26 - Sybil Fitzgerald, "Naples" (1904)

Naples, painted by Augustine Fitzgerald, described by Sybil Fitzgerald, published by Adam & Charles Black, London, 1904

 

Chapter 1 – Naples

“Où sont nés le maccaroni

Et la musique.”

Alfred de Musset

 

Naples and the province lying round it may be regarded as an epitome of the Art and Nature. Here “winter is a word, and the commonest objects are as lovely as the rarest.” Yet, in comparison with the mass of literature and art produced under the influence of Central Italy, little has been inspired by the South. There is, as it were, an invisible borderland across Italy, dividing the country loved by our modern poets, painters, and sculptors, from the land loved by the ancient Greeks. It is another world, and almost another race inhabit it. Its loveliness has grown with time into a proverb, and no longer inspires to song as of old. “The ideal of Nature exceeds that of man,” wrote Hans Andersen years ago, when he found himself in this fairy world of his dreams. It is justly said that a visit to Italy has been the turning point in many lives, and certainly great careers of the last century bear out the assertion. Since that golden age of poetry when Shelley and Keats, Landor and the Brownings, Ruskin and a whole world of gifted travelers, poured into Italy, the North of Europe has felt a passionate attraction toward the South. And if the intellectual charm of Naples is more illusive than that of Rome or Florence, its beauty, at least, has no rival. There is something in the soft and limpid loveliness of the Bay of Naples that may well appeal to our Northern races with the intensity of a passion. I do not mean to include the life there—the life of the great, sordid “Paris” of Italy, which, with its depths of poverty, vice, and misery, lies like a great shadow in this world of sunshine—but only speak of the natural scenery, which embraces even these dark things with such tenderness. It is a beauty which the hand of man cannot destroy. The midland sea is as blue, the curves of the bay are as sweeping, as in the days when lovers of Nature heard there the voices and the songs of their Gods.

To approach Naples to the best advantage, you must go by sea. A wide view is before us of the headlands, softened by distance, and of the harbor, which lies like a great opal reflecting colors and sunshine as glowing as those of the East, and yet far softer. There is something Homeric in the setting of this cluster of sea-washed towns, extending in a wide half-circle from Posillipo to Sorrento. In the near background rises the most celebrated volcano in the world, purple Vesuvius, whose raveled cloud extends across the heavens. No longer does the luxuriant growth of the South clothe the summit with the vineyards of long ago, when gardens crept up to the very mouth of the crater, when mossy grass encircled it as with a velvet belt, and the rose-colored homes of the inhabitants clustered round its knees as closely as they had clustered in the thoughtless days of Pompeiian splendor. The molten lava upon its sides has taken weird and fantastic shapes, which have been likened to a confused mass of fallen horses and riders contorted upon a field of battle. One hardy flower sill lingers there—

 

“La qual null’altro allegra arbor nè fiore

Tuoi cespi solitari in torno spargi,

Odorata ginestra.”

 

So wrote the greatest of Italy’s nineteenth-century poets before the snowy cloud above the mountain had again darkened to blood-red, and before again its fiery tongue had licked away the persistent trace of vegetation. Well may the sleep of Vesuvius be likened to “some great trance, the ages coming and going all the while.”

The eruption of 1631 produced much Neapolitan literature, poetical and scientific. The following is a free translation of one of the three somewhat overwrought poems on Vesuvius which were written at that time by Gian Battista Basile, author of the Pentamerone, whose works are now very rare:

 

“With strenuous throb of fire and mighty aim,

The earth is furrowed as by monstrous plough;

Gathered to its breast the fire seeds now

Gush forth in fervent rivers of liquid flame.

Thence to fertilize, the swift hours bear

Their amplitude of ashes to the shore

Where the Tyrrhenian sea receives once more

A wasted harvest of profound despair.

But, e’en though mortals suffer vital harm,

Great Vesuvius, exhausted in its turn,

Knows no relief for all those wounds that burn

Beneath the settling cinders, white and calm;

Nor from the stupor of its fiery breath

Can rend apart Hell’s images—and Death.”

 

The splendid harbor of Naples seems entitled by Nature to be a greater shipping port than it is. But the Neapolitan is often his own enemy, and, in spite of the efforts of his country towards advance, is not sufficiently lavish in his labor. He is content to live on a crust of bread rather than better himself. Misery in this blazing sunshine loses more than half its horrors, and much of the pity given to the poor is wasted. A lady told me that one day, while walking along the shore, she saw a ragged and half-starved man lying on the sand. Thinking that he would be only too thankful to earn a few soldi, she asked him to carry her box and camp-stool for her.

“Grazie, Signora, ma ho già mangiato oggi,” was the answer.

Similarly, I have been told of an Italian baker who happened to make a certain biscuit which gradually became a kind of “Sally Lunn” in popularity among the foreign residents. It brought him an increased clientèle, and his fortune as a baker seemed assured; but one fine day the delightful little cakes were not forthcoming, and why?

“Alas, Signora, I had to cease making the dolci; so many ladies wanted them!”

But poverty has brought out much that is sympathetic in the character of the Neapolitans. A great traveler, who had profoundly studied human nature in many parts of the world, said that if he were to find himself alone, starving, and without a penny, he would prefer of all places to find himself in the slums of Naples. So high an opinion had he formed of this apparently degraded kind of people. One starving man will share his wretched meal of bread and an onion with another, and both will laugh and joke the while, as if it were a meal fit for a king. Misery never deadens their sense of life and amusement; and so ungovernable is their love of pleasure, they will pawn or sell their last possession to go to a Festa. A woman will sell her bed to buy a worthy dress in which to appear at her daughter’s wedding, or for a first communion; and to bury her dead with pomp the people will resort to the last and most touching sacrifices. Their sense of honor is often as keen as ours, though different in kind—for the knife is ever ready to play a part in uit. “They belong, indeed, to the country that uses the knife.” Brothers will defend their sisters’ virtue, and husbands their wives’ good name, at the cost of their lives, and a wrong committed against their women is avenged to the death. Their natures are so passionate that only too easily does tragedy enter into their life; but, fortunately or unfortunately, they soon forget. Unlike the Sicilians, the Neapolitan poor are people without memories. If today be sunny, why remember that yesterday was dark with clouds?

But, if they are among the most passionate of people, they are also the least sentimental, mixing up their love affairs and their money questions with an ingeniousness which would embarrass the most practical bourgeoisie of other countries. The young girl hastens to value her bethrothal ring, so that she may purchase a gift in return of not more than a third of his value, that being considered sufficient. The deliberation with which gifts are made robs them of any poetry they might have, and the dot is even more openly discussed in Naples than in Paris. The feeling for money is a very curious study here, and it is sometimes hard to detect how far it is purely practical. To hide the lack of it, or to indulge the love to show, the poor people have recourse to absurd measures. The wedding presents are often merely lent for the occasion; perhaps even the jewels are hired from shops. At one time families owned carriage doors painted with their arms, which were fitted into hired vehicles. In one of the Neapolitan dialect plays, one of the characters is made to say,

 

“Take away my honor, but leave me my purse!”

 

Whether or not this expresses the sentiment of certain classes in Naples, all I can say is that the people seem to me remarkably generous, and generosity among the poor is proverbial.

Out of his own country, and far from the corrupt influence of the Camorra, which undermines energy and independence, the Neapolitan is a hard-working man. In every country in the world he might be traced, and no great works are ever completed to which Italian labor does not contribute. But out of their country, as in it, the Italian laborer is always underpaid. Because he can manage to subsist on cheaper food and less meat than the workman of another land, he is obliged to gain less in proportion. The injustice of such treatment is obvious. Abstinence from drink has never lessened a man’s wages in England or elsewhere; but the Italian laborer must pay for his frugality.

The last time we visited Naples we decided to put up at Bertolini’s new Palace Hotel, which is on the highest point, overlooking the whole town. For charm of position it is perhaps unique in all Europe. The rocky height on which it stands has been tunneled by the shaft of a lift which carries its visitors up through the solid rock into the hotel itself, hundreds of feet above—a remarkable feat of engineering. The drive rapidly takes us out of the teeming a breathless town—out of the streets which might have been laid, for all the modern comfort they provide, with the clumsy stones which paved Pompeii. Leaving on our right the eccentric gray castle which has lately spring upon the amazed eyes of all who know Naples, from the solid rock, we follow a winding road towards the Parco Griffeo, passing by the private gardens of many villas into which we can just glimpse. They are filled with aloes, acacia trees, palms and roses; wild geraniums bloom on the road. From the terrace of the hotel a splendid panorama is at our feet. The great sordid city, encircled by its five castles, lies half-hidden from our view. Far away the white and rose-tinted villas of Posillipo glitter in the sun, and almost lost in the blue haze of the sea lie the dream-like islands of Ischia and Capri. I know not what there is in the lines of the headlands and the contours of the islands that continually reminds one of the great Greek wanderer.

Above the hotel on the Vomero is situated the beautiful Villa Floridiana, presented by Ferdinand I. to Lucia Migliaccio, a Sicilian window. A beautiful and, I believe, unique, miniature of this lady is seen in the Filangieri Museum, in which she is represented wearing a red turban and sash, with a face pensively gentle. Ferdinand must have had a strong infatuation for her. She was over forty when he married her, clandestinely, and the funeral service for his dead Queen were still going on in the churches. Perhaps he was glad at last to have a wife genuinely feminine, and not, as his former spouse had been, “il suolo uomo del regno di Napoli.”

The villa was fitted up with most extravagant luxury. It possessed a theater, a coffee-house, even a tiny temple; the whole of the grounds were alive with birds, among them swans and pheasants, while deer and even wild animals filled the park. This exotic character has, of course, vanished, and the beautiful villa is now the property of a foreigner. The view from the terrace, like all the views from the Vomero, has something singularly tranquil in it, and it is a spot which has ever been peculiarly attractive to Neapolitans.

Near the Floridiana, and once a part of it, stands the pretty Villa Lucia, which, like so many bits of the Parco Griffeo, has passed into private hands. It is said to have changed hands on one occasion because the wife of the owner wearied of having “une cuvette bleu” eternally under her eyes. In its garden may still be seen the marble fountain with an allegorical group composed of a figure posing a garland on Love. Through the hole of the garland the sun-ray passes, and marks constantly the date of the marriage of the king and the Floridia.

Here, far above the town itself, the air is decidedly purer than on the sea-shore, and the breeze is exquisitely scented. In the evening the view is surprisingly beautiful. To the west is the afterglow to the sunset, and the light of the rising moon spreads a silver halo round the crest of Vesuvius, where a red glow of flame throbs from time to time towards the sky. The city below is like a vast sea of electric stars. Here is one shooting down the hill, and passing away beneath us—the electric tram which follows the curve of the Corso. Beyond lies the dark sea upon which the moonlight will soon be trembling.

 

“O, balmy nights of Naples! It is but wayward indulgence,

If for a few swift moments the revelling heart is oblivious

For thy fair sake of St. Peter, of e’en the divine Pantheon,

Ay, and of Monte Mario? And thou, o Villa Pamphili,

E’en thy fountains of crystal, thy laurel-dimmed paths are forgotten.”

 

But for those who wish to study the life and ways of the people the Corso is too far away from the town, and too far from the picturesque life of the fishermen, who are a great feature of Naples, and of all the little fishing towns along the shore. Crowds of idlers, leaning over the sea wall, seem never weary of watching the hauling in of the nets, which are very large and stretch far out to sea. Sometimes as many as twenty men will be hauling the same rope, and the operation seems to go on for hours; but I myself have never “been in at the finish.” If interested, the loiterers looking on will often lend a hand, and the scene is full of animation. These fishermen are as dark as the Pompeiian bronzes in their Naples Museum, and a breath of the picturesque spirit of antiquity seems to touch us in looking at them. But the genius such forms once inspired seems asleep. The artistic character of a race undergoes changes as inexplicable as its political development. “O, com’è bello!” says the poorest peasant before any beautiful object, and no doubt the sense of beauty is as alert in these southern races as in the Graeco-Roman workmen of the Roman Empire. But the sacred fire of creative enthusiasm is extinguished. The tradition of the past overshadows the production of the present.

The unity of Italy has given her youth only in name and political combinations; but her traditions, social and artistic, seem to fetter her to the past, and are more of an obstacle than an assistance to her progress. At least, this is the impression strongly borne in upon one from personal contact with the artists of the country and the representatives of its social life. Thus, a country follows mysteriously a law of evolution, the secret of which has always defied the critic of art as well as the historian.

The word “decadence,” which is generally used to cover the period of a decline in art, is here inadequate. We have only to turn into the Museum of Naples to discover the chef d’oeuvres of sculpture which were produced in the distinctly decadent age of the Roman Empire. In Italy there is now a distinct national advance in which the commercial conditions of the country are steadily improving, while science is flourishing and education becoming more general; yet this period is almost sterile of artistic production. Morelli may be named as a true and great exception; but he stands alone. An admirer of the “genie de la race Latine” can scarcely believe in its ultimate extinction. But it is a curious fact that the glorious days of Greek and Roman art (as of still more ancient periods) were days of slavery; and one is tempted to ask whether times of comparative liberty have not proved its death-warrant. Be this as it may, we must not forget that in the south of Italy languor and weakness of morale go hand in hand with acuteness and intellectual activity. The lower as well as the upper classes are naturally intelligent; and while the north of Italy is superior in moral qualities and steadiness, the Neapolitans are, by dint of their intelligence, and perhaps unscrupulousness, making themselves a strong political factor in modern Italy.

Crispi may be taken as the most brilliant type of what the South Italian may rise to. In spite of the attacks of many enemies, and in spite of his latter-day unpopularity, he was for many years not only the strongest statesman in Italy, but he succeeded in voicing the Nationalist aspirations of his whole country. Had he kept up with the times more resolutely, his power might have been far greater. But his ideas (to quote from one who knew him intimately) remained at the same point for the last twenty years of his life. In his conversation it was remarked that the names of the younger generation, however brilliant and promising, were passed over, while those of the compatriots of his own youth were continually on his lips. As though fossilized in his prime, Crispi remined a great man; but he grew no greater.

This influence of the South in politics is viewed with disfavor by the central Italians. They feel, with a certain justice, that the country, unified by the minds and the robust integrity of Cavour, Mazzini, Minghetti, and the other great leaders of the Rinascimento, is falling under the influence and the corruption of the South. Hence I have noticed an intense acrimony towards the Neapolitans in the minds of many of the Piedmontese and Tuscans, an acrimony which is returned with interest. The unity of Italy does not seem to have amalgamated the races of the North and South any more than has been the case in Austria-Hungary.

This supports the assertion that the moral slackness of the South does not go hand in hand with intellectual decay.

The Neapolitan is said to be able to conquer the difficulties of reading and writing in three months! Taine, in his critical work on Naple, says, “Il n’y a pas de race plus fine, plus prompte à saisir et à deviner toutes les idées. Le paysan, enrichi et éclairé, deviendra plus liberal.” These words were written before the unity of Italy. The Camorra itself is an extraordinary instance of misdirected intelligence. How any brain can control the countless threads of intrigue in this society is a mystery. The ramifications of this body completely undermine the foundations of law and order, and have made an effective secret-service system under the ostensible régime of justice and municipal government. Not very long ago the tourist season in Naples was threatened by rumors of several cases of plague in the town. Being for the moment in need of funds, the Camorra endeavored to levy blackmail on the hotel-keepers; but they met with a decided refusal. A few days afterwards the newspapers were filled with reports of an outbreak of plague, much to the damage of the hotels. Is it not curious that a large proportion of the governing intellect of Italy should have its origin in a town where such a condition of corruption exists? But secret societies have always played a great part in Italian history, and no doubt always will.

The stranger would hardly guess at these facts, which lie hidden beneath a smiling surface, beneath the volatile and buoyant spirit of the inhabitants. And herein, perhaps, we have the real charm of Naples! In its vivid contrast of light and shade, of mystery and well-being, of languor and buoyancy, there is the continual triumph of the sun over the shadow—in appearance at all events. The Sun God seems ever transfixing the serpent with his glittering shafts, and the luxuriant beauty of this land spreads a golden veil over the misery of its inhabitants.

 

“O Natura cortese,

Son questi i doni tuoi,

Questi i deletti sono

Che tu porgi ai mortali.”

 

Here where the leaves of the trees laugh and gentle breezes whisper through their branches, the drowsy toiler in the sun seems half unburdened of his care.

In Naples the same changes which have transformed Milan, and are transforming Florence, are at work. All artists must deplore them, for they mean the supplanting of the old and picturesque by the purely useful and banal. Where once narrow houses with roof-gardens, jutting corners, and quaintly constructed arches and stairs, broke the line of the narrow streets, are now seen rows of high modern buildings. Electric trams run through the streets, and much of the local color is gradually retreating to the older quarters of the town. In the last ten years this inevitable change has been creeping into all the smaller towns from Naples to Castellamare. Soon there will be a tramway along one of the most beautiful drives in the world—from Castellamare to Sorrento.

Hand in hand with progress we find curiously obsolete customs. In hired vehicles the horses are not driven with a bit. A small bar is fixed over the nose, and the rein is attached to it. This custom, however provincial it may appear, seems to give excellent results. The horse is quite under the control of the driver, and can drink with ease. I have often asked myself whether this primitive system may not have some advantage.

The natives’ general love of display is vividly seen in the trappings of their horses. What must be intended as an ornament, a thing like an enormous duster, is attached to the animal’s head. The tinkling of many bells relieves the monotony of the poor beast’s life, and the cracking of whips no doubt relieves it more. The decoration of the mules is still yet more bizarre. On the back of the animal—and again for apparently decorative effect—rises an enormous brass column, surmounted by a tuft or fur and adorned with brass nails. Between the ears and over the nose hangs a mass of soft light fur and red tassels. I know no instance in which so much unnecessary trouble has been taken for artistic effect. To see a long line of mules passing along the white and dusty roads, tinkling with many bells and gay with this fantastic blazonry, is to fancy oneself in the days of the Mamelukes—such a touch of Eastern magnificence is in the simple scene. The mules pass us, not only with the jingling of bells, but also with the drivers’ snatches of light-hearted song, the gay songs of Piedigrotta. It seems as if these popular canzonetta were a key to the people’s character. Every year a competition is held for them at the fete of the Madonna of Piedigrotta, and a prize awarded to the most successful composer. Imagine this scene on a starlit autumn night, the sea bright as polished crystal. Not a single cloud is in the sky, save that beautiful column rising like a stone pine above Vesuvius. The city and all around the bay is a glitter of lights. On the roads, white with dust, not less than some twenty thousand gaily-dressed men, women, and children are moving along, tired, overheated, but light-heartedly happy. It is the night of their greatest festa, a festa which will last with song and dange far into the cool morning hours! Over this mass of human beings, with their dark and laughing faces, play the colored lights which the boys carry and wave about on long sticks. Other lads carry poles garlanded with delicious fruit and gay with paper flowers. Sometimes the light gleams on the bright copper boilers which men bear cleverly poised in baskets on their heads: the vessels hold that great delicacy for the poor—snail soup! Along the sides of the road, especially around the Grand Hotel, are piled small mountains of water melons and Indian figs. It is a wonderful scene, and almost terrific is the noise! Thousands of men and boys are playing on their curious musical instruments—tin trumpets, wooden hammers, and large shells—which produce a strange booming roar. And stranger still is the instrument called the putipù, which gives an almost unearthly sound. This consists of an open terracotta jar, with sheep skin tightened over it, and a hole drilled in the skin, through which a stick is worked up and down. Where could this instrument have originated, if not in the East?

At midnight begins the procession of decorated carts full of dressed-up men and women. One by one these carts pausa, and the occupants in turn sing their new Piedigrotta songs. The seething crowds listen critically, approving or condemning; and early in the morning, while yet the stars are in the sky, the prizes are awarded to the composers whose songs have been adjudged the best.

Song and dance must be heard and seen together to be fully appreciated. The blue sky must be overhead; the radiant sea must be in the background; the faces of the singers must be olive-tinted and dark-eyed! Alas, the real tarantella dance-music and song are becoming spoiled by the critical taste of foreigners, who too often judge by the musical standard of their own countries. Could they be superseded by a higher music, this would not be so regrettable; but a bird’s note cannot be changed, and in these Piedigrotta songs a delicate national vein is heard, which, becoming extinct, would be followed by nothing but imitations from other countries. For long past there has existed here in the South a school of song which is quite unique; into it any introduction of orchestration is fatal. The mandolin, the guitar, the castanets—these are their natural instruments; and, strange as it may seem to critics, the rich and untrained voice, when accompanied only by these simple instruments, has a wild charm of its own, quickly lost in the midst of a more complicated orchestra. The violin, badly or indifferently played, has done more to destroy the charm of the native melodies than anything I know of.

The music and songs of the tarantella are rarely heard in Naples now, save by visitors at the hotels. Absurd bands of men and women, overdressed, and with exasperatingly sharp voices, still entertain them of an evening. But listening to a noisy stamping on parquet floors in overheated rooms, hearing the native songs accompanied by the town orchestra, is highly ridiculous. Only at Sorrento the tarantella still keeps something of its old charm. Of an evening the dancers take their places in the open courtyard of the hotel. Their background is a garde of orange and lemon trees and flowers, the breath of which perfumes the air deliciously. The stars twinkle in the dark blue sky, and the whole scene is lovely and poetical. The women are dressed in bright costumes of red and green, with white muslin aprons. Beads of glass are round their necks; gold and coral gleam in their ears. The figures are glittering in the semi-obscurity as they move against the dark trees. The castanets resound in the air, and we are carried away by the laughing music. A distinctly humorous element crops out in many of the songs, written, of course, in dialect. In one of the braying (and even the kicking) of the ass is imitated with drollery; in others a sadder and more plaintive note is struck, reminding one forcibly of the far-off, Arab origin of all the dances, which spread from Spain to Italy hundreds of years ago. Never do we hear the cheaply sentimental note; and as to the comic songs, although coarse and often full of double meanings, they have not the common vulgarity of our music-halls. Happily, the songs that are born among the people in any country, songs which are national in their origin, are always free from this element of our modern civilization.