SORRENTO FROM THE WEST.
When all had seen the grotto, the steamboats took us to the town of Capri, which, with another on the hill, is picturesque. There are good hotels near the landing-place. A long ascent leads to the high town, near which the palace of Tiberius once stood. From the height I had a view of the southern coast of Italy; but the day was hot, and the atmosphere therefore hazy, so that we could not see far. We returned to Sorrento in the afternoon.
Sorrento is a great place—in fact, the chief place—for the manufacture of articles of inlaid wood. It is the industry of the town, and everywhere we found workshops for its manufacture, having attached to them shops for its sale, although, I presume, the larger part of the manufacture is for export or transmission elsewhere. As may be supposed, there is considerable diversity of skill among the workmen, and many articles exhibit inferiority; but I soon found out in which shops the best workmanship prevailed, and in particular considered the articles manufactured by M. Grandville were both well finished and wrought in good taste. Garguilo also, who has a more imposing establishment, had some very fine specimens of work. Every visitor buys more or less, principally, doubtless, to take home as gifts to friends, and I did not escape the contagion. Some of the articles are extremely beautiful; and one I secured, which seemed to be one of the finest examples, was so delicately inlaid that at first sight it seemed as if it were a painting on the wood. I saw, however, the process by which the inlaying is effected, which satisfied me with the reality of the inlaying. A picture is drawn on paper, and little pieces, corresponding in colour to the pattern, are cut out of larger coloured pieces with an extremely slender steel saw—almost a thread for fineness. These are glued down upon the pattern so closely that the joinings are invisible, and it is in the comparative skill with which this nice operation is conducted I presume the difference of quality and effect is mainly found. In purchasing these articles, however, one has not to lose sight of the fact that the transaction is taking place in the South of Italy, and sometimes a considerably higher price is asked than the seller is prepared to take. I had the specimens purchased put in a box, carefully packed, to send from Naples home by sea, and found on entering Naples that octroi duty upon it was exacted, and this not according to value, but to weight. The wood shops are among the best in Sorrento, but I was struck with the marvellous likeness there was, in size at least, in the common small shops of Sorrento to what had been shops in Pompeii.
We led a quiet life very pleasantly among friends and acquaintances at the hotel in Sorrento for about a fortnight, glad of rest after so much previous sight-seeing; but the hotel was always full, and the constant jingling of horses’ bells, denoting the arrival or departure of carriages, kept it lively, while, among other diversions, we witnessed the Tarantala dancing entertainment, to which I have elsewhere alluded (p. 72). We had at first thought of going to Cava, with a view to taking trips thence to Amalfi and Pæstum; but preferring rest, left that, like many other excursions, to another opportunity, which might never come. We returned to Naples on 11th April, having a glorious day for the return drive to Castellamare. The trees were only budding, so that we did not see things in perfection. As we drove out of the hotel yard, a man, neither clothed in plush and fine linen nor recently washed, jumped up and sat on the luggage behind, an undesirable-looking and unengaged lackey. The driver explained it was to guard the luggage, which sometimes, I believe, is, by the nimble-fingered inhabitants of the bay, quietly abstracted if not well roped. It was only, however, a genteel method of begging for 30 centimes, with which at Castellamare he was well satisfied. The beggars of Sorrento are certainly industrious in their calling. I stayed a few minutes at one place to make a little sketch, and was immediately surrounded by half-a-dozen women, and at least as many children, all wanting copper. One regular beggar, a man, old to appearance, who was constantly sauntering about, stick in hand, amused me much. His address was, as you approached him, arrestively and decisively, ‘Signor!’ You proceeded a yard farther, and it was more decisively, or rather imperatively, ‘Signor!’ You passed him, and it was ‘Signor! Signor!’ (weepingly) ‘povero vecc. he he per amor di Dio,’ a phrase generally employed by the Italian beggars. It is, however, but fair to add, that begging in Italy is not nearly so bad as it once was, for the authorities are setting their face against it. Still, in some places, it is a great annoyance that one cannot walk along the streets of a small town like Sorrento without being assailed by the same everlasting beggar, giving to whom only encourages to ask again.
We were anxious upon our return to Naples to have ascended Vesuvius, at least as far as the Observatory, but unfortunately a heavy cloud hung over the mountain, and reluctantly we had to give it up. Instead, we took a drive to Puteoli, or, as it is now called, Pozzuoli, about two hours distant. Our way lay through the grotto of Posilipo, which is lighted up with gas, and is about a third of a mile long, about 21 feet wide, and varies in height from 70 to 25 feet; thence along an uninteresting road till again we reached the sea, when the islands and Puteoli looked very picturesque. One could hardly imagine from its appearance that it was formerly a great Roman port; but it has been subjected to many changes, and bears evidence of the forces below agitating the ground, by which some parts have been alternately submerged and upheaved, and the recurrence of such events would be sufficient of themselves to account for its desertion. Here we drove over the southern termination of the Appian Way, paved with the large old Roman stones; and our coachman pointed out the part of the old Roman pier (now in fragments, like a row of giant stepping-stones lifting their heads above water) at which he alleged the Apostle Paul had landed. There are some ruined temples in Puteoli and its neighbourhood, and the ruins of a large amphitheatre, which the guide said had held 45,000, but, as is more credibly stated by others, 25,000 spectators, for it is not so large or so imposing as that at Nismes, while the measurements are considerably less,—Nismes exceeding it in length by 75 feet, and in breadth by 120 feet. Chambers underneath were discovered in 1838, and are very interesting. They contained dens for the confinement of the wild beasts, and rooms where the gladiators were trained to fight. We had, previous to entering Puteoli, taken a side road to Solfatara. This is a scarcely extinct crater, supposed to have a direct communication underground with Vesuvius, twelve miles distant. However, there has been no eruption since 1198, when it sent forth a current of lava. A man who appeared as guide threw a heavy stone upon the probably thin crust of sulphurous matter constituting the ground over which we were treading; the reverberation from the fall indicated that it was hollow below, and in all likelihood a slender protection from a fiery furnace which it might not be safe to expose to the air and light of day. And as Solfatara is quiescent when Vesuvius is active, and active when Vesuvius is quiescent, which it then was, the thought, as we were intruding upon the domains of these angry forces of nature, that some sudden impulse might burst the earthy covering and blow us all up into the air, like Paul Pry peering about the steamboat when the boiler burst, was not comfortable. The guide took us to a hole from which sulphurous fumes were issuing, and for a few coppers entered it at some risk of suffocation, and by means of a long stick pulled out some pieces of hot sulphur from the boiling natural caldron, which we carried off as souvenirs of our visit to a place which some day may become the scene of a terrible disaster.
Taking a different route on returning, we passed the supposed tomb of Virgil; and crossing over the hill, came again in sight at some distance of Naples, and the continuous stretch of houses along the coast to the southward. Altogether it was a very interesting drive. Had we had time for it, we should have gone farther, as far as to Baiæ, which is a few miles beyond Puteoli.
As illustrative of the method of selling and clutching at a profit, however small, I may here mention that, going out with a friend from the hotel, we were waylaid by boys offering walking-sticks for sale. The first boy asked 2 francs for a cane, my friend offered 1 franc, and it was at once taken. Thereupon another with much better canes came up. My friend picked out five of the best, for which he was asked 15 francs, and they were really very cheap at the money. He offered 5 francs and then 6, and to throw in the stick he had just bought of the other boy. The offer was at once closed with, so that he got for 7 francs five beautiful canes, which, judging from prices asked in the shops, were worth 20 francs at least.
We had still a good deal to see in Naples; but, not feeling very well, we were anxious to leave a place the reputation of which for salubrity is by no means assuring, and departed for Rome by a morning train, leaving at 7 o’clock and arriving before 2 p.m.