CHAPTER X.
English Life In Naples.
The English who wintered in Naples at the same time with the Spencer family seemed to have formed, as they generally do, a special caste. They dined together, drove out together, they laughed at the churches, and crowded the opera. Their conduct in the latter place did not seem to be very edifying to the Neapolitans, who, perhaps, may have thought it was an English custom to see a nobleman "tumbling tipsy one night into Earl Spencer's box," to the no small disedification of the whole family, who were models of sobriety and decorum. The English, by forming their own circles in this exclusive manner, and by their external deportment on various occasions, keep away the higher and more pious grades of society in Catholic cities. The scoffers at monachism and priestly rule are freely admitted within the English pale, and pay for their hospitality, by catering to the worst prejudices of their entertainers, and maligning their neighbours. It is very often a repetition of the fable of the sour grapes. For this we have ample testimony in the writings of our contemporaries, which we will strengthen by quoting Father Ignatius's own words a little later. The better Italians sometimes laugh at all this, so that John Bull is become a by-word among them for exclusiveness and arrogant, selfish pride. The blame lies with the English.
They sometimes found disagreeable incidents from the clashing of tastes and customs. On the 8th of December they made the round of the churches, but were sorely piqued that the Neapolitans had too much respect for our Blessed Lady to open the operas and theatres on the evening of the Feast of her Immaculate Conception, so they had to content themselves with whist, and discordant notes from George's guitar. Another of these crosses occurred a few days after. George made a lame excursion to Vesuvius, and when groaning from toothache on his return, heard that the father of his bosom friend, Sir Thomas Fremantle, senior, was dead. To make matters worse, the remains could not be interred in a cemetery, and the Inglesi had to pay the last sad rites to their friend in a private garden. On Christmas Day they had service at the Consul's, and then they walked about, and had their whist for the rest of the day. The old year was danced out at a grand quadrille party, of which more hereafter; and George tells us very carefully that "a set of us drank in the new year in diavolone." How remarkable, at every turn, and even by such chance and off-hand expressions, to note the contrast between the George Spencer of that day and the subject of divine grace he afterwards became!
It is a relief to begin the new year 1820 with recording an exception made to the general custom above. George was presented by his father to King Ferdinand, and all the nobili Inglesi were invited to join in the festivities with which it was customary to usher in the new year. For the rest, the evenings and early part of the mornings are spent in a continual whirl of amusement, and it would require a page to number up the balls and dances he figured in. He visits also the Carthusian and Camaldolese monasteries, but makes no comments. He goes two or three times to see Vesuvius and the crater and the lava, of which he gives a very nice description; after this he is allowed, by special favour, to be at the Royal chase: this puts him in great humour, for, besides the sport it afforded in the way of getting shots at such choice game as wild boars, it gave him an opportunity of seeing the "King and all his court, to which nothing can be similar."
Towards the end of January, Lord and Lady Spencer determined on returning to England, and offered to leave George to travel through the sights of Southern Italy. He perceives, in a few days, the tokens of an inclination in his parents to have his company, and goes straightway to the Honourable Augustus Barrington, who was to be his fellow-traveller, and breaks off the plan they had formed. It was only after very pressing instances from his father and mother that he could be persuaded to take up the first plan anew. A portion of his autobiography will throw some light upon many things we have only just touched upon, and, therefore, it is better to quote it here, though it might come in more opportunely at the conclusion of his first tour abroad.
"It is extraordinary, indeed, that I should have remained a whole year on the Continent and never once have seriously taken into consideration the subject of the Catholic religion. Such was the case; and I returned to England, as far as I can remember, without one doubt having crossed my mind whether this was the true religion or not. ...
And now for a little recollection of the state of my mind during this period of travelling, and its moral effects upon me. During all this time I continued, thank God, wholly convinced that a course of iniquity would not answer; and had I met with any among the young men, my associates, who would have dared to speak out fully in favour of morality, I should, I believe, have been ready to agree with him. But where were such to be found? I had now grown so far more independent of the world, that I had not open assaults to bear continually against for not running with the rest. Many of the young men who maintained their character as free licentious livers, yet professed some degree of moderation and restraint in their indulgences. Some I remember, who professed to keep clear of immoral practices, and no doubt their sincerity in this might be depended on; for where no credit but dishonour would be the reward of steady conduct, there was no temptation to pretend to it falsely. But I remember now but one who dared to allude in my hearing—and that was but once, I think, in private—to the consequence of this sin in another world, and to maintain that it was better to avoid it for fear of punishment hereafter. While, then, I still knew that the way of evil was all wrong, and would have been most happy if the fashion of wickedness could have been at an end; and though I never once, as far as I know, was the first to introduce immodest conversation, and hardly ever heard it introduced by others without inward repugnance, and seldom joined in it; yet I never dared declare how much I hated it, and was still in the most awful and desperate state of wishing I had been like the worst, sooner than be thus subject to the torment of being put to shame before bold profligates. While with my parents, I have before said, I was under good surveillance, and could not think of being detected by them in any evil. How shall I ever be thankful enough for all this? My father's character was such that though many who were often in his company were men whom I have known, when out of it, to delight in most abominable things, I knew of none who ever dared in his sight to do more than covertly allude to them. I was therefore happy in this respect whenever he was near; but when once more left to myself, I again returned to those fearful deliberations of which I have before spoken of, as it were, selling myself, for a time at least, to work wickedness without restraint. It may be well conceived how miserably fallen and corrupt must have been my heart when such purposes were entertained within it; and if, partly through some remains of the holy impressions of my childhood, which still operated on my poor, degraded heart as a kind of habit not yet quite worn off; partly by a sense of the shame and misery I should have before my family and some more whom I knew in the world, who would be themselves most afflicted if they heard of my fall from the good dispositions which they had known in me; partly from a fear of ridicule, even from the profligate, if, after all, I was to fell; partly by the wonderful providence of God, which (I acknowledge) most wisely and most tenderly, yet strongly interposed at times to baffle the madness of my designs when about to be accomplished—if, I say, thus I have been in a degree preserved, God knows I have no credit due to me: God knows that from my heart I take only shame and confusion of face to myself in the remembrance, of my very preservation. Towards the latter part of my stay abroad, I began to be in some way weary of this uncertain state of mind. I was always expecting to take Orders when I should reach the age; and as I knew that then I should not be expected by the world to join in its fashionable vices, and should even suffer in public estimation if I did, my thoughts began to be rather better directed, and I took pains from time to time to overcome some of the evil that was in me."
"It is wonderful that any good disposition should have lived within me, when every remembrance of religion seems to have been put out of my mind. I now could hardly understand how this should have indeed been the case, if I had not a clear remembrance of certain circumstances which plainly show what was the state of my mind. On the 27th January, 1820, I went up Mount Vesuvius with Dr. Wilson, when, as we were looking into the crater of the volcano, a discharge of red-hot stones took place. I heard them whistle by me as they ascended, and though it was of no use to attempt to get out of the way, I hurried back a few steps by a natural impulse, and immediately saw a lump of red-hot stuff twice the size of one's head fall on the spot where I had been standing just before. We immediately ran down the side of the mountain, and reached a place about a quarter of a mile distant from the mouth of the crater, from whence we could see the upper cone of the mountain. Just then a grand explosion took place, which shook the whole mountain, and a vast quantity of these masses of fiery red stuff was spouted out from the crater, which in its return appeared entirely to cover the whole space over which we had been running five minutes before. Here was an evident escape which, in a mind possessed with any religion at all, could not fail of awakening some serious reflections. Alas! I never thought of the abyss into which I must have fallen had not the good angel, who watched and guided me through so many perils which I thought not of, then preserved me. When I came down in the evening to Naples, the only effect was that I was pleased and vain at having a good adventure to relate, and showing off a spirit of bravery and indifference, when some blamed me for my rashness.
"Another circumstance I may record to show how free from all religious fear my mind was. I have before noticed the fits of melancholy which became habitual to me during the last part of my Cambridge life. These came, I think, to their greatest height in the last half of the time I spent at Naples. The interesting excitement of our journey, the company of my sister when I first came to Naples, and the gaieties of which I had my fill there, and which at first had all the charm of novelty, kept me from much thought of any kind, and I enjoyed the balls, the concerts, the grand operas, the enchanting rides of Naples, for a month or six weeks, almost without a cloud. At least I used always to count that my brightest period in the way of enjoyments. Unhappy those who have health and spirits and talents to enable them to please and be pleased long together in such a round of vanity! To my great vexation I found myself again attacked with my old enemy, melancholy; do what I would, I could not drive away those fits of gloom. They were caused partly by the effect on my health of too much good living, and bad hours; but the chief cause was the intrinsic worthlessness of all such pleasure, which will discover itself sooner or later to every one even of its most devoted lovers, and which happily showed itself to me sooner than others. Oh! what frivolous causes did my happiness then seem to depend on! Not dancing to my satisfaction in one quadrille, fancying that some of my favourite partners were tired of my conversation, and that the nonsense of some other silly youth pleased her better, was enough to turn what I flattered myself was about to be a bright and pleasant evening into gloom and sadness. Sometimes, without an assignable cause, my spirits failed, as at others an equally frivolous reason would remove my clouds and make me bright again; but gradually the gloomy moods gained ground, and grew more dark and tedious. I remember comparing notes with another young man, who was like me a victim of the dumps, and finding some satisfaction in the sympathy of a fellow-sufferer, who, with a smile at the absurdity of such feelings, of which he was well sensible while he avowed them, exactly described to me my state of mind when he said that under them he fancied himself the most unfortunate of mankind, and would willingly have changed places with the most despicable and wretched of men, not to say with any animal almost. Poor blind fools that we were! We could not between us suggest the way to be happy which is open to all.
"I remember well coming home one night from a ball, which, by my journal, I find to be on the 25th January, when, as I wrote at that time, I was more miserable than ever I was in that way. I went to bed, and heard a noise like a creak in the ceiling of my room. I felt a wish that it would break through and crush me. How I used to wish at that time I had the sort of bold, firm heart which appeared through some of the young manly faces which I used daily to meet—to whom low spirits was a thing unknown. I knew not that I was quarrelling with the most choice of God's mercies to me, without which I should probably have been irrevocably lost. I still, to this day, am used to the visits of my feelings of dejection, but, thank God, I know better how to receive them; and, far from wishing them away, I rather fear their departure, and desire they may never leave me. For if I have within me one bright, heavenly desire, I owe it to these feelings, which first poisoned my pleasure in the world, and drew me at length to seek for it elsewhere, and now I wish never to have peace within my breast while one desire lives there for anything but God.