Saunterings

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> Saunterings


I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which he only
receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain.
A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned one
for my admiration.

As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please myself with
size, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round; and I
see, by a glance, that all the occupations in that neighborhood,
including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade.
The interest of the circle visibly increases; and others take such a
part in the transaction that I begin to doubt if the first man is,
after all, the proprietor.

At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There is
a little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have both
for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down the
oranges, amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My
offer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. I
can see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children of
the sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determine
upon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napoleon of
oranges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largest
oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me intently, and,
for the first time, pull out a piece of money. It is a two-sous
piece. I offer it for the four oranges.

"No, no, no, no, signor! Ah, signor! ah, signor!" in a chorus from
the whole crowd.

I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got somewhere near the
value; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, such
indignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small a
cause. It cannot be thought of; it is mere ruin! I am, in turn, as
firm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and
tender the money.

"No, never, never! The signor cannot be in earnest."

Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner,
befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down,
and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away.

There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost to a clamor. I
have not proceeded far, when a skinny old woman runs after me, and
begs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.

The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me is
intently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for four
sous. I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. I
will give two sous for the original four, and not a centesimo more.
That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewed
conference; but at last the proprietor relents; and, with the look of
one who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrifice
himself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead,
the crowd disperses, and the street is as quiet as ever; when I walk
away, bearing my hard-won treasures.

A little while after, as I sat upon the outer wall of the terrace of
the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges were
taken from my pockets by Americans; so that I am prevented from
making any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians.

There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons at the village of
Massa, through which travelers are shown by a surly fellow, who keeps
watch of his trees, and has a bulldog lurking about for the unwary.
I hate to see a bulldog in a fruit orchard. I have eaten a good many
oranges there, and been astonished at the boughs of immense lemons
which bend the trees to the ground. I took occasion to measure one
of the lemons, called a citron-lemon, and found its circumference to
be twenty-one inches one way by fifteen inches the other,--about as
big as a railway conductor's lantern. These lemons are not so sour
as the fellow who shows them: he is a mercenary dog, and his prices
afford me no clew to the just value of oranges.

I like better to go to a little garden in the village of Meta, under
a sunny precipice of rocks overhung by the ruined convent of
Camaldoli. I turn up a narrow lane, and push open the wooden door in
the garden of a little villa. It is a pretty garden; and, besides
the orange and lemon-trees on the terrace, it has other fruit-trees,
and a scent of many flowers. My friend, the gardener, is sorting
oranges from one basket to another, on a green bank, and evidently
selling the fruit to some women, who are putting it into bags to
carry away.

When he sees me approach, there is always the same pantomime. I
propose to take some of the fruit he is sorting. With a knowing air,
and an appearance of great mystery, he raises his left hand, the palm
toward me, as one says hush. Having dispatched his business, he
takes an empty basket, and with another mysterious flourish, desiring
me to remain quiet, he goes to a storehouse in one corner of the
garden, and returns with a load of immense oranges, all soaked with
the sun, ripe and fragrant, and more tempting than lumps of gold. I
take one, and ask him if it is sweet. He shrugs his shoulders,
raises his hands, and, with a sidewise shake of the head, and a look
which says, How can you be so faithless? makes me ashamed of my
doubts.

I cut the thick skin, which easily falls apart and discloses the
luscious quarters, plump, juicy, and waiting to melt in the mouth. I
look for a moment at the rich pulp in its soft incasement, and then
try a delicious morsel. I nod. My gardener again shrugs his
shoulders, with a slight smile, as much as to say, It could not be
otherwise, and is evidently delighted to have me enjoy his fruit. I
fill capacious pockets with the choicest; and, if I have friends with
me, they do the same. I give our silent but most expressive
entertainer half a franc, never more; and he always seems surprised
at the size of the largesse. We exhaust his basket, and he proposes
to get more.

When I am alone, I stroll about under the heavily-laden trees, and
pick up the largest, where they lie thickly on the ground, liking to
hold them in my hand and feel the agreeable weight, even when I can
carry away no more. The gardener neither follows nor watches me; and
I think perhaps knows, and is not stingy about it, that more valuable
to me than the oranges I eat or take away are those on the trees
among the shining leaves. And perhaps he opines that I am from a
country of snow and ice, where the year has six hostile months, and
that I have not money enough to pay for the rich possession of the
eye, the picture of beauty, which I take with me.




FASCINATION

There are three places where I should like to live; naming them in
the inverse order of preference,--the Isle of Wight, Sorrento, and
Heaven. The first two have something in common, the almost mystic
union of sky and sea and shore, a soft atmospheric suffusion that
works an enchantment, and puts one into a dreamy mood. And yet there
are decided contrasts. The superabundant, soaking sunshine of
Sorrento is of very different quality from that of the Isle of Wight.
On the island there is a sense of home, which one misses on this
promontory, the fascination of which, no less strong, is that of a
southern beauty, whose charms conquer rather than win. I remember
with what feeling I one day unexpectedly read on a white slab, in the
little inclosure of Bonchurch, where the sea whispered as gently as
the rustle of the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. Could there
be any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit?
There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not have
anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was
his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up to
the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have led
him by a spell he could not break.

I am sometimes in doubt what is the spell of Sorrento, and half
believe that it is independent of anything visible. There is said to
be a fatal enchantment about Capri. The influences of Sorrento are
not so dangerous, but are almost as marked. I do not wonder that the
Greeks peopled every cove and sea-cave with divinities, and built
temples on every headland and rocky islet here; that the Romans built
upon the Grecian ruins; that the ecclesiastics in succeeding
centuries gained possession of all the heights, and built convents
and monasteries, and set out vineyards, and orchards of olives and
oranges, and took root as the creeping plants do, spreading
themselves abroad in the sunshine and charming air. The Italian of
to-day does not willingly emigrate, is tempted by no seduction of
better fortune in any foreign clime. And so in all ages the swarming
populations have clung to these shores, filling all the coasts and
every nook in these almost inaccessible hills with life. Perhaps the
delicious climate, which avoids all extremes, sufficiently accounts
for this; and yet I have sometimes thought there is a more subtle
reason why travelers from far lands are spellbound here, often
against will and judgment, week after week, month after month.

However this may be, it is certain that strangers who come here, and
remain long enough to get entangled in the meshes which some
influence, I know not what, throws around them, are in danger of
never departing. I know there are scores of travelers, who whisk
down from Naples, guidebook in hand, goaded by the fell purpose of
seeing every place in Europe, ascend some height, buy a load of the
beautiful inlaid woodwork, perhaps row over to Capri and stay five
minutes in the azure grotto, and then whisk away again, untouched by
the glamour of the place. Enough that they write "delightful spot"
in their diaries, and hurry off to new scenes, and more noisy life.
But the visitor who yields himself to the place will soon find his
power of will departing. Some satirical people say, that, as one
grows strong in body here, he becomes weak in mind. The theory I do
not accept: one simply folds his sails, unships his rudder, and waits
the will of Providence, or the arrival of some compelling fate. The
longer one remains, the more difficult it is to go. We have a
fashion--indeed, I may call it a habit--of deciding to go, and of
never going. It is a subject of infinite jest among the habitues of
the villa, who meet at table, and who are always bidding each other
good-by. We often go so far as to write to Naples at night, and
bespeak rooms in the hotels; but we always countermand the order
before we sit down to breakfast. The good-natured mistress of
affairs, the head of the bureau of domestic relations, is at her
wits' end, with guests who always promise to go and never depart.
There are here a gentleman and his wife, English people of decision
enough, I presume, in Cornwall, who packed their luggage before
Christmas to depart, but who have not gone towards the end of
February,--who daily talk of going, and little by little unpack their
wardrobe, as their determination oozes out. It is easy enough to
decide at night to go next day; but in the morning, when the soft
sunshine comes in at the window, and when we descend and walk in the
garden, all our good intentions vanish. It is not simply that we do
not go away, but we have lost the motive for those long excursions
which we made at first, and which more adventurous travelers indulge
in. There are those here who have intended for weeks to spend a day
on Capri. Perfect day for the expedition succeeds perfect day,
boatload after boatload sails away from the little marina at the base
of the cliff, which we follow with eves of desire, but--to-morrow
will do as well. We are powerless to break the enchantment.

I confess to the fancy that there is some subtle influence working
this sea-change in us, which the guidebooks, in their enumeration of
the delights of the region, do not touch, and which maybe reaches
back beyond the Christian era. I have always supposed that the story
of Ulysses and the Sirens was only a fiction of the poets, intended
to illustrate the allurements of a soul given over to pleasure, and
deaf to the call of duty and the excitement of a grapple with the
world. But a lady here, herself one of the entranced, tells me that
whoever climbs the hills behind Sorrento, and looks upon the Isle of
the Sirens, is struck with an inability to form a desire to depart
from these coasts. I have gazed at those islands more than once, as
they lie there in the Bay of Salerno; and it has always happened that
they have been in a half-misty and not uncolored sunlight, but not so
draped that I could not see they were only three irregular rocks, not
far from shore, one of them with some ruins on it. There are neither
sirens there now, nor any other creatures; but I should be sorry to
think I should never see them again. When I look down on them, I can
also turn and behold on the other side, across the Bay of Naples, the
Posilipo, where one of the enchanters who threw magic over them is
said to lie in his high tomb at the opening of the grotto. Whether
he does sleep in his urn in that exact spot is of no moment. Modern
life has disillusioned this region to a great extent; but the romance
that the old poets have woven about these bays and rocky promontories
comes very easily back upon one who submits himself long to the
eternal influences of sky and sea which made them sing. It is all
one,--to be a Roman poet in his villa, a lazy friar of the Middle
Ages toasting in the sun, or a modern idler, who has drifted here out
of the active currents of life, and cannot make up his mind to
depart.




MONKISH PERCHES

On heights at either end of the Piano di Sorrento, and commanding it,
stood two religious houses: the Convent of the Carnaldoli to the
northeast, on the crest of the hill above Meta; the Carthusian
Monastery of the Deserto, to the southwest, three miles above
Sorrento. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have for the
taste of the monks of the Middle Ages. They invariably secured the
best places for themselves. They seized all the strategic points;
they appropriated all the commanding heights; they knew where the sun
would best strike the grapevines; they perched themselves wherever
there was a royal view. When I see how unerringly they did select
and occupy the eligible places, I think they were moved by a sort of
inspiration. In those days, when the Church took the first choice in
everything, the temptation to a Christian life must have been strong.

The monastery at the Deserto was suppressed by the French of the
first republic, and has long been in a ruinous condition. Its
buildings crown the apex of the highest elevation in this part of the
promontory: from its roof the fathers paternally looked down upon the
churches and chapels and nunneries which thickly studded all this
region; so that I fancy the air must have been full of the sound of
bells, and of incense perpetually ascending. They looked also upon
St. Agata under the hill, with a church bigger than itself; upon more
distinct Massa, with its chapels and cathedral and overlooking feudal
tower; upon Torca, the Greek Theorica, with its Temple of Apollo, the
scene yet of an annual religious festival, to which the peasants of
Sorrento go as their ancestors did to the shrine of the heathen god;
upon olive and orange orchards, and winding paths and wayside shrines
innumerable. A sweet and peaceful scene in the foreground, it must
have been, and a whole horizon of enchantment beyond the sunny
peninsula over which it lorded: the Mediterranean, with poetic Capri,
and Ischia, and all the classic shore from Cape Misenum, Baiae, and
Naples, round to Vesuvius; all the sparkling Bay of Naples; and on
the other side the Bay of Salerno, covered with the fleets of the
commerce of Amalfi, then a republican city of fifty thousand people;
and Grecian Paestum on the marshy shore, even then a ruin, its
deserted porches and columns monuments of an architecture never
equaled elsewhere in Italy. Upon this charming perch, the old
Carthusian monks took the summer breezes and the winter sun, pruned
their olives, and trimmed their grapevines, and said prayers for the
poor sinners toiling in the valleys below.

The monastery is a desolate old shed now. We left our donkeys to eat
thistles in front, while we climbed up some dilapidated steps, and
entered the crumbling hall. The present occupants are half a dozen
monks, and fine fellows too, who have an orphan school of some twenty
lads. We were invited to witness their noonday prayers. The
flat-roofed rear buildings extend round an oblong, quadrangular
space, which is a rich garden, watered from capacious tanks, and
coaxed into easy fertility by the impregnating sun. Upon these roofs
the brothers were wont to walk, and here they sat at peaceful
evening. Here, too, we strolled; and here I could not resist the
temptation to lie an unheeded hour or two, soaking in the benignant
February sun, above every human concern and care, looking upon a land
and sea steeped in romance. The sky was blue above; but in the south
horizon, in the direction of Tunis, were the prismatic colors. Why
not be a monk, and lie in the sun?

One of the handsome brothers invited us into the refectory, a place
as bare and cheerless as the feeding-room of a reform school, and set
before us bread and cheese, and red wine, made by the monks. I
notice that the monks do not water their wine so much as the osteria
keepers do; which speaks equally well for their religion and their
taste. The floor of the room was brick, the table plain boards, and
the seats were benches; not much luxury. The monk who served us was
an accomplished man, traveled, and master of several languages. He
spoke English a little. He had been several years in America, and
was much interested when we told him our nationality.

"Does the signor live near Mexico?"

"Not in dangerous proximity," we replied; but we did not forfeit his
good opinion by saying that we visited it but seldom.

Well, he had seen all quarters of the globe: he had been for years a
traveler, but he had come back here with a stronger love for it than
ever; it was to him the most delightful spot on earth, he said. And
we could not tell him where its equal is. If I had nothing else to
do, I think I should cast in my lot with him,--at least for a week.

But the monks never got into a cozier nook than the Convent of the
Camaldoli. That also is suppressed: its gardens, avenues, colonnaded
walks, terraces, buildings, half in ruins. It is the level surface
of a hill, sheltered on the east by higher peaks, and on the north by
the more distant range of Great St. Angelo, across the valley, and is
one of the most extraordinarily fertile plots of ground I ever saw.
The rich ground responds generously to the sun. I should like to
have seen the abbot who grew on this fat spot. The workmen were busy
in the garden, spading and pruning.

A group of wild, half-naked children came about us begging, as we sat
upon the walls of the terrace,--the terrace which overhangs the busy
plain below, and which commands the entire, varied, nooky promontory,
and the two bays. And these children, insensible to beauty, want
centesimi!

In the rear of the church are some splendid specimens of the
umbrella-like Italian pine. Here we found, also, a pretty little
ruin,--it might be Greek and--it might be Druid for anything that
appeared, ivy-clad, and suggesting a religion older than that of the
convent. To the east we look into a fertile, terraced ravine; and
beyond to a precipitous brown mountain, which shows a sharp outline
against the sky; halfway up are nests of towns, white houses,
churches, and above, creeping along the slope, the thread of an
ancient road, with stone arches at intervals, as old as Caesar.

We descend, skirting for some distance the monastery walls, over
which patches of ivy hang like green shawls. There are flowers in
profusion, scented violets, daisies, dandelions, and crocuses, large
and of the richest variety, with orange pistils, and stamens purple
and violet, the back of every alternate leaf exquisitely penciled.

We descend into a continuous settlement, past shrines, past brown,
sturdy men and handsome girls working in the vineyards; we descend
--but words express nothing--into a wonderful ravine, a sort of refined
Swiss scene,--high, bare steps of rock butting over a chasm, ruins,
old walls, vines, flowers. The very spirit of peace is here, and it
is not disturbed by the sweet sound of bells echoed in the passes.
On narrow ledges of precipices, aloft in the air where it would seem
that a bird could scarcely light, we distinguish the forms of men and
women; and their voices come down to us. They are peasants cutting
grass, every spire of which is too precious to waste.

We descend, and pass by a house on a knoll, and a terrace of olives
extending along the road in front. Half a dozen children come to the
road to look at us as we approach, and then scamper back to the house
in fear, tumbling over each other and shouting, the eldest girl
making good her escape with the baby. My companion swings his hat,
and cries, "Hullo, baby!" And when we have passed the gate, and are
under the wall, the whole ragged, brown-skinned troop scurry out upon
the terrace, and run along, calling after us, in perfect English, as
long as we keep in sight, "Hullo, baby!" "Hullo, baby!" The next
traveler who goes that way will no doubt be hailed by the
quick-witted natives with this salutation; and, if he is of a
philological turn, he will probably benefit his mind by running the
phrase back to its ultimate Greek roots.




A DRY TIME

For three years, once upon a time, it did not rain in Sorrento. Not
a drop out of the clouds for three years, an Italian lady here, born
in Ireland, assures me. If there was an occasional shower on the
Piano during all that drought, I have the confidence in her to think
that she would not spoil the story by noticing it.

The conformation of the hills encircling the plain would be likely to
lead any shower astray, and discharge it into the sea, with whatever
good intentions it may have started down the promontory for Sorrento.
I can see how these sharp hills would tear the clouds asunder, and
let out all their water, while the people in the plain below watched
them with longing eyes. But it can rain in Sorrento. Occasionally
the northeast wind comes down with whirling, howling fury, as if it
would scoop villages and orchards out of the little nook; and the
rain, riding on the whirlwind, pours in drenching floods. At such
times I hear the beat of the waves at the foot of the rock, and feel
like a prisoner on an island. Eden would not be Eden in a rainstorm.

The drought occurred just after the expulsion of the Bourbons from
Naples, and many think on account of it. There is this to be said in
favor of the Bourbons: that a dry time never had occurred while they
reigned,--a statement in which all good Catholics in Sorrento will
concur. As the drought went on, almost all the wells in the place
dried up, except that of the Tramontano and the one in the suppressed
convent of the Sacred Heart,--I think that is its name.

It is a rambling pile of old buildings, in the center of the town,
with a courtyard in the middle, and in it a deep well, boring down I
know not how far into the rock, and always full of cold sweet water.
The nuns have all gone now; and I look in vain up at the narrow slits
in the masonry, which served them for windows, for the glance of a
worldly or a pious eye. The poor people of Sorrento, when the public
wells and fountains had gone dry, used to come and draw at the
Tramontano; but they were not allowed to go to the well of the
convent, the gates were closed. Why the government shut them I
cannot see: perhaps it knew nothing of it, and some stupid official
took the pompous responsibility. The people grumbled, and cursed the
government; and, in their simplicity, probably never took any steps
to revoke the prohibitory law. No doubt, as the government had
caused the drought, it was all of a piece, the good rustics thought.

For the government did indirectly occasion the dry spell. I have the
information from the Italian lady of whom I have spoken. Among the
first steps of the new government of Italy was the suppression of the
useless convents and nunneries. This one at Sorrento early came
under the ban. It always seemed to me almost a pity to rout out this
asylum of praying and charitable women, whose occupation was the
encouragement of beggary and idleness in others, but whose prayers
were constant, and whose charities to the sick of the little city
were many. If they never were of much good to the community, it was
a pleasure to have such a sweet little hive in the center of it; and
I doubt not that the simple people felt a genuine satisfaction, as
they walked around the high walls, in believing that pure prayers
within were put up for them night and day; and especially when they
waked at night, and heard the bell of the convent, and knew that at
that moment some faithful soul kept her vigils, and chanted prayers
for them and all the world besides; and they slept the sounder for it
thereafter. I confess that, if one is helped by vicarious prayer, I
would rather trust a convent of devoted women (though many of them
are ignorant, and some of them are worldly, and none are fair to see)
to pray for me, than some of the houses of coarse monks which I have
seen.