The Fashionable World of Naples at the Races—Brilliant Show of
Equipages—The King and his Brother—Rank and Character of the
Jockeys—Description of the Races—The Public Burial Ground at
Naples—Horrid and inhuman Spectacles—The Lazzaroni—The Museum
at Naples—Ancient Relics from Pompeii—Forks not used by the
Ancients—The Lamp lit at the time of our Saviour—The antique
Chair of Sallust—The Villa of Cicero—The Balbi Family—Bacchus
on the Shoulders of a Faun—Gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves,
Mercuries, and Apollos, Statue of Aristides, &c.
I have been all day at “the races.” The King of Naples, who has a great
admiration for everything English, has abandoned the Italian custom of
running horses without riders through the crowded street, and has laid
out a magnificent course on the summit of a broad hill overlooking the
city on the east. Here he astonishes his subjects with _ridden_ races,
and it was to see one of the best of the season, that the whole
fashionable world of Naples poured out to the campo this morning. The
show of equipages was very brilliant, the dashing liveries of the
various ambassadors, and the court and nobles of the kingdom, showing on
the bright greensward to great effect. I never saw a more even piece of
turf, and it was fresh in the just-born vegetation of spring. The
carriages were drawn up in two lines, nearly half round the course, and
for an hour or two before the races, the king and his brother, Prince
Carlo, rode up and down between with the royal suite, splendidly
mounted, the monarch himself upon a fiery grey blood-horse, of uncommon
power and beauty. The director was an Aragonese nobleman, cousin to the
king, and as perfect a specimen of the Spanish cavalier as ever figured
in the pages of romance. He was mounted on a Turkish horse, snow-white,
and the finest animal I ever saw; and he carried all eyes with him, as
he dashed up and down, like a meteor. I like to see a fine specimen of a
man, as I do a fine picture, or an excellent horse, and I think I never
saw a prettier spectacle of its kind, than this wild steed from the
Balkan and his handsome rider.
The king is tall, very fat, but very erect, of a light complexion, and a
good horseman, riding always in the English style, trotting and rising
in his stirrup. (He is about twenty-three, and so surprisingly like a
friend of mine in Albany, that the people would raise their hats to them
indiscriminately I am sure.) Prince Charles is smaller and less kingly
in his appearance, dresses carelessly and ill, and is surrounded always
in public with half a dozen young Englishmen. He is said to have been
refused lately by the niece of the wealthiest English nobleman in Italy,
a very beautiful girl of eighteen, who was on the ground to-day in a
chariot and four.
The horses were led up and down—a delicate, fine-limbed sorrel mare,
and a dark chestnut horse, compact and wiry—both English. The bets were
arranged, the riders weighed, and, at the beat of a bell, off they went
like arrows. Oh what a beautiful sight! The course was about a mile
round, and marked with red flags at short distances; and as the two
flying creatures described the bright green circle, spread out like
greyhounds, and running with an ease and grace that seemed entirely
without effort, the king dashed across the field followed by the whole
court; the Turkish steed of Don Giovanni restrained with difficulty in
the rear, and leaping high in the air at every bound, his nostrils
expanded, and his head thrown up with the peculiar action of his race,
while his snow-white mane and tail flew with every hair free to the
wind. I had, myself, a small bet upon the sorrel. It was nothing—a pair
of gloves with a lady—but as the horses came round, the sorrel a whip’s
length ahead, and both shot by like the wind, scarce touching the earth
apparently, and so even in their speed that the rider in blue might have
kept his hand on the other’s back, the excitement became breathless.
Away they went again, past the starting-post, pattering, pattering on
with their slender hoofs, the sorrel still keeping her ground, and a
thousand bright lips wishing the graceful creature success. Half way
round the blue jacket began to whip. The sorrel still held her way, and
I felt my gloves to be beyond peril. The royal cortège within the ring
spurred across at the top of their speed to the starting-post. The
horses came on—their nostrils open and panting, bounding upon the way
with the same measured leaps a little longer and more eager than before;
the rider of the sorrel leaning over the neck of his horse with a loose
rein, and his whip hanging untouched from his wrist. Twenty leaps more!
With every one the rider of the chestnut gave the fine animal a blow.
The sorrel sprang desperately on, every nerve strained to the jump, but
at the instant that they passed the carriage in which I stood, the
chestnut was developing his wiry frame in tremendous leaps, and had
already gained on his opponent the length of his head. They were lost in
the crowd that broke instantly into the course behind them, and in a
moment after a small red flag was waved from the stand. My favourite had
lost!
The next race was ridden by a young Scotch nobleman, and the son of the
former French ambassador, upon the horses with which they came to the
ground. It was a match made up on the spot. The Frenchman was so
palpably better mounted, that there was a general laugh when the ground
was cleared and the two gentlemen spurred up and down to show themselves
as antagonists. The Parisian himself stuffed his white handkerchief in
his bosom, and jammed down his hat upon his head with a confident laugh,
and among the ladies there was scarce a bet upon the grave Scotchman,
who borrowed a stout whip, and rode his bony animal between the lines
with a hard rein and his feet set firmly in the stirrups. The Frenchman
generously gave him every advantage, beginning with the inside of the
ring. The bell struck, and the Scotchman drove his spurs into his
horse’s flanks and started away, laying on with his whip most
industriously. His opponent followed, riding very gracefully, but
apparently quite sure that he could overtake him at any moment, and
content for the first round with merely showing himself off to the best
advantage. Round came Sawney, twenty leaps ahead, whipping unmercifully
still; the blood of his hired hack completely up, and himself as red in
the face as an alderman, and with his eye fixed only on the road. The
long-tailed bay of the Frenchman came after, in handsome style, his
rider sitting complacently upright, and gathering up his reins for the
first time to put his horse to his speed. The Scotchman flogged on. The
Frenchman had disdained to take a whip, but he drove his heels hard into
his horse’s sides soon after leaving the post, and leaned forward quite
in earnest. The horses did remarkably well, both showing much more
bottom than was expected. On they came, the latter gaining a little and
working very hard. Sawney had lost his hat, and his red hair streamed
back from his redder face; but flogging and spurring, with his teeth
shut and his eyes steadily fixed on the road, he kept the most of his
ground and rode away. They passed me a horse’s length apart, and the
Scotchman’s whip flying to the last, disappeared beyond me. He won the
race by a couple of good leaps at least. The king was very much amused,
and rode off laughing heartily, and the discomfited Frenchman came back
to his party with a very ill-concealed dissatisfaction.
A very amusing race followed between two midshipmen from an English
corvette lying in the bay, and then the long lines of splendid equipages
wheeled into train, and dashed off the ground. The road, after leaving
the campo, runs along the edge of the range of hills, enclosing the
city, and just below, within a high white wall, lies the _public
burial-place of Naples_. I had read so many harrowing descriptions of
this spot, that my curiosity rose as we drove along in sight of it, and
requesting my friends to set me down, I joined an American of my
acquaintance, and we started to visit it together.
An old man opened the iron door, and we entered a clean, spacious, and
well-paved area, with long rows of iron rings in the heavy slabs of the
pavement. Without asking a question, the old man walked across to the
farther corner, where stood a moveable lever, and fastening the chain
into the fixture, raised the massive stone cover of a pit. He requested
us to stand back for a few minutes to give the effluvia time to escape,
and then, sheltering our eyes with our hats, we looked in. You have
read, of course, that there are three hundred and sixty-five pits in
this place, one of which is opened every day for the dead of the city.
They are thrown in without shroud or coffin, and the pit is sealed up at
night for a year. They are thirty or forty feet deep, and each would
contain perhaps two hundred bodies. Lime is thrown upon the daily heap,
and it soon melts into a mass of garbage, and by the end of the year the
bottom of the pit is covered with dry white bones.
It was some time before we could distinguish anything in the darkness of
the abyss. Fixing my eyes on one spot, however, the outlines of a body
became defined gradually, and in a few minutes, sheltering my eyes
completely from the sun above, I could see all the horrors of the scene
but too distinctly. Eight corpses, all of grown persons, lay in a
confused heap together, as they had been thrown in one after another in
the course of the day. The last was a powerfully made, gray old man, who
had fallen flat on his back, with his right hand lying across and half
covering the face of a woman. By his full limbs and chest, and the
darker colour of his legs below the knee, he was probably one of the
lazzaroni, and had met with a sudden death. His right heel lay on the
forehead of a young man, emaciated to the last degree, his chest thrown
up as he lay, and his ribs showing like a skeleton covered with skin.
The close black curls of the latter, as his head rested on another body,
were in such strong relief that I could have counted them. Off to the
right, quite distinct from the heap, lay, in a beautiful attitude, a
girl, as well as I could judge, of not more than nineteen or twenty. She
had fallen on the pile and rolled or slid away. Her hair was very long,
and covered her left shoulder and bosom; her arm was across her body,
and if her mother had laid her down to sleep, she could not have
disposed her limbs more decently. The head had fallen a little away to
the right, and the feet, which were small, even for a lady, were pressed
one against the other, as if she were about turning on her side. The
sexton said that a young man had come with the body, and was very ill
for some time after it was thrown in. We asked him if respectable people
were brought here. “Yes,” he said, “many. None but the rich would go to
the expense of a separate grave for their relations. People were often
brought in handsome grave-clothes, but they were always stripped before
they were left. The shroud, whenever there was one, was the perquisite
of the undertakers.” And thus are flung into this noisome pit, like
beasts, the greater part of the population of this vast city—the young
and the old, the vicious and the virtuous together, without the decency
even of a rag to keep up the distinctions of life! Can human beings thus
be thrown away?—men like ourselves—women, children, like our sisters
and brothers? I never was so humiliated in my life as by this horrid
spectacle. I did not think a man—a felon even, or a leper—what you
will that is guilty or debased—I did not think anything that had been
human could be so recklessly abandoned. Pah! It makes one sick at heart!
God grant I may never die at Naples!
While we were recovering from our disgust, the old man lifted the stone
from the pit destined to receive the dead on the following day. We
looked in. The bottom was strewn with bones, already fleshless and dry.
He wished us to see the dead of several previous days, but my stomach
was already tried to its utmost. We paid our gratuity, and hurried away.
A few steps from the gate, we met a man bearing a coffin on his head.
Seeing that we came from the cemetery, he asked us if we wished to look
into it. He set it down, and the lid opening with a hinge, we were
horror-struck with the sight of _seven dead infants_! The youngest was
at least three months old, the eldest perhaps a year; and they lay
heaped together like so many puppies, one or two of them spotted with
disease, and all wasted to baby-skeletons. While we were looking at
them, six or seven noisy children ran out from a small house at the
road-side and surrounded the coffin. One was a fine girl of twelve years
of age, and instead of being at all shocked at the sight, she lifted the
whitest of the dead things, and looked at its face very earnestly,
loading it with all the tenderest diminutives of the language. The
others were busy in pointing to those they thought had been prettiest,
and none of them betrayed fear or disgust. In answer to a question of my
friend about the marks of disease, the man rudely pulled out one by the
foot that lay below the rest, and holding it up to show the marks upon
it, tossed it again carelessly into the coffin. He had brought them from
the hospital for infants, and they had died that morning. The coffin was
worn with use. He shut down the lid, and lifting it again upon his head,
went on to the cemetery, to empty it like so much offal upon the heap we
had seen!
I have been struck repeatedly with the little value attached to human
life in Italy. I have seen several of these houseless lazzaroni
literally dying in the streets, and no one curious enough to look at
them. The most dreadful sufferings, the most despairing cries, in the
open squares, are passed as unnoticed as the howling of a dog. The day
before yesterday, a woman fell in the Toledo, in a fit, frothing at the
mouth, and livid with pain; and though the street was so crowded that
one could make his way with difficulty, three or four ragged children
were the only persons even looking at her.
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I have devoted a week to the museum at Naples. It is a world! Anything
like a full description of it would tire even an antiquary. It is one of
those things (and there are many in Europe) that fortunately _compel_
travel. You must come abroad to get an idea of it.
The first day I buried myself among the curiosities found at Pompeii.
After walking through the chambers and streets where they were found, I
came to them naturally with an intense interest. I had visited a
disentombed city, buried for seventeen centuries—had trodden in their
wheel-tracks—had wandered through their dining-rooms, their chambers,
their baths, their theatres, their market-places. And here were gathered
in one place, their pictures, their statues, their cooking utensils,
their ornaments, the very food as it was found on their tables! I am
puzzled, in looking over my note-book, to know what to mention. The
catalogue fills a printed volume.
A curious corner in one of the cases was that containing the articles
found on the toilet of the wealthiest Pompeian’s wife. Here were pots of
rouge, ivory pins, necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, small silver
mirrors, combs, ear-pickers, &c. &c. In the next case were two loaves of
bread, found in a baker’s oven, and stamped with his name. Two large
cases of precious gems, cameos and intaglios of all descriptions, stand
in the centre of this room (among which, by the way, the most
exquisitely done are two which one cannot look at without a blush).
Another case is filled with eatables, found upon the tables—eggs,
fish-bones, honey-comb, grain, fruits, &c. In the repository for ancient
glass are several cinerary urns, in which the ashes of the dead are
perfectly preserved; and numerous small glass lachrymatories, in which
the tears of the survivors were deposited in the tombs.
The brazen furniture of Pompeii, the lamps particularly, are of the most
curious and beautiful models. Trees, to which the lamps were suspended
like fruit, vines, statues holding them in their hands, and numerous
other contrivances, were among them, exceeding far in beauty any similar
furniture of our time. It appears that the ancients did not know the use
of the fork, as every other article of table service except this has
been found here.
To conceive the interest attached to the thousand things in this museum,
one must imagine a modern city, Boston for example, completely buried by
an unexpected and terrific convulsion of nature. Its inhabitants mostly
escape, but from various causes leave their city entombed, and in a
hundred years the grass grows over it, and its very locality is
forgotten. Near two thousand years elapse, and then a peasant, digging
in the field, strikes upon some of its ruins, and it is unearthed just
as it stands at this moment, with all its utensils, books, pictures,
houses, and streets, in untouched preservation. What a subject for
speculation! What food for curiosity! What a living and breathing
chapter of history were this! Far more interesting is Pompeii. For the
age in which it flourished and the characters who trod its streets, are
among the most remarkable in history. This brazen lamp, shown to me
to-day as a curiosity, was lit every evening in the time of Christ. The
handsome chambers through which I wandered a day or two ago, and from
which were brought this antique chair, were the home of Sallust, and
doubtless had been honoured by the visits of Cicero (whose villa,
half-excavated, is near by,) and by all the poets and scholars and
statesmen of his time. One might speculate endlessly thus! And it is
that which makes these lands of forgotten empires so delightful to the
traveller. His mind is fed by the very air. He needs no amusements, no
company, no books except the history of the place. The spot is peopled
wherever he may stray, and the common necessities of life seem to pluck
him from a far-reaching dream, in which he had summoned back receding
ages, and was communing, face to face, with philosophers and poets and
emperors, like a magician before his mirror. Pompeii and Herculaneum
seem to me visions. I cannot shake myself and wake to their reality. My
mind refuses to go back so far. Seventeen hundred years!
I followed the cicerone on, listening to his astonishing enumeration,
and looking at everything as he pointed to it, in a kind of stupor. One
has but a certain capacity. We may be over-astonished. Still he went on
in the same every-day tone, talking as indifferently of this and that
surprising antiquity as a pedlar of his two-penny wares. We went from
the bronzes to the hall of the papyri—thence to the hall of the
frescoes, and beautiful they were. Their very number makes them
indescribable. The next morning we devoted to the statuary—and of this,
if I knew where to begin, I should like to say a word or two.
First of all comes the _Balbi family_—father, mother, sons, and
daughters. He was pro-consul of Herculaneum, and by the excellence of
the statues, which are life itself for nature, he and his family were
worth the artist’s best effort. He is a fine old Roman himself, and his
wife is a tall, handsome woman, much better-looking than her daughters.
The two Misses Balbi are modest-looking girls, and that is all. They
were the high-born damsels of Herculaneum, however; and, if human nature
has not changed in seventeen centuries, they did not want admirers who
compared them to the Venuses who have descended with them to the “Museo
Borbonico.” The eldest son is on horseback in armour. It is one of the
finest equestrian statues in the world. He is a noble youth, of grave
and handsome features, and sits the superb animal with the freedom of an
Arab and the dignity of a Roman. It is a beautiful thing. If one had
visited these Balbis, warm and living, in the time of Augustus, he could
scarcely feel more acquainted with them than after having seen their
statues as they stand before him here.
Come a little farther on! Bacchus on the shoulders of a faun—a child
delighted with a grown-up playfellow. I have given the same pleasure to
just such another bright “picture in little” of human beauty. It moves
one’s heart to see it.
Pass now a whole gallery of Dians, Cupids, Joves, Mercuries, and
Apollos, and come to the presence of Aristides—him whom the Athenians
exiled because they were tired of hearing him called _The Just_. Canova
has marked three spots upon the floor where the spectator should place
himself to see to the best advantage this renowned statue. He stands
wrapped in his toga, with his head a little inclined, as if in
reflection, and in his face there is a mixture of firmness and goodness
from which you read his character as clearly as if it were written
across his forehead. It was found at Herculaneum, and is, perhaps, the
simplest and most expressive statue in the world.
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