The next morning the whole party were packed in their travelling
carriage to start from Rome. Winston had no longer refused that fourth
seat which had been destined for him at Genoa. To say nothing of some
diminution of expense (a very worthy subject of consideration with all
travellers,) it was a great relief to Mr. Bloomfield to have a second
gentleman in their party. It decreased materially his own share of
personal trouble. Besides which, the travelling experience of Winston,
and his more familiar acquaintance with the Italian, rendered him very
acceptable. Mildred had generally acted as interpreter; and so long as
the speaker would answer in the same pure Tuscan in which she addressed
him, she could perform the office admirably well. But unfortunately, the
traveller in Italy has most need for his Italian exactly where any thing
but pure Tuscan is spoken. She could always succeed in making herself
understood; but was often sadly at a loss to understand that answer
which, with all due dexterity, she had elicited.
On they now rattled through the streets of Rome. What rags upon those
beggars! Patches of all colours, red, blue, brown; but worn with such an
air of calm assurance, as if the garment of many colours had been
bestowed on the most favoured son of humanity. They passed the peasant
dame, or damsel, in her gaudy attire, with gold comb and ear-rings
glittering in her jet black hair, and that square folded handkerchief on
her head, which we always associate with the bandit's wife; and amidst
the squalid populace there appeared now and then, quite distinct from
the rest, a form or face of some youth, or maiden, or old man, that
might have issued from the canvass of Raphael. The apostles of the old
masters, at least, are walking still about Rome; and sometimes a Virgin
Mary is seen sitting at the door, and still more often a young John the
Baptist looks up to you from the pavement. Their own postilion reminded
the whole party of the _Suonatore di Violino_ of Raphael--whose
fiddlestick, by the way, being that of a bass viol, might at first sight
be mistaken for a folded riding-whip.
On they pass by the beautiful church of St. Giovanni, the statues on the
roof and over the portico of which have at least one point of
resemblance with their saintly prototypes--they are standing out there
in the clear blue heavens, to which, and not to the earth, they seem to
belong. At the Port Sebastian they are detained by a string of
wine-carts, each drawn by one horse, with his plume of black feathers on
his head, and each cart furnished with its goatskin umbrella, under the
shade of which the driver lies fast asleep. Then follow a long cavalcade
of peasants, mounted on mules or asses--_mounted_ of a truth, for they
sit on a high wooden saddle, their arms folded under their long brown
cloaks, and a black pointed hat upon their heads. Strange figures!
"A flower in _that_ hat!" exclaimed Mildred, as one passed her with a
beautiful carnation stuck into a beaver, which, except that it retained
its pyramidal form, and was there upon a human head, could not have been
recognised as _hat_ at all. "And he wears it seriously," she continued,
"serenely--without the least feeling of incongruity. Oh, I like that!"
Getting clear of this train, they advanced through the gate into the
open country. To their left the old aqueduct extended on the horizon its
long line of ruined arches; to the right the plain was dotted with mere
massive fragments of undistinguishable ruin, looking like what the
geologists call boulders. The trace of man's labour was lost in them;
the work of the artificer had come to resemble the rudest accident of
Nature.
And so Rome was left behind.
* * * * *
"Is that smoke or a cloud," asked Miss Bloomfield, "that rests so
constantly upon that mountain?"
"It is Vesuvius! Vesuvius!" exclaimed the rest of the party.
But they found themselves in a position, at that moment, the least of
all favourable to enthusiastic emotions. Their carriage was delayed at
the entrance into Naples, in the middle of a wide road, the hottest and
the dustiest that can be imagined. There they were arrested to undergo
the examination and the extortions of the custom-house gentry. Poor Mr.
Bloomfield was in a fever. His passport had been asked for six several
times between Rome and Naples, and each time solely, as it seemed, to
extract a gratuity. Even the military guard stationed at the gates of
the towns had begged. No one in Italy seemed to speak to him but to beg,
or to _lay the foundation_, as a lawyer would say, for a begging
question. And now these fellows were examining, or pretending to examine
his baggage, and were evidently resolved to keep them there, in the sun
and the dust, till they had paid a sufficient ransom. In this position
it was that Winston and Mildred were, by stolen glances, taking their
first survey of the burning mountain. By stolen glances, because they
were compelled from a certain feeling of politeness to share in the
anxieties and chagrin of Mr. Bloomfield. For themselves, they both
agreed it was much better to submit quietly, and at once, to all these
impositions; even if there were a fair chance, after much controversy,
of a successful resistance. There is surely no money so well laid out as
that which purchases equanimity.
They were extricated at length, and the carriage rattled on into Naples.
Mr. Bloomfield had written to procure apartments in the quarter of the
_Chiaja_, opposite the Villa Reale, (or royal gardens.) To these
therefore they drove. Winston of course found his way to an hotel.
That evening he walked out to look at the burning mountain. It was now,
and during the whole period of their stay, in a state of great activity,
which some dignified with the name of an eruption. As Winston watched
its burning summit across an angle of the bay, he thought he had never
seen any thing which so completely _fascinated_ the eye. The flame
alternately rising and falling leads the spectator every moment to
expect something more than he has hitherto seen, and that _now_ it is
about to burst forth. And even at this distance it is so evidently not a
fire _upon_ but _within_ the mountain, from the manner in which the
flame sinks down, and that red metallic glare which shoots along the
rocky summits and cavities, here the fire is not visible. Yet
fascinating as the object was, it did not entirely rivet the thoughts of
Winston. To his own surprise and confusion, he found that he, a
professed admirer of nature, was standing, for the first time, by the
bay of Naples, under the beautiful star-light of Italy, watching one of
the most magnificent of nature's wonders with a divided and distracted
mind. All this scene, and all its novelty, could not keep Mildred from
his thoughts. Evidently he was a lost man.
And who or what, after all, was Alfred Winston? The, question, it may be
supposed, had often occurred to the Bloomfields. That he was an artist,
was a conjecture long ago given up; he travelled with no portfolio, and
was never known to use the pencil. That he was a literary man was also
contradicted by his own straightforward unaffected denials; if he had
cultivated his mind, it was solely for the pleasure or profit accruing
to himself. The manner in which his time was at his own disposal, seemed
to contradict the idea that he belonged to any of the learned
professions. What could he be therefore but simply a gentleman? And such
they had satisfied themselves, from many reasons, that he was. But there
are gentlemen and gentlemen--rich, and poor. To which of these two
classes did he belong? Question of questions. The moment it is asked how
all vain enchantments are dispersed! how the bare earth shows itself
directly beneath our feet! Where is now the bay of Naples, and
star-light, and Vesuvius? Is he rich or poor?
One word on the father of Alfred Winston will best explain his own
present position in the world. That father was one of a class of men
altogether inexplicable, quite unintelligible to sober-minded and
methodical persons; and yet the class is not so very rare. He was of
good birth and fortune, of agreeable manners, and witty conversation,
but utterly destitute of all prudential, all providential care, whether
for himself or others. He was born to an ample estate; and, fond of
pleasure as he was, he might have found it sufficient, with very little
effort of prudence, to gratify all his tastes. But from the very
commencement of his career, he entered upon the ruinous practice of
"eating the land with the revenue," and continued, in this manner,
consuming every year more of land and less of revenue. He early lost his
wife. He had been an amiable husband, and manifested a decorous sorrow
on the occasion; but could not disguise from his intimate friends the
pleasure he felt at the recovery of his bachelor freedom. He hated the
necessity of having to yield his own inclinations to another; though he
hated still more the alternative of having to dispute with that other
for liberty to follow his own inclinations.
After the decease of his wife, the elder Winston lived, for the most
part, a roaming life upon the Continent. A little intrigue, a little
gaming, the dinner, and the opera, sufficiently filled up the time of
one who, while he courted pleasure, was not difficult in his amusements.
And for _this_ he could continue, with the utmost calmness and freedom
from anxiety, a scale of expenditure which was rapidly dissipating his
hereditary estates. His son he treated with indulgence and liberality,
and when he saw him, which was seldom, with great kindness of manner. He
encouraged him in all the idle and expensive habits of a gentleman of
fortune, while he was utterly destroying the property which could alone
support them.
He died suddenly; a fever carried him off at the age of fifty. Had he
lived three years longer, he would have spent every shilling he
possessed. What had he intended to do _then_? It is impossible to say.
To all appearance he had never entertained the question. When young
Winston had paid off his father's debts and his own, he who had
expected to enter into an ample revenue found himself in the possession
only of a few thousand pounds. This was all his patrimony. What to do he
had not yet resolved; but this reverse had not prevented him from
accomplishing a long cherished wish of visiting Italy. Some idea also
was floating in his mind that perhaps he should select some place upon
the Continent where to reside permanently upon the small pittance that
was left to him.
It will be now seen at a glance, why it was that Winston fled from the
attractions of Mildred at Genoa: he knew himself to be poor, and had
become acquainted with the peculiar, and perhaps dependent, position in
which Miss Willoughby stood. No one will blame him for running away from
Genoa; but ought he to have lingered at Rome? We fear our friend was not
remarkable for resolution of character. He had ardent feelings, and to
counteract them he had just perceptions of what life demands from us;
but he lacked, evidently, in steadiness of purpose.
And what now _could_ he do? Flight, as at Genoa, was out of the
question. He could not, by any rude or abrupt behaviour, forfeit that
share of Mildred's esteem which he possessed. On his way back to his
hotel he resolved--it was the utmost that his prudence suggested--that
he would take occasion quietly and unostentatiously to intimate that,
like Bassanio,
"All the wealth he had
Ran in his veins, he was a gentleman."
It would then be seen by Miss Willoughby, as clearly as by himself, that
his _attentions_, to use the appropriate phrase, _meant nothing_. What
might follow would be a torture merely to himself--the torture of a
hopeless passion. She would know how to regulate her own feelings
towards him. He alone should be the sufferer.
Very fallacious reasoning! If he with his eyes open loved and suffered,
how could he tell but that Mildred might do the same? and this quiet
intimation of certain barriers and impediments to his passion was likely
to prove--as indeed it did prove--little better than a declaration of
love, and not the less ardent because coupled with avowals of
despondency.
Meanwhile, having made this concession to the cause of prudence and his
honour, he resigned himself to the charms of Mildred's society. Every
day brought some new excursion to scenes of surpassing beauty, in
companionship with one of the most lovely and gifted of women. Winston's
theory, that what is most beautiful in nature ought to be enjoyed in
solitude, was entirely overthrown. He cared to visit nothing unless in
her society; nor was there any scene whatever in which her presence was
not felt to be the higher gratification.
Mr. Bloomfield and his sister, after their first visit to some of the
environs of Naples, felt little disposed to make any unusual exertion.
They had both discovered that the bay was much the same whether viewed
from the right side or the left, and that in this warm weather--it was
now the month of May--the shady walks in the _Villa Reale_, or a
promenade in the town, was to be preferred to a ride in an open
carriage. To Mildred, on the contrary, almost every excursion, whatever
its professed object, derived its chief attraction from the different
points of view it presented her of that bay, which every hour seemed to
make more lovely. It followed, therefore, that Winston and Mildred were
sometimes left to proceed on their expedition alone. How the heart of
Winston beat as he, handed her into the carriage, and took his seat
beside her! It was something very like a curse which fell at that moment
upon the memory of his selfish parent. Had he been fairly dealt with, it
might have been his lot to hand her into a carriage of his own--and
hers.
Winston was almost in danger of forgetting the existence of Mr.
Bloomfield; but habitual politeness so far prevailed, that he
occasionally brought himself to listen to the account that gentleman
gave of his own impressions or afflictions.
"I was never more disappointed," said Mr. Bloomfield on one of these
occasions, "or rather, I was never more mistaken in any place in my life
than in this town of Naples. I had heard much of lazzaroni lying about
in the sun, eating maccaroni, and of the love of the people for gaudy
colours and tinsel, even to the sticking gold-leaf and little flags of
red paper upon the meat in the butcher's shop; and I had seen depicted
the more curious costumes of man and horse, and especially this
_curiculo_, as I believe they call it, which seems originally to have
been like our old-fashioned one-horse chaise, but by the extension of
the shafts into a sort of platform before and behind, and by means of a
network suspended underneath between the wheels, has been made to hold a
quite indefinite number of persons, and still remains a one-horse
chaise, inasmuch as the whole cluster of mortals is generally carried on
at a gallop by one little black horse, who, as some sort of compensation
for the work they give him, is tricked out as fine as leather and brass
nails, ribands and feathers, can make him. Well, out of all these
materials I had contrived for myself a picture of utter and contented
idleness on the one hand, and the extreme of hilarious activity on the
other. I need not tell you how little such a picture answers to the
reality, how little prepared I was to encounter the din, and more than
Cheapside confusion of this main thoroughfare, the _Toledo_ street. The
impression which Naples actually makes, is of a city where noise and
turmoil and confusion are at their very height. Carried one step
further, "chaos would come again." There is the same incessant toil for
gain as in London itself--as little of repose, as little of hilarity.
Here is the spirit of trade without the order and method which trade
should introduce. It is commerce bewildered, and passionate after pence.
There are some parts of London more thickly stocked perhaps with carts
and wagons, and carriages of all descriptions, but they are order itself
compared to this _Toledo_ street. Every thing one can desire to
purchase, every thing one can desire to escape from, comes walking
abroad upon its even, uniform pavement, where men and carriages are
circulating together. Glass, and tea-trays, and crokery-ware, and
haberdashery, all meet you in the street. You are running for dear life
from some devil of a driver, who thinks that if he does but shout loud
enough, he is at perfect liberty to break your bones, and you are stopt
in your flight by an industrious chapman, who spreads his stock of
pocket-handkerchiefs before your eyes. Men are walking about with live
fowls, cocks, hens, turkeys, which they hold, head downwards, in a
bunch, tied together by the legs. They are the quietest animals in the
street. They seem to have been touched by the utter inutility of their
loudest exclamations, and therefore to have resigned themselves in
silence; only when some cart-wheel grazes that head of theirs, which
they naturally hold up as high as possible, lest they should die of
apoplexy, do they make any ineffectual attempt to call attention to
their sufferings. Even money-changers, who, in all capitals of Europe,
carry on their business with a certain dignity and decorum, are here to
be seen, like our apple-women, ambulatory: they keep a stall with a sort
of bird-cage upon it, between the wires of which are glistening a store
of coins, gold, and silver, and much copper. I saw an old woman at one
of these stalls laying down the rate of exchange. No doubt she knew her
arithmetic that old crone, and made no mistake, at least on one side of
the account. A couple of lads with a large trayful of spectacles and
opera-glasses, were the great opticians of the day. I saw all sorts of
men, priests among them, trying on spectacles in the jostle of this
thoroughfare. The tailor and the hatter sit outside the door-way
stitching. I look into a baker's shop, if that can be called a shop
which is merely a square cavity laid open at the side near the
street--it is verily a baker's, and bread is made there, for you may see
the whole process carried on. Against the wall, on one side, a great
wheel is turning--grinding the corn; at the opposite side stands a man
up to his elbows in flour, kneading away with all his might; and in
front of you, if you will wait a moment, you will see the fiery oven
open, and the baked bread make its appearance--a sample of which is
deposited in the wire safe that hangs up at the entrance, and serves
for shop-window. Would that all handicrafts were but as peaceful! A few
doors further on there is _Rafaelle Papa_, the copper-smith, hammering
remorselessly at his copper pans. And, O heavens! the blacksmith himself
has come out in the open air with his fire and his forge; he has
established his smoking furnace in the only recess, the only place of
refuge, the whole street afforded."
"And in the midst of all this, and at every corner, what heaps of
beautiful flowers!" said Mildred. "It is curious, too," she added, "to
see, moving through this Cheapside throng, the mendicant friar, cowled
and sandaled, with his wallet, or double sack that hangs across his
shoulder before and behind, actually then and there collecting alms for
his convent."
"But you must not forget the sugar saints and saviours," said Miss
Bloomfield, "that one sees amongst the sweetmeats; and how in every shop
there hangs up the picture of some patron saint, before which on
holydays candles are burning; nor above all, those lemonade stalls,
which are certainly the gayest things in the town. But tell me," she
continued, "I do not quite understand them. First, there is a sort of
dresser heaped up with lemons and oranges. At each end of this rise two
little pillars, painted with red and white stripes, and supporting a
sort of canopy, on which figures, of course, the Virgin Mary--so that
the whole looks like a little altar. Well, but on each side, between
these pillars, there swings, suspended by the middle, a sort of wooden
barrel, and when the damsel, who makes the lemonade, has nothing else to
do, she gives it a touch, and sets it swinging. Now, what are those
for?"
"They hold the snow," said her brother, "which serves instead of ice,
and which the damsel, by this swinging process, helps to dissolve. Some
day we will have a glass of lemonade at one of these altars, as you call
them. We shall get it fresh enough, and cheap enough. But you must take
your sugar with you, for sugar they do not give; their customers are in
the habit of taking it without. I was amused to-day," he continued, "by
watching the progress down the street of a very simple style of
water-cart. A butt of water, with a leathern pipe issuing from it, is
drawn on a low cart by a donkey. A bare-legged fellow ties a string to
the end of the leathern pipe, and follows jerking it to and fro, this
side and that side--of course with many loud vociferations--and so
continues to distribute the contents of his butt over a pretty large
area."
"Very surprising!" said Winston, who for some time past had not heard
one syllable of what was uttered.