The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner


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 are
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

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.