One morning we drove along the shore, up hill, and down, by the Porto
d'Ischia to the town and castle. This country curiously combines the
qualities of Corfu and Catania. The near distance, so richly cultivated,
with the large volcanic slopes of Monte Epomeo rising from the sea, is
like Catania. Then, across the gulf, are the bold outlines and snowy peaks
of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian ranges. Here, as in Sicily, the old
lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. Mesembrianthemums--I
must be pardoned this word; for I cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers,
with their wealth of gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured
like strawberry and pine-apple cream-ices--mesembrianthemums, then, tumble
in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convolvuluses curl
about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's refined sky-coloured
outline relieving its hard profile on the horizon, is one of those
exceedingly picturesque objects just too theatrical to be artistic. It
seems ready-made for a back scene in _Masaniello_, and cries out to
the chromo-lithographer, "Come and make the most of me!" Yet this morning
all things, in sea, earth, and sky, were so delicately tinted and bathed
in pearly light that it was difficult to be critical.
In the afternoon we took the other side of the island, driving through
Lacca to Forio. One gets right round the bulk of Epomeo, and looks up
into a weird region called Le Falange, where white lava streams have
poured in two broad irregular torrents among broken precipices. Florio
itself is placed at the end of a flat headland, boldly thrust into the
sea; and its furthest promontory bears a pilgrimage church, intensely
white and glaring.
There is something arbitrary in the memories we make of places casually
visited, dependent as they are upon our mood at the moment, or on an
accidental interweaving of impressions which the _genius loci_ blends
for us. Of Forio two memories abide with me. The one is of a young
woman, with very fair hair, in a light blue dress, standing beside an
older woman in a garden. There was a flourishing pomegranate-tree above
them. The whiteness and the dreamy smile of the young woman seemed
strangely out of tune with her strong-toned southern surroundings. I
could have fancied her a daughter of some moist north-western isle of
Scandinavian seas. My other memory is of a lad, brown, handsome,
powerfully-featured, thoughtful, lying curled up in the sun upon a sort
of ladder in his house-court, profoundly meditating. He had a book in
his hand, and his finger still marked the place where he had read. He
looked as though a Columbus or a Campanella might emerge from his
earnest, fervent, steadfast adolescence. Driving rapidly along, and
leaving Forio in all probability for ever, I kept wondering whether
these two lives, discerned as though in vision, would meet--whether she
was destined to be his evil genius, whether posterity would hear of him
and journey to his birthplace in this world-neglected Forio. Such
reveries are futile. Yet who entirely resists them?