in London
—a land so big that it must be very far away,” said
one woman to me.

A certain pathos attaches to Ischia as a consequence
of the earthquake which left such calamity behind it.
There is no doubt that the generality of tourists have
been frightened away from the island, though there is
no more ground for alarm here than elsewhere round
the Neapolitan “crater ’’—indeed, much less. There
is a great difference between an earthquake and the
settlement of earth, since the first is as much of an
omen for the future as the latter is comparatively a
safeguard. The disaster of 1883 was so local that the
guardian of Etna, Professor Silvestri, failed to detect
any especial disturbances in his instruments at Catania,
and the fissure in the crater was so minute that the gas
(to quote an authority) was seen only in the imagination
of some, and was nothing but the dust raised by the
breeze at those points where the mountain was fissured
and the detached masses fell at the last shock. Epomeo
may be called practically extinct as long as the fumes
rise from the mouth of Vesuvius, the active outlet, as
it has ever been, of all the forces which lie beneath the
Phlegrean fields and the volcanic islands round Naples.
The disaster of Casamicciola is believed to have been
due to an explosion of gases which might have happened

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as easily in several other parts of the Neapolitan
coast.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Ischia was ruined
not only by the disaster itself, but also by the widespread
terror left in the public mind. The once gay centre of
the Italian summer season, the pleasure-seat of the
Bourbons among the vines which once brought in a
round addition to their revenue, fell back into the old-
time poverty.

But a better fate awaits it. New hotels are springing
up, and its springs are as miraculous as ever. If fewer
pleasure-seekers find their way to it, there is still a
courageous and cosmopolitan assembly to be found
with each summer, facing recklessly the volcanic
dangers in which they firmly believe for the sake of
that health without which life is not worth having.
From early morn, during the summer months, the
procession to the Baths begins, a few starting off on
foot, though it requires a superhuman effort to face
the hill in the sweltering heat. By luncheon time
the mud is washed off, and conversation begins. The
talk varies little with the days of the week, always
ending with the remark, “It’s wonderful! I feel
another creature.” And indeed it is quite remarkable
to watch those who arrived decrepit with rheumatism
able to walk off at the end of the season. It makes
one almost regret having no illness at all in a spot where
the remedy is one so enjoyable as sitting in hot mud
and discussing it afterwards with one’s friends.

The bathing society in the hotel was very amusing.

207

Naples

There were a few English. A Swedish lady, whose cure
consisted not only of mud ablutions, but also of a
self-originated diet of hard nuts and milk, over which
her doctor, figuratively, wept in despair. There was
also a German blonde who, between every meal, slept
with her head upon the dining-room table, to the
great confusion of the waiters; and in one corner a
typical Neapolitan bourgeois family sat, who seemed to
grow daily in size, as all fat people do. But foreign
“‘types” rarely fit into a landscape harmoniously, and
when thinking of Ischia the mind’s eye sees the peasant
life only—the dark Eastern faces of the girls as they
pass by bearing the classic pitcher on their heads ;
little groups of dirty children under the shade of
flowering oleanders bright with double flowers ; goats,
absurdly clad donkeys, labourers resting upon the way-
side and devouring neatly peeled Indian figs; and
across the sea the continually changing sun effects
upon the water.

It is a picture little changed, I imagine, since when,
a century ago, Lamartine visited Ischia in his happy
married life, in love with life and nature and disdainful
of probable earthquakes. He was one of the very
few who have known how to gather inspiration from
the island’s beauty ; and here he composed in his sober
middle age that romance, every page of which glows
with passionate youth and poetry. But the novels
of the early nineteenth century are little read now,
and the age of the Romanticists which grew, not
only from the art galleries, but also from the real

208

Ischia

beauty and sentiment of Italian landscape, has long
passed.

Ischia, like all volcanic regions, has a kind of exotic
charm. Fruits grow with wild luxuriance, though for
commercial purposes the vine is now taking the place
of many other kinds. Pears, loquats or medlars,
peaches (very hard, but ripe, though one feels they
should not be so), figs and prickly pears, limes and
the famous red cherries of Casamicciola—all grow
freely. Mulberry trees abound, though continued
lopping of the leaves for the silk-worms destroys
the fruit. Of flowers the commonest are the wild
cyclamen, the arbutus, the richly-scented large violets,
and mountain wild-flowers growing up the sides of
Epomeo, the names of which I do not know. The
Italian peasant, when asked the name of any flower,
makes always the same answer, “ Una pianta qualunque.”
Along the roadsides are oleander trees, which spring
up rapidly, and as rapidly die. It is characteristic of
the planting of trees in the South that when they are
planted, unenduring and comparatively worthless kinds
are chosen. But tree-planting and cutting is to-day a
sore subject in Italy from north to south, and the
country may be said still to await an Italian Evelyn
to discourse on forest trees with the same success that
such argument produced long ago in England.’

The ruined dwellings about the island remain just
as they collapsed in 1885, in the midst of heaps of

1 The law, forbidding the cutting down of a tree without the planting

of three in its place, is rarely put into effect,
27 209

Naples

débris. Casamicciola is not unlike a tiny Pompeii,
with the rosy bright dabs of vermilion paint which
Italians of all ages have loved still clinging to the
walls, and the sunshine and lizards sparkling in the
courtyards. It might have happened a thousand years
ago as easily as yesterday, and only little details
remind us of its proximity to our own times. That
was my home,” said our driver as we passed up the
hill from Casamicciola, and he pointed to a ruined
dwelling. ‘My little boy was buried under the ruins.”
He spoke as though the tragedy had but just happened,
for Italians love nothing if not their children ; had it
been his wife he might have forgotten the fact.

Ruins mark also the mountain path from Casamicciola
to Forio. On one side stands the old Cathedral, open
now to the day, and far more beautiful, no doubt, in
its dilapidated condition than when its pretentious
facade hid the line of hills behind. There is no money
to rebuild it ; when, indeed, will there ever be? This
walk, skirting along the beautiful view of sea and
sky, with the dim outline of Procida behind us, and
stretches of vines between us and the shore, is one of
the loveliest on the island. It leads down into the
little town of Lacco Ameno, with its golden beach,
and strange trunk of stone rising from the sea. Here
it was that the dead saint was washed up in the past;
and the Festival of S. Restituta has lost less of its
old time simplicity than have most of the native
customs round the island. It may be likened to the
Festival of Montevergine of Naples, both fétes acting

210

A STREET IN CASAMICCIOLA, ISCHIA

Ischia

as an inducement to whole families from all parts to
join in its celebration and to have at least one day’s
outing in the year. Just as the marriage contracts of
the Neapolitan peasants once included participation in
the Festival of Piedigrotta among the wife’s rights,
so the Ischian women claimed a right to be escorted
by their husbands to Lacco in the month of May. No
doubt the custom had a singular importance in the
days when women were subjected to an almost Eastern
mode of indoor life.

S. Restituta possesses untold wealth in the way of
jewels and costly offerings of the past centuries, besides
many humble gifts of the poor. Some years ago these
possessions were stolen by a poor fisherman, and
hidden in the sand to await an opportunity of being
transferred to Naples and sold. But fear at his evil
deed tormented the thief; and he ran away without
his riches, which were happily discovered and restored.
The minds of the poor, however, were much disturbed
at the occurrence, and one peasant was heard to say,
mournfully and with a certain justice, to the saint’s
image in the church, “ Blessed Saint, if you cannot look
after your possessions better than that, I, for one, will
certainly give you nothing more.”

This is not the only festival of Ischia. Follow-
ing the road from Lacco, we reach Forio, where there
is a procession of its patron saint, S. Vito, in the
summer. But to those who remember this festival
some thirty years ago, with its quaint costumes, and
the perfume of broom and lavender and pinks floating

211

Naples

sweetly through church and streets, the affair of to-day
seems like all the other countless noisy fétes of Naples.
There are the fireworks, the gaudy and _ tasteless
decorations, the discordant town bands. It is only on
Easter day that the century-old ceremony which may
yet be seen in many parts of Italy remains unchanged.
Between eleven and midday a dense crowd collects on
either side of the principal street leading past the
church of S. Maria di Tareto. Along this road, borne
on men’s shoulders, two painted wooden statues slowly
advance. ‘They represent the figures of St. John and
the Virgin Mary, whose face is covered by a thick
black veil. Opposite to them comes the Brotherhood
of S. Maria Visitapoveri in long white surplice gowns ;
and in their midst is carried a large golden angel ; and
last of all a figure of Christ, risen and triumphant. At
a given signal the standard of the Brotherhood is
waved aside; the Christ remains stationary ; and the
angel, after bending before Him in salute, turns and is
carried at full speed through the passage left by the
spectators to announce to the Virgin that her Son is
risen. The Virgin refuses to believe, and the Angel
returns sadly to the Christ to tell Him of his unsuccess.
Again sent to the Virgin, but all in vain, he again
retires ; and yet again is sent upon his urgent mission
to the holy Mother, who now begins, half in doubt, to
move slowly forward. Joyfully the angel reports this
to the Son, who once more sends him to encourage
St. John and His Mother, both of whom finally believe,
and rush forward to see the great truth for themselves.
212

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EVENING UPON THE BEACH OF THE
MARINA OF ISCHIA

Ischia

During this curious bit of Miracle Play, the people
continue to sing loudly the “Regina Coeli”; and at
the meeting of Mother and Son the veil of the Virgin
drops, pigeons and small birds are allowed to fly
around, from every window and roof wafers float down,
and from the Campanili the bells announce that the
ceremony is over. Then gradually the mass of human
beings in their bright holiday garb seems to melt away
like a dissolving kaleidoscope, and the streets resume
their sleepy character.

The contributions to cover the expenses of the
religious festivals in Ischia are subscribed by emigrant
Italians in America and at the Cape, but mostly by the
peasants themselves, who would fain avert all evils that
menace their land—plague, pestilence, and earthquake—
by insuring themselves, their vineyards, houses, boats,
and fish, against every possible calamity, arguing that
should the ground of Ischia quake again S. Vito, if
handsomely féted, should save at least a portion. It is
their investment, and they believe implicitly in the
interest it gives.

The festival of Forio has gained greatly in import-
ance of late years, owing to the energy of a town official
who encourages the people to subscribe generously, and
has even persuaded the naval authorities to lend the
presence of a man-of-war for the great occasion. A
year or two ago there were no fewer than four war-
ships, English and Italian, anchored in the Bay of
Forio!

There is a quaint fashion here attached to the. use of

213

Naples

eggs at Easter. On Palm Sunday it is the custom for a
young affianced girl to send a gift of a hundred and
one eggs and a branch of olive to her lover; and on
the day of S. Restituta, May 17, the grateful lover
sends her in return twelve pounds of sorrone, a sweet-
meat peculiar to Italy, made of honey and almonds,
and harder than most stones. A young fellow asked
this favour of an egg one day as he looked up at the
window of a mischievous girl. ‘Ma certo,” she
answered, and, fetching one fresh and raw, broke it
neatly over his face. But far from discouraging him,
this proceeding filled him with such hope and deter-
mination that they were speedily married, and have
now a merry family of children, both parents probably
believing it was one of the substantial sources of their
prosperity.

Some one has said that Forio is Turneresque ; and
indeed there is something of the idealism of the great
painter in the broad sweep of its white towers and
houses straggling into the sea from the distant slopes of
the mountain behind, on which clouds rest softly, or
float away like a breath from the barren crater. The
Cistercian Convent, the Moorish towers, the white
fishing houses, the peaceful bay lapping their feet,—all
show with wonderful distinctness in the lucid air.
Farther on the road dwindles away, and finally stops on
the eminence of S. Angelo. Far away over the slopes
of vineyards a narrow neck of land runs into a jutting
promontory forming twin bays to right and left and
crowned with peasants’ huts all the way. And as the

214

Ischia

night falls lights from these humble dwellings twinkle
like stars above the sea.

If the streets of Forio seem at times monotonous
and lacking in life, it is because all the animation has
bubbled over on to the beautiful beach, where knots of
fishermen, children, and idlers are lying on the sands,
gesticulating. Two towers dominate the town, and one,
a curious relic of medieval times, and still almost
perfect, stands not far from the seashore, and is now
the dwelling of an Ischian sculptor and his English wife,
herself a clever aquarellist. This sturdy monument of
the past has been adapted with artistic taste by the
present owners into a modern dwelling. Flowers grow
all about it ; oleander and olive trees shade the garden ;
a vine is trellised over the steps ; roses, velvety honey
flowers, passion flowers, and red pomegranates, clematis
and geraniums, beautify it ; and it is wonderful how all
this mass of flowering vegetation resists the sea-spray
which from time to time washes over it. On the little
terrace stand some fine specimens of the great oil jars,
disused now on the island, since oil was found to pre-
serve better in tin cans. A more romantic home cannot
be imagined ; and how beautiful is it as the day falls
and the glowing sunfire lights the stern gray of its
turreted walls! One must see Forio at sunset to realise
its beauty. Nowhere in all this region are the glories of
the setting sun more amply reflected. The little bay of
Forio is before us ; to the left stretches the breakwater ;
and the Franciscan Convent crowns the Punto Caruso.
The distant outline of the island of Ponza shows but a

215

Naples

delicate ridge of deep blue as the sun sinks, and reminds
us of the first view that Ulysses had of his native land :

“Tt seemed like a shield in the violet sea.”

The Ischian side of the island is less idyllic in that
it is less wild and more inhabited. A long dust-white
road leads from Casamicciola to Ischia, along which in
the cool of the evening are to be seen all the utterly
dilapidated vehicles that can be hired, filled with summer
visitors. Men and women laden with straw wares pass
us on the way,—girls with jars underneath their arms
and on their heads as well, and friendly peasants, who
attach themselves to the solitary foreigner on foot, and
never leave him as long as he consents to let them make
his life a burden.

As we approach the town there is a lovely stretch of
beach along which may sometimes be seen a magnificent
peacock spreading its plumage, dark and glowing against
the blue of the sea. Ischia has as oriental a taste in its
animals as in its vegetation. Monkeys sported here in
the past, it is said ; and peacocks are a favourite trophy
of the returned emigrant.

At the end of the street of Ischia, familiar Neapolitan
perfumes greet us with that old welcome which, in the
flowery country round Casamicciola, we had almost
forgotten. The drive goes but a little farther, passing
on the left the beautiful and now deserted home of an
Englishman—perhaps the most romantic of all foreign
dwellings about Naples—till it comes in view of the
wonderful old castle of the Pascara, jutting out into the

216

PEASANTS UNDER THE VINES,
CASAMICCIOLA, ISCHIA

a

Baba hy

Ischia

sea, a veritable sentinel of nature, as it was indeed a
sentinel of the past. The interior of its courts are now
filled with hundreds of ratskins drying in the sun—the
only modern use these stern walls have succumbed to.

To us it would seem too severe a ruin to conjure up
other than feelings of gloom; but in the days of the
happy lovers, D’Avolos and his young bride Vittoria,
the bare rocks were covered more luxuriantly than now,
and this quarter of the island was the centre of all that
was noble and cultured of that time. It was the spot
where Vittoria Colonna wrote the greater part of her
tender and feminine poetry, bequeathing to Ischia the
echo of a poet’s name, though not her birthplace.

28 PING)

CHAPTER Xi
CAPRI

“Far in the distance amidst the languor of waves, lies Capri,
Swift vessels pass to and fro, the sailors swing to the masthead,
While the light bark beguiles to the breast of the saffron ocean.”

(Translation from the German of Von Platen.)

However familiar we may be with the Bay of Naples
in general, it is a complete revelation to land at Capri.
This island is a world apart from the peninsula with
which, in the unknown past, it must once have been
a whole. Three miles of sea have sufficed to create
another people, another atmosphere, another scenery
and climate. One is struck on landing with a com-
plete change in the surrounding elements, human and
cosmical. A sense of sculpturesque solidity is received,
and insensibly one thinks of stern and sphinx-like
forms. It is indeed the form of this island which is
its especial charm. Ruskin felt it when, grievously
disappointed with his first view of Naples, “ready
to cry like a girl” with the bad roads and miserable
weather, he first caught sight of the beautiful shapes
ef Monte S. Angelo and Capri. The rocks seem
218

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Capri

chiselled as by some great master. Surely a statuette
of Capri, delicately modelled and true to nature, would
be a perfect work of art?

On landing from the boat, the sturdy, almost mas-
culine types of the peasant women who crowd about the
quay to unload the passengers’ heavy luggage are a sight
never to be forgotten. How unlike the eastern and
somewhat melancholy types of Ischia or the women of
Sorrento and Amalfi! Tall, powerful, somewhat bois-
terous in health and spirits, with a dash of savagery, they
are the ideal mothers of an island home. Caprian women
have an apparent dignity of their own, a quality which
is far from common in a country where, as Madame de
Stael remarks, dignity more than other qualities is lacking.
We are in a land where the aristocracy of the peasant
is the only aristocracy. Ischia has had its feudal days,
its old medieval traditions; Capri none. With the
death of Tiberius began more or less the unmomentous
existence which the island has since maintained. Its
legends of tyranny and dissolute romance died away,
and with the centuries Capri became famous only for
its calm peasant life and the industry and morality of
its inhabitants. Let us hope such a tradition may
outlive even our degenerate age. The Italian noblesse
have never sought a footing here; and, curiously
enough, its beauty and immunity from volcanic dangers
have never attracted Italians. It is the northern races
who are gradually colonising the island, and slowly but
surely blending their language and characteristics with
those of the natives. The Teuton, not beautiful him-

219

Naples

self, has an unerring eye for the beautiful in nature.
He loves, too, ground where the traces of Roman days
linger in the soil, and, as if a passion for contrast filled
him with a grotesque delight, will erect architectural
monstrosities in spots which not only nature but the
ruins of great ages have idealised.

Unfortunately, in Italy the new element quickly
destroys the old, and customs and costumes disappear
rapidly. Only some among the fisher women and lads
wear still their charming red “ tammies,” and the youths
discard these, appearing on every possible festive occasion
in hard black hats. The transformation these changes
of dress occasion is quite particularly trying to the
artist's mind. One painter who had made a successful
study of a boy in his “tammie,” and felt inspired to
make another, looked up her model at a festa; and
there he was, hideous to behold, in shining black head-
gear.

“No, [ll not have you again,” she remarked in real
disgust. ‘But, Signora,” he said in amazement, and
pointing to the lining of his hat, “was it not made in
Germany?”

We had a long talk about the island with an Italian
artist, a Roman, who has made Capri his home for
many years. ‘You have no idea,” he said, “how
utterly primitive a being is the native of Capri. In
the scale of mental and moral development he seems
to me a far more rudimentary creature than the South
Italian peasant of the mainland. His ignorance, as far
as education goes, has been accentuated by the narrow

2.20

Capri

limitations proverbial to the islander, and a certain
poverty of ideas which ensues from being out of all
touch with the people of the continent. I have lived
here many years and find it difficult to bring up my
children so as to prevent them from falling to the level
of the contadini about. The late Herr Krupp, the
great German manufacturer, had some excellent schemes
for founding schools in the island, which would have
been admirable if he had lived to carry them out, and
if the narrow sectarian politics of the place had not
thrown obstacles in his way. He had set himself a stiff
task, for nothing is more difficult than to help a people
among whose lower class reigns a crass ignorance,
while the petty bourgeoisie are engaged in constant
political feuds. Unhappily, he died before seeing any
of his philanthropic ideals realised.”

Meanwhile the great beauty of the island has drawn
hither foreigners from all parts of the world, who have
erected villas on many a lovely slope, some of them
full of charm in an architecture which seems to have
developed naturally from the peasants’ houses. The
gleaming whiteness of their walls in the rarified air of
Capri gives a certain oriental brilliance which one meets
nowhere else.

Drive down from the Quisisana to the Piccola Marina
if you wish to see a thoroughly characteristic bit of
Capri. The road, built at great expense by Herr
Krupp, was left not quite finished at his death: so you
must make up your mind to be sadly jolted on the
way down by the unrolled macadam: for the town

221

Naples

authorities have not as yet had the enterprise to com-
plete the splendid work of their benefactor. On the
right-hand side one passes the villa of the talented
painter, Lovatti, built with a beautiful loggia and
pergola in the style of a Pompeian house. Farther
down, that magnificent group of rocks known as the
Faraglioni appears in all its glory. Turner caught
well the spirit of this side of nature in the azure
distance of that masterpiece, “Ulysses deriding Poly-
phemus,” Finally, the road ends at the Piccola Marina.
What a quaint bit of fisherman nature is this secluded
spot! The rocks about are delightfully grouped,
forming tiny arches and promontories, as in some fairy
scene in a scene-painter’s dream. Here are the “seats
of living rock” of the reid, and it would be difficult
to imagine anything more pregnant of the mythical sea-
roving stories of the ancients.

It is over a century since Germanic influence began
to take root in the island. A friend, a German himself,
advised us by no means to go to Capri, because, said
he, “‘ my compatriots have ruined the place’’; and indeed
it is the fashion among tourists to affirm that this is so.
It seems to me, however, that nothing could be further
from the truth. The Teutonic element in the little
town of Capri itself has introduced a régime of order
and cleanliness which one does not find in any other
South Italian town; and if the local colour has been
effaced in places, it is perhaps compensated for by the
model of civilisation shown to the inhabitants.

I believe that it was the well-known poetic effusion

222

PEASANT GIRL OF CAPRI

Capri

on Pagano’s café that first attracted the general flow of
German tourists to the island ; but the discovery of the
Blue Grotto no doubt started popular interest in it.
Kopisch, who first brought its beauty into notice, was
not only an expert swimmer, but also a poet belonging
to that brief period of Neapolitan history when Naples
may be said to have struck a sudden fount of poesy,—
when Von Platen and Leopardi were under the spell of
this beautiful land.

The Blue Grotto is as mysterious in its beauty and
history as it is in the effect it produces on many a
visitor’s mind. In spite of its wonderful properties of
colour, the first impression is always one of disappoint-
ment. It is a scene which words have proved incapable
of describing accurately, and artists cannot catch its
values. Andersen wrote of it as in a dream, and the
dream is so surpassingly beautiful that the reality seems
more like a copy than the original. But the curious
thing is that, though the Blue Grotto may seem to
fall short of our expectations at the moment, when
remembered the imagination colours it with just as
brilliant hues, and we think of it always as a wonder-
ful dream, just as Andersen did.

Every morning the sea in front of the cave is dotted
with the tiny cockle-shell boats which came into use
with its discovery. They bob about, waiting for the
daily steamer loaded with sightseers, and for a brief
half-hour the Blue Grotto is a veritable pandemonium.
Let us wait till the last has pulled back towards the
steamer, or towards the shore of the Marina, before

223

Naples

visiting it. There is a pebbly bit of beach beneath the
Ruined Baths of Tiberius, and only ten minutes’ distance
from the Grotto, where we can anchor our boat and
await the opportune moment. A stout individual who
has spread bathing-towel and mat in the shade of a
rock, in anticipation of a plunge into the sparkling water
under the conditions that Walt Whitman has glorified,
glares at us furiously. Such is life now, and one tourist
must hunt another from his lair like the wild beasts of
the forest.

All is quiet at last ; and we row round the jutting
rock to the entrance, lie flat in the boat, and pass
through the low aperture.

The world seems suddenly reversed, and the blue
sky lies beneath where but a second before green water
gleamed. We can touch the thousand stars that break
over it as the oar moves. The blue light which is
already familiar by hearsay before we see it does not
envelope: it only lies profoundly and deeply blue
below. Above, all is shadow and darkness, and the
boat floats upon liquid as transparent as air and as
living as blue flame. No other effect in nature has
ever been produced by so slight a cause. Were the
level of the water lowered by even six feet, the rock
on the right of the entrance would remain some two
feet out of the sea, and the light entering through so
large an aperture would dissolve this fairy world. Such
must have been the case in ancient times, no doubt ;
and this would account for the fact that no mention
is made of the phenomena. That the sea has risen

224

VILLAGE ROAD OF CAPRILI, CAPRI

Capri

(or rather that the land has sunk) the coasts of Puzzoli
and of Misena bear ample witness. That it is still
sinking perhaps the Temple of Serapis will in its turn
some day prove.

Another Grotto, still less easily accessible as yet to
the ordinary tourist, has recently been discovered, and
again by a German. The rocks that frown over the
sea are gemmed with these translucent caves, lending
something strangely unreal to their sternness—for that
they are stern no one will deny. The hills around
Athens have been spoken of as a chorus. I should be
inclined to liken the majestic forms of Capri to the
Protagonist of the drama. They frown, seeming to
lament, their feet washed by the ever-murmuring sea
like to some Prometheus.

But amid the smiling Nature of Capri it is only
at moments that the extraordinary character of the
mountain shapes takes the mind back to antiquity.
Thrilling deliciously through the trees at sunrise and
sunset is heard the song of birds—even the chirping
of quails, which is so rarely heard now on the mainland,
owing to their slaughter for food; those creatures,
says the Englishman in Italy—

“Whose heads—speckled white

Over brown like a great spider’s back,

As I told you last night—

Your mother bites off for her supper.”
The cactus and the aloes spring from ‘the bare earth.
The vine winds up its high poles, or is festooned over
the tiny pergolas. In the autumn groups stt under

29 225

Naples

them, sorting out masses of prickly pears, separating
into basketfuls the green from the black olives, or
stringing together into ropes the small green tomatoes
which will hang and ripen with time into scarlet on
the sunny walls. Through dark doorways is seen the
primitive crushing of the olives into wine, while the
patient tread of horse or mule grinds round its
wheel.

The gardens are bright with flowers. Blue con-
volvulus train up the tree-trunks or float over the walls
with a strange growth of the trefoil and rounded leaf
on a single stem. The purple mint, which is said by
some to ward off mosquitoes—the peasant women use
it to perfume their ‘‘ boccato’—springs, as is its way,
from the stoniest spots, and floods the air with sweet-
ness. The scent, said to be partly due to camphor in
the plant, can revive as well as delight. It is easy to
understand why poets, even from classic times, have loved
this humble flower, with its rock-coloured leafage, which
throws out its entire fragrance even as the foot crushes it.

Here and there a wild flowering aloe rises like a
slender wand across the sky from the midst of its
withered leaves; for the leaves of the common Italian
aloe fade as the flower blooms. All this vegetation
partakes of the pale tint of the rocks, and olive and
aloe and cactus melt into the grays of the limestone.
The dark and ‘‘dewless’’ cypress and the yew, which
make such a. note of contrast in the South, are absent
here save in one garden mentioned elsewhere, and in
their traditional home, the Campo Santo.

226

Capri
“ Both you two have
Relation to the grave,”
writes Herrick ; but it was only the cypress which the
Romans dedicated to Pluto, as a funeral tree, believing
that when once cut it never grew again.

How curious is it that about all the luxuriant
vegetation and flora of Naples no legends linger !
Trees and flowers, so often enveloped with story in
the North, have here purely practical associations.
The spring bursts into flower without one of the old
customs with which the Romans welcomed it, dedicat-
ing the season to Flora and wearing in her honour
woven garlands of the blossoms with which she had
strewn the earth. In the native poetry of Naples
floral terms and similitudes are used only to draw
comparisons between them and the amorous feelings
of the people, and even these allusions are restricted to
three or four flowers and fruits—the rose, the cherry,
the pomegranate. I could give a hundred instances ;
but the two I choose are fair examples from the
Neapolitan :—

“ Sweet as the cherry,
Rosy as the pomegranate flower,

Ah! how that mouth o’erwhelms me
With its witching power.”

“‘ Look at this rose, just look at it,
Soft as velvet, red as flame,
How it resembles your pretty mouth
Side by side the same.” 1

1 Translations from the Neapolitan.
227

Naples

No doubt the melodious quality in the names of
flowers has played its part in dialect poetry, as else-
where. The ugly Italian name for the cherry has,
in dialect, been transformed into the soft - sounding
“ Cerase ””’ and ‘“Curvina,”’ accounting somewhat for its
constant poetic use about Naples, while of course the
rose’s name is the softest in sound of any plant. But
ignorance of, and indifference to, flowers in general has
played a part in limiting their floral vocabulary. The
feeling for Nature has little inspired in it, nor does it
seem to raise the ideals of the people in any way. We
are in a country where the wearing of flowers is almost
unknown. Even in Naples ladies rarely wear them, and
such a fashion would be viewed as a mere frivolity.

But enough of roses and cherries, though in the
early summer they force their beauty upon the senses.

“Jt was the month of May, and in her lap
Bunch by bunch the ripe red cherries fell ;
Sweet was the air, and all the garden lay
Beneath the perfume of the roses’ spell.’ ?

In Capri, as elsewhere, are found the old towers of
the middle ages. They were not buildings of any
great importance, save for the purpose of watching the
coast. Built in the very spots least able to resist the
elements, it might be natural to suppose: that they
would have completely disappeared as their use declined.
Yet they are still to be seen, sturdy and fantastic,
sentinels lingering at their post. A fashion for buying,
restoring, and living in them has spread very much of

1 Translation from the Neapolitan of di Giacomo.
2.28

it ta: the eee

ion ace meeaeye ng som

ra

baie 'N N aps,

vere. eee

ort wed Te
i

thy boat ja aie

ER 6 RL oF CAPR

at and! £

wt

aioe . r,
Pe Ene: found the. o

ru y re Meee: wa tchij

Capri

late years. How curious is the need—is it decadent?
—certain modern types of mind display of being
surrounded by old walls and ruins! They gather a
veritable inspiration from the deserted dwellings of past
lives ; and the more “‘ modern ”’ is life in other respects,
the more does it draw intellectually on these mysterious
sentiments which, perhaps, were unknown in the days
when the ruined walls were new and firm.

In Capri one of these ‘“‘torrione” can be seen from
a lovely point of view at Caprioli, hiding amid a gray
wilderness of olives far above the sea. Rescued from
threatened vandalism, it is now in the possession of
Dr. Munthé, the Swedish author of Letters from a
Mourning City, who first settled in the island years
before tourist elements and disfiguring architecture and
eccentric legends had destroyed its wild charm. It is
the natural lot of all of our day who love and covet
remote beauty in Nature to watch that charm dwindle
before encroaching civilisation. It is at least consoling
to think that perhaps even Tiberius in 47s day experi-
enced a foretaste of it, hunted from villa to villa up to
the heights of Anacapri.

The Podere of olives and orange-trees in the midst
of which stands this winter home is, I believe, the
largest in Capri. A long path bordered with rude
overgrown pillars leads to the tower, and on every side
beneath the trees the brown earth has been planted
with a wild growth of roses, free to grow whithersoever
they will unthreatened by gardener’s laws: a Roman
rose garden, without the fastidious artificiality of Roman

229

Naples

days. This delight in gardens without gardeners is
but one of the many possibilities that the South gives
us—a gift in itself.

The interior of the tower is still more strange than
beautiful. It is too distinct and personal for strict
perfection, too much stamped with the eccentric char-
acter of its owner ; but in this lies its very charm. All
connoisseurs collect in somewhat the same manner, but
this tiny interior is more than a mere catalogue of
objects. There are, for example, ample signs that this
collector not only loves his gems, but also understands
their setting. Even the enchanting views from the
tower are framed in windows of exquisite Byzantine
workmanship, windows that give esthetic delight to
gaze from.

Far above, overlooking Anacapri and the whole
superb view, stands another dwelling, a summer villa,
half Roman, half Byzantine. The walls, inside and out,
are pure dead white, contrasting with the deep green
that looks in from every window. This villa is a
museum of rare objects—a lived-in museum with just
the touch of sadness which collected and defaced
treasures must possess. Here is a colossal head of
marble which the owner saw one day lying under the
transparent sea. Here are columns restored from the
waters of the Bay of Naples—that Bay which has
washed over untold wealth of Greco-Roman days.
Byzantine mosaics are inserted into the walls, and in
the garden are old sarcophagi, antique time - changed
statuary, half hidden under the vegetation.

230

IN THE VILLA MUNTHE, ANACAPRI

A museum of rare objects of art.

Capri

Was it one of the villas of Tiberius? Dr. Munthé
claims the possibility at least. He believes that upon
the beautiful little terrace the tyrant was pacing to and
fro, tremulous with a forewarning of bad tidings, when
the news of Christ’s death reached him. There are
many traces of the age of the villa’s foundations, and a
skeleton biting still the coin which marked him as a
pagan may be seen in its hollow at the villa.

In the garden may be seen a long avenue of tiny
cypresses, the only specimens of the tree on the island.

There is still carried out on New Year’s Eve at
Anacapri an old custom which must surely have
originated in some pre-nervous period of man’s existence.
The native lads of the place, armed with primitive
musical instruments and a large upright log, enter the
houses of their various friends and “ plant” the happiness
of the inmates for the coming year by thumping the
log in the middle of the floor for what would seem to
our ears an eternity. A monotonous chant is kept up
during the whole performance. As to the Caprian’s idea
of music, it is certainly curious, among the inevitable
changes resulting from foreign influence, how little of
German music and song has penetrated to Capri.
Never was there a more silent isle—not a guitar, hardly
a mandoline, even in the barbers’ salons, where these
instruments are usually so much in request. Only the
singing and twittering of birds at sunrise and sunset is
heard.

Speaking of birds, the great Easter Eve celebration
on the Saturday at mid-day is wonderful to witness. At

221

Naples

the sound of the Gloria hundreds of little birds are
suddenly let free from baskets, pockets, and the hot
hands of many children, adding a wild chirp of delight
to the ringing and clanging of the bells.

The life of Capri is distinctly an outdoor one. The
air, surcharged with ozone, fills the body with a de-
lightful energy. Ravenous hunger makes every meal-
time a delight—even luncheon-time I might say, for
it is then that Capri is stormed with hungry visitors
from all parts of the world—American women with
long floating veils; Neapolitan families, who care not
the least for the “sights” but dearly love an excursion ;
German couples, absorbed and happy ; and a few, but
very few, English, and those mostly honeymoon couples.
This feeding hour is unlike anything of the kind else-
where. The rush and hurry, the indecent haste to
be fed, followed by a sleepy and replenished lingering
over the tables, seems to repeat itself day after day
with unchanging regularity. But in spite of these
too human surroundings, there is something so truly
exhilarating in the delicious Caprian climate, that, what-
ever else Capri may lack, let us at least glorify it for
this one solid virtue which makes life so well worth
living.

For my part, I believe that air scented with flowers
is more of a cure for mind and body than many an
advertised tonic.

It was while we were at Capri that we met a
Neapolitan lady who was there with her children for
the bathing. Along with other hotel acquaintances

2.32

Capri

she was on the best of terms with a very tall thin
foreigner in spectacles. When one of her children
fell ill, he gave her a simple remedy; but, as is so
often the case, the child persisted in carrying through
its illness in its own fashion, and promptly developed
fever. This elicited further offers of help; but the
lady received them in almost trembling fear, turned
pale, and, excusing herself, hastened away. It was the
old story of the jettatura. Poor man! He had all
the attributes supposed to accompany the ill, and the
lady herself, a Neapolitan, was certainly to blame in
not having noticed them sooner. To be tall, meagre
in body, and to wear blue spectacles, is almost always
the outward and visible form of the inward sin. It
was but last summer that I read in one of the daily
newspapers the description of just such a person who
had lately landed at Naples, and was declared to have
brought with him the particularly bad weather that
happened to be raging at the time.

That an individual may have the Evil Eye is believed
all over Italy, but the peculiarly terrible belief in its
heredity seems to be purely Neapolitan. One of the
oldest and noblest families in Naples is said to possess
this incurable taint, and that to such a degree that
the family name has been changed, and a member of
it, a Neapolitan poet, has left behind him less of the
poet’s name than this legend of the jettatura, which
has made him the hero of a well-known French
romance. It is only a wonder that the family should
still exist and not have died out, for marriages

30 233

Naples

into it were made with the greatest difficulty, and
S. Catarine coiffés many of the daughters for no other
reason. The belief in the jettatura is much more
noticeable among the educated than among the ignorant.
Nor must it be forgotten that France, a country which
is considered as in every way more enlightened than
Italy, embittered the life of a great musician for no
other reason.

Some years ago Capri was a great centre for the
tarantella ; but the dance has now grown artificial and
cosmopolitanised both here and at Sorrento. Little
of the old wild spirit of its origin can now be traced
in this, the only relic of the mania for dancing which
the bite of the harmless tarantula spider was said to
have spread over Europe in the Middle Ages. The
following poem hardly describes the tame performance
which is now to be seen :—

“Listen! The castanets of yon happy pair
Are striking loudly together, and now begins
The Tarantella, Bacchantic, luxuriant dance !
See how the young girl moves as lightly as air ;
And the handsome youth, how swiftly he leaps and spins,
And turns with the rhythm, stamping with fiery glance !
And now he flings at the fair girl’s heart, a rose.
But all the covetous fire is checked in his eyes,
Tamed by her softly commanding mien, maiden wise
In her country’s restraint. Oh, fortunate land !
For Nature withholds it nought from her magic wand,
Not e’en the calm reserve that the North never knows.” }

I sometimes think that form is more distinctly

1 Translated from the original of Von Platen.
234

oe
hee

pidotia RtategneyD 2

Lie ihes es ae Wag
RC A ee a la el on

VILLA DUBUFFE

Home of the celebrated French painter.

Capri

remembered than the changing colour of Nature upon
which the eye can never gaze sufficiently long to be
wholly master of it. Homes of rock and stone get
a kind of grip on the memory, a mastery, as it were,
through their brute strength, when the purely lovely
fades away like a dream.

As we approach Naples, and the melting colours of
the Bay once more envelop us, when, looking back,
Capri has faded into a transparent fresco upon the
horizon, the mind’s eye still sees the great outline of
rock, the sphinxes of limestone that sink into the sea.
What contrasts of beauty are there in this land! A
mere glance seems to separate the majestic from the
languid, the stern from the gentle forms of Nature,
and we know not which to think the most lovely.

“1 faut dans ce bas monde aimer beaucoup de choses,
Pour savoir aprés tout ce qu’on aime le mieux.”

THE END

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DATE DUE

3 3eeb OOLY4 9307 |

pa. e42.5 FS

Fitzgerald, Sybil.

Naples

| DG 842.5 «F57

_ Fitzgerald, Sybil. :

| Naples 4

DATE DUE DURRUW OER See

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