WE were at Naples and Pompeii in the winter, and again in the spring. The Romans aver that most of the foreigners who die in their city with fever, contract the disease in Naples. We credited this so far that we preferred to make short visits to the latter place, and, while there, passed much time in the open air. It is our conviction, moreover, that little is to be apprehended from malaria in the worst-drained city of Italy if visitors will stipulate invariably for bed-room and parlor fires. The climate is deceitful, if not so desperately wicked as many believe. Extremes of heat and cold are alike to be avoided, and the endeavor to do this involves care and expense. It must be remembered that in America we have no such winter suns as those that keep alive the heart of the earth in Southern Europe. Nor are our houses stone grottoes, constructed with express reference to the exclusion of the fierce heats of eight months of the year. The natives affect to despise fires in their houses except a charcoal-blast in the kitchen while meals are cooking, and a brazier, or scaldino of coals in the portière’s lodge, in very cold weather. Our Roman visitors evidently regarded the undying wood-fire in our salle as an extravagant caprice. It was pretty, they admitted. It pleased their æsthetic taste, and they never failed to praise it, in taking their seats as far as possible from it. Indoor life to them is a matter of secondary importance in comparison with driving, walking and visiting. The ladies have few domestic duties, or such intellectual pursuits as would tempt them to sit for hours together at home. Cookery, sewing and housework are done by hirelings, who are plentiful, content with low wages and who live upon salads, black bread and sour wine, never expecting even savory crumbs left by their employers. Americans are apt to construe literally the injunction to live in Rome as the Romans do, leaving out of view the grave consideration that they are not, also, born and bred Italians. They have cold feet incessantly, even at night, they will tell you; are chilled to the marrow by stone walls and floors; the linen sheets are so many snow-drifts; the air of their apartments is that of ice-vaults upon their incoming from outdoor excursions.
“Yet, it is too absurd to have fires in this lovely weather! Who would think of such a thing at home on a June day?”
Forgetting that “at home” the June air would make its way to the inner chambers and modify the temperature of the very cellars. One more sanitary hint, and I leave practical suggestions for the present. Wear thick flannels and woolen stockings in the Italian winter, and keep at hand light shawls or sacques that may be cast about the shoulders indoors, in laying aside the wrappings you have worn in the street. Always recollect that the danger of taking cold is greatest in coming in, not in going out.
The winter weather in Naples was so fine as to banish our fears of illness. We had heard that sea-storms a week long were not uncommon at that season, and to make sure of Pompeii, drove out thither, the day after our arrival. The entrance to the long-entombed city provoked and amused us. The Hôtel Dioméde is to the eye a second-class lager-bier saloon, the name conspicuous above the entrance. A smart and dirty waiter ran down the steps, opened the carriage-door, and ushered us into the restaurant, where the proprietor received us bowingly, and pressed upon us the hospitalities of the establishment.
Crest-fallen at the news that we had lunched, he opined, notwithstanding, that we would purchase something in the Museum, and passed us on to the custodian of the inner room. This was stocked with trinkets, vases, manufactured antiquities, etc., prepared to meet the wants of those travellers to whom a cheap imitation is better than a costly original; people who wear lava brooches and bracelets, crowd their mantels with mock Parian images and talk of “Eyetalians” and “Pompey-eye.” We were not to be stayed, having seen the turf and sky beyond the back-door.
A flight of steps took us up to a high terrace where was the ticket-office. A revolving bar passed us through between two guards. A guide in the same uniform was introduced to us.
“No. 27 will show you whatever you wish to see,” said an officer.
No. 27 touched his cap, and belonged to us henceforth.
No ashes, or scoria heaps yet! No ruins,—no lava! For all we could perceive—no Pompeii. Only a pleasant walk between high turfed banks and portulacca-beds, with Vesuvius, still and majestic, a mile or two away, a plume of white vapor curling slowly above the cone. We traversed a short, covered corridor, and began the ascent of a paved alley—dead walls on each side.
“Porta della Marina! Via della Marina!” said our guide, then, translating into French the information that we had entered Pompeii by the Gate and the Street of the Sea—the highway of city-traffic before the imprisoned demons of the mountain broke bounds.