Naples Past and Present Part 14

The roof of the Blue Grotto, low-spreading near the entrance, rises at the centre into a domed vault. It is not dark--nowhere in the grotto is it dark--it is neither light nor dark, but blue; blue pervades the air, and plays about the crannies of the roof like flame, far paler than the sea, yet quick and living.

Far back in the cave, where the blue shades are deepest, is a shelf of rock, the only place within the grotto at which one can land. It is usually occupied by a boy who pesters visitors by offering to dive in return for as many francs as he can extort. The sight of his body in the silvery water has excited various writers to high flights of eloquence, one of them indeed a.s.suring us that here alone we can realise what we shall look like in heaven, when the grossness of our bodies has been purged away into the radiance of ethereal light. If this is so one should rejoice, though on more human grounds I regret the presence of the boy, whose avarice detracts from the charm of the grotto. The aspect of his body in the water is less wonderful than he believes. Moreover, the shelf which he has turned into a bathing board has a higher interest than any which it derives from him.

For at this spot, and this only, is conclusive evidence that other eyes, in ages far distant from our own, have beheld this grotto, though, for reasons to be given presently, it is practically certain that those eyes saw a different sight. It is easy to discern a squared opening, like a door or window, in the rock above the ledge. Probably such visitors as notice it regard this as a modern contrivance to serve some purpose of the guides; but it is not so. It stands untouched since Kopisch saw it when he swam in half blinded by the smoke. When he, first of all men of our age, climbed up on the rock ledge and peered through the opening he felt confident that he had found the secret exit from the palace of Tiberius at Damecuta; and nothing has yet been discovered which disproves the possibility of this.

The boatmen will have it that the pa.s.sage goes to Anacapri. Mine was positive upon the subject, and though constrained to admit that his conclusion had not been proved, yet did not regard it as open to discussion. Tradition has a certain value where proof is not available; and as the pa.s.sage is blocked at no great distance from the grotto, it may be long before the boatman's faith is shaken. Kopisch followed it as far as possible. He describes several corridors radiating in different directions through the hillside, forming a sort of labyrinth in which his party almost lost themselves, and in which they were finally checked by the presence of mephitic vapours.

Now, whatever may be the secret of these pa.s.sages, it scarcely admits of doubt that they were designed for an entrance to the grotto from the island. Capri is so thickly studded with Roman works of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and possesses so few others, that there is little risk in attributing the construction of this pa.s.sage to Roman hands. But what did the Imperial courtiers see, if they did indeed come down those winding pa.s.sages and stand on the rock shelf where the greedy boy now bargains loudly for francs? Was it the same blue wonder that we see? The answer is certain. The miracle of colour depends directly on the level of the water, and in Roman days the arch was far too high to permit the necessary refraction or colouration of the rays of sunlight.

This is proved in two ways. Firstly, there is unanswerable evidence in the hands of geologists and naturalists that the level of the sea in Roman days was many feet lower than at present. Secondly, the fact that there was more of the archway to be uncovered has been proved by Colonel MackOwen, who explored it by diving, and who found not only that the original height of the entrance was six feet and a half, of which three feet are under water, but also that the base of the opening is formed by a flat, projecting sill, which appeared to have been set there by human hands. Moreover, this archway, which is now the sole entrance to the grotto, is but a poor subst.i.tute for a more ancient and incomparably larger doorway still existing, but now submerged, and measuring as much as fifty feet by forty feet, which must have let white sunlight into the cavern as long as it stood above the water.

There is thus not much reason for supposing that Roman eyes ever beheld this wonder of the world. Whether seen or not seen by an occasional bold intruder, this unique marvel lay silent and unvisited through all the Middle Ages, accounted even by our grandfathers as a haunt of fiends and a centre of mysterious terrors. It is not easy now to catch a moment in which the cave is silent. Only early in the morning one may find its charm completely undisturbed, and carry away a recollection of unearthly mystery and beauty which will remain a precious possession throughout life.

There is much in Capri that is unparalleled. If I have set the Blue Grotto first, that is not because more beauty is found there than exists elsewhere upon the island. It may be beauty of a rarer kind; I do not know. All Capri is a gem, and that which one sees from the island is lovelier still than anything upon its sh.o.r.es.

Only one driving road exists in Capri, yet that one serves the purpose of a score, so rich is it in a charm that perpetually changes. It leads to Anacapri, and is cut along the precipices of Monte Solaro, doing violence to the face of those solitary cliffs on which the winding staircase offered until recently the only mode of approach.

Here and there one may find a few yards of the stair still clinging to the front of the abyss, and by its narrow steepness it is possible to gauge the desperate courage of those Turkish rovers who, coming up this way, stormed and destroyed the castle overhead. Perhaps, however, what we should measure by the dangers of the approach is the faint spirit of the defenders, who could not even keep a path by which every enemy was under full arrowshot a dozen times while toiling up the cliff. One ought to visit Anacapri on a clear morning, early, because the sunshine is then softer; and having seen what is of interest in that whitewashed hamlet, leaving Monte Solaro for another day, it is well to loiter down the road on foot--the way is far too beautiful to drive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNLOADING BOATS, BAY OF NAPLES.]

First, in coming down, one's eye is caught by the incomparable loveliness of the channel that parts the island from the peninsula.

High on the right hand towers the dark headland named "Lo Capo," and when one has dropped upon the hillside to the point at which the strait appears about to close, and the height of Capri seems almost to touch the tower on the Punta di Campanella, just so much of the coast towards Amalfi has disclosed itself as looks like the sh.o.r.es of fairyland skirting a magic sea. Behind the green slope of the Campanella, with its humps close to the water's edge, drops the purple ridge of the St. Angelo, with an islet at its base, shadowy and having the colour of an amethyst. Upon the great slopes of St. Angelo one can see every jag and cleft, while further off lie the blue mountains, vague, soft, melting imperceptibly into the pale sky. Away beyond Salerno, where the mountains join the purple sea, a solitary snow-capped cone towers up radiant and flashing, while as one watches the changes of the light, now one peak and now another is lit up, and disappears again under the returning shadow.

But if I turn in the direction of the north, there lies extended the whole length of the Sorrento peninsula, the little town of Ma.s.salubrense exactly opposite, with the low point of Sorrento jutting like a tooth, while further off the Punta di Scutola rises out of the sea, all purple in the warm sun, with the further cliff that hides Castellammare--Capo d'Orlando the people call it talking still of a great sea fight that occurred there six hundred years ago, when the Admiral Roger di Loria shattered the fleet of Sicily, which in other days he had led to victory. There is all the curving strand of the Campagna Felice, backed by its mountains, brown and blue, ridged here and there with snow; and then one sees Vesuvius with his smoky pillar, the reflection of which lies across the bay, discolouring the water, and Somma, wonderfully shadowed by the clouds; while further north again, gleaming so splendidly, rising so pure and white into the heavens that one has to look more than once to make sure they are not piles of c.u.mulus, stretches the snowy line of Apennines, peak rising over peak till the gleam upon their summits dissolves in the great distance. Lower down in the vast prospect is the chain of Campanian mountains, which seem so lofty when one cannot look beyond them; and at their feet lies Naples, that queenly city with the long sweep of coast from Posilipo to Miseno, where the flames rose from the pyre of the Trojan trumpeter. Further off again is craggy Ischia, while blue and infinitely vague upon the skyline one can see the mountains behind Gaeta.

There is surely in the whole world scarce any other view at once so wide, so beautiful, and so steeped in the a.s.sociations of romance. The sun climbs higher, the light increases, the coast towards Amalfi is as purple as a violet. The sea, unruffled by the lightest breeze, is of that nameless blue which seems to have been refined and purified from the colour of a turquoise. Far as one can see, from the headland which hides c.u.mae to the farthest point of the Lucanian coast, scarcely one vessel is in sight. The ancient waterway is deserted by which aeneas came, which through so many centuries was ploughed by the galleys of Alexandria, and which in later days, when the power of Amalfi rose to its height, was crowded with the wealth of furthest India. From side to side of the great Bay of Salerno there is now no port of consequence. The coast is silent which once rang with the busy noise of a.r.s.enals; trade has departed; and the boats which slip in and out beneath the Islands of the Sirens are so few that Parthenope would have disdained them, not caring to uplift her song for so mean a booty.

This decay happened long ago. It was partly the work of pirates, who, as I have often said, swarmed upon these coasts up to that year of grace in which Lord Exmouth destroyed Algiers. The nest being dinged down, the crows flew away, or rather learnt better manners. But for many generations they hunted at their will along the coasts of Italy, counting the people theirs, as often as they chose to come for them--the men to slay, the women and children to be carried off.

The corsairs in all generations had a rendezvous at Capri, which served them much the same useful purpose as Lundy, at the entrance of the Bristol Channel, did to others of their breed. It was a turnpike placed across the track of shipping, and heavy tolls were taken there from the luckless sailors. Barbarossa has stamped his memory on the island more permanently than any other rover. Dragut was, perhaps, as terrible in life, and Occhialy can have met few men who did not fear him. But tradition makes less of them than of the red-bearded scoundrel who a.s.sumed the cognomen of an emperor. Barbarossa was indeed often at Capri. His armaments were colossal. One gasps in reading of a pirate who descended on Capri with a fleet of 150 sail!

Yet such were the numbers with which Barbarossa arrived about St.

Johns Day in the year 1543. Happily we do not know the exact details of the woe he wrought upon the midsummer seas; but on this lofty road it is well to recollect him, for it was up the now fragmentary stair to Anacapri that his warriors swarmed, perhaps on this, perhaps on some other visit, and stormed the ancient castle overhead.

It is worth while to climb up this last flight of the old broken stair. One has free access to it from the modern road, and turning away from the sea-wall, over which one can distinguish the boats far down below on their way to the Blue Grotto, looking as small as beetles from this vast height, one may climb cautiously up the shattered steps, gaining continually wider outlooks until at last a level platform is attained, where the path winds round the face of the precipice. Sweet-scented shrubs and flowering plants are rooted in the crannies of the limestone, and next the path leads under an old gatehouse, spanning the whole width of the ground between precipice above and abyss below.

How, one asks, did the Turks get past this point? There is no way round, save for the birds. They must have stormed it, coming on in twos and threes--which is another way of saying that the defenders were either fools or cowards. The mere sight of a Turk turned men's hearts to water, it would seem. When the corsairs had won the gatehouse, they were still at some distance from the castle, which towers on a crag several hundred feet higher, strengthened with towers, and having guardrooms for a substantial number of defenders.

It is not often that a castle wins and keeps the name of the enemy who stormed it. One may surmise that Barbarossa committed some atrocious deed when the fight was over. There is a dizzy precipice on the higher side of the castle. Probably all the garrison went over it who had not fallen by the sword. It is a grand and beautiful spot. There is no end to the pleasures of these mountain slopes; one may wander over Monte Solaro for many days, and yet remain in doubt from what point or in what light its wondrous views are finest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAPLES--ON THE MODERN SIDE--LOOKING TOWARDS CAPRI FROM THE CORSO VITTORIO EMMANUELE]

As one comes down the winding road, in the shadow of the high grey scars, discoloured with patches of black brushwood, the saddle of the island looks picturesque and homely. The white town nestles on the ridge between two conical hills, the Telegrafo and the Castiglione, the latter crowned by a small fort, the modern representative of an ancient stronghold which was the last defence of the Capriotes in the days of piracy.

It is a good and defensible position, but the stranger, remembering the almost inaccessible plateau of Anacapri, may wonder not unnaturally why all the inhabitants of the island did not retreat thither on the approach of danger. The answer is that on the small island there are two nations, despising each other like most other neighbours. To the undiscerning eye of the stranger the Capriotes are a pleasant, friendly race; but any child in Anacapri will declare them to be full of malice and deceit, unworthy neighbours of those who look down on them from a moral elevation no less remarkable than the physical. The Capriotes, on their part, would not have dreamt of taking refuge in Anacapri, knowing that here, as elsewhere, only bad men dwell in lofty places. They had a refuge of their own in times of danger--a vast cavern in the hill of Castiglione, where the women and children used to crowd together when the pirates came. It could tell woeful stories, but has not been examined with the care that its past history demands.

As for the streets of Capri, they are always gay and charming, but to my mind they are most pleasing when the dusk descends, bringing not only cool fresh breezes from the sea, but also imparting a sense of s.p.a.ce to vistas which under the garish sunlight seem a trifle cramped.

Therefore I go on through the town towards the opposite height, where the villa of Tiberius crowns the hill; and here it is necessary to discourse of Carolina and Carmelina, the two sirens who lie in wait for travellers on the ascent.

These words are not a warning. It is no calamity for a traveller to fall into the hands of either nymph. It is a thirsty walk, and she will bring him wine. It is not a very beautiful walk; and she--yes, both of her!--is charming, attired in blue and scarlet, like the Capriote maidens of an olden day. She will, moreover, dance the tarantella gracefully and well, and talk even about archaeology when she has done explaining volubly what a cheat the other girl is, and how false is her pretence to be custodian of anything worth seeing.

The whole of the weary climb is beguiled by the pretty rivalries and antics of these dancers. I have scarcely commenced the ascent, when a boy, starting up from the cover of a rock, thrusts upon me a notice gracefully written in three languages. It advertises the attractions of the restaurant of the Salto and Faro of Tiberio, and contains the following emphatic caution: "Visitors are requested to take careful note that certain unscrupolous (_sic_) persons do their best to misguide visitors in misnominating the real and authenticated position of the Tiberius Leap. Visitors are therefore warned not to be misguided by these unscrupolous persons who, for their own ends, falsely indicate an historical fact, etc., etc."

I hardly know what weighty accusations may lurk beneath the words "etc.," but I have hardly done reading this kindly caution when, at a turn of the path, I am confronted by the chief among the "unscrupolous persons" who debase historical truth. It is no other, indeed, than Carmelina herself, smiling all over her handsome face so pleasantly that I could forgive her a worse crime. She is unabashed by the knowledge that I have been put upon my guard as to her true character.

She has a Salto, she informs me; and when I point out that it is not the true one, but a fraud, she directs my attention, with a charming shrug, to her own particular notice-board, whereon is printed in large characters a judicial statement to the effect that it is quite impossible for anyone to say precisely over which precipice Tiberius threw his victims. Thus, one being as good as another, it is the part of a wise man, without labouring further up the hill, to take the first which comes, at which, moreover, the Capri wine is of unequalled quality, and so forth.

I do not propose to discuss the rival merits of Carmelina and Carolina. No chart avails the mariner in danger of wreck upon the reefs of woman's beauty. Nothing will help him but a good stout anchor, and that I cannot give him, nor even indicate where he should cast it out. But if a man pa.s.s safely by these perils he will ere long attain the summit of the rock, whence he will find much the same view exposed before him as he saw from Anacapri, and thus may give his attention the more freely to the ruins of the "Villa di Tiberio."

None but an archaeologist can derive much pleasure from these ruins.

Eighteen hundred winters and the delvings of many investigators, whether pirates or men of science, have so shattered the buildings that a trained intelligence is required to comprehend their arrangement. Other eyes can see nothing but broken walls, gra.s.s-grown corridors, and vaulted bas.e.m.e.nt chambers, which suggest but little splendour. Yet here, on the summit of the headland, stood beyond any doubt the largest and most magnificent of the palaces in which Tiberius secluded himself during the long years he spent in Capri; and with this spot most of the stories told by the guides are a.s.sociated.

These tales are grim and terrible. Tiberius, in the days he spent in Capri, was a tyrant and a debauchee. His palaces, which are now washed and blown clean by the pure rain and wind, were stews of l.u.s.t and murder while he lived. It is not strange that he is well remembered in the island. His life was wicked enough to beget tradition--the surest way of earning long remembrance! When he saw Capri first it was occupied by a simple, laughing people, gracious and friendly as they are to-day. He left it full of agony and tears. No wonder that after eighteen centuries he is not yet forgotten!

Tiberius came first with the Emperor Augustus, an old man near his end, but joyous and frank, as was his nature.

It happened that a ship from Alexandria was lying at the Marina, bound for Pozzuoli; and the shipmen, desiring to do honour to Augustus, clad themselves in white, put garlands on their heads, and came to give him hail. The simple ceremony, the frank reverence of the sailors, pleased the Emperor beyond measure. He mixed freely with them, gave his attendants money to buy merchandise from the ship, put himself at the head of the revels; and left behind him when he went away a kingly memory. Perhaps the Capriotes hoped that when Tiberius came back those good days would return. But Tiberius was made of other clay, and brought only deepening terror to the island.

Timberio, the islanders call him, and they believe that deep down in the bowels of this hill, where now his crumbled villa is slowly yielding to the weather, the Emperor sits to this hour upon his steed, both carved in bronze, and having eyes of diamond. Years ago,--no one can say how many!--a boy, creeping through some crevice of the rock, saw that sight, and lived to tell of it, but could never find his way into the vault again. Such tales of mystery are common all the world over; but there are few places in which, whether true or untrue, they have more excuse.

It is impossible to wander round the remnants of this gigantic building without suspecting that the hillside underneath it must be honeycombed with vaults and secret chambers, natural caverns, perhaps, which are so plentiful in Capri, adapted to the uses of the villa.

There is a constant tradition among the peasants that from this palace as from all the others, Tiberius had a secret pa.s.sage to the sea. The tremendous height of the cliff seems almost to forbid belief in the tale; but if it be true, corridors and stairs must exist in the hill upon a scale sufficient to warrant even stranger stories than those which circulate.

There is in the face of the Salto a cavern which, from its proximity to the ruins of the palace, has sometimes been regarded as a possible exit of the secret pa.s.sage. In 1883 a gentleman of Capri named Ca.n.a.le, together with three peasants, climbed up to this grotto from the sea.

It was a hardy feat; and the searchers were rewarded by the discovery of two chambers hewn by hand in the solid rock. Beyond them was an opening closed with fallen stones and earth; and having cleared away the rubbish, they penetrated into a large and lofty natural grotto, hung with stalact.i.tes; but found no exit from it. There was no trace of a staircase. The issue of the search seems unsatisfactory, and one can only wish that it may be resumed. Clearly there must have been some approach to these chambers otherwise than by climbing from the sea.

The day may come when on this spot, as elsewhere in Capri, more careful excavations and researches will be set on foot and continued until Time has either been compelled to yield up his secrets, or has been convicted of possessing none. At that day the archaeologist will rejoice; but I think the unlearned man may rather grieve. For the abounding mystery of Capri is so inextricably woven with its extraordinary beauty that to touch either must be to reduce the strange fascination which conquers every visitor, which wakes enthusiasm even in those who do not love Italy, and makes this little island the one spot which no one sees without longing to return. How shall one explain this feeling? It would be as easy to a.n.a.lyse a caress. Not alone the mystery, the beauty, the aloofness from the world, the balmy air or the odorous vegetation of the hillsides,--all these elements exist upon the mainland, yet there is no town, not even Sorrento, which wins such instant or such enduring love. It is partly in the people that the secret lies. They have charm. They are simple, friendly, gracious; they accost the stranger from the outset as a kindly friend, who must mean well, and whom they are disposed to like.

If they beg, which is but rarely, they ask without importunity, and accept refusal with good temper. The children run up as you cross the piazza, say "Buon Giorno," and run away smiling out of pure delight.

The women sitting in their doorways, clean and industrious, look up and smile but ask for nothing. They are indifferently honest, paragons of every solid virtue, when compared with the denizens of Naples. But were it otherwise, were they unblushing rogues and knaves, I think one would love them still for their abundant charm and grace.

In Capri it is rare to see a plain girl; it is perhaps not very common to see a beautiful one. But between the two extremes lies something more attractive than regularity of feature, a thing without a name--charm, vivacity, a gracious radiance of manner which is lacking in scarce any girl or woman of the island. Their features are small and delicate, their heads well poised, their faces brown as berries, their large and l.u.s.trous eyes are sometimes pensive, but oftener sparkling with goodwill and merriment. They toil at heavy weights like men, yet do not grow coa.r.s.e. They will work from dawn to dusk without complaining, without even dreaming that constant labour is a grievance; and at any moment they will return a pleasant word with one still pleasanter, not only responsive to kindness, but arousing it with all the frankness of a child who feels sure all people are as full of goodwill as he is himself.

It is this sense of simplicity and friendliness which, more than any other of Capri's rare attractions, wins the heart of every visitor. On the mainland no such sense exists, save perhaps in some degree on the Piano di Sorrento. Naples, even in broad daylight, is none too safe, and at night the citizens themselves walk cautiously. Castellammare is a wicked city. Amalfi puts the stranger on his guard instinctively. In Capri, from the very hour of landing, one drops precautions.

Suspicions are cast off like bad dreams in this isle of laughter and goodwill; the women on the roads want nothing but a greeting, the men believe you when you say you do not need a carriage. If you lose your purse the loss is cried in church, and the odds are the purse comes back that day. Crimes of violence are very rare; and never has it been taught in Capri, as it is even in Sorrento, that he who licks the warm blood on his knife will not be troubled by remorse.

There is a hermit on the summit of the hill among the ruins of the villa. He is not poor, but prosperous. He keeps a visitors' book, a tap of wine, moreover, and though he has a chapel he did not interest me. Escaping him with some dexterity, I wandered along the cliff past the lighthouse, climbing over boulders, sometimes knee-deep in tuft gra.s.s and scrub, until I reached the brow of the valley on the hither side of the Telegrafo, and climbed down into it by a break-neck path.

Having reached the bottom, I was in the main way from the town to the Arco Naturale, and a few turns of the path brought me to the verge of the cliff.

The sun had sloped far westwards, so that all this, the eastern face of the island, was in shade. The first steps of the rock staircase by which the gorge is descended lay in grateful shadow. There is a fine path along the northern slope, but it is better to plunge down the stair towards the level of the sea. After many flights had been descended I came out under a great arch, where cavernous vaults lined with Roman masonry awake once more the sense of mystery which is never far distant in this island. At the foot I found a rough path leading to the south, by which I clambered on until by backward glances I was a.s.sured that the Arco Naturale had freed itself from the labyrinth of spires and splintered jags of limestone over which it rises, and stood out clear and sharp against the sky.

The setting sun shone warm and soft on the top of the great cliffs, but all their vast height was covered with cool grey and brown, with here and there a green tuft of gra.s.s or trailing herbs. There is no end to the fantastic wonder of the crags rising out of the cliff slopes. The great loophole of the Arco Naturale is the loftiest and most striking, but there are countless others. The whole line of the cliff is pierced with cavities and grottoes, with many a sheer, smooth precipice, dropping steep and awful to the sea. Immediately opposite lay the bare headland of the Bell, bathed in golden sunlight, and the rocky coast towards Amalfi, purple and brown beneath the paling sky.

Then a bar of cloud came and drew its wisps of vapour slowly across the sunset slope of the Campanella. Whence it came I know not; for the sky was clear, and the hill, both above and below the bank of mist, was bright. The ravines of St. Angelo grew sharper and the glow more purple. The sea was paling fast. One or two rosy clouds floated in the east, catching all the reflections of the sunset. Night was at hand; but as I climbed up the stair I turned often to look again upon that channel through which the Greek ships steered their way three thousand years ago, as they came or went between Euboean c.u.mae and the far-distant cities of the East.

Well, it is growing dusk in Capri, and the time has gone by in which one can see sights. The sea has turned grey and the colour has gone out of the coast. I turn back towards the town, and as I loiter down the steep hill paths I perceive by a growing brightness in the sky that the full moon is rising behind the Telegrafo. The April night has all the fine warm scents of summer. The blue darkness is dropping fast across both town and sea, while in the soft sky the small gold stars are trembling as they do in June in England.

Ere long the silvery light begins to drive the shadows back; the bright disc climbs above the pointed hill, and floods all the Valley of Tragara. From hill to hill the old white town lies glowing softly.

The sea is all a-shimmer, "Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus"; the deserted cloister of the Certosa has the colour of old carved ivory; the Castiglione on the hilltop shines like steel. The tremendous precipice of Monte Solaro, a cliff wall severing the island in twain, is transformed most wonderfully. In the clear morning sun the heights are red and grey, chiselled into infinite crevices and clefts, awful and magnificent. But when the full moon sails clear of the Telegrafo all the rock face turns light and silvery, almost impalpable, towering up among the stars like a mountain of frosted silver rising out of fairyland. The small piazza is silent and empty, streaked with hard shadows flung by the rising moon. As I step out on it and pause in wonder at the beauty of the scene, the striking of the clock falls on the still air with a strange theatrical effect. Away over the houses comes a drift of music; for Schiano, the coiffeur, is giving a concert in his salon, and all the world has crowded down the street to hear it. At this distance the voices are softened, and blend insensibly with the magic of the summer night, across which, trembling like a star fallen out of the blue sky, shines the light hung over the great figure of the Madonna set in a cleft of the rock on the road to Anacapri.

CHAPTER XIII