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This is the third day of sirocco, heavy-clouded,
sunless. All the colour has gone out of Naples;
the streets are dusty and stifling. I long for the
mountains and the sea.
To-morrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which
calls at Paola. It is now more than a twelve-month
since I began to think of Paola, and an image of
the place has grown in my mind. I picture a little
marina; a yellowish little town just above; and
behind, rising grandly, the long range of mountains
which guard the shore of Calabria. Paola has no
special interest that I know of, but it is the nearest
point on the coast to Cosenza, which has interest
in abundance; by landing here I make a modestly
adventurous beginning of my ramble in the South.
At Paola foreigners are rare; one may count upon
new impressions, and the journey over the hills
will be delightful.
Were I to lend ear to the people with whom I am
staying, here in the Chiatamone, I should either
abandon my project altogether or set forth with
dire misgivings. They are Neapolitans of the better
class; that is to say, they have known losses, and
talk of their former happiness, when they lived
on the Chiaia and had everything handsome about
them. The head of the family strikes me as a typical
figure; he is an elderly man, with a fine head,
a dignified presence, and a coldly courteous demeanour.
By preference he speaks French, and his favourite
subject is Paris. One observes in him something
like disdain for his own country, which in his mind
is associated only with falling fortunes and loss
of self-respect. The cordial Italian note never
sounds in his talk. The signora (also a little ashamed
of her own language) excites herself about taxation
-- as well she may -- and dwells with doleful vivacity
on family troubles. Both are astonished at my eccentricity
and hardiness in undertaking a solitary journey
through the wild South. Their geographical notions
are vague; they have barely heard of Cosenza or
of Cotrone, and of Paola not at all; it would as
soon occur to them to set out for Morocco as for
Calabria. How shall I get along with people whose
language is a barbarous dialect? Am I aware that
the country is in great part pestilential? -- la
febbre! Has no one informed me that in autumn snows
descend, and bury everything for months? It is useless
to explain that I only intend to visit places easily
accessible, that I shall travel mostly by railway,
and that if disagreeable weather sets in I shall
quickly return northwards. They look at me dubiously,
and ask themselves (I am sure) whether I have not
some more tangible motive than a lover of classical
antiquity. It ends with a compliment to the enterprising
spirit of the English race.
I have purchases to make, business to settle, and
I must go hither and thither about the town. Sirocco,
of course, dusks everything to cheerless grey, but
under any sky it is dispiriting to note the changes
in Naples. Lo sventramento (the disembowelling)
goes on, and regions are transformed. It is a good
thing, I suppose, that the broad Corso Umberto I.
should cut a way through the old Pendino; but what
a contrast between that native picturesqueness and
the cosmopolitan vulgarity which has usurped its
place! "Napoli se ne va!" I pass the Santa Lucia
with downcast eyes, my memories of ten years ago
striving against the dulness of to-day. The harbour,
whence one used to start for Capri, is filled up;
the sea has been driven to a hopeless distance beyond
a wilderness of dust-heaps. They are going to make
a long, straight embankment from the Castel dell'Ovo
to the Great Port, and before long the Santa Lucia
will be an ordinary street, shut in among huge houses,
with no view at all. Ah, the nights that one lingered
here, watching the crimson glow upon Vesuvius, tracing
the dark line of the Sorrento promontory, or waiting
for moonlight to cast its magic upon floating Capri!
The odours remain; the stalls of sea-fruit are as
yet undisturbed, and the jars of the water-sellers;
women still comb and bind each other's hair by the
wayside, and meals are cooked and eaten al fresco
as of old. But one can see these things elsewhere,
and Santa Lucia was unique. It has become squalid.
In the grey light of this sad billowy sky, only
its ancient foulness is manifest; there needs the
golden sunlight to bring out a suggestion of its
ancient charm.
Has Naples grown less noisy, or does it only seem
so to me? The men with bullock carts are strangely
quiet; their shouts have nothing like the frequency
and spirit of former days. In the narrow and thronged
Strada di Chiaia I find little tumult; it used to
be deafening. Ten years ago a foreigner could not
walk here without being assailed by the clamour
of cocchieri; nay, he was pursued from street to
street, until the driver had spent every phrase
of importunate invitation; now, one may saunter
as one will, with little disturbance. Down on the
Piliero, whither I have been to take my passage
for Paola, I catch but an echo of the jubilant uproar
which used to amaze me. Is Naples really so much
quieter? If I had time I would go out to Fuorigrotta,
once, it seemed to me, the noisiest village on earth,
and see if there also I observed a change. It would
not be surprising if the modernization of the city,
together with the state of things throughout Italy,
had a subduing effect upon Neapolitan manners. In
one respect the streets are assuredly less gay.
When I first knew Naples one was never, literally
never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these
organs, which in general had a peculiarly dulcet
note, played the brightest of melodies; trivial,
vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious,
and dear to Naples. Now the sound of street music
is rare, and I understand that some police provision
long since interfered with the soft-tongued instruments.
I miss them; for, in the matter of music, it is
with me as with Sir Thomas Browne. For Italy the
change is significant enough; in a few more years
spontaneous melody will be as rare at Naples or
Venice as on the banks of the Thames.
Happily, the musicians errant still strum their
mandoline as you dine. The old trattoria in the
Toledo is as good as ever, as bright, as comfortable.
I have found my old corner in one of the little
rooms, and something of the old gusto for zuppa
di vongole. The homely wine of Posillipo smacks
as in days gone by, and is commended to one's lips
by a song of the South. . . .
Last night the wind changed and the sky began to
clear; this morning I awoke in sunshine, and with
a feeling of eagerness for my journey. I shall look
upon the Ionian Sea, not merely from a train or
a steamboat as before, but at long leisure: I shall
see the shores where once were Tarentum and Sybaris,
Croton and Locri. Every man has his intellectual
desire; mine is to escape life as I know it and
dream myself into that old world which was the imaginative
delight of my boyhood. The names of Greece and Italy
draw me as no others; they make me young again,
and restore the keen impressions of that time when
every new page of Greek or Latin was a new perception
of things beautiful. The world of the Greeks and
Romans is my land of romance; a quotation in either
language thrills me strangely, and there are passages
of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without
a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud
because my voice fails me. In Magna Græcia the waters
of two fountains mingle and flow together; how exquisite
will be the draught!
I drove with my luggage to the Immacolatella, and
a boatman put me aboard the steamer. Luggage, I
say advisedly; it is a rather heavy portmanteau,
and I know it will be a nuisance. But the length
of my wanderings is so uncertain, its conditions
are so vaguely anticipated. I must have books if
only for rainy days; I must have clothing against
a change of season. At one time I thought of taking
a mere wallet, and now I am half sorry that I altered
my mind. But ----
We were not more than an hour after time in starting.
Perfect weather. I sang to myself with joy upon
the sunny deck as we steamed along the Bay, past
Portici, and Torre del Greco, and into the harbour
of Torre Annunziata, where we had to take on cargo.
I was the only cabin passenger, and solitude suits
me. All through the warm and cloudless afternoon
I sat looking at the mountains, trying not to see
that cluster of factory chimneys which rolled black
fumes above the many-coloured houses. They reminded
me of the same abomination on a shore more sacred;
from the harbour of Piræus one looks to Athens through
trails of coal-smoke. By a contrast pleasant enough,
Vesuvius to-day sent forth vapours of a delicate
rose-tint, floating far and breaking seaward into
soft little fleeces of cirrus. The cone, covered
with sulphur, gleamed bright yellow against cloudless
blue.
The voyage was resumed at dinner-time; when I came
upon deck again, night had fallen. We were somewhere
near Sorrento; behind us lay the long curve of faint-glimmering
lights on the Naples shore; ahead was Capri. In
profound gloom, though under a sky all set with
stars, we passed between the island and Cape Minerva;
the haven of Capri showed but a faint glimmer; over
it towered mighty crags, an awful blackness, a void
amid constellations. From my seat near the stern
of the vessel I could discern no human form; it
was as though I voyaged quite alone in the silence
of this magic sea. Silence so all-possessing that
the sound of the ship's engine could not reach my
ear, but was blended with the water-splash into
a lulling murmur. The stillness of a dead world
laid its spell on all that lived. To-day seemed
an unreality, an idle impertinence; the real was
that long-buried past which gave its meaning to
all around me, touching the night with infinite
pathos. Best of all, one's own being became lost
to consciousness; the mind knew only the phantasmal
forms it shaped, and was at peace in vision.
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