SURRIENTO GENTILE: ITS BEAUTIES AND BELIEFS
I suppose I need remind no one that the coast roads between
Castellammare and Salerno are famous round all the world for beauty.
No great while ago there were but two. A third has placed herself
between them now, and many are the disputes as to which bears off the
palm. In these bickerings it is to be feared that the way from
Castellammare to Sorrento must needs go to the wall; for indeed it
does not possess the grandeur of the others. The northern face of the
peninsula has an aspect wholly different from that of the precipices
which look towards Paestum and the islands of the Sirens. It is softer,
more exquisitely wooded; its hillsides sink more often into valleys
and ravines; its cliffs are certainly not awful; its mountain slopes
are sweet and homely, clad with olive groves and pastures, studded
with villas and with monasteries. It is a land which lies in the cool
shadow of the mountains for full half the day, so that the scorching
sun does not strike it until he is well past the middle of his course
towards the Tyrrhene Sea.
I left Castellammare on an uncertain morning. Large grey clouds had
sunk far down over the green slopes of Monte Faito; even the wooded
cone of Monte Coppola had caught a wreath of vapour which lay
drifting across the trees with menace of rain and mist. But here and
there a gleam quivered on the woods; and presently far-distant Ischia
was all a-glimmer, while the dark sea in between flashed into tender
shades of blue. Then came the sunlight, warm and soft, casting sharp
shadows in the gloomy town, while out on the low road beyond the
arsenal the colour of the waves was glorious, and all the long beaches
of the curving shore shone like silver. A heavy shower in the night
had clogged the level road with white mud. Out of the quarry, half a
mile beyond the town, came five men pushing a cart of stones through
the slush--swarthy ruffians, clad in blue trousers, with coloured
handkerchiefs knotted on their heads. And there, descending by a rocky
path from the Monastery of Pozzano, was a solitary monk, with flapping
hat, a grey old man with a bleached, sunken face, the very opposite of
the bright, lusty day. It is thus, so slow and lonely, that "'O
Munaciello" comes, that ghostly monk whom all the children hope and
fear to see; for if they can but snatch his hat from off his head, it
will bring a fortune with it. But "'O Munaciello" does not come down
the mountain paths in this bright daylight; nor is there time to think
of spirits at this moment. For the beauty of the road is growing
strangely. Round the shoulder of a sheer grey cliff which overtops the
road, there is suddenly thrust out into the sea a craggy precipice, in
which one recognises the familiar face of Capri, unseen since we
passed Torre dell'Annunziata. A moment later a long, sharp promontory
like a tooth emerges in the nearer distance. That is "Capo di
Sorrento," but one has scarce time to identify it when the far loftier
cliff of "Punta di Scutola" appears, dropping from a vast height
almost sheer into the sea, while on a nearer and a lower cliff rests
the white town of Vico, flashing in the sun.
Among the pleasures of the road it is not the least that the traveller
coming from Castellammare, as long as this most lovely scene extends
before his eyes, is compelled to saunter. No man may hurry, for the
road winds continually upwards, and one pauses, now to look down upon
a little beach, where the blue tide washes in over white gravel, now
to notice how the slopes are cut in terraces of vines; while in every
sheltered cleft the golden fruit of orange trees hangs in the shadow
of the brown screens put up to guard them from the sun. The vegetation
is extraordinarily rich; as well it may be, for the limestone mountain
is overlaid with volcanic tufa for full half its height--though Heaven
only knows where the tufa came from. A hundred yards beyond the beach
there is once more deep water, dark and unruffled, up to the very base
of the high cliff; and further out the sea is stained with turquoise
changing into green that recalls in some dim way the colour of a field
of flax when the blue flowers are just appearing. But this is fresher,
alive with light and sparkles, flashing with the soft radiance of the
sky, while the olive woods upon the lofty headland behind the town
change from grey to dusk as the shadows of the clouds are flung upon
them or dispersed by the returning sun.
Vico, no less than Pozzano, has its miraculous Madonna. She was found
long ago by one Catherine, a poor crippled girl, to whom the Virgin
appeared in a dream, saying, "Go, Catherine, to the Cave of Villanto,
and there, before my image, you will be healed." Now the Cave of
Villanto was occupied by cows, and seemed a most unlikely place to
contain even the least sacred statue. But Catherine did not stay to
reason; she went and found it, was healed according to the promise,
and now on the third Sunday in October the image is borne in solemn
procession from the Church of Santa Maria del Toro through the streets
of Vico, in glorious memory of this striking miracle.
There is no end to these marvels of Madonnas. At Meta, just where the
road drops into the plain of Sorrento, an old woman, attending on her
cow, was amazed to see the beast drop on its knees in front of a
laurel tree. She kicked and poked the creature, but in vain; Colley
continued her devotions with placid piety, and the natural amazement
of her mistress was increased when she saw a flame spring up at the
foot of the tree, in which flame presently appeared not only a statue
of the Madonna, but a hen and chickens of pure gold!
It may be mere accident that, while the legend goes on to describe
fully what became of the statue, it says nothing more about the golden
hen and chickens--worthless dross, of course, yet surely not without
some interest for the finder! Perhaps the silence hides a tragedy. It
had been prudent if the old woman had allowed no mention of those
gewgaws to be made. She was probably a gossip, and could not hold her
tongue in season. These are fruitless speculations, and yet I think
some charm is added to the loveliest of countries by the knowledge
that such gauds as a hen and chickens of pure gold are to be picked up
there by the piously observant.
But to return to Vico. I should do that townlet too much honour if I
left it to be supposed that its only traditions are concerned with
heavenly presences. The truth is otherwise, and it would be improper
to conceal it. Vico, indeed, shares with no few other townlets on the
peninsula the discredit of having been afflicted sorely by witches.
Once upon a time the nuisance grew unbearable. A farm close to the
town had long been the centre of uncanny noises, such as terrified the
peasants almost to death, and might have gone near to depopulate the
neighbourhood had not some very bold people gone over to inspect.
There were the witches sure enough. They had bells tied to their
heels, and were leaping like monkeys from one tree to another, while
the bells tinkled and the air was full of weird noises. Fortunately
the investigators carried guns, and the witches, seeing that their
enemies were ready to shoot, decided to come down, whereupon they
received such a trouncing with sticks that they learnt better manners
and left the neighbourhood at peace.
If one is so defenceless, is it worth while to be a witch in Italy at
all? The point is arguable, and it is important to be right on it; for
many children of both sexes become witches without knowing it, by the
mere fact of being born on Christmas night, or on the day of the
conversion of St. Paul. If, therefore, the parents do not wish the
bairns to retain the _entree_ of the witches' Sabbath--held always at
Benevento--it behoves them to take prompt action. The remedy is
simple. You cut a slip of the vine, set fire to one end, and pass it
over the child's arm in the shape of a cross. The flame burns out, and
Satan's spell is broken.
I do not find anyone who can tell me why the witches have bells on
their heels. Bells throughout the peninsula are sacred to
Sant'Antuono, called Antonio elsewhere. In old times the bell of Sant'
Antuono was carried round from house to house, and mothers would bring
out their sucking children to sip water from it, in the hope that they
might learn to speak the sooner. Even now a little bell is often hung
round a baby's neck, where it serves the purpose of the horn, the
half-moon, or the hand with outstretched fingers; that is to say, it
keeps off the evil eye. What can there be in common between the babies
and the sinful witches that both should be followed by the same
tinklings?
Vico, as I have said, lies on a plateau, and when the road has
traversed the clean town--how different from the foulness of
Castellammare or Nocera!--it drops into a ravine of very singular
beauty, a winding cleft which issues from the folds of Faito and St.
Angelo, brimming over with vineyards and orange groves, and opening at
last upon the sea, where through the soft grey foliage one looks to
Ischia, far away across the blue. Having traversed the bridge which
spans this shadowy valley, the road mounts again, rising through dense
woods of olive, till at last the summit of Punta di Scutola is won,
and all the plain of Sorrento lies below.
There is no hour of dawn or dusk in which this view is otherwise than
exquisite. In the morning light the plain is full of shadows, for the
sun has not yet travelled westwards of St. Angelo, and the mighty
mountain towers dark over the whole peninsula. It is the evening sun
which shines most beautifully here, and no one who has climbed up this
road when the plain is full of soft, gold light, when Ischia turns
rosy and the jagged peak of Vico Alvano soars up dark against the pale
green sky, is likely to forget it when he thinks of Paradise.
Sorrento lies upon the western side of the plain, almost touching the
rim of the mountains that inclose it, so that one has hardly left the
streets before the mountains close in and the plain is lost. A little
way beyond the houses the hill upon one's left is already high and
sheer, a broken outline of sharp limestone jags, clothed with cytisus
and broom and slopes of sweet short grass, out of which rings the
plashing of a stream, for there has been rain upon the mountains, and
all the clefts and runnels are brimming over with fresh fallen water.
So one goes on among the whispering sounds of tree and brook until a
mightier noise surpasses them, and one pauses at the foot of the
ravine of Conca to behold the waterfall.
So high and dark is this ravine that though the sun is almost exactly
above it, its light catches only the bushes at the very top, and
penetrates not at all into the sheer funnel down which the water
plunges, scattered into spray by the force of the descent, until a
hundred feet below it drops upon a jut of rock and so pours down in a
succession of quick leaps from pool to pool.
It is a wild and beautiful sight to watch the downpour of this water
on the days succeeding rain. But in the warm weather the ravine is
dry, and an active climber might go up it without much trouble. There
is some temptation to the feat; for men say a treasure lies hidden in
a cave which opens out of the sheer walls, and the gold is enough to
make a whole village rich. If any doubt it, let him go there on the
stroke of midnight. As the hour sounds, he will see the guardian of
the hoard appear at the top of the ravine, a dark mailed warrior,
mounted on a sable steed, who leaps into the gulf and vanishes when
mortal men accost him. There was once a wizard living at no great
distance from Sorrento whose dreams were haunted by the craving for
this treasure. He must have been a half-educated wizard, for he knew
no spell potent enough to help him towards his object. One day there
came to him three lads who had possessed themselves, I know not how,
of a magic book, a work of power such as might have been compiled by
the great enchanter, Michael Scot, who toiled in Apulia for the
welfare of the Emperor, reading the secrets of the stars with little
thought of the pranks that would one day be played on him by William
of Deloraine in Melrose Abbey. It is rather odd that though our
generation turns out so many kinds of books, both good and bad, it
seems unable to produce the magic sort. But the three lads got one,
and they brought it to the wizard of Sorrento; and all together one
May night, casting a rope ladder into the ravine of Conca, climbed
down until they reached the entrance of the cave.
They found it buried in black darkness, and waited there trembling
till the grey dawn stole down the rocks, and a gold beam from the
rising sun quivered into the mouth of the grotto. As the light shot
through the opening, all the treasure-seekers shouted together; for
walls and roof were crusted over with gold and gems, and marvellous
flashes of soft colour glowed in the heart of rubies and of emeralds.
They stood and stared awhile, then one of them tried to break off a
mass of jewels, but had no sooner touched it than the rocks rang with
a crash of thunder, the magic book whirled away in a livid flame,
wizard and lads fled trembling up the ladder. It was a melancholy
rout. I fear the party was too large for prudence. The local proverb
says, "When there are too many cocks to crow, it never will be day."
A little further up the road a stair ascends the fresh and sunny
hillside. It winds upwards through green grasses and grey rocks till
it attains a level plateau, where a few olives grow detached and
scattered. At that point I turn to look down upon the plain and the
long line of cliff which holds the sea in check, so black and sheer,
so strangely even in its height. It is still early on this bright
mid-April morning, but the sun has force and power, and all the sea
is radiantly blue. Immediately below me is a little beach, the Marina
Grande, the opening of the westerly ravine, small, yet much the
largest which the town possesses, and there most of the boats lie
hauled up on the black sand. Another fringe of lava sand runs under
the dark cliff below the great hotels. Sometimes in the early morning
the traveller, waking not long after dawn, may hear a low monotone of
chanting down beneath his window, and flinging it open to the clean
salt wind that breathes so freshly over the grey sea dimpling into
green, ere yet the sun does more than sparkle on the water, he will
see far down below him the barefooted women tugging in the nets, while
the fish glitter silvery on the red planking of the boat that rocks on
the translucent water twenty yards from shore.
[Illustration: ROOF TOP--MODERN NAPLES]
Beyond these beaches the straight sheer cliff sweeps on with what
looks like an unbroken wall, though in truth it is gashed by creeks
and inlets, while one beach, the Marina di Cassano, has in its time
done yeoman's service to the trade of all the plain. There clings to
it a tale of witches too. But really, I must turn aside less readily
at these beckonings of Satan. Let the witches wait. It is the lava
which attracts me now. Anybody else would have noticed it long since,
and turned his mind to the wonders of creation first.
Most people expect to have done with volcanoes and their products when
they climb up out of the Campagna Felice on to the hillsides of
Castellammare. Yet we heard of lava soil at Vico; and here are the
lava cliff, the lava sand, and the abounding vegetation just as lush
as if Vesuvius, or some other like him, were close behind the hilltop.
Was I not told that the peninsula is built of limestone, showing no
trace of fire, shaped and chiselled as it stands to-day before the
earth's crust broke at any spot in all Campania, or fire burst forth
from any fissure? It is limestone too! What other rock could so ridge
its precipices, or give so vivid a freshness to the green pastures on
its slopes? Whence, then, came the lava?
Well, that is in some degree a mystery. Swinburne, to whose travels I
have referred already, thought he had solved it, and declared that the
Isles of the Sirens, commonly known as "I Galli," for reasons which we
shall come to in good time,--he declared these islands to be nothing
but the relics of a crater. The rocks were visited so seldom a century
ago that no one could contradict him at the moment. But in Naples a
geologist lay waiting disdainfully to demolish him. It was no other
than Scipione Breislak, a formidable man of science, and an authority
even now, which is something more than can be said of Swinburne.
Breislak got a boat and went himself to the Galli to see what nonsense
it was that the Englishman had been talking. Alas! he found no trace
of fires or crater! Thus one more nail was driven into the coffin of
English scholarship, and since that day no one has even guessed where
the lava came from.
What may be regarded as fairly certain, however, is that it was not
ejected on this spot. The Piano di Sorrento, sweet country of
perpetual summer, of which more truly than of many parts of Italy, the
poet might have written--
"Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus aestas,"
is in no danger of being blown to fragments. Perhaps the lava came
from some volcanic outburst under the sea, from some islet formed and
washed away again--it matters little. Somewhere underneath the soil
lies the clean, firm limestone, and the volcanic matter, whencesoever
it came, did no more than fill a hollow of the hills, and turn it into
the loveliest valley in the world. Sorrento, the very name whispers of
smiles and laughter, and the people, softening it still with the
incomparable music of their speech, modulate it into "Surriento," just
as they turn "cento" into "ciento," and drop a liquid vowel into the
harshness of Castellammare, calling it "Castiellammare." "Surriento!"
How it trembles on the air! Had ever any town a name so fit for love!
And was any ever set in a fairer country? It is a plain, yet no
monotony of level, for a spine of the encircling hills tilts the
gardens to the evening sun, while the shadow of the mountains wards
off the fierce glare of the heat till long past noon. And what
fertility! Is there on the surface of the earth such a lush wild glade
of orange groves, three generations, "father, son, and grandson," as
the Sorrentines say, hanging on a single tree; while as they hang and
ripen, the scented flowers are continually budding in the shadow of
the dark green leaves, and every waft of air is sweetened by the
fragrance of the blossom. But at Surriento all the airs are sweet. If
they do not blow across the orange groves they carry down the scent of
rosemary and myrtle from the mountains, which are knee-deep in
delicious scrub; or they come off the sea in sharp, cool breezes,
bringing the gladness and fresh movement of the deep, scattering the
stagnant heats and making all the plain laugh with pleasure in the joy
of life. How long the lovely summer lasts at Surriento, and how short
are the bad winter days! "A Cannelora," say the peasants, "state rinto
e vierno fora!" What is "Cannelora"? It is the second day of
February, when England still has full three months of winter! Then it
is that summer returns to the Piano di Sorrento and chases winter away
across the hills. Is it true? "Chi lo sa." Perhaps not quite, but what
of that? The Sorrentines themselves have another saying, which runs
thus: "A neve 'e Marzo nu' fa male,"--that is, "Snow does no harm in
March." So the summer which comes at Cannelora is not incompatible
with snow! Yet even in fibs there must be probability, or where would
be the use of them? To declare that an English summer began at
Cannelora would be simply dull.
The plain, I say, is not one unbroken level, nor is it wide enough to
be monotonous. One cannot look out far in any direction over the olive
woods which like a soft grey flood surge over the fertile country,
without being checked by the cool, shadowy mountains, St. Angelo vast
and lovely, Vico Alvano thrusting up an almost perfect cone; and many
another peak showing towards Sorrento a slope of crag and pasture-land
which on its other face drops in sheer precipices to the Gulf of
Salerno. One knows that from the summit of the ridge there is an
outlook over both the gulfs; and from my post, here on the hillside
known as Capo di Monte, I can see the red monastery called the
Deserto, because it was indeed erected in a solitary waste, where the
soul of man might hope to tread down underfoot him who, in the
language of the place, is rarely spoken of by name, but indicated more
gently as "Chillo che sta sotto San Michele"--"He who lies beneath St.
Michael."
The pleasantest way to the Deserto is on foot. One goes on up the
stairs from Capo di Monte, stopping gladly enough to chaffer with the
children who offer flowers or early fruits, and are contented with so
very little coin in exchange, then climbing on past hillside cottages
and orange groves within high walls, which only now and then admit a
glance across the sea to Vesuvius smoking, or the blue hills beyond
Nola so far away, until at last the stairs are left behind and one
passes on through vineyards into a wood which occupies the higher
slopes of the open hillside, a mossy, fragrant wood, whose spring
foliage is not yet so dense as to bar the sunlight from the anemones,
lilac and purple, which grow in profusion out of the trailing ivy and
the dead leaves of last year's fall. After the wood, the gate of the
Deserto is close at hand: it gives access to a straight, steep drive,
at the end of which stands a tower overtopping a red group of
buildings, and on it the words--
"Ego vox clamantis
In Deserto
Tempus breve est."
An old monk admitted me, and without waste of words, pointed out the
staircase which gave access to the upper story. He did not offer to
accompany me, but went back along the silent corridor like a man
contemptuous of earthly things, even of the immeasurable beauty which
lay stretched out on every side of that high eminence. So I went up
the stairs alone, listening to the echoes of my feet, until I came to
a doorway whence I passed out on the wall which surrounds the garden
quadrangle; and here I turned instinctively to seek for Capri, unseen
since the glimpse I caught of its high precipices on approaching Vico
Equense.
Looking northward from the monastery wall I had the island on my left,
the sheer cliff called the Salto turned towards me, the island rocks
of the Faraglioni standing out distinctly, the little marina
sparkling in the sun, while high above it, like an eagle's nest,
towered the crags of Anacapri and Barbarossa's castle. The morning sun
had transformed the island wondrously. Grey and green by nature, some
suffusion out of the warm sky had showered down deep purple on it, and
from end to end it lay glowing with the colour of an evening cloud.
Whence that light came was a marvel that I could not guess; for the
nearer slopes of Punta di Campanella caught not a trace of it, but
ravine and mountain pasture lay there in the sunlight grey and green
as ever, while across the narrow strait Capri had all the tremulous
beauty of the coasts of fairyland. Far away northwards, across a space
of the loveliest sea imaginable, lay the craggy peak of Ischia, the
low reef of Procida, and the mountains of the Campanian coast; while
on the hither side of that blue land of cloudy peaks the sun had flung
a heavy shadow over Monte Sant'Angelo, and all his towering slopes lay
black and lurid.
The southward view is scarcely so fine. For the Deserto is built on
the Sorrento side of the ridge, so that even from its roof one surveys
a part only of the vast waters which owned the domination of Salerno,
of Amalfi, and in far older days submitted to the rule of that great
city Paestum, whose shattered temples are still, unto this day, a
prouder relic than any left by the commonwealths which rose in later
times upon the gulf. One looks across the blue moving waters towards
the flat where Paestum stood. Behind it rise the mountain peaks in long
succession, flashing here and there with fields of snow, while further
off, scarce seen by reason of its distance, the headland of Licosia
marks the limit of the bay.
Such is the Deserto, a solitude among the mountains. When I came down
once more into the cool corridors, the old monk acknowledged my
benefaction with a solemn bow, but let me go without a word. Silence
hung over the building like a spell. It played its part in the great
charm and beauty of the spot; and I was well content that nothing
broke it. It was past noon, and the sun was dropping westwards. All
the hillsides were glowing in gold light. The budding woods, so
shadowy as I climbed up, were full of glimmering radiance; and as I
descended further, and all the plain lay before me, its olive woods,
its orange groves, and the long line of white villas cresting the
black cliff were suffused in one wide glory of warm colour. As I went
across the bridge into the city, I turned off from the main street,
and found what is left of the old wall, guarding the ancient ducal
domain, though indeed one might have thought the deep ravines had
fenced it sufficiently on three sides, while on the fourth the sea
protects it strong and well. The gates have gone, under which in the
old days of festival, when Carnival pranced up and down the streets,
the grisly figure of death, "la morte di Sorrento," used to lurk,
waiting to mow down the rioter as the hour struck which marked the
approach of Lent. But there is still enough left of the massive
fortifications to show that a rich city once occupied this site.
It is a pleasant spot at this hour of evening shadows. The deep ravine
is filled with the whispering echoes of a stream, which does not fill
the bottom of the hollow, but leaves space for orange groves, deep
thatched with boughs. Cottages are built out on jutting rocks,
overhanging the precipice with strange indifference to the probable
results of even little earthquakes; and the lanes are alive with
brown, half-naked children. The sheer rocky chasms, the swarming
population, the ancient walls, recall memories of an older Sorrento
than one can recover easily upon the sea-front, or in the tortuous
streets which skirt it. One sees here the system of defence, and can
believe that in its day Sorrento was a fortress, though its great days
of independence passed so early, and its dukes were tributaries long
ere the Normans came and coveted these shores. Yet the ducal days, the
"Giorni Ducheschi," are by no means forgotten in Sorrento. Indeed, if
their natural glories had passed out of mind, the nocturnal ramblings
of Mirichicchiu would serve to refresh the memory of every man and
child, terror being, as Machiavelli puts it, a better remembrancer
than love.
Mirichicchiu, "the little physician," was a dwarf. He lived in the
time of the dukes, and was unwise enough to conspire against his lord,
who promptly cut his head off and caused the body to be thrown into
the fields outside the castle walls, where its several parts appear to
have been dispersed by the operations of husbandry, since Mirichicchiu
to this day has not been able to recover them.
Night by night he goes searching up and down the fields, stooping with
a lantern over the clods, until the cock-crow frights him back to the
place from whence he came. Sometimes the lonely little dwarf will go
up to a cottage and tap at the door. When that light knocking rings
through the startled house the inmates know that Mirichicchiu is
hungry, and they prepare his breakfast. The dish must be cooked
specially for him, and no one else must taste it. If he finds it to
his mind he leaves coins in the plate.
There can, I think, be few districts in which the folklore is richer
or more romantic than in this region of Sorrento. The peasants are
soaked in superstition. The higher classes are scarce more free from
it. Those who loiter at midnight near the Capo di Sorrento, whither
every tourist goes to see the ruins of the Villa Pollio and the great
cool reservoir of sea-water known as "Il Bagno della Regina
Giovanna," may see a maiden clad in white robes rise out of the sea
and glide over the water towards the Marina di Puolo, the little beach
which lies between the Punta della Calcarella and the Portiglione. She
has scarce touched land when she is pursued by a dark rider on a
winged horse, who comes from the direction of Sorrento, and hunts her
shrieking all along the shore. There are spectres on every cliff and
hillside, witches on the way to their unhallowed gatherings at
Benevento, and wizards prowling up and down in the shape of goats or
dogs. At night the peasants keep their doors and windows closed; if
they do not, the Janara may come in and cripple the babies. You may
sometimes keep out evil spirits by setting a basin full of water near
the door; the fiends will stop to count the drops, which takes a long
time, probably enough to occupy them until day drives them home.
If anyone be out after dark it is better not to look round. The risk
is that one may be turned into stone.
Here and there one may see ruined churches in the country, but no
peasant will go near them after nightfall; for he knows that spectral
Masses are celebrated there, solemn services chanted by dead priests,
who are thus punished for neglect of their offices in life, and whose
congregation is made up of worshippers who forgot their religion while
they lived.
The Italian fancy begets things terrible more easily than it conceives
a lovely dream. Even the tales of fairies turn more readily on fear
than on the merry pranks with which our northern legends associate
the dwellers in the foxglove bells. But on a fine spring evening, when
the sun is glowing over the plain, there are pleasanter things to
think of in Sorrento than the spirits of the other world. I turn
gladly away from the ravines into the broad main street, and passing
by the cathedral, pause in the piazza, where the life of the pleasant
little town is busiest and gayest. It is here that one should call to
mind the poet Tasso, whose tragedy was cast into noble verse by
Goethe; for his statue stands in the square, looking down gravely on
the rows of vetturini cracking whips, the children coming or going to
the fountain, the babble of strange tongues from lands which never
dreamt of Surriento when he dwelt on earth. But I think the days are
gone in which English people can delight in the sixteenth-century
poets of which Italy was once so proud. Tasso and Ariosto may have
every merit save sincerity; but that is lacking, and Italy has so many
noble poets who possess it! I care little for the memories of Tasso,
save in Goethe's verse, and as I go down to the marina it is of older
visitors, welcome and unwelcome, that my mind is full--St. Peter, for
example. There is a constant legend that he came this way after the
death of Christ, landing perhaps from some galley of Alexandria that
touched here on its way to Pozzuoli, and set down the apostle to win
what souls he could among the rough dwellers in the mountains. The
saint preached his first sermon by the roadside near Sant'Agnello, a
village between Sorrento and the Marina di Cassano; and then went over
the hills towards Castellammare, where he rewarded the hospitality of
the dwellers at Mojano, near the roots of Faito, by making springs of
water gush out of the thirsty rock.
[Illustration: NAPLES--COURTYARD IN THE OLD TOWN]
Doubtless the apostle was on his way to Rome. I know no reason why
we should distrust the tale that he did indeed pass through this
country. The water-way from the East around the coasts of southern
Italy is of mysterious antiquity. Paestum was a mighty trading city
many centuries before St. Peter lived, and its sailors may well have
inherited traditions of navigation as much older than their day as
they are older than our own. I do not know whether it was indeed upon
the islands under the Punta di Campanella that Ulysses, lashed to the
mast, heard the singing of the Sirens, but the tradition is not
doubted in Sorrento; and without leaning on it as a fact, one may
recognise at least that the tale suggests the vast antiquity of trade
upon these waters. Else whence came the heaps of whitening bones of
lost sailors, among which the Sirens sat and sang? Here year by year
we learn more of the age of man, and of the countless centuries he has
dwelt by the shore of the great deep. We cannot tell when he first
adventured round the promontories with sail and oar; but it is safe to
believe that those early voyages were made unnumbered centuries before
any people lived whose records have come down to us, and that those
sailors whom we discern when the mists are first lifted from the face
of history were no pioneers, but followed in a well-worn track of
trade, beaten out who knows how long before their time.
It is said that in old days the city of Sorrento stretched farther out
to sea than it does now. The fishers say they could once go dryfoot
from one marina to the other. There are ruins underneath the water.
The two small beaches have but cramped accommodation now, and if trade
settled there, as it did in the days of Tiberius, a harbour of some
sort must have existed. A city on the coast may last without a harbour
which has once brought it consequence; but would it have grown
without one to a place of power? It is profitless speculation,
perhaps. But no one wandering along these coasts, which played so
great a part in early maritime adventure, can easily refrain from
wondering at the tricks of destiny which brought the stream of
commerce now to one spot, now to another; and then, wresting away the
riches it had given, left the busy quays to silence, and made one more
city of the dead.
The hotels which line the summit of the cliff conceal the remnants of
great Roman villas. The Hotel Vittoria is built over one of the
finest. On that spot, in 1855, were found the remains of a small
theatre, destroyed to make the terrace of the hotel. The tunnel by
which one goes down to the sea is the same by which the Roman lord of
the mansion descended to his boat. Beneath the Hotel Sirena there are
large chambers which once formed part of such another villa. I cannot
tell how many other traces of old days may be left scooped out of the
black rock.
As the dusk descends upon Sorrento, and the sea turns grey, the
narrow, tortuous streets resume an appearance of vast age. They are
very silent at this hour; the shops are mostly closed; the children
hawking woodwork have gone home. One's footsteps echo all down the
winding alleys, and the tall houses look mysterious and gloomy. Such
was the aspect of the town on the evening of Good Friday, when I took
my stand in the garden of the Hotel Tramontano to see the procession
of our Lady of Sorrows, who, having gone out at daybreak to seek the
body of the Lord, has now found it, and is bearing it in solemn
mourning through the city streets.
Along the narrow lane which passes the hotel a row of lamps has been
set, and little knots of people are moving up and down, laughing and
jesting, with little outward recognition of the nature of the rite.
The procession has already started; it is in a church at the further
end of the long alley, and every ear is strained to catch the first
sound of the chanting which will herald its approach. Wherever the
houses fall back a little the space is banked up with curious
spectators. Some devout inhabitant hangs out a string of coloured
lamps, and is rewarded by a shower of applause and laughter, which has
scarcely died away when a distant strain of mournful music casts a
hush over the throng. Far down the alley one sees the glittering of
torches, and a slow, sobbing march, indescribably weird and majestic,
resounds through the blue night, with soft beat of drum and now and
then a clash of cymbals. Very slow is the approach of the mourners,
but now there is no movement in the crowd. Men and children stand like
ranks of statues, watching the slow coming of the torches and the dark
waving banners which are borne behind them.
So the heavy rhythm of the funeral march goes up into the still air,
knocking at every heart; and after the players, treading slow and
sadly, come the young men of Sorrento, two and two, at wide intervals,
hooded in deep black, their eyes gleaming through holes in the crape
masks which conceal their faces. Each bears some one among the
instruments of the divine passion--the nails, the scourge, and
scourging pillar, the pincers--while in their midst rise the heavy
folds of a huge crape banner, drooping mournfully from its staff. Next
comes a silver crucifix raised high above the throng, and then, as the
head of the procession winds away among the houses, the throbbing note
of the march changes to a sweeter and more plaintive melody, while
from the other hand there rises the sound of voices chanting "Domine,
exaudi." In a double choir come the clergy of the city and the country
round, all robed in solemn vestments, and between the two bodies the
naked figure of our Lord is borne recumbent on a bier, limbs drawn in
agony, head falling on one side, pitiful and terrible, while last of
all Our Lady of Sorrows closes the long line of mourners.
When she has passed, silence drops once more upon the dusky alleys.
Far off, the sound of chanting rings faintly across the houses, and
the slow music of the march sighs through the air. Then even that dies
away, and on the spot where Tasso opened his eyes upon a troubled
world there is no sound but the wind stirring among the orange
blossoms, or the perpetual soft washing of the sea about the base of
the black cliffs.