Continuing our journey past the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, its semi-oriental looking houses clustered together on a rocky headland, like Monaco, we reach the hallowed ground of the classical student. No one who has read his Virgil or his Horace at school can help being struck by the constant succession of once familiar names scattered so thickly among the dry bones of the guide-books. The district between Cumæ and Pozzuoli is the sanctum sanctorum of classical Italy, and “there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of Greece, or associated with some name familiar in the history of Rome.” Leaving Pozzuoli, we skirt the Phlegræan Fields, which, owing to their malaria-haunted situation, still retain something of their ancient sinister character. This tract is, however, now being drained and cultivated a good deal. That huge mound on our right, looking like a Celtic sepulchral barrow, is Monte Nuovo, a volcano, as its name denotes, of recent origin. Geologically speaking, it is a thing of yesterday, being thrown up in the great earthquake of September 30th, 1538, when, as Alexandre Dumas graphically puts it, “One morning Pozzuoli woke up, looked around, and could not recognize its position; where had been the night before a lake was now a mountain.” The lake referred to is Avernus, a name familiar to all through the venerable and invariably misquoted classical tag, facilis descensus Averni, etc. This insignificant-looking volcanic molehill is the key to the physical geography of the whole district. Though the upheaval of Monte Nuovo has altered the configuration of the country round, the depopulation of this deserted but fertile country is due, not to the crater, but to the malaria, the scourge of the coast. The scarcity of houses on the western horn of the Bay of Naples is very marked, especially when contrasted with the densely populated sea-board on the Castellamare side. Leaving Monte Nuovo we come to a still more fertile tract of country, and the luxuriant vegetation of these Avernine hills “radiant with vines” contrasts pleasingly with the gloomy land “where the dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells” of the poet. The mythological traditions of the beautiful plain a few miles farther on, covered with vineyards and olive-groves and bright with waving corn-fields, where Virgil has placed the Elysian Fields, seem far more appropriate to the landscape as we see it. Perhaps a sense of the dramatic contrast was present in the poet’s mind when he placed the Paradiso and the Inferno of the ancients so near together.
Quite apart from the charm with which ancient fable and poetry have invested this district, the astonishing profusion of ruins makes it especially interesting to the antiquary. A single morning’s walk in the environs of Baiæ or Cumæ will reveal countless fragmentary monuments of antiquities quite outside of the stock ruins of the guide-books, which the utilitarian instincts of the country people only partially conceal, Roman tombs serving as granaries or receptacles for garden produce, temples affording stable-room for goats and donkeys, amphitheaters half-concealed by olive-orchards or orange-groves, walls of ancient villas utilized in building up the terraced vineyards; and, in short, the trained eye of an antiquary would, in a day’s walk, detect a sufficient quantity of antique material almost to reconstruct another Pompeii. But though every acre of this antiquary’s paradise teems with relics of the past, and though every bay and headland is crowded with memories of the greatest names in Roman history, we must not linger in this supremely interesting district, but must get on to the other beautiful features of the Gulf of Naples.
Capri, as viewed from Naples, is the most attractive and striking feature in the Bay. There is a kind of fascination about this rocky island-garden which is felt equally by the callow tourist making his first visit to Italy, and by the seasoned traveller who knew Capri when it was the center of an art colony as well known as is that of Newlyn at the present day. No doubt Capri is now considered by super-sensitive people to be as hopelessly vulgarized and hackneyed as the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles, now that it has become the favorite picknicking ground of shoals of Neapolitan excursionists; but that is the fate of most of the beautiful scenery in the South of Europe, if at all easy of access. These fastidious minds may, however, find consolation in the thought that to the noisy excursionists, daily carried to and from Naples by puffing little cockle-shell steamers, the greater part of the island will always remain an undiscovered country. They may swarm up the famous steps of Anacapri, and even penetrate into the Blue Grotto, but they do not, as a rule, carry the spirit of geographical research farther.
The slight annoyance caused by the great crowds is amply compensated for by the beauties of the extraordinarily grand scenery which is to be found within the island desecrated by memories of that “deified beast Tiberius,” as Dickens calls him. What constitutes the chief charm of the natural features of Capri are the sharp contrasts and the astonishing variety in the scenery. Rugged precipices, in height exceeding the cliffs of Tintagel, and in beauty and boldness of outline surpassing the crags of the grandest Norwegian fiords, wall in a green and fertile garden-land covered with orange-orchards, olive-groves, and corn-fields. Cruising round this rock-bound and apparently inaccessible island, it seems a natural impregnable fortress, a sea-girt Gibraltar guarding the entrance of the gulf, girdled round with precipitous crags rising a thousand feet sheer out of the sea, the cliff outline broken by steep ravines and rocky headlands, with outworks of crags, reefs, and Titanic masses of tumbled rocks.
These physical contrasts are strikingly paralleled in the history of the island. This little speck on the earth’s surface, now given up solely to fishing, pastoral pursuits, and the exploitation of tourists, and as little affected by public affairs as if it were in the midst of the Mediterranean, instead of being almost within cannon-shot of the metropolis of South Italy, has passed through many vicissitudes, conquered in turn by Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans; under Rome little known and used merely as a lighthouse station for the benefit of the corn-galleys plying from Sicily to Naples, till the old Emperor Augustus took a fancy to it, and used it as a sanatorium for his declining years. Some years later we find this isolated rock in the occupation of the infamous Tiberius, as the seat of government from which he ruled the destinies of the whole empire. Then, to run rapidly through succeeding centuries, we find Capri, after the fall of Rome, sharing in the fortunes and misfortunes of Naples, and losing all historic individuality till the beginning of the present century, when the Neapolitan Gibraltar became a political shuttlecock, tossed about in turn between Naples, England, and France; and now it complacently accepts the destiny Nature evidently marked out for it, and has become the sanatorium of Naples, and the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque.
One cannot be many hours in Capri without being reminded of its tutelary genius Tiberius. In fact as Mr. A. J. Symonds has forcibly expressed it, “the hoof-print of illustrious crime is stamped upon the island.” All the religio loci, if such a phrase is permissible in connection with Tiberius, seems centered in this unsavoury personality. We cannot get away from him. His palaces and villas seem to occupy every prominent point in the island. Even the treasure-trove of the antiquary bears undying witness to his vices, and shows that Suetonius, in spite of recent attempts to whitewash the Emperor’s memory, did not trust to mere legends and fables for his biography. Even the most ardent students of Roman history would surely be glad to be rid of this forbidding spectre that forces itself so persistently on their attention. To judge by the way in which the simple Capriotes seek to perpetuate the name of their illustrious patron, one might almost suppose that the Emperor, whose name is proverbial as a personification of crime and vice, had gone through some process akin to canonization.
Capri, though still famous for beautiful women, whose classic features, statuesque forms, and graceful carriage, recall the Helens and the Aphrodites of the Capitol and Vatican, and seem to invite transfer to the painter’s canvas, can no longer be called the “artist’s paradise.” The pristine simplicity of these Grecian-featured daughters of the island, which made them invaluable as models, is now to a great extent lost. The march of civilization has imbued them with the commercial instinct, and they now fully appreciate their artistic value. No casual haphazard sketches of a picturesque group of peasant girls, pleased to be of service to a stranger, no impromptu portraiture of a little Capriote fisher-boy, is now possible. It has become a “sitting” for a consideration, just as if it took place in an ordinary Paris atelier or a Rome studio. The idea that the tourist is a gift of Providence, sent for their especial benefit, to be looked at in the same light as are the “kindly fruits of the earth,” recalls to our mind the quaint old Indian myth of Mondamin, the beautiful stranger, with his garments green and yellow, from whose dead body sprang up the small green feathers, afterwards to be known as maize. However, the Capriotes turn their visitors to better account than that; in fact, their eminently practical notions on the point appear to gain ground in this once unsophisticated country, while the recognized methods of agriculture remain almost stationary. The appearance of a visitor armed with sketch-book or camera is now the signal for every male and female Capriote within range to pose in forced and would-be graceful attitudes, or to arrange themselves in unnatural conventional groups: aged crones sprout up, as if by magic, on every doorstep; male loungers “lean airily on posts”; while at all points of the compass bashful maidens hover around, each balancing on her head the indispensable water-jar. These vulgarizing tendencies explain why it is that painters are now beginning to desert Capri.
But we are forgetting the great boast of Capri, the Blue Grotto. Everyone has heard of this famous cave, the beauties of which have been described by Mr. A. J. Symonds in the following graphic and glowing picture in prose: Entering the crevice-like portal, “you find yourself transported to a world of wavering, subaqueous sheen. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue-white sand. The flesh of a diver in this water showed like the face of children playing at snap-dragon; all around him the spray leaped up with living fire; and when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosphorescent sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls.” It must, however, be remembered that these marvels can only be perfectly seen on a clear and sunny day, and when, too, the sun is high in the sky. Given these favorable conditions, the least impressionable must feel the magic of the scene, and enjoy the shifting brilliancy of light and color. The spectators seem bathed in liquid sapphire, and the sensation of being enclosed in a gem is strange indeed. But we certainly shall not experience any such sensation if we explore this lovely grotto in the company of the noisy and excited tourists who daily arrive in shoals by the Naples steamer. To appreciate its beauties the cave must be visited alone and at leisure.
Those who complain of the village of Capri being so sadly modernized and tourist-ridden will find at Anacapri some of that Arcadian simplicity they are seeking, for the destroying (æsthetically speaking) fingers of progress and civilization have hardly touched this secluded mountain village, though scarcely an hour’s walk from the “capital” of the island.
We will, of course, take the famous steps, and ignore the excellently engineered high-road that winds round the cliffs, green with arbutus and myrtle, in serpentine gradients, looking from the heights above mere loops of white ribbon. Anacapri is delightfully situated in a richly cultivated table-land, at the foot of Monte Solaro. Climbing the slopes of the mountain, we soon reach the Hermitage, where we have a fine bird’s-eye view of the island, with Anacapri spread out at our feet, and the town of Capri clinging to the hillsides on our right. But a far grander view rewards our final climb to the summit. We can see clearly outlined every beautiful feature of the Bay of Naples, with its magnificent coast-line from Misenum to Sorrento in prominent relief almost at our feet, and raising our eyes landwards we can see the Campanian Plain till it is merged in the purple haze of the Apennines. To the south the broad expanse of water stretches away to the far horizon, and to the right this incomparable prospect is bounded by that “enchanted land” where