NAPLES OF TO-DAY.
Once more I am in Naples, with its houses rising one over another, in
front of me, and Vesuvius looking down on me, and across the loveliest
bay the world has yet seen. There is little to see in Naples beyond its
museum, which no one should omit to visit, and Pompeii, to which you are
conveyed by train, where you come face to face with ancient civilization
and ancient life. For the traveller the city is rich in hotels, and at
one of them—the Hôtel Vesuve, a magnificent structure with stately
halls—I once spent a happy week. I had come with money enough to defray
my two days’ expenses; but, to my horror, I had to stay longer than I
intended, and you may judge of my delight when the manager, who knew me,
at the end of the week refused a penny for my board and daily food. I
wish I could speak as well of the shopkeepers, who fleece you as much as
possible, and are prone to give you bad money for good.
The people are industrious, and mostly very poor; but they don’t drink,
and content themselves with water and a slice of lemon—always on sale in
the streets. They are devout Roman Catholics, but, nevertheless, an
official said to me, ‘Morality is unknown here.’ I met with a man from
Newcastle, an engineer, who employs a thousand people here, and gave them
an excellent character. ‘Do you employ any English?’ I asked. ‘Not
one,’ was his reply; ‘they drink too much and are too troublesome.’
Taxes are awful and Custom dues ditto. I landed here once with
twenty-five cigars, a present from one of the gentlemanly captains of the
Orient line. I could have put them in my pocket, and no one would have
been any wiser. I thought, however, ‘Italy is a poor country, and I
might as well contribute my mite towards its exhausted exchequer.’ My
confidence was misplaced; for those cigars I had to pay a duty—incredible
as it may seem—of three shillings and ninepence! Only fancy!
What I like best in Naples are its tram-cars, which are cheap, and the
attendants are civil. Riding and driving seem to be the principal
amusements of the people, especially on a Sunday, when the poor horses
have to rattle along with tremendous loads, which makes one regret that
in this part of the world there seems to be no society for the prevention
of cruelty to animals. Pope Pius IX. did not think one required.
Artistic manufactures seem to constitute the staple trade. In every
hotel there are fine marble busts for sale. Vesuvius supplies abundant
lava, which is utilized in a thousand forms. On many a housetop you may
see the macaroni spread out to dry, and in many a street you may watch
through the windows the tortoiseshell manufacturers at work. To the city
there appears to be no end, as it stretches away to the right and left,
and climbs up the hills on which it is built. It boasts two Gothic
cathedrals, and numerous churches, and many public buildings of a
handsome order. Little of female loveliness, however, is to be seen in
the streets—not half so much as in Oxford Street at home any day in the
week. Miss Cobbe writes: ‘Naples struck me on my first visit—as it has
done again and again—as presenting the proof that the Beautiful is not by
itself the root out of which the Good spontaneously grows.’ I quite
agree with Miss Cobbe.
In the wide and sunny expanse of blue waters that surrounds Naples there
is much to be seen. Rocky Capri lies just opposite—the home of artists
and English residents. In the bay on our left are Baiæ and Puteoli, the
latter the port at which St. Paul landed on his way as a prisoner to Rome
to appeal to Cæsar. Baiæ was the Brighton of ancient Rome; the remains
of its temples and baths are scattered freely among the fig-trees and
olives of the peasant. Emperors dwelt there. There Cæsar sought
retirement, and the warm springs on the side are yet called by his name.
Behind, Virgil placed the entrance of Avernus, and not far off is his
reputed tomb. Between Baiæ and Puteoli was the Lucrine Lake, over which
coloured sails wafted the small yachts of fashionable visitors, and which
contained the oyster-beds for the luxurious tables of Rome. Vitellius
the beastly, as Gibbon calls him, seems to have been the greatest
oyster-eater in the ancient world. He is said to have eaten oysters all
day long and to have swallowed a thousand at a sitting. There are no
oysters in the Lucrine Lake now, for the simple reason that an earthquake
long ago destroyed the lake. All that now remains of that famous fishery
is a small and shallow stream, which is separated from the sea by a
narrow strip of sand. Further north is Misenum, where Æneas came to
land; where the navy of old Rome rode secure; from whence Pliny sailed
away to get a nearer view of the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius, and
where he met with his death by the ashes discharged from the burning
mountain. On the other side of the bay lie Sorrento and other charming
spots. It was here the Greeks sent colonists. The Greeks were the
colonizing people of antiquity, as much as the English are colonizing
people of to-day. It is pleasant of a night to stand on the deck of the
steamer to see the gas-lamps on the shore glittering like glow-worms or
fireflies all along the romantic coast.
If possible, the tourist should find time to have a look at Pæstum. In
his diary Rogers the poet thus describes his visit: ‘Country green and
level. The temples in a plain shut in on three sides by the mountains,
on the fourth open to the sea; and the sea itself half shut in them by
the promontory of Sorrentum, within which are the Isles of the Sirens. A
magnificent theatre, worthy of such objects: the columns almost
bare—broken and of an iron-brown, like iron rust; the floor green with
moss and herbage; the columns and cornices of the richest tints, and
climbed by the green lizards that fly into a thousand chinks and crevices
at your approach; fluted fragments of columns and moulded cornices among
briars strew the middle space between the temple and the basilica.’ Let
me add, the temples are all in the same Doric style. Poseidonia, as its
inhabitants, the Greek colonists, called it, was founded in the seventh
century B.C., and, as the name imports, was specially sacred to Poseidon,
or Neptune. The principal temple, which was probably that of Neptune,
was that of the sea god.
Let me remind my readers that in the English burial-place at Naples was
laid one of the very greatest and best of Englishwomen—the late Mrs.
Somerville—where a marble monument has been placed over her grave by her
daughter. It represents her, heroic size, reclining on a classic chair,
in somewhat the attitude of the statue of Agrippa in the Vatican. It is
a shame that she was not buried in Westminster Abbey. When asked, Dean
Stanley assented, as was to be expected, freely to the proposal. Mrs.
Somerville’s nephew, Sir William Fraser, promised at once to defray all
expenses. There was only one thing further needed, and that was the
usual formal request from some public body or official persons to the
Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Dean Stanley immediately wrote to the
Astronomer Royal and the President of the Royal Society, as
representative of the science with which Mrs. Somerville was immediately
connected, to ask him to authorize the Dean proceeding in the matter.
But that gentleman refused to do so on the ground that he had never read
Mrs. Somerville’s books. ‘Whether he had read,’ writes Miss Cobbe,
commenting indignantly on the above, ‘one in which she took the opposite
side from his in the bitter Adam Le Verrier controversy, it is not for me
to say.’ Any way, jealousy, either scientific or masculine, declined to
admit Mrs. Somerville’s claim to a place in our national Walhalla, where
so many men neither intellectually nor morally her equal have been
received.
In one respect Naples has improved since I was here last. The drainage
has been rendered better, and the fearful odours that met you at every
turn have disappeared. The poor are indolent, dirty, thriftless, and
ill-housed; but that does not much matter, as most of their lives are
passed in the open air. The convents are suppressed, the schoolmaster is
abroad, and they may grow better as the years roll by, and Italy, as a
nation, once more becomes great and renowned. But a good deal has yet to
be done. I heard of things to be seen in Naples of the most disgraceful
and disgusting character. At the dawn of the Reformation Naples took the
lead among the Italian cities in the adoption of its principles. Then
came a bitter persecution, and the triumphs of the Pope and the
Inquisition. As the result, Naples has been given up for years to the
most abject superstition, and its people have become the most ignorant
and demoralized in Europe. But the city is full of life—far more so than
is to be found in any other Italian city. Such talking, shouting, and
rushing to and fro can hardly be found anywhere else. Nowhere is there
more life than is to be seen on the Toledo. One of the quaintest objects
is that of the letter-writer, seated at his desk in the open air, with
his clients waiting to have their letters written—some of business, some
of love. The cab-driver is better than he looks, and it is not difficult
to get along with him. But you must be on your guard with waiters. More
than once one has come to me with a bad franc, which he pretended I had
given him; but I turned a deaf ear to his complaint, and [Picture: The
Bay of Naples. (From a photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate.)] left him
to do the best he could with his spurious coin.
If you want to visit Vesuvius, apply at Cook’s offices, where you will
find everything arranged for you in the most agreeable manner, and no
difficulty of any kind. His funicular railway is one of the wonders of
the place. The ascent of the cone requires two hours’ hard walking in
deep ashes and on hard rubble lava—an undertaking not very pleasant for
people affected with delicate hearts and constitutions, or bordering on
old age. Get into one of Cook’s railway cars, and you are up in a few
minutes. At the lower station there is an excellent restaurant belonging
to the wonderful John Cook, whose headquarters are the Piazzi del
Martini. I dined once at his restaurant at the foot of the cone, and it
is one of the few dinners in my life to which I look back with pleasure.
I had a friend with me, of course. It is never pleasant to travel—at any
rate, in a foreign country—alone. We had a good rumpsteak and French
beans, an omelette, and a bottle of the wine whose praises were sung by
Horace when the world was much younger and fresher than it is now. After
dinner we sat on the terrace, drinking black coffee and smoking cigars.
Of course, as an Englishman, it gave me pleasure to reflect that our
beautiful Princess of Wales had been there before me in 1893, with
Victoria of Wales, the Duke of York, and a distinguished suite. As I sat
smoking, it seemed to me as if I was monarch of all I surveyed. Naples
was at my feet, far away behind was the green Campagna, with but here and
there a solitary dwelling, and before me, in all its glory, the bay and
its islands. If old Sam Rogers had gone up there to write his ‘Italy,’ I
think he would have done better than he did—at any rate, I was never so
near heaven before; and this reminds me that I have said nothing of the
means of grace available to English Protestants when they come to Naples.
There is an English Church in the San Pasquale à Chiagia, a Scotch
Presbyterian opposite Cook’s offices, and a Methodist.
There are many ways of getting to Naples. I came this time overland by
Paris and Marseilles, and thence, as I have said, by the _Midnight Sun_.
If the weather is fine, and the Bay of Biscay in good form, I prefer to
come by the Orient steamers right away from London. You have then no
trouble till you land in Naples. We leave Black Care behind as we slip
out of English fog and cold into the region of cloudless skies and starry
nights. We smoke, or read, or feed, or walk the deck, or talk in the
pleasantest manner. Perhaps we get a glimpse of Finisterre. Heroic
memories come to us as we pass the seas where the _Captain_ was lost—it
is to be feared in consequence of defective seamanship. All along the
coast and on those faraway hills the noise of battle rolled, and not in
vain, for the struggle that ended in Waterloo placed England in the first
rank among the nations of the earth.
As soon as we cross the bay we think of Corunna and Sir John Moore. Afar
off are the memorable heights of Torres Vedras. Cape St. Vincent, a
bluff sixty feet high, with a convent and a lighthouse, reminds one of
the brilliant victory won by Sir John Jervis, with Nelson and Collingwood
fighting under him; and in a little while we are at Trafalgar, to which
sailors still look as the greatest sea-fight in the history of our land,
and as the one that saved the nation; and then you spend a day at
Gibraltar. A Yankee friend once said to me, ‘I must go back to America.
I can’t stay any longer in Europe; I shall get too conceited if I do.’
I, too, feel conceited as I skirt along that romantic coast, which you
sight in a few hours after leaving Plymouth. Englishmen are always
grumbling. There is no country like England; and an Englishman who is
not proud of his native land, and ready to make every sacrifice for her,
ought to be shot, and would be if I had my way.