I never go to Venice without wondering why I can live away from it. Yet I have never published my tribute to it, except in periodicals, and in the pages about it which come into my How to See Italy.
I have to say the same of Florence, to which we moved from Venice on our progress through Italy to Egypt. Like Venice, I have visited it many times, and I find Florence one of the most inspiring cities in the world. The Venetian, unless he be a guide or a gondolier, is silent to foreigners; he takes no account of them; there are few foreigners living in Venice. But in Florence there are five thousand foreigners, who talk about the glories of Florence every day, and all the inhabitants seem to be children of the Medici Florence, who think that every foreigner’s mind should be in the Florence of the Middle Ages. You talk pictures or history all day long.
From Florence we went on to Rome and Naples, where we were to take ship for Egypt. Of Rome I have written much in How to See Italy, as well as in The Secrets of the Vatican, which contained the fruit of years of study. I have also published in periodicals enough to fill another book about the parts which belong to the kingdom of Italy, as the Vatican belongs to the Papacy. To Rome I go back regularly. About Rome I intend to publish a book like How to See Italy, and Sicily, the New Winter Resort, combined, to make use of my street by street study of the Eternal City. I know Rome far better than London. Rome has always appealed to my historical enthusiasm, in the one point where Florence leaves me cold, for Florence was, as it were, at the back of the door while kingdoms were being carved out of the unformed mass of Europe during the Middle Ages, while Rome gave the world laws, language and civilisation, collated from the wisdom of the ancient world.
Naples itself is not an inviting town, but it slopes up from one of the most beautiful bays in the world, and it is rich in outstanding objects—Capri in front, Vesuvius on the left, the hill of Posilippo on the right, and the three great castles, St. Elmo, del Ovo and Nuovo, which make the points of a vast triangle from the sea to the mountain-top, while in the centre is the rock of Parthenope, now called the Falcon’s Peak, the site of Palæpolis, the old city, which came before Neapolis, the new city.
The outskirts of Naples are of the highest interest, for on the south side the disinterred ruins of Pompeii and Herculanæum lie under their destroyer, Vesuvius, the most interesting volcano in the world; and on the other are Cumæ, the first settlement of the Greeks in the virgin lands of Italy, which was their America; and all the volcanic phenomena, which furnished Roman mythology with the details of its Hades.
Pompeii is of undying interest to me, especially since the new custom has come in of leaving any fresh treasures which are discovered, in situ. There is no place where, if you study it in conjunction with the collections in the museum of Naples, you can so easily picture the life of the Greeks and Romans as at Pompeii. I have many times thought of writing upon Pompeii.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WRITING OF MY BOOKS: PART III
It was Benton Fletcher, one of the “identities” of Egypt, equally well known as an artist who does valuable work in connection with excavations and does delightful landscapes, which are the fashion with “winterers” in Egypt, who first put into my head the idea of visiting that matchless country. Egypt is literally matchless; there is no country in the world which has such a winter climate, and no country in the world which has monuments so ancient and so perfect, so close together and so accessible. Every monument which is not in an oasis is on the Nile, and the Nile in Egypt is like a railway in other countries.
Fletcher not only worked up my enthusiasm to the point of going there, but met us on our arrival in Cairo, and initiated me in the secret beauties of the Arab city. But for him Oriental Cairo would never have been written.