The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it three
feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very much like
chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my chair and
table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.
I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the
heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one
gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great
elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without
fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial
voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive nowhere, I
suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in parting with the
taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless composition. If it were
not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very
house in Naples--that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,--where Tasso found
a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that
hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and
written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have
been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for
the adornment of the garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal
production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these
seductive shores, or it would have been more strongly flavored with
classic mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be
necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory
of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place
that I have yet found.
I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should
look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a
white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and
the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person
delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs
of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the
plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the
heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit with my
back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun, which is
full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I remember
such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting sweetness, too,
into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting redder and softer day
by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit of taking up an orange,
weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it is ripe, that the test is
extending to other things. I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast,
weighing an egg in the same manner; and some one asked him if it was
ripe.
It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is to-day.
It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I like the
sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an illimitable
opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it.
There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I do not feel
here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there flecks and
sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and the fishing-boats that have
put out from the marina float in the most dreamy manner. I fear that
the fishermen who have made a show of industry, and got away from
their wives, who are busily weaving nets on shore, are yielding to the
seductions of the occasion, and making a day of it. And, as I look at
them, I find myself debating which I would rather be, a fisherman there
in the boat, rocked by the swell, and warmed by the sun, or a friar,
on the terrace of the garden on the summit of Deserto, lying perfectly
tranquil, and also soaked in the sun. There is one other person, now
that I think of it, who may be having a good time to-day, though I do
not know that I envy him. His business is a new one to me, and is an
occupation that one would not care to recommend to a friend until he had
tried it: it is being carried about in a basket. As I went up the new
Massa road the other day, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman,
with a large shallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large
man, though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman asked
alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a man in
a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, she had put
him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of the passing
vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature thought that, if he
got a new injury in this way, his value in the beggar market would be
increased. I do not mean to do this exemplary wife any injustice; and I
only suggest the idea in this land, where every beggar who is born
with a deformity has something to thank the Virgin for. This custom
of carrying your husband on your head in a basket has something to
recommend it, and is an exhibition of faith on the one hand, and of
devotion on the other, that is seldom met with. Its consideration is
commended to my countrywomen at home. It is, at least, a new commentary
on the apostolic remark, that the man is the head of the woman. It is,
in some respects, a happy division of labor in the walk of life: she
furnishes the locomotive power, and he the directing brains, as he lies
in the sun and looks abroad; which reminds me that the sun is getting
hot on my back. The little bunch of bells in the convent tower is
jangling out a suggestion of worship, or of the departure of the hours.
It is time to eat an orange.
Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knew
him to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of the bay
is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze; and
the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit is still
distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column of white smoke,
greater in quantity than on any previous day of our sojourn; and the sun
turns it to silver. Above a long line of ordinary looking clouds, float
great white masses, formed of the sulphurous vapor. This manufacture
of clouds in a clear, sunny day has an odd appearance; but it is easy
enough, if one has such a laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the
white smoke! It is piled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the
crater, straight into the blue sky,--a pillar of cloud by day. One
might sit here all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious
spring singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to take
possession of the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily
and Tunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning has
gone; and I have written nothing.