Saunterings

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> Saunterings


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

It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which
encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere,
to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems.
practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into
heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there,
and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like
balloons in the hazy air. Sea and air and land here are all kin, I
suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The
contours of the shores and the outlines of the hills are as graceful
as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and
sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones
all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.

The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a
drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental
dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often
seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of
clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever
represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to
bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a
golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for
all these Mediterranean shores.

The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which
it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one
day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and
stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there
were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to
produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted
rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing
bow, and studied the high, receding shore. The picture is simple, a
precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of
uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a
deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove,
where a cluster of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the
precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas,
hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and
galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns,
natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and
it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy
mansion in this rocky front with a spade.

As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento,
with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives,
lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; and
soon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and the
olives also. These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring,
when the masses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fill
all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eye
reaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bare
precipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still to
the left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful
dip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida,
the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and rough
Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp and
clear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we get
under its rocky side.

Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of those
effects which are the despair of artists. I had been told that
twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color
vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner
bay, as we put off from shore. Ischia was one mass of violet color,
As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of
fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of
water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced,
glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what
seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The
colors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter's
palette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks of
eastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the stars
came out, crowding the sky with silver points.

Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspired
either by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulled
with new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs of
this coast. A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended
in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt of
excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was more
splash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there was
no harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was not
remarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is
very much here what it is in Naples. I have to keep saying to myself
that Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistake
noise for music.

The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let us
hope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whose
chapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silver
image of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marble
altar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five
times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different
times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things,
and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back
again,--an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is
worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about with
votive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, and
with coarse lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils of
ships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of the
deep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of the
image are worn quite smooth with kissing. Underneath it, at the back
of the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose the
bones of the holy man.


The whole shore is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is good
mousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content with
one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and
perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern,
circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final
resort of the antiquarians. This theory has kept me from entering
the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under the
Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or caves
of Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broad
interior flights of steps, which lead through galleries and
corridors, and high, vaulted passages, whence extend apartments and
caves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings,
where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats and
protecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn passage, as
if there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormous
fragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from
above.

Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where one
could sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay and
its shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lie
opposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gay
retinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us say
in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure or
warlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been trodden
for ages, by nobles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of
more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and
left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the
corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings,
quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place,
broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had
found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of
the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving
me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here
when it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past,
I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through the
narrow orange lanes.




ON TOP OF THE HOUSE

The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it
three feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very
much like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my
chair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.

I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the
heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one
gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great
elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out,
without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his
aerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive
nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in
parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless
composition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I
could distinguish the very house in Naples--that of Manso, Marquis of
Villa,--where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was
entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if
he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the
theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he
would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the
garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not
composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or it
would have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than it
is. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my
writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an
elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet
found.

I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should
look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a
white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and
the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person
delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs
of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the
plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of
the heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit
with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun,
which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I
remember such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting
sweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting
redder and softer day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit
of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it
is ripe, that the test is extending to other things. I saw a
gentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the same
manner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.

It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is
to-day. It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I
like the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an
illimitable opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am
nearer to it. There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which
I do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there
flecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and the
fishing-boats that have put out from the marina float in the most
dreamy manner. I fear that the fishermen who have made a show of
industry, and got away from their wives, who are busily weaving nets
on shore, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, and making
a day of it. And, as I look at them, I find myself debating which I
would rather be, a fisherman there in the boat, rocked by the swell,
and warmed by the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden on
the summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also soaked in
the sun. There is one other person, now that I think of it, who may
be having a good time to-day, though I do not know that I envy him.
His business is a new one to me, and is an occupation that one would
not care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it: it is being
carried about in a basket. As I went up the new Massa road the other
day, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman, with a large
shallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large man,
though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman asked
alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a man
in a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, she
had put him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of
the passing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature
thought that, if he got a new injury in this way, his value in the
beggar market would be increased. I do not mean to do this exemplary
wife any injustice; and I only suggest the idea in this land, where
every beggar who is born with a deformity has something to thank the
Virgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on your head in a
basket has something to recommend it, and is an exhibition of faith
on the one hand, and of devotion on the other, that is seldom met
with. Its consideration is commended to my countrywomen at home. It
is, at least, a new commentary on the apostolic remark, that the man
is the head of the woman. It is, in some respects, a happy division
of labor in the walk of life: she furnishes the locomotive power, and
he the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks abroad;
which reminds me that the sun is getting hot on my back. The little
bunch of bells in the convent tower is jangling out a suggestion of
worship, or of the departure of the hours. It is time to eat an
orange.

Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knew
him to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of the
bay is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze;
and the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit
is still distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column of
white smoke, greater in quantity than on any previous day of our
sojourn; and the sun turns it to silver. Above a long line of
ordinary looking clouds, float great white masses, formed of the
sulphurous vapor. This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny day
has an odd appearance; but it is easy enough, if one has such a
laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white smoke! It is
piled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the crater,
straight into the blue sky,--a pillar of cloud by day. One might sit
here all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious spring
singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to take possession
of the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily and
Tunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning has
gone; and I have written nothing.




THE PRICE OF ORANGES

If ever a northern wanderer could be suddenly transported to look
down upon the Piano di Sorrento, he would not doubt that he saw the
Garden of the Hesperides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller:
their branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the almond-trees
in full flower, and with the silver sheen of the olive leaves, the
oranges are apples of gold in pictures of silver. As I walk in these
sunken roads, and between these high walls, the orange boughs
everywhere hang over; and through the open gates of villas I look
down alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by the walk, and
the fruit above,--gardens of enchantment, with never a dragon, that I
can see, to guard them.

All the highways and the byways, the streets and lanes, wherever I
go, from the sea to the tops of the hills, are strewn with
orange-peel; so that one, looking above and below, comes back from a
walk with a golden dazzle in his eyes,--a sense that yellow is the
prevailing color. Perhaps the kerchiefs of the dark-skinned girls
and women, which take that tone, help the impression. The
inhabitants are all orange-eaters. The high walls show that the
gardens are protected with great care; yet the fruit seems to be as
free as apples are in a remote New England town about cider-time.

I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to ascertain the
price of oranges; not for purposes of exportation, nor yet for the
personal importation that I daily practice, but in order to give an
American basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths I
meet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets of
the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, as
large as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carrying
them to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots,
where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women are
cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes to England for
preserves. I am told that these oranges are sold for a couple of
francs a hundred. That seems to me so dear that I am not tempted
into any speculation, but stroll back to the Tramontano, in the
gardens of which I find better terms.

The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento oranges
are usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of the
fruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it is
that is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say,
if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),--or
he might as well eat a lemon. The mercenary aspect of my query does
not enter in here. I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of
the branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comes
off easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top bough
with a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, I
call it a cheap one. I can usually tell whether they are good by
splitting them open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare their
oranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and see
the yellow meat in the white casket. After you have eaten a few from
one tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but there
is nothing certain about it,--one bough that gets the sun will be
better than another that does not, and one half of an orange will
fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.

The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along the
lanes, don't cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think the
girls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile: and, in
that, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you
from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor. I
have no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have been
seeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves. As I walked
towards the heights, the other morning, and passed an orchard, the
gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, to
reach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he had
been picking. As an experiment on the price, I offered him a
two-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name of
money,--when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as I
liked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new red
Phrygian cap; and I had n't the heart to take advantage of his
generosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest. One
ought never to abuse generosity.

Another experience was of a different sort, and illustrates the
Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of
prices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its
long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of
the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a
handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood
untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would
measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the
owner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of the
neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies,
listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and
sauntered towards me.

"How much for this?" I ask.

"One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holding
up one finger.

I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether too much, in
fact, preposterous.

The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in an
amiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it in
his hand, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one, franc.