Parker's Hotel, Naples,
_January 13_.
You Dear,
I have seen Naples, but I don't wish to die. Not that I should so much
grudge dying after the happy life you've given me, but there'd be such
an awful waste of time in staying dead when so much is left to see.
There's Capri, and there's Sicily almost next door; and even a Saturday
to Monday on Mars wouldn't make up to me for missing them.
We put our hands to the plough, and came here from Rome in six hours,
only one hour more than the fast (?) train takes. We didn't stop for
lunch, but kept ourselves up on beef lozenges, which were nasty but
supporting. We wanted to see how quickly we _could_ do it, and even Aunt
Mary was excited. She is much pleasanter without Jimmy, and we really
did have fun. It's an ill rain that doesn't temper the dust to an
automobile, so we blessed the weather which we had previously
anathematised. After a pouring night, it cleared before we started; and
it was one of the best days we have ever had. I remembered heaps of
things which had happened to me when I was a Roman princess, two
thousand years ago, and felt just as if I were travelling in my chariot
from my father's palace in Rome to his villa, perhaps in Baiae. My only
fear was that, in going so fast, we should arrive at our destination so
long before the impedimenta that I should have to do without my baths of
asses' milk for several days; and where would be my royal complexion?
It was six o'clock, and dark, when we came in sight of something which
made me cry out "Oh!" It was a dull red light, high up in the sky, and a
dark shape, like a great wounded bull, with two streams of fiery blood
pouring down its gored sides. Vesuvius! Brown had planned that we should
see it for the first time after dark. I had wondered why he suggested
not leaving Rome till twelve o'clock, when usually he is so keen on
early starts, and he was evasive when I asked why. But when I had
breathed that "Oh!" and had a moment to recover myself, he told me.
Dad, dear, Brown is splendid. He has _revealed_ Naples to me. I can't
express it in any other way, for nobody else who has told me about
coming to Naples has ever done the things that we have; and they would
not have occurred to Aunt Mary or me. We should have gone the ordinary
round if it hadn't been for him, and when we said good-bye to her Naples
would have been only a mere acquaintance of ours, not a dear and
intimate friend who has told us her best secrets. In the first place, we
shouldn't have known any better than to stop in some big, _obvious_ sort
of hotel in the noisy wasps' nest of the city, instead of coming here
where the air is pure and some of the most beautiful things in the
world in sight without turning our heads. It's such a homelike hotel,
and instead of sending to _England_ for orange marmalade made of
Sicilian oranges, the way all the other hotels seem to do, they make it
themselves out of their own oranges; and it's a poem.
We've been up Vesuvius, not in the daytime, like the humdrum tourists,
but by torchlight, and we saw the moon rise. Instead of rushing to the
Museum the first thing and mooning vaguely about there for hours, we
saved it until after we'd been out to Pompeii on the motor-car; then it
was a hundred times more interesting, and we are coming back after Capri
to pay another visit to the busts of Tiberius and his terrible mother. I
felt in Rome as if it were an impertinence to be modern and young. But
in Pompeii--oh, I can't tell you what I felt there. I think--I really do
think that I saw ghosts, and they were much more real and important than
I. It was like entering the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty in
the wood, only a thousand times more thrilling and wonderful. I didn't
feel as if anyone else had ever been there since it was dug up, except
Brown and me--and, of course, Aunt Mary.
Brown knew about fascinating Italian restaurants, and he drove us up on
the automobile for tea to a new hotel on a high hill, almost a mountain.
It's the "smart" thing for people who know to go up to tea, which--if
it's fine--you have on a great terrace that is the most beautiful thing
in all Naples. And we spent a whole morning up at St. Elmo. That is
going to be my best recollection, I think, and--you will laugh--but the
next best will be the Aquarium. When you came to Naples was there a
thing in the Aquarium like the ghost of a cucumber, transparent as
glass, with strings of opals and rubies being drawn through its veins
every two minutes regularly? Brown says that it--or its ancestor--has
been there ever since he can remember. I like that green light in the
Aquarium, which makes you feel as if you were a mermaid under the sea,
and inclined to swim instead of walk.
When we were driving up to the hotel, Brown said it was almost as steep
and winding as the road from Capri to Anacapri. That speech, and gazing
from our balcony at Parker's over the blue bay to the island which looks
like the Sphinx rising out of the sea, have made me distracted to take
the automobile to Capri. Brown "doesn't advise it," and thinks "we may
have great trouble in landing," but that makes me want the adventure all
the more; so we're going to-morrow--not just for a day, like the people
who don't care about Tiberius, and think the Blue Grotto is the only
thing to see--but to stay for several days. Brown says one could find a
new walk on the island for every day of a whole month, and each would be
absolutely different from the other, though Capri is only three and a
half miles long and about a mile and a half in width.
I feel as if we were in for something exciting, just as you feel, I
suppose, when you are going to bring off a big _coup_ "in the street."
Your Chip-of-the-old-Block,
Molly.
P.S.--I wouldn't post my Naples letter. I thought if I did, you might
imagine that we and our car had been engulphed in the sea, unless you
got the end of the adventure tacked on to the beginning; so this is to
be a fat postscript. Yes, a gorged python of a postscript.
At first the dock people couldn't be persuaded that we seriously
intended to take an automobile to the island of Capri; and when they
realised that we were in earnest, they buzzed with excitement like
swarming bees. Everyone directly or indirectly concerned argued at the
top of his voice, and embroidered his arguments with gestures, nobody
paying the slightest attention to anybody else. We didn't even ask
permission to go on one of the big passenger steamers, for we knew it
would be no use; but there's a little sea-chick of a thing called _La
Sirena_, which plies back and forth every day with provisions, luggage,
and passengers, to whom cheapness is an object. She was our prey; and as
nobody had happened to make a law against transporting motor-cars,
simply because nobody had ever thought of taking anything so abnormal
since Tiberius used to send his chariots, we could not be restrained.
All the loafers in Naples collected on the quay, and I don't believe
anything would have been done for us if Brown hadn't calmly begun to
widen the gangway. He had suggested that I should go over in the morning
with Aunt Mary on the North German Lloyd that takes the trippers (as he
calls them) over for the Blue Grotto, and lunch. But I didn't see it in
that light, for I wanted the adventure. Aunt Mary _didn't_ want it at
any price, so she was packed off by herself; and when the Lightning
Conductor slowly drove the car on board the little _Sirena_ I was by his
side. There was a moment of awestruck silence on the quay; but when
Brown had gently man[oe]uvred Balzac into position in a clear space on
deck, the murmurs of doubt and disapproval turned into a burst of
delighted wonder. Brown and I felt like "variety" artistes being
applauded for a clever turn, and the appropriate thing would have been
to bow and kiss our hands.
But all this was nothing to what was in store for us at the Grande
Marina at Capri. If we had gone in one of the bigger steamers, we should
have had to get the automobile into a small boat, or perhaps lash it
somehow on to two boats; but the _Sirena_ is so small that she can come
up along the landing-place, which was one reason why, after Brown had
made inquiries, he was willing to go with the fowls and vegetables. The
nearer we got to the island, the more beautiful it looked, and as we
came in Brown was telling me things about Tiberius' palaces and where
they had stood, when suddenly a shout went up from the quay. A group of
stalwart women, clustered together there, were laughing and pointing at
our car. They belonged to a race of Amazons bred on Capri, whose daily
work it is to land heavy goods and carry trunks on their heads to the
omnibuses and cabs in waiting at the end of the quay. Before we were
fairly in, they swooped like a pack of wolves on the car, laughing and
gabbling, and somehow they and Brown landed it on the slippery little
quay.
The news that there was an automobile on the island must have flashed
around by magic telegraph, for people--swarms of people, more than you
would have thought could live on the whole of Capri--came running from
everywhere to see us start. I should have been awfully amused if it
hadn't been for one thing. Up there at the end of the quay, where we
must pass, were half a dozen hotel omnibuses and a long rank of smart
cabs, like victorias, with very pretty little horses, whose faces looked
incredibly short--perhaps on account of their huge blinders. They had
feathers on their heads, and their harness was ornamented with all kinds
of strange devices in silver or brass. Sweet little pets they were, that
you felt as if you might ask into your house to sit on the hearthrug;
and when they saw Balzac they all began to snort and shiver and act as
if they were going to faint. Their drivers--in hard, white hats
something like our policemen's helmets--flew to the poor beasties'
heads; and some laughed, and some looked anxious, some angry.
Evidently the little horses had lived an innocent, peaceful life for
years on Capri, and had never heard of railways or steam rollers, much
less automobiles. I was so sorry for them, and wished I hadn't been so
headstrong, but had been guided by Brown when he advised me to leave
Balzac at Naples. However, we couldn't abandon the car on the quay, so
we got in and Brown started the motor. Oh, my goodness! every horse went
into hysterics! Their drivers held them, and said things soothing or the
reverse, according to their bringing-up, but the little things kicked
and plunged and doubled up in knots, although Brown drove by as slowly
and solemnly as the Dead March in _Saul_. I thought we should never get
past, but when we did the worst was still to come, for we had a steep
road to climb up the cliff, and in the distance several cab-horses were
trotting down. I begged Brown to stop and let them go by, lest they
should jump over into space, so he did; and it was all that he and the
drivers of the cabs could do to get the poor horrified little animals
past us at all. That experience was enough for me. Brown pointed up
towards Anacapri, far, far above Capri proper, on a horn of the
mountain, reached only by a narrow but splendidly engineered road
winding like a piece of thin wood shaving, or by steep steps cut in the
rock by the Ph[oe]nicians thousands of years ago. "No," said I sadly,
"we'll never drive up to Anacapri on the automobile. I shan't use it
once again while we're on the island, and all the horses had better be
warned indoors when we go down to take the boat."
But it was a beautiful drive up from the quay to the town of Capri and
our hotel. I couldn't help enjoying it a little, in spite of feeling
like an incipient murderess. I believe if I'd been on the way to
execution I would have enjoyed it. The road swept round to the left,
ascending loop after loop, to a saddle of the island lying between two
cliffs, crowned with the most picturesque ruins I ever saw. Everywhere
you looked was a new picture, and oh! the delicious colour of sky, and
sea, and the dove-grey of the cliffs! You can see next to nothing of
the town till you come on it; then suddenly you are in a busy _piazza_,
with an old palace or two and a beautiful tower, and everything
characteristically Italian, even the sunshine, which is so vivid that it
is like a _pool_ of light. Here we made a great deal more excitement
before we drove under an old archway and plunged down a steep,
stone-paved street filled with gay little shops, and ending with the
courtyard of our hotel.
I know you only came to Capri with the "trippers" to see the Blue
Grotto, and I feel sorry for you, you poor Dad, because, though the
Grotto is so strange and beautiful, it is the thing I care for least of
all. Just think, you didn't even stay long enough to see the sunset turn
the Faraglioni rocks to brilliant, beaten copper, standing up from clear
depths of emerald, into which the clouds drop rose-leaves! You didn't go
to the old grey Certosa, for if you had you would certainly have bought
it and restored it to use as a sort of "occasional villa," like those
nice heroes of Ouida's who say, "I believe, by the way, that is mine,"
when they are travelling with friends in yachts and pass magnificent
palaces which they have quite forgotten on the shores of the
Mediterranean or the Italian lakes. You didn't walk along a steep path
about twelve inches wide, hanging over a dizzy precipice, to the Arco
Naturale--and neither would I if it hadn't been for Brown. I was
horribly afraid, but I was ashamed to let him see that, so I struggled
along somehow, and it was glorious. We ended the walk by going down a
great many steps cut in the rock to the grotto of Mitromania, where they
used to worship the sun-god and sacrifice living victims--human beings
sometimes. You can see the altar still, and the trough where the blood
used to run--ugh! and the secret chambers where they kept the victims.
We stayed a day and two nights in the town of Capri, and should have
stopped on till we were ready to leave the island, for it is a charming
hotel, with a big garden and a ravishing view; but I got it into my head
that I wanted to walk up all the Ph[oe]nician steps to Anacapri--there
are about eight hundred of them--instead of going up by a mere road, no
matter how beautiful. Of course, Aunt Mary was consumed with no such mad
ambition, and as she had heard that to go up the steps was like walking
up a wall, she was afraid to have me try the ascent alone; so I asked
Brown to take me. We started after breakfast; and to go up all the steps
we first had to descend to the very shore, near a palace of Tiberius',
which is buried under the sea with all its treasures. Doesn't that sound
like a fairy story? Then we began going up and up, and we kept meeting
peasant girls tripping gaily down in their rope shoes, singing together
like happy birds, not even touching with their hands the loaded baskets
on their heads. They were so beautiful that they were more like stage
peasants than real ones. Their eyes were great stars, and their clear,
olive faces were like cameos with a light shining through from behind.
They were dressed in the simplest cotton dresses, but their pinks and
blues and purples, put on without any regard to artistic contrast,
blended together as exquisitely as flowers in a brilliant garden.
I tripped gaily, too, at first, but the sun grew hot and so did I.
Still, on we went, up the face of the cliff, and with every interval for
rest came a new and wonderful view. By-and-by we got up so high that the
row boats on their way to the Blue Grotto looked like little
water-beetles, with oars for legs; and though the waves were beating
against the rocks, we could no longer see them; the water appeared as
smooth as an endless sapphire floor polished for the sirens to dance on.
It was all so entrancing that I didn't know I was almost getting a
sun-stroke; besides, who would think of sunstrokes in January, no matter
how hot the weather? Brown remarked that my lips were pale, but I said I
was only a little tired. In rather more than an hour we came to the top,
which was Anacapri. My head ached, so we went into a restaurant place,
which turned out to be very famous. I sat on the wall of a terrace
looking over a sheer precipice a thousand feet high until I felt partly
rested; then a handsome girl, evidently of Saracen blood, brought me
delicious lemonade. We had started away to walk into the village of
Anacapri, when everything began to swim before my eyes. Luckily we were
close to a house. It was a little old domed white house with a long
vine-covered pergola, and it said "Bella Vista" over the gateway. I had
to lean on Brown's arm going in, and the last thing I remember was a
kind-faced man hurrying to the door. The next thing I was in a big white
bedroom, sparsely furnished and daintily neat. I had fainted and they
had sent for a doctor. Presently he appeared, and afterwards I found out
that he was quite a celebrity--the "Doctor Antonio" of Capri. He said it
was the sun; I hadn't eaten enough breakfast, and I'd had a
"heat-stroke"--not half so bad as a sun-stroke; still, I ought to rest.
I was quite willing to obey the prescription, for I was falling in love
with the house, and longed to stay in it for days. The room I was in had
four windows, each one looking out on a view that stay-at-home people
would give hundreds of dollars to see; and it opened on to a lovely
private terrace. Brown took a message "downstairs" to Capri, asking Aunt
Mary to pack up and come to the Bella Vista, which she did, and we've
been here for two days. I was quite well in a few hours, but I wouldn't
have gone back to more conventional comforts for anything. Anacapri and
our little house seem as if they were in the world on top of the clouds
which Jack discovered when he climbed his beanstalk up into the sky.
Why, the first morning when I waked here, and opened my glass door on to
the terrace to look at the sea, and the umbrella pines, and the
cypresses (which I seem to _hear_, as well as see, like sharp notes in
music), four or five large white clouds got up from the terrace where
they'd been sitting and sneaked past me through the door into the room,
just like the cows which, I suppose, the gods kept on Olympus to milk
for their ambrosia. And the sunsets, with Vesuvius set like a great
conical amethyst in a blaze of ruby and topaz glory! It is something to
come to Anacapri for. But at the Bella Vista we would not feed you on
sunsets and cloud's milk alone. The little landlord and landlady cook
and wait on us, and I never tasted daintier dishes than they "create."
There are more things than sunsets and pines and cypresses to see too.
One takes walks all over the island. One goes to rival inns where rival
beauties dance the tarantella, and vie in announcements that Tiberius
amused himself by throwing victims in the sea from the exact site of
their houses. Oh, everything is Tiberius here. He is regarded by the
peasants as quite a modern person, whom you may meet in a dark night, if
you haven't murmured a prayer before the lovely white virgin in her
illuminated grotto of rock. Mothers say to their children, "If you do
that, Tiberius will catch you"; and the English colony of Capri quarrel
over the gentleman's character, on which there are differences of
opinion.
The most beautiful house I ever saw in my life is set on the brow of the
precipice at Anacapri; it is a dream-house; or else its owner rubbed a
lamp, and a genie gave it to him. It is long and low and white, and
filled with wonderful treasures which its possessor found under the
sea--spoil of Tiberius' buried palaces. The floors are paved with mosaic
of priceless coloured marble, which Tiberius brought from distant lands
for himself; a red sphinx, which Tiberius imported from Egypt crouches
on the marble wall, gazing over the cliffs and the sea; Tiberius'
statues in marble and bronze line the arched, open-air corridors.
There's nothing else like it in the world in these days, and few men
would be worthy to have it and to live there; but I think, from what I
hear, that the man who does live there _is_ worthy of it all.
You will find a rose and a spray of jasmine in this letter. I picked the
rose for you, in the pergola, and our landlady gave me the jasmine. I
wish I could send you more of the beauty of this magic island.
Your enchanted
Molly.