Ida and Elizabeth Vernon came early to carry us off to Posilippo; first to call on Mrs. Vernon at Villa Casinelli, and then to decide on a lodging as near to them as possible. We found them living in a house whose foundations are washed by the sea, and commanding a view of wonderful beauty. The descent from the main road was too steep for any carriage, winding in and out through vines and fig-trees, oranges and Japanese medlars, ending in a closely-knit avenue of the white mulberry, which in the summer makes a dense shade.
Our friends wanted us to take the villa next to theirs, if only the proprietor, a poor and proud marchese, would let it to us. We went over to look at it, but came away in disgust. There was scarcely any furniture, and none that would have satisfied even the most modest requirements. I do not remember seeing any beds, although it is certain the family come there from time to time for a few days. I asked Ida where they slept, and she pointed to some roomy sofas and wide divans, on which had been flung the ashes and the ends of cigars, as the probable resting-place of the proprietors. We could only shake our heads in horrified astonishment, and think what a lovely place might be made of this quaint old house. It stands partly on the rock and partly on arcades, through which the sea comes rushing when the waves are high, but where, when it is calm, you may sit on silver sands or on the stone steps that lead down from the house and the upper terraced gardens. We had been so fascinated by the appearance of this residence, which looks outside like the fragment of an old feudal castle, and inside is bright with sunshine and the glorious view it commands, that we had requested Padre Cataldo to write and ask the terms before we had gone over it. On our return from doing so, shocked at the dirt and disorder we had witnessed, we were amused to find a magniloquent reply to the effect [pg 354] that the titled owner would “condescend” to let us his dwelling for (and here he named an exorbitant price), solely out of an amiable desire to make himself agreeable; and that he would call the following morning to receive the ten weeks' rent in advance! We finally decided on the villa next but one to that of our friends—the Villa R—— R——. We did not require more than one floor of the house. The rest was occupied by the family, and had a second entrance. We came into our part straight from the Strada Nuova, down a few steps, and in at a large folding door flanked by a Stone seat and two vases with huge aloes. We had a lovely view of the bay in front, a little garden on a sloping bank on one side, full of oranges and lemons, now in full fruit and flower; a loggia—that great desideratum of an Italian house—and a view of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. On our return to our apartments, we were met by the woman who attends upon us, telling us that Ann was in her room with a bad headache. Little did we guess what had befallen her! We went in to see what was the matter, and found her flung upon the bed, with her clothes on, in a profound stupor. In vain we called her and shook her; we could not rouse her. The landlady presently came and told us that an hour previous poor Ann had been brought home by a gendarme in a carriage; that she was unable to walk up-stairs without assistance, and seemed completely dazed when spoken to. The gendarme said he had noticed a young person sitting on a bench in the Villa Reale, the long, narrow garden which runs for a mile along the Chiaja by the sea-shore; that she looked extremely ill; and that, noticing she had valuables about her (alluding to her watch and chain), he had asked her address, put her into a carriage, and brought her home. It was a mercy he had done so. The Neapolitan police are not always so honest. But our dismay was increased when at length, having awakened her, she did not know any of us. She kept entreating Mary, who held her in her arms, to take her back to her own Mrs. Gordon, her good Mrs. Gordon. In vain Mary replied, “But I am Mrs. Gordon, Ann. Look at me; don't you know me?”
“No, no; you look something like her, but you have not her voice. Oh! where is she. Where is Miss Jane, and where is Lulu?”
Fortunately, Lulu, Mary's dog, was in her room, and the probability was that, though she failed to know us, she would recognize Mary's Lulu from any other Lulu. I flew to fetch the little animal, and threw it into her arms, to poor Lulu's great astonishment. It succeeded perfectly. She knew the dog, and thus recovered her memory of the faces around her, and her conviction that she was in her own room. Evidently she had a vague horror that she might have been taken to the wrong house, and that she had awakened among strangers. When she had entirely recovered herself, we found that no trace of what had happened to her remained on her memory from the moment that she entered the Villa Reale; yet she was found more than half way down it! She must have wandered on partially insensible; and it is a blessing that, when the gendarme found her, she had enough consciousness left to give the right address. She had already been out in the morning, and a second walk in the hot sun had been too much for her. It was a sun-stroke; and strangers [pg 355] are more subject to such accidents than persons who have become habituated to the climate. It was, however, long before Ann really shook off the effects of gratifying her over-curiosity to visit the beauties of Naples on first arriving.
In a very short time, we were comfortably settled at Villa R—— R——. The Vernons had arranged everything for us with a forethought for which we could not be too grateful. They lent us the services of Monica as cook, assuring us that, if we took a Neapolitan, we should be cheated and tormented out of our lives. Monica was a Piedmontese, and as good and simple-hearted a girl as any one could wish to find. Her economical scruples were positively amusing. We could hardly induce her to buy the particular articles we desired for our dinner, because, in her estimation, they were at too high a price in the market; and she would beg and entreat of us to wait patiently a little longer until they should have gone down. If it had been her own money she was spending, she would not have been so economical; for, as we found out later, she was always ready to lend to those less well off than herself, and would give away more than she could afford. The name of the young lad whom the Vernons engaged to act as servant was Paolino, a boy of eighteen, with glorious, large brown eyes and bright complexion. It was some time before we taught him manners, as he had never been in a gentleman's family before. His father was a vignaiuolo of the name of Camerota. He had several sons and daughters, some of them married. He rented the vineyards of the marchese whose dilapidated house we had declined to hire, and each of his children married from their home with a good substantial dower and a large trousseau. The eldest girl had not long been a bride when we arrived; and, after making the acquaintance of the other members of the family, we one day called upon her. Their dwelling was built against the tufa rock which skirts the Strada Nuova. She had three rooms, nicely furnished, with marble tops to the chest of drawers and the table, such as we in England should only expect to find in the houses of the rich, but which here are common enough. The bedstead was of walnut, and the sheets like the driven snow for whiteness. Ida, who had known the girl for years, told us that her trousseau contained a dozen of every necessary article of dress and house-linen, even to a dozen pairs of stays!—enough to last a life-time. There hung a crucifix at the head of the bed, and a few colored engravings ornamented the walls of the sitting-room, in which also there stood a tiny altar with a statue of the Mater Dolorosa and a few flowers.
The lower classes here have what we should call strange notions with respect to the sacrament of marriage. It is treated as a deed of darkness. The bride is conveyed late in the evening, or by cock-crowing, to church, by her mother and a few respectable matrons. No young girl, not even a sister, is allowed to be present, and would endanger her reputation were she to appear on such an occasion. A few days later, the bride once more puts on her wreath, and her veil, and her wedding-dress. All the family and friends of both sexes are gathered together, and the women and men, in separate carriages, drive fast and furious along the Chiaja up the Strada Nuova, [pg 356] past Posilippo, by the hour, and finally pause at the Taberna del Capo di Posilippo, or some other house of entertainment, and have a merry feast. We held this said Taberna somewhat in horror. On Sundays—the day on which everybody seems to think his honor and reputation are engaged in galloping up hill and down dale at a break-neck pace for the whole afternoon—this was the chief place of meeting; and in the lovely starlight evenings, the returning guests would come back with a sadly rollicking air, hat on one side, a long cigar in the mouth, and a leg hanging over the side of the frail vehicle, while the spirited little Sardinian horse, all blood and sinew, would fly along, with jingling bells and bright brass harness, as if his hoofs hardly struck the earth. The drivers of these cittadine, as the little hired open carriages are called, take great pride in their harness. The horse-collar more resembles a yoke; and where it meets over the horse's neck, there is often a little brass image of the angel guardian—a very necessary angel, indeed, considering the pace they go, and whose guardianship must be severely put to the test by the mad risks of the half-inebriated coachmen. It is very rare to see a Neapolitan really drunk. The wine they take produces a light, joyous, but brief intoxication, which makes dare-devils of them for the time, but soon loses its effects, and is rarely stupefying. It is the divine inflatus of the Bacchus of old, and not the coarse, heavy incapacity of the snoring Silenus. Nevertheless, though I have spoken so indulgently of the Taberna del Capo di Posilippo, it formed a not unfrequent subject of grave rebuke and expostulation in the discourses of our good Padre Cataldo to his little group of listeners in the chapel in the rock belonging to Villa Casinelli. And probably he knew more of its evil influences than we did. I remember, one Sunday afternoon, being particularly struck by a carriage full of merry-makers, drawn by the most miserably thin gray mare my eyes had ever beheld. She was nothing but a bag of bones, and must have reached the utmost age that horse ever attains. I was horrified to see so old and pitiable an object driven so hard and fast, and could only console myself by thinking the gallop I then witnessed must surely be the last. But it was not so; far from it. Day after day, but on Sundays especially, my Rosinante might be seen flinging her wild hoofs into space, amid a cloud of dust, and generally in competition with a beautiful, wicked-looking black horse, sleek and well cared for, in dazzling harness, with red ribbons in his mane—a perfect little devil, as he took the bit between his teeth, and seemed to enjoy the eagerness of his driver, albeit the lash fell often on his sleek and steaming flanks. I delighted in that little black horse. But to the last Sunday of our abode at Posilippo poor Rosinante held her ground. And I can see her now, awful to behold, neither fatter nor thinner—that she could hardly be—than the first day, devouring the ground beneath her, and flinging out her skeleton leg straight from the shoulder, so that I could hardly see she touched the ground.
The chief amusement on Sunday afternoons of our own humbler friends and neighbors, the vignaiuoli,[91] was a game of bowls by the side [pg 357] of the road, and in front of the wide-gaping wooden doors of the strange dwellings cut in the rock where the inhabitants of Posilippo reside. Many of these are restaurants and taverns on a small and humble scale; and Padre Cataldo had been making vigorous efforts, not to discourage the game of bowls, but to induce the men to play in an open space near the Villa Casinelli, and consequently at some distance from the taverns. Like all Italians, and chief amongst them all, the Neapolitans are great gamblers. The tavern-keepers encourage this, because it promotes their trade; and the games being carried on in front of their caverns (for such they really are) leads to incessant “treating.” In this way, what between entertaining his friends and losing his money at play, it often happens that the ill-advised vignaiuolo returns to his home with his pockets empty; and the next day the wife would come in tears to tell her sorrows to the good father. Even our Paolino was never contented without an hour or two at bowls on Sunday afternoon. And we did not like to refuse him, for we were obliged to take him somewhat on his own terms; and these involved a very small sense of servitude, and a very large one that he had put us under something of an obligation by coming to us at all. Had he been a year or two older, his parents would not have allowed him to enter service, thinking it a degradation. But as he was very young, and rather restless and wanting change, it was decided that he might be allowed to work off a little of the exuberance of boyhood in our service. Even this could not have been allowed had we not been friends of the Vernons; but as they are adored by all the vignaiuoli and the inhabitants of Posilippo generally, their request could not be overlooked. Accordingly, Paolino, blushing and grinning, was admitted to form one of our household. His father told us exactly what his son's labor was worth to himself, and that we were to hand over to him. It was all to go to the making-up of Paolino's marriage-portion. We were then to pay the lad a little over for himself, as pocket money. And this was to be done with discretion; not to prove a temptation to lavish expenditure. This is the way in which the marriage-portions of both boys and girls are made up. They work for their own parents, and the latter put by the wages for them. When old enough, they are at liberty to undertake other and more profitable work. And from time to time there comes a windfall—a little work to be done in addition; or a specially good harvest, when the parents add something of the surplus to the portion of the girl or boy then marriageable. There was a deep, dark-eyed maiden, of the ripe age of fifteen, with wayward black locks and a furtive glance in her liquid eyes like a startled fawn, about whose conduct there was a slight demur. Venturella (for such was her name, and it struck me at the time as of evil omen) was at heart as innocent as a child of five. But there was something in her shy yet daring nature which caused a certain uneasiness as to the fate of the timid, impulsive girl in this evil world. Venturella was fond of leaning over the low parapet which divided her father's vineyard from the highroad; and when the brief Italian twilight had sunk in the shades of night, and the brilliant stars, that seem so near in those southern lands, had spangled [pg 358] the dense blue heavens with their myriad fires, Venturella would pretend she did not hear her mother's voice calling her to come home. With arms crossed, she would lean on the wall, just breast high, and her star-like eyes would seek their sister-stars above with a vague, dream-like wonder. What the stars—and perhaps even more the moon—said to Venturella we shall never know; but one of them must have carried a message to a certain youthful Franceschino, whose hyacinthine locks clustered low over a brow of ivory, beneath which lay two eyes like the evening sky Venturella was so fond of; and whose teeth gleamed in the soft light like the white sea-foam. Nobody knew; and as the birds had all long ago gone to bed, none of them were there to whisper tales.
Franceschino was the son of a vignaiuolo who lived on the Vomero, the heights above Posilippo; and the little stolen interviews took place as he came back from the city, whither he had been sent on his father's business. From time to time the mother wondered what made her son so late in coming home; and one night she thought she would find out for herself whether the dry bush hanging out before the wide doors of one of those cavernous taverns had tempted Franceschino to try the red wine within, and perhaps take a hand at cards with some other loiterers. Alas! for Venturella when the indignant matron found out the charm which had led to the boy's delay. She was not likely to hold her tongue about it. Nor was his father, who beat and cuffed him well; for boys of nineteen at Posilippo will meekly bear a cuffing from a parent, when they would not tolerate a finger's weight from any one else. Then came the rage of Venturella's mother; and spite of Padre Cataldo's having elicited the fact that no greater wrong had been done than a few silly promises and one shy kiss, all Posilippo was loud in crying, Fie for shame! on the fawn-eyed Venturella. At length those older than herself and wiser than her mother took the matter in hand. Could nothing be done? Stern fortune answered, Nothing. Venturella's marriage-portion was far from being made up. She was an idle hussy, and only worked when she could not help it. The rest of the time she paddled with naked feet in the silver sands, tempting the tiny waves to kiss them, or gathered scarlet poppies from among the green corn and twisted them in her raven hair. Worse than all, Franceschino was equally behindhand with his fortune; and nineteen was too young for a lad to marry, though fifteen was none too soon for a Neapolitan maiden.
There was, however, something in the silent sauvagerie of the strange girl which made it evident to her betters that she could not be thwarted with safety. There was something deeper than words in the sudden flash of those wild eyes when they looked up fiercely, and then fell beneath the long, fringed lids, and lay in shadow like pools in some dense forest. Venturella shrank, half angry, half ashamed, at every breath of blame; while her eyes grew larger and deeper, and the round, full cheeks became pallid and sunken.
“What is to be done with that wayward girl?” was the ever-recurring question among the Vernons, who seemed to take upon their own charitable shoulders every [pg 359] burden that weighed upon their numerous friends, the Posilippians. At length a suggestion was made that Venturella should be sent to school far away from present associations, where she would have numerous girls of her own age to divert her, and where she might learn fine needle-work and embroidery—the only thing, besides paddling in the sea and weaving wreaths of wild flowers, for which she had ever shown any disposition. Meanwhile, a dot was to be thought of for her; not so very much was wanted to make up the necessary sum—about 4,500 francs. And then, when Venturella should be wiser and Franceschino older, who knows but what love's young dream may turn out true at last?