into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight
o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers
Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one
could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only
is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is
worthy of it. Said Gautier, “It is surely the finest in the world”;
said Canova, “It is worthy of the Romans.” Pallid and broad and long,
and so level that its double lines of fine lights scarcely rise to the
slightest of arcs, it rests with rare grace on its nine sweeping arches
and spans the Thames just where the great bend is made to the east. One
looks along it northward and sees the lamps of Wellington Street fade
into the blurring dazzle of the Strand and Longacre, and southward to
find the converging lights of Waterloo Road sending a bright arrow
straight to the heart of Southwark. The greensward of the flowered
and statued Embankment sweeps across and back on either side of its
northern end, and palace hotels, Somerset House and the huge glass roof
of Charing Cross Station bulk large at hand. Eastward the Ionic columns
of Blackfriars Bridge and the strutting iron arches of Southwark Bridge
stalk boldly across the serene river, and southwestward the broad arch
of Westminster Bridge offers Parliament cheer to glum Lambeth. It would
be the most natural mistake in the world to suppose the trim buildings
of St. Thomas Hospital, on the Surrey bank, a favored row of handsome
detached summer villas, with owners of strong political influence to be
able to build on the fine long curve of the Albert Embankment, having
no less a vis-à-vis than the terraces and glorious Gothic pile of
Parliament buildings on their thousand feet of “noblest water front in
the world.”
Only the mind’s eye may look farther on to Chelsea and take note of the
tall plane-trees of Cheyne Walk, and re-people the red brick terraces
and homely old houses with Sir Thomas More entertaining Erasmus
and Holbein, with Addison and Steele in revelry at Don Saltero’s
coffee-house, with Byron at home in the amazing disorder of Leigh
Hunt’s cottage, with Tennyson smoking long pipes with Carlyle, with
Turner and Whistler bending over their palettes, and with Rossetti,
Swinburne, and Meredith courting the Muses under a common roof and in a
common brotherhood.
[Illustration: LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE]
To the observer on Waterloo Bridge the deep roar of the city comes
out dulled and subdued. Bells chime softly and the whistles of the
river-craft sound, from time to time, with sudden and startling
shrillness. Long shafts of light shake out from either bank and spots
of color from signal lamps dot the nearer rim. All outside is a
bright dazzle, with patches of deep shadow and heavy ripples from the
brown-sailed lighters and pert steamers that move across the shining
reaches. The gloomy Southwark shore is blurred and uncertain in light
mists, and the roof masses of the frowning city lift the ghostly
fingers of Wren’s slender spires and cower beneath the indistinct and
cloudlike silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s. The prospect is that
of a vast, confused expanse of indistinguishable, shadowy blending of
buildings and foliage whose remoter verges merge into a soft violet
blur, and over all of it rages a wild snowstorm of tiny pin-point
lights. Under the arches of the bridge old Father Thames moves serenely
seaward, the most ancient and yet ever the youngest member of the
community. From his continual renewal of life one could believe that
in some long-forgotten time he had won this reward when he, too, had
achieved the Holy Grail among the stout knights up Camelot way “in
the dayes of Vther pendragon when he was kynge of all Englond and so
regned.” With true British reserve he whispers to a stranger no word
of such secrets as once he confided at this bridge to Dickens, of the
savagery and cruelty of this London that has driven so many of its
desperate children to peace within his sheltering arms,—
“Mad with life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery
Swift to be hurled—
Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of the world.”
Looking from one of these bridges on the proud, powerful,
self-sufficient city, Wordsworth was once moved to exclaim that “earth
has not anything to show more fair.” Certainly it has few things
to show more stirring and impressive, few to move the heart more
profoundly, few that in achievement, resourcefulness, and power embody
more completely to men of to-day
“The grandeur that was Rome.”
[Illustration]
NAPLES
8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
Drifting lazily of a summer evening over the Bay of Naples in a brown
old fishing felucca with a friendly ancient boatman for companion,
careless of time or direction; the night winds soft; the moon clear;
indolent boating-parties in joyous relaxation all about; languorous,
plaintive songs of Italy near by and far away; Vesuvius glorious and
mysterious in the purple offing, and the gray old city, touched with
silver, beaming down from all her crescent hillsides,—here, indeed,
is the stuff of which day dreams are compounded! Chimes in shadowy
belfries take soft, musical notice of the hour; and my thoughts recede
with those fading echoes and retrace the bright and pleasant stages
that have led me this evening into an environment of such charm and
romance.
Thus, then, it was. Two hours ago, as I loitered along the crowded
Via Caracciolo on the Bay front and watched Neapolitan Fashion
take the air, I again encountered my Old Man of the Sea at his
landing-place,—swarthy, wrinkled Luigi of the hoop earrings and
faded blue trousers rolled to the knees. Little was he bothering
his grizzled head over the frivolity that fluttered above him; and
yet it was, in fact, a charming show. Old Luigi makes a mistake, in
my opinion, in ignoring the elegant _passeggiata_; for afternoon
promenading on the Caracciolo is something that most of Naples will do
more than lift its head to see. Besides, what an attractive setting it
has! The boasted park, the Villa Nazionale, arrays the western front
in a pleasant old woods of broad and shady trees, along the water
side of which stretches the handsome boulevard of the Caracciolo. The
distinguishing mark is thus supplied to divide society between the
carriage set who hector it here and along the Villa’s winding drives,
and those lesser lights who venture to raise their heads secure from
snubs in the promenading spaces under the trees and before the cafés
and bandstand. With the latter, as the elders salute friends, renew
acquaintances, and exchange civilities with jubilant exclamations,
delighted shrugs, and storms of exultant gestures, the younger men,
in flannel suits and foppish canes, flirt desperately by twirling
their waxed little mustaches, and the snappy-eyed signorinas respond
in kind by a subtle and discrete use of the fan. The contemplative
promenader will stroll along the cool, statue-lined _allées_, issuing
forth from time to time to enjoy the brisk music of the band. The
hardened idler will take a mean delight in penetrating the retired
and romantic retreats in the neighborhood of the Pæstum Fountain and
thus arousing whole coveys of indignant lovers who have regarded this
region as peculiarly their own from time immemorial; in the event of
threatened reprisals the disturber can seek sanctuary in the renowned
Aquarium, just at hand, and there spend his time to better advantage in
contemplating octopi and sensitive plants, and all sorts of astonishing
fishes. But the real show, of course, is _en voiture_. With a clatter
and dash along they come: The _jeunesse dorée_, with straw hats cocked
rakishly, shouting loudly to their horses and sawing desperately on
the reins; young beauties in the latest word of milliner and modiste
loll back in handsome victorias, reveling in the sensation they are
creating, and with great black eyes flashing in curious contrast to the
studied placidity of their quiet faces; consequential senators down
from Rome; fat merchants trying to appear at ease; and all the usual
remnants of the fashionable rout. On the wide sidewalks the promenaders
proceed leisurely and with more good-humored democracy: prim little
girls with governesses; romping schoolboys in caps of all colors;
back-robed students; long-haired _artisti_; and priests by the score
strolling sedately and gesturing earnestly with dark, nervous hands.
To all this brave parade Luigi turns a blind eye and a deaf ear;
but he always manages to see me, I have noticed. This afternoon his
programme was the attractive one of a sail down to the Cape of Posilipo
for a fish-dinner at a rustic little _ristoranti_, with the table to
be spread under a chestnut-tree on a weathered stone terrace at the
water’s edge where the spray from an occasional wave-top could spatter
the cloth and I might fleck the ashes of my cigar straight down into
the Bay. This old fellow can interest any one, I believe, when he
wrinkles up into his insinuating and enthusiastic grin and plays that
trump card, “And after dinner, if the signore wish, we can drift about
the Bay or sail over toward Capri and Sorrento.” Naturally, this is my
cue to enter. Into the boat I go; off come hat, coat, collar, and tie,
and up go sleeves to the shoulder. I am allowed the tiller, and the
genial old fisherman stretches at his ease beside the slanting mast
and lights a long, black, quill-stemmed cheroot. Now for comfort and
romance and all the delights of Buchanan Read’s inspired vision:
“I heed not if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;—
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.”
[Illustration: THE BAY OF NAPLES]
From all garish distractions our little boat bore us in rippling
leisure along the picturesque Mergellina front and under the long,
villa-dotted heights of the Posilipo hillside, whose shadows crept
slowly out on the waters as Apollo drove his flaming chariot beyond the
ridge to seek the dread Sibyl of Cumæ. Nature has always been partial
to her gay, irresponsible Naples, and this afternoon she seemed
resolved to outdo herself in clothing it with charm and beauty. Under
the setting sun the entire sky over Posilipo became a gorgeous riot of
crimson and gold, and the opposite Vesuvian shore basked with indolent
Oriental listlessness in a brilliant deluge that penetrated the deepest
recesses of its vineyards and fruited terraces. Through this magic
realm of richest color we floated lightly, silently responsive to the
varying phases of the calm and glorious sunset hour. In deepest content
“my hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail.”
The region to which we lifted our eyes is one of veritable
poet-worship. How incredible to think that on this hillside Lucullus
has lived and Horace strolled and Virgil mused over his deathless
verse! Look again, and under a clump of gnarled old trees one sees the
latter’s venerated tomb. Over these waters came the pious Æneas with
his Trojan galleys to question the Cumæan Sibyl; and since the age of
fable what fleets of Carthage have passed around Cape Miseno, what
barks of savage pirates, what brazen triremes of Rome, what armadas of
Spain and navies of all the world! It staggers the mind to attempt to
recall the scenes of war and pillage that have been enacted under the
frowning brows of these storied hills during the last three thousand
years.
The wonderful sail was all too brief, and almost before I was aware
the goal was at hand, and I stepped ashore at the _ristoranti_
approved of Luigi and entered upon the promised joys. It was all as
he had predicted; with possibly the exception of a few details he
had discreetly neglected to warn me against. That it required four
determined efforts and a threat of police to get the proper change when
I came to settle the bill is really no jarring memory at all. It is the
usual experience with the “forgetful” Neapolitan restaurant keeper. And
what are foreigners for, anyway? And was it not worth something extra
to have dined face to face with this glittering Bay, with the panorama
of Naples on one hand and a sunset over Cape Miseno on the other? So
with many bows and mutual civilities I parted with the zealous boniface
and rejoined the waiting felucca. A light shove, and the shadows of
the terrace fell behind us and we were out again on the Bay. Such are
the alluring stages, among others, that may bring one eventually to an
evening’s moonlight sail at Naples.
Just now the bells rang eight. Luigi grows sentimental. Again he
declines my cigars, stretches at his ease and produces another quilled
specimen of government monopoly such as, when at home, he lights at the
end of a smouldering rope dangling in a tobacco shop of the Mercato.
In the gathering gloom one sees little now of the trellised paths of
Posilipo, the white marble villas with their balconies and terraces, or
the brilliant clustering roses gay against the glossy green of groves
of lemons and oranges. In the darkness of the firs each cavern and
grotto of this legend-haunted headland disappears and one can barely
make out the wave-washed Rock of Virgil, at the farthest extremity,
where, the Neapolitans will tell you, the poet was wont to practice his
enchantments. The ruddy sky pales over the mouth of Avernus and the
Elysian Fields, and Apollo abandons us to Diana and the broad flecking
of the lights of Parthenope. We swing a wide circle in the offing.
Between us and the distant rim of water-front lamps hundreds of light
craft are idly floating. Romantic, pleasure-loving Naples has dined
and taken to the water, to cheer its heart with laughter and song.
Like glowworms the lights of the little boats lift and sway with the
movement of the waves; while seaward, the drifting torches of fishermen
flare in search of _frutti di mare_.
Like an aged beauty Naples is at her best by night, when the ravages of
time are concealed. Lights glitter brightly along the shore line from
Posilipo to Sorrento and all over the hillsides, and even beyond Sant’
Elmo and the low white priory of San Martino the palace-crowned heights
of Capodimonte, where the paper-chases of early spring afford so much
diversion to the young gallants of the court. Popular restaurants up
the hillsides are marked by groups of colored lights. A thick spangle
of lamps proclaims the progress of some neighborhood _festa_. The moon
is full; the sky brilliant with enormous stars. In the distance the
curling smoke of Vesuvius glows with a sultry red or fades fitfully
into gloomy tones, as suits that imperious will which threescore of
eruptions have rendered absolute. But, as all the world knows, this
aged beauty of a city that “lights up” so well by night is far from
“plain” by day. Then appears the charm and distinction of the original
way she has of parting her hair, as it were, with the great dividing
rocky ridge that runs downward from Capodimonte to Sant’ Elmo and then
on to Pizzofalcone, “Rock of the Falcon.” She even secures a coquettish
touch in the projecting point, like an antique necklace pendant, at the
centre of her double-crescented shore, where juts a low reef and at its
end rests the ancient, blackened Castello dell’Ovo,—on a magically
supported egg, they say,—the accredited theatre of so many extravagant
adventures. And by day she looks down in indolent content through the
half-closed eyes of ten thousand windows and surveys a glorious sea of
milky blue, brimming tawny curving beaches crowned with white villas
in luxuriant groves and vineyards, expanding in turquoise about soft
headlands and dim precipices, and bearing, on its smooth, restful bosom
in the far, faint offing, magical islands of pink and pearl that seem
no more than tinted clouds.
A shoal of skiffs hangs under the black hull of a belated liner, whose
rails are crowded with new arrivals delighted at so picturesque and
enthusiastic a reception, and whose silver falls merrily into the
inverted umbrellas of the boys and girls who are singing and dancing
in the little boats by the light of flaming torches. Very shortly these
visitors will learn that the interest they excite in Neapolitans is
to be measured very strictly in terms of ready cash. Secretly, they
will be despised. There is no smile-hid rapacity comparable with that
encountered here. The incoming steamer has not yet warped into her
berth before the Neapolitan has begun his campaign for money. Beggars
crawl out on the pier flaunting their hideous deformities and wailing
for _soldi_, and insulting cabmen lie in ambush at the gates. At no
other port does a foreigner disembark with so much embarrassment. He
goes ashore feeling like a lamb marked for the shearing, and lives
to fulfill the expectation with humiliating dispatch. It has to be
admitted, on the other hand, that the customs-officers occasionally
catch strange flashes of transmarine interests that must puzzle them
not a little. As an instance, the first person to land from the steamer
I was on was a young American athlete in desperate quest of the latest
daily paper, and bent, as we presumed, upon securing instant word of
some matter of great and immediate importance. He succeeded; but what
was our astonishment to behold him a minute later leap and shout for
joy and announce to every one about him that Princeton had again won
the Yale baseball series and remained the college champions!
Naples, to-night, is vibrant with song; faithful to her ancient
myth of the nymph Parthenope, whose sweet singing long lured men to
destruction until Ulysses withstood it and the chagrined goddess cast
herself into the sea and perished and her body floated to these shores.
Parthenope’s children here do not destroy people by their singing now,
but rather delight and revitalize them. Mandolins and guitars are
throbbing softly on every hand and the old familiar songs of Naples
fill the air. “Traviata,” “Trovatore,” and the “Cavalleria” reign
prime favorites. To be sure, there is no escaping the linked sweetness
of the wailing “Sa-an-ta-a Lu-u-ci-a,” nor that notion of perpetual
and hilarious youth conveyed in the ubiquitous “Funiculì-Funiculà.”
In martial staccato, as of old, Margarita, the love-lorn seamstress,
is jestingly warned against Salvatore,—“_Mar-ga-rì, ’e perzo a
Salvatore!_”—and the skittish “Frangese” recites for the millionth
time the discouraging experience of the giddy young peddler who
undertook to barter his “pretty pins from Paris” in exchange for kisses
that would only bring “a farthing for five” in Paradise. More than one
singer is deploring the heartless coquetry of “La Bella Sorrentina,”
while as many more appeal amorously to the charming Maria with promises
of “beds of roseleaves,”—
“Ah! Maria Marì!
Quanta suonna che perdo pe te!”
We take an æsthetic interest in the Pagliaccian ravings of Canio, and
grieve for the “little frozen hands” of “La Bohème”; while, by way of
contrast, all the peace and serenity of moonlight comes to us in the
chaste, stately measures of the pensive “Luna Nova.” Serenades seem
twice serenades when breathed in the soft, lissome dialect of Naples.
There is no tiring of the impassioned refrain of “Sole Mio”:—
“Ma n’ atu sole
Cchiu bello, ohinè,
’O sole mio
Sta nfronte a te!”
And what sufficient word can be said of the lovely “A Serenata d’ ’e
Rrose”? It is impossible not to rejoice with these soulful tenors in
that
“The glinting moonbeams look like silver pieces
Flung down among the roses by the breezes,”—
or to respond to the plaintive intensity of the appealing cry:—
“Oj rrose meje! Si dorme chesta fata
Scetatela cu chesta serenata!”
Like old Ulysses, the swift little felucca soon stops its ears to these
fascinating distractions, and bears Luigi and me off into the purple
darkness. The prison-capped rock of Nisida drops astern with all its
august memories of Brutus and his devoted Portia, and its repugnant
ones of Queen Joanna, the very bad, and King Robert, the very good.
In the moonlit path the distant cliffs of Procida, isle of romance
and beauty, loom afar, but we distinguish no faintest echo of the
bewildering _tarantella_ music that is danced there in its perfection.
What a different spectacle its observers are enjoying from the stale
perfunctory performances of the Sorrento hotels, which the tourists
see at two dollars a head. For the _tarantella_, well done, is the
intensest and most expressive of dances. All the emotions of the lover
and his coquettish sweetheart are aptly portrayed—the advances,
rebuffs, encouragements, slights, and final triumph. The Procida dance
is a revelation when rendered out of sheer delight—_con amore_, as the
Italians say.
An occasional faint light marks dissolute Rome’s favorite place of
revelry, Baiæ the magnificent. In its heyday every house, as we read,
was a palace; and it has been said that every woman who entered it a
Penelope came out a Helen. Through their faded green blinds no light
may be seen in the yellow stone houses of neighboring Puteoli where
Paul, Timothy, and Luke took refuge in the early days of the Faith.
Stolid pagan Rome had little time for them, considering that Cumæ was
just around the headland, with Dædalus landing from his flight from
Crete and the frantic Sibyl, at the very Jaws of Avernus, screaming her
“Dies iræ! Dies illa!”
Distant Ischia appears a huge ghostly blot, mysterious and solemn.
Scarce an outline can be caught of its fabled, crag-hung castle,
chambered as the very nautilus and eloquent of the unhappy Vittoria
Colonna. How often has Michael Angelo climbed with sighs that old stone
causeway where now the fishermen mend their blackened nets! Ischia
never wants for devotees, however, and already a quarter-century has
sufficed to dull the horror of that July night when Casamicciola paid
its quota of three thousand lives to the dread greed of the earthquake.
To-day one lingers, undisturbed by such memories, amidst the pretty
whitewashed cottages set in olive groves and vineyards, loiters among
the picturesque straw plaiters of Lacco, or dreams to the drowsy tinkle
of goat bells in the myrtle and chestnut groves on the slopes of Mont’
Epomeo.
Shadowy Capri, isle of enchantment, lies soft and dim off the Sorrento
headland as we swing our little vessel toward the city. It seems only
a delightful dream that a few mornings ago my _déjeuner_ was served
on a cool terrace of the Quisisana there, and that I looked down over
the coffee-urn on olive groves and sloping hillsides green with famous
vineyards. With joy I relive the row around its precipitous shores, the
eerie swim in the elfland of the Blue Grotto, the drive down the white,
dusty road from the lofty perch of Anacapri to the pebbly beaches of
Marina Grande, before a fascinating, unfolding panorama of verdant
lawns, fruited terraces, snowy villas, and bold cliffs crowned with
fantastic ruins. Sinister Tiberius and his unspeakable companions have
small place in our permanent memories of Capri; one is more apt to
recall the charming blue and white Virgin in the cool grotto beside the
old Stone Stairs.
A faint rim of lights on the mainland marks Sorrento, and a patch
nearer the city, Castellammare; and were we nearer, the great white
hotels would doubtless be found brilliant and musical. Could we but
see it now, we should find the moonlit statue of Tasso in the little
square vastly more tolerable than by day, and this would be a pleasant
hour to spend on the old green bench before it absorbed in stirring
thoughts of the “Gerusalemme Liberata” in the place where its author
was born. Monte Sant’ Angelo looms above Castallammare spectre-like
in night shadows, and the royal ilex groves must be taken on faith.
The crested hoopoes, crowned of King Solomon, have long been asleep on
the mountain-sides, but Italian Fashion, devoted to its Castellammare,
having idled and rested all day in the _bagni_, now flirts and dances
at the verandaed _stabilimenti_. An occasional faint breath of
fragrance recalls the floral luxuriance that is so notable here—the
gorgeous scarlet geraniums, snowy daturas, cactus, and aloe, festoons
of smilax, and the carmine oleanders that they call “St. Joseph’s
Nosegay.”