CHAPTER XIX
NAPLES—POMPEII—ROME—THE GERMAN RESTER GOT RID OF—SOCIAL SUCCESS IN ROME—LEAVES FOR FLORENCE—BARTHOLDY AND THE NIOBE GROUP—LADY DILLON—THE WELLINGTON PALACE—PISA—TOUR IN THE NORTH—MEETS STACKELBERG AGAIN—RETURNS TO FLORENCE AND ROME—HOMEWARD BOUND—CONCLUSION.
With one exception there were no Englishmen, artists or others, in Naples at that time, but a number of Frenchmen, with some of whom Cockerell struck up a great intimacy. In spite of national feeling, which was running very high at the time, he got on very well with them, but he says in a letter from Rome they were dreadful time-servers in their political views. Of course it was a difficult moment for Frenchmen. After Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau in April 1814, they had had to accommodate themselves to a revival of the ancient monarchy, which could not be very satisfactory to anyone, and now Napoleon was back again in France. Between two such alternatives no wonder that their judgment oscillated; but to Cockerell—patriotic, enthusiastic, and troubled by no awkward dilemmas—their vacillation was unintelligible.
The one Englishman was Gell (afterwards Sir William), who speaks of a stay they made together at Pompeii as the pleasantest time he had spent in his three years' tour.
During this time Cockerell worked hard, and besides what he did which could only be of use to himself, he made himself so familiar with Pompeii that Gell proposed to him to join him in writing an itinerary of that place.
Altogether, leaving Athens on the 15th of January, it was six months before Cockerell got to Rome. Between Naples and Rome the country seems to have been in a very unquiet state, and Carl Rester, who was still with him, writes afterwards: "You remember how anxious about brigands we all were on the journey."
Soon after they arrived, Rester, who must by now have become an irksome burden, started from Rome to walk to his own home at Frankfort. He took a long time about it, but he got there at last in December, only to find his family so reduced by the wars that he determined, as he says, not to be a burden to them, but to show his gratitude to his benefactor by asking for more favours and throwing himself as a burden upon him. So he determined to extend his walk to England. Before leaving his native town, however, he says he published in the local newspaper the following strange tribute to Cockerell's generosity:
"Magna Britannia victoriosa, gloriosa, bene merens, felix. Carolus Robertus Cockerell nobilis Anglus et moribus et scientiis praeclarus me infelicem perditum Germaniae prolem, primis diebus 1815 e Morea barbaris deportavit. Ad Corfum deinde amicis meis Anglis restituit et patriae advicinavit per Napolem universum, Romae me secum ducentem [for ducens] humaniter semper et nobili amicitia me tractavit a London, Old Burlington Street, No. 8, nobilissimi parentes ipsum progenuerunt dignissimum membrum magnae nationis et hominem ubicunque aestimatissimum