Chapter 16

I have said little about the view; but I might have written about nothing else, both in the ascent and descent. Naples, and all the villages which rim the bay with white, the gracefully curving arms that go out to sea, and do not quite clasp rocky Capri, which lies at the entrance, made the outline of a picture of surpassing loveliness. But as we came down, there was a sight that I am sure was unique. As one in a balloon sees the earth concave beneath, so now, from where we stood, it seemed to rise, not fall, to the sea, and all the white villages were raised to the clouds; and by the peculiar light, the sea looked exactly like sky, and the little boats on it seemed to float, like balloons in the air. The illusion was perfect. As the day waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that the waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo in a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet. Only it still was not the sea at all; but the little chopping waves looked like flecked clouds; and it was exactly as if one of the violet, cloud-beautified skies that we see at home over some sunsets had fallen to the ground. And the slant white sails and the black specks of boats on it hung in the sky, and were as unsubstantial as the whole pageant. Capri alone was dark and solid. And as we descended and a high wall hid it, a little handsome rascal, who had attended me for an hour, now at the head and now at the tail of my pony, recalled me to the realities by the request that I should give him a franc. For what? For carrying signor's coat up the mountain. I rewarded the little liar with a German copper. I had carried my own overcoat all day.

SORRENTO DAYS

OUTLINES

The day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, most noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, was founded by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Her descendants still live here; and we have become a little weary of their inherited musical ability: they have learned to play upon many new instruments, with which they keep us awake late at night, and arouse us early in the morning. One of them is always there under the window, where the moonlight will strike him, or the early dawn will light up his love-worn visage, strumming the guitar with his horny thumb, and wailing through his nose as if his throat was full of seaweed. He is as inexhaustible as Vesuvius. We shall have to flee, or stop our ears with wax, like the sailors of Ulysses.

The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto, Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Let us go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our geography.

The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but never adequately, must consent to be here described as essentially a parallelogram, with an opening towards the southwest. The northeast side of this, with Naples in the right-hand corner, looking seaward and Castellamare in the left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen miles, is a vast rich plain, fringed on the shore with towns, and covered with white houses and gardens. Out of this rises the isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This growing mountain is manufactured exactly like an ant-hill.

The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction, is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands. First comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels, partly natural and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of one of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautiful bay, the shore of which is incrusted with classic ruins. On this bay stands Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli where St. Paul landed one May day, and doubtless walked up this paved road, which leads direct to Rome. At the entrance, near the head of Posilipo, is the volcanic island of "shining Nisida," to which Brutus retired after the assassination of Caesar, and where he bade Portia good-by before he departed for Greece and Philippi: the favorite villa of Cicero, where he wrote many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baiae, epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, and extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered the great fleets of Rome.

This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thin crust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out, is one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine Lake, the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the Lake Avernus. This entrance to the infernal regions was frozen over the day I saw it; so that the profane prophecy of skating on the bottomless pit might have been realized. The islands of Procida and Ischia continue and complete this side of the bay, which is about twenty miles long as the boat sails.

At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and runs southwest along the side of the Sorrentine promontory. This promontory is a high, rocky, diversified ridge, which extends out between the bays of Naples and Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards the latter. Below Castellamare, the mountain range of the Great St. Angelo (an offshoot of the Apennines) runs across the peninsula, and cuts off that portion of it which we have to consider. The most conspicuous of the three parts of this short range is over four thousand seven hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, and the highest land on it. From Great St. Angelo to the point, the Punta di Campanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by balloon, but twenty by any other conveyance. Three miles off this point lies Capri.

This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and hills; but it has at intervals transverse ledges and ridges, and deep valleys and chains cutting in from either side; so that it is not very passable in any direction. These little valleys and bays are warm nooks for the olive and the orange; and all the precipices and sunny slopes are terraced nearly to the top. This promontory of rocks is far from being barren.

>From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rockcut road by the bay,- -one of the most charming in southern Italy,--a distance of seven miles, we reach the Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the opposite headland, the Capo di Sorrento, inclose the Piano di Sorrento, an irregular plain, three miles long, encircled by limestone hills, which protect it from the east and south winds. In this amphitheater it lies, a mass of green foliage and white villages, fronting Naples and Vesuvius.

If nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, and then filled it up to a depth of two hundred to three hundred feet with volcanic tufa, forming a precipice of that height along the shore, I can understand how the present state of things came about.

This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs push down into it from the hills; and great chasms, deep, ragged, impassable, split in the tufa, extend up into it from the sea. At intervals, at the openings of these ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermen have their huts' and where their boats land. Little villages, separate from the world, abound on these marinas. The warm volcanic soil of the sheltered plain makes it a paradise of fruits and flowers.

Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of this plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to the hills,--a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The ancient boundary of the city proper was the famous ravine on the east side, a similar ravine on the south, which met it at right angles, and was supplemented by a high Roman wall, and the same wall continued on the west to the sea. The growing town has pushed away the wall on the west side; but that on the south yet stands as good as when the Romans made it. There is a little attempt at a mall, with double rows of trees, under that wall, where lovers walk, and ragged, handsome urchins play the exciting game of fives, or sit in the dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do not know what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper which has the value of one sou.

The great ravine, three quarters of a mile long, the ancient boundary which now cuts the town in two, is bridged where the main street, the Corso, crosses, the bridge resting on old Roman substructions, as everything else about here does. This ravine, always invested with mystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. Demons inhabit it. Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cut for descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, at the bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a mill down there, where there is breadth enough for a building; and altogether, the ravine is not so delivered over to the power of darkness as it used to be. It is still damp and slimy, it is true; but from above, it is always beautiful, with its luxuriant growth of vines, and at twilight mysterious. I like as well, however, to look into its entrance from the little marina, where the old fishwives arc weaving nets.

These little settlements under the cliff, called marinas, are worlds in themselves, picturesque at a distance, but squalid seen close at hand. They are not very different from the little fishing-stations on the Isle of Wight; but they are more sheltered, and their inhabitants sing at their work, wear bright colors, and bask in the sun a good deal, feeling no sense of responsibility for the world they did not create. To weave nets, to fish in the bay, to sell their fish at the wharves, to eat unexciting vegetables and fish, to drink moderately, to go to the chapel of St. Antonino on Sunday, not to work on fast and feast days, nor more than compelled to any day, this is life at the marinas. Their world is what they can see, and Naples is distant and almost foreign. Generation after generation is content with the same simple life. They have no more idea of the bad way the world is in than bees in their cells.

THE VILLA NARDI

The Villa Nardi hangs over the sea. It is built on a rock, and I know not what Roman and Greek foundations, and the remains of yet earlier peoples, traders, and traffickers, whose galleys used to rock there at the base of the cliff, where the gentle waves beat even in this winter-time with a summer swing and sound of peace.

It was at the close of a day in January that I first knew the Villa Nardi,--a warm, lovely day, at the hour when the sun was just going behind the Capo di Sorrento, in order to disrobe a little, I fancy, before plunging into the Mediterranean off the end of Capri, as is his wont about this time of year. When we turned out of the little piazza, our driver was obliged to take off one of our team of three horses driven abreast, so that we could pass through the narrow and crooked streets, or rather lanes of blank walls. With cracking whip, rattling wheels, and shouting to clear the way, we drove into the Strada di San Francisca, and to an arched gateway. This led down a straight path, between olives and orange and lemon-trees, gleaming with shining leaves and fruit of gold, with hedges of rose-trees in full bloom, to another leafy arch, through which I saw tropical trees, and a terrace with a low wall and battered busts guarding it, and beyond, the blue sea, a white sail or two slanting across the opening, and the whiteness of Naples some twenty miles away on the shore.

The noble family of the Villa did not descend into the garden to welcome us, as we should have liked; in fact, they have been absent now for a long time, so long that even their ghosts, if they ever pace the terrace-walk towards the convent, would appear strange to one who should meet them; and yet our hostess, the Tramontano, did what the ancient occupants scarcely could have done, gave us the choice of rooms in the entire house. The stranger who finds himself in this secluded paradise, at this season, is always at a loss whether to take a room on the sea, with all its changeable loveliness, but no sun, or one overlooking the garden, where the sun all day pours itself into the orange boughs, and where the birds are just beginning to get up a spring twitteration. My friend, whose capacity for taking in the luxurious repose of this region is something extraordinary, has tried, I believe, nearly every room in the house, and has at length gone up to a solitary room on the top, where, like a bird on a tree he looks all ways, and, so to say, swings in the entrancing air. But, wherever you are, you will grow into content with your situation.

At the Villa Nardi we have no sound of wheels, no noise of work or traffic, no suggestion of conflict. I am under the impression that everything that was to have been done has been done. I am, it is true, a little afraid that the Saracens will come here again, and carry off more of the nut-brown girls, who lean over the walls, and look down on us from under the boughs. I am not quite sure that a French Admiral of the Republic will not some morning anchor his three-decker in front, and open fire on us; but nothing else can happen. Naples is a thousand miles away. The boom of the saluting guns of Castel Nuovo is to us scarcely an echo of modern life. Rome does not exist. And as for London and New York) they send their people and their newspapers here, but no pulse of unrest from them disturbs our tranquillity. Hemmed in on the land side by high walls, groves, and gardens, perched upon a rock two hundred feet above the water, how much more secure from invasion is this than any fabled island of the southern sea, or any remote stream where the boats of the lotus-eaters float!

There is a little terrace and flower-plat, where we sometimes sit, and over the wall of which we like to lean, and look down the cliff to the sea. This terrace is the common ground of many exotics as well as native trees and shrubs. Here are the magnolia, the laurel, the Japanese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, the date-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the Cape of Good Hope, the pomegranate, the elder in full leaf, the olive, salvia, heliotrope; close by is a banana-tree.

I find a good deal of companionship in the rows of plaster busts that stand on the wall, in all attitudes of listlessness, and all stages of decay. I thought at first they were penates of the premises; but better acquaintance has convinced me that they never were gods, but the clayey representations of great men and noble dames. The stains of time are on them; some have lost a nose or an ear; and one has parted with a still more important member--his head,--an accident that might profitably have befallen his neighbor, whose curly locks and villainously low forehead proclaim him a Roman emperor. Cut in the face of the rock is a walled and winding way down to the water. I see below the archway where it issues from the underground recesses of our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation that some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no one ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges and lemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch. And there is an uncommon stir of life; for a schooner is shipping a cargo of oranges, and the entire population is in a clamor. Donkeys are coming down the winding way, with a heavy basket on either flank; stout girls are stepping lightly down with loads on their heads; the drivers shout, the donkeys bray, the people jabber and order each other about; and the oranges, in a continual stream, are poured into the long, narrow vessel, rolling in with a thud, until there is a yellow mass of them. Shouting, scolding, singing, and braying, all come up to me a little mellowed. The disorder is not so great as on the opera stage of San Carlo in Naples; and the effect is much more pleasing.

This settlement, the marina, under the cliff, used to extend along the shore; and a good road ran down there close by the water. The rock has split off, and covered it; and perhaps the shore has sunk. They tell me that those who dig down in the edge of the shallow water find sunken walls, and the remains of old foundations of Roman workmanship. People who wander there pick up bits of marble, serpentine, and malachite,--remains of the palaces that long ago fell into the sea, and have not left even the names of their owners and builders,-the ancient loafers who idled away their days as everybody must in this seductive spot. Not far from here, they point out the veritable caves of the Sirens, who have now shut up house, and gone away, like the rest of the nobility. If I had been a mariner in their day, I should have made no effort to sail by and away from their soothing shore.

I went, one day, through a long, sloping arch, near the sailors' Chapel of St. Antonino, past a pretty shrine of the Virgin, down the zigzag path to this little marina; but it is better to be content with looking at it from above, and imagining how delightful it would be to push off in one of the little tubs of boats. Sometimes, at night, I hear the fishermen coming home, singing in their lusty fashion; and I think it is a good haven to arrive at. I never go down to search for stones on the beach: I like to believe that there are great treasures there, which I might find; and I know that the green and brown and spotty appearance of the water is caused by the showing through of the pavements of courts, and marble floors of palaces, which might vanish if I went nearer, such a place of illusion is this.

The Villa Nardi stands in pleasant relations to Vesuvius, which is just across the bay, and is not so useless as it has been represented; it is our weather-sign and prophet. When the white plume on his top floats inland, that is one sort of weather; when it streams out to sea, that is another. But I can never tell which is which: nor in my experience does it much matter; for it seems impossible for Sorrento to do anything but woo us with gentle weather. But the use of Vesuvius, after all, is to furnish us a background for the violet light at sundown, when the villages at its foot gleam like a silver fringe. I have become convinced of one thing: it is always best when you build a house to have it front toward a volcano, if you can. There is just that lazy activity about a volcano, ordinarily, that satisfies your demand for something that is not exactly dead, and yet does not disturb you.

Sometimes when I wake in the night,--though I don't know why one ever wakes in the night, or the daytime either here,--I hear the bell of the convent, which is in our demesne,--a convent which is suppressed, and where I hear, when I pass in the morning, the humming of a school. At first I tried to count the hour; but when the bell went on to strike seventeen, and even twenty-one o'clock, the absurdity of the thing came over me, and I wondered whether it was some frequent call to prayer for a feeble band of sisters remaining, some reminder of midnight penance and vigil, or whether it was not something more ghostly than that, and was not responded to by shades of nuns, who were wont to look out from their narrow latticed windows upon these same gardens, as long ago as when the beautiful Queen Joanna used to come down here to repent--if she ever did repent--of her wanton ways in Naples.

On one side of the garden is a suppressed monastery. The narrow front towards the sea has a secluded little balcony, where I like to fancy the poor orphaned souls used to steal out at night for a breath of fresh air, and perhaps to see, as I did one dark evening, Naples with its lights like a conflagration on the horizon. Upon the tiles of the parapet are cheerful devices, the crossbones tied with a cord, and the like. How many heavy-hearted recluses have stood in that secluded nook, and been tempted by the sweet, lulling sound of the waves below; how many have paced along this narrow terrace, and felt like prisoners who wore paths in the stone floor where they trod; and how many stupid louts have walked there, insensible to all the charm of it!

If I pass into the Tramontano garden, it is not to escape the presence of history, or to get into the modern world, where travelers are arriving, and where there is the bustle and proverbial discontent of those who travel to enjoy themselves. In the pretty garden, which is a constant surprise of odd nooks and sunny hiding-places, with ruins, and most luxuriant ivy, is a little cottage where, I am told in confidence, the young king of Bavaria slept three nights not very long ago. I hope he slept well. But more important than the sleep, or even death, of a king, is the birth of a poet, I take it; and within this inclosure, on the eleventh day of March, 1541, Torquato Tasso, most melancholy of men, first saw the light; and here was born his noble sister Cornelia, the descendants of whose union with the cavalier Spasiano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory of the poet green with the present generation. I am indebted to a gentleman who is of this lineage for many favors, and for precise information as to the position in the house that stood here of the very room in which Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in a memoir of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose careful researches have disproved the slipshod statements of the guidebooks, that the poet was born in a house which is still standing, farther to the west, and that the room has fallen into the sea. The descendant of the sister pointed out to me the spot on the terrace of the Tramontano where the room itself was, when the house still stood; and, of course, seeing is believing. The sun shone full upon it, as we stood there; and the air was full of the scent of tropical fruit and just-coming blossoms. One could not desire a more tranquil scene of advent into life; and the wandering, broken-hearted author of "Jerusalem Delivered " never found at court or palace any retreat so soothing as that offered him here by his steadfast sister.

If I were an antiquarian, I think I should have had Tasso born at the Villa Nardi, where I like best to stay, and where I find traces of many pilgrims from other countries. Here, in a little corner room on the terrace, Mrs. Stowe dreamed and wrote; and I expect, every morning, as I take my morning sun here by the gate, Agnes of Sorrento will come down the sweet-scented path with a basket of oranges on her head.

SEA AND SHORE