Naples, Past and Present

by Arthur H. Norway

This has been a long discourse. But if certain things happened a great while ago, is it my fault? Or again, am I to blame for the strange neglect of Italian history in schools? The lesson is done now, and the sun is still bright and hot on the Via Partenope. Even the enchanted Castle of the Egg, black and grim as it usually looks, has caught the glow, and is steeped and drowned in warm light. A quiver of haze hangs over the sea, tremulous and burning. The wind has dropped, and a midday silence has descended upon Naples. It is the hour when sacristans bar the church doors and seek the solace of slumber, when the vetturini congregate on the shady side of the piazza and cease to crack their whips at the sight of strangers. On the castle bridge a sentry paces to and fro. There are one or two restaurants below him in the shadow, neither good nor bad, but good enough; and I order my colazione in one which looks towards the sheer cliff of the Pizzofalcone, and from which towards my right I can look out upon the harbour, can catch a glimpse of the Castel Nuovo, the old royal dwelling of the Houses of Anjou and Aragon, and see beyond it the old city bathed in sunshine sloping to the curving sea.

The Pizzofalcone is the Falcon's Beak. If it were not too hot to think much about anything, I might perhaps detect the resemblance. But at this hour, in this city, and in face of this sun, one does not think; one sits and lets half realised ideas drift past as they will. The Pizzofalcone looks to me much like any other cliff, rather dangerously near the castle, which could easily be dominated from the height by even the smallest modern guns. There was once a villa of the Roman Lucullus on that height. Statesman and epicure, he had another on this island; or perhaps the two formed part of a single domain, which must have been rarely lovely in those days when waving pine trees filled the hollows of the cliff and the sea broke white and creamy on the strand of Santa Lucia. It was not this handsome quay stretching on beyond the castle which set the Neapolitans singing—

"Oh, dolce Napoli,

Oh, suol beato."

For the truth is that modern works of engineering have not yet proved as prolific in poetry as the abuses they replace, and the Neapolitans have not written about their sea-wall any song one half so sweet as that which was inspired by the pretty, solitary creek outside the city bounds, bad as it is understood to have been in morals. There were, and are still, caverns all along the cliffs of Santa Lucia which were sad places in the old day, full of riotous and evil people who resorted thither for the worst of ends. For this reason Don Pietro di Toledo, when he was Viceroy, ruined some and closed others, by which act he at once improved the morals of Naples and enriched its folklore, for nothing stimulated the imagination of the people so much as the idea that their caverns were lying empty and silent. They believe now that some are the haunt of witches, while others are filled with treasure. One or two are worth seeing still if a guide can be found to show them.

But I sat down here to talk of tragedies connected with this castle. Some people may think it would be better to do so within and not without the walls, and they are welcome to their opinion; but I have tried both courses and think not. The interior of the castle is badly modernised. The custodian is stupid and knows nothing. The old chapel is a kitchen, and when I went to see the spot where the spirit of Queen Helena wrote the word "revenge" upon the altar I found it full of soldier cooks washing potatoes for the garrison. The prisons are either forgotten or not shown. Inside the walls there is nothing but disillusion and regret.

Queen Helena was the young wife of Manfred, who, as I said above, was slain at Benevento, defending his kingdom against the butcher, Charles of Anjou. The poor girl was at Lucera with her children, when they brought her news that her husband, kingdom, and home were all lost; and her first natural impulse was to flee to the protection of her father, the Greek Emperor in Constantinople. So she took to horse, and rode down out of the hill country through the coast plains of Apulia, where but a few weeks earlier she had hunted and feasted with her lord, and so came to the port of Trani, where she had touched land and met the King in all the splendour of his retinue when she came from the east a happy bride. One can fancy with what fearfulness this little band of fugitives rode towards the sea, carrying with them the children of the slain King, and how often they must have turned their heads to watch lest they might see the spearpoints of Anjou flashing among the defiles of the mountains. At Trani surely they would find servants loyal enough to speed them on board ship before they cast themselves at the feet of the conqueror; and as she rode beneath the gateway of the white-walled town and saw the green Adriatic stretching far towards the shores of Greece, the Queen's heart must have leapt amidst its sorrow at the thought that she had brought her dead lord's boys in sight of safety and of freedom.

Alas, poor Queen! The whole land was turning like a flower to the sun! The Castellan of Trani spoke her fair. A month before he would have given all he had to gain her favour, and now—he did but beg her rest until a ship could be got ready, and instantly sent off tidings to the French. Ere morning mother and children were riding once more across the plain, their horses' heads turned from the sea, and their bridles guided by French hands. Neither the sorrow of the Queen nor the youth of the children touched the heart of Charles. He would have none of the blood of Manfred left in freedom, and Queen and children died after many years in prison.

Queen Helena was shut up in this castle for some years. Men say it was at Nocera that she died, but it must have been here that her noble spirit fretted most sorely against fate, bruising itself like a poor lark flapping against its prison bars. For in the corridors of this old castle her spirit used to walk on the eve of Ascension every year, pacing slowly from her cell to the chapel of the castle, where she wrote upon the altar the word "revenge" with finger dipped in blood. Nothing could erase those letters till the night of the Sicilian Vespers, when the French were hunted and slain in every street and alley of Palermo. After that dread act of vengeance wrought in her own capital city, the spirit of Queen Helena was never seen again.

It is in sight of these grey walls, which stood here before Naples was a kingdom, certainly in the year 1140, that every pageant and almost every tragedy in the long story of the city has passed by. In those days when dukes ruled Naples, and the age of Greek dominion was but just over, the castle was called "Castello del Salvatore," the Castle of the Saviour, with the addition of the words "near Naples," for the old walled city which made such valorous defences lay beyond the ridge. Sometimes, again, it is spoken of as "Castello Marino," a name which sufficiently explains itself; but nowhere is its present designation used in ancient documents until the year 1352, when it appears in the rules of the Order of the Holy Spirit, founded by Louis of Anjou, and appears, moreover, not only as "the Castle of the Egg," but as "the Castle of the Enchanted Egg," thus showing that the legend concerning the magical foundation of the fortress had gained strength enough to displace one, if not two, ancient titles, and attach itself inseparably to the spot.