Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

Naples, March 2d.

If Lady Morgan wrote of her beloved Irish capital "dear, dirty Dublin," we may describe Naples less alliteratively in somewhat the same words, except that to American eyes the Neapolitan city is even dirtier and vastly more beautiful. Indeed, no words written nor pictures painted give any adequate conception of the blueness of the sea, the soft purple shades upon the mountains, and the fine transparency and lightness of this air. One breathes in gayety with every breath, a certain elasticity and joie de vivre which the filth, the noise, the bad odors, and even the hopeless poverty all around us are powerless to dispel.

From the Strada Vittorio Emanuele, where we are stopping, we look down upon a series of terraced gardens, some of them very poor little gardens with a few vegetables, among them the omnipresent and much beloved artichoke, the fennel, like a coarse celery, and lettuce. Roses are climbing all over the walls of these hillside gardens, and in many of them orange-trees are blooming, spreading around them a delicious perfume. Here on the heights we have none of the disadvantages of Naples, the noise, the unsavory odors, or the uncleanliness.

Above this strada, which is the name by which the Neapolitans call their streets, the hills tower for many feet, and way up on their crests are the Castle of St. Elmo and the old Carthusian monastery of San Martino. We visited San Martino the day after our arrival, because Zelphine had an irrepressible desire to get to the tip-top of everything and view both the city and bay from the heights above us. The ascent was made in one of the funicolari, cable trams, which are used so much over here. They are rather terrifying at first, but are said to be quite safe, and are, I believe, less dangerous than many of our elevators.

The Bay of Naples

The old monastery is now a museum, under the management of the Museo Nazionale, and contains many paintings, porcelains, carvings, and other antiques. We neglected the treasures within for the greater pleasure of wandering at will through the charming, picturesque cloisters, which are richly carved and of a stone warm and creamy in tone, so different from the heavy, dark cloisters one sees in England and elsewhere. Most of our morning was spent basking in the sunshine of the court; we could fancy the old monks enjoying, as we did, the genial warmth that in the Southern Italian winter is only to be found out of doors. The museum itself was damp, as are all the galleries at this season.

In this court are a number of handsome sarcophagi, with inscriptions and coats-of-arms carved in the marble; from hence we passed into the Belvedere, whose balconies command an exquisite view of the city and bay. We gazed long at the noble panorama spread before us, from Posilipo to the hill of Capodimonte. Over across the bay were Ischia and Capri, blue as its own grotto, with Sorrento's long point of land reaching out into the sea, and off in the far distance the snow-line of the Apennines. To our left, Vesuvius, with its three peaks, was smoking away as peacefully as a Hollander on his hooge stoep. Seeing them by day it is hard to believe that these fair blue hills could have wrought sudden destruction upon the cities of the plain; but last night, when flames flashed up skyward from the smoking crater, I must confess that we had some misgivings. When we beheld these danger-signals, as they seemed to us, we carried our fears and our queries to the padrone and the concierge, who both assured us, to their own satisfaction if not entirely to ours, that Vesuvius has never erupted in the direction of Naples, evidently feeling that Italian volcanoes, like Italian people, are not in the habit of changing their ways.

Standing upon the Belvedere of San Martino, we were able to form some idea of the great width of the bay, where just now "William's yacht," as one of our English friends always calls it, is riding at anchor. The Kaiser is making one of his rapid, semi-official, quite friendly, and wholly diplomatic visits to Rome, and his yacht awaits him here.