Saunterings Part 10

SEA AND Sh.o.r.e

It is not always easy, when one stands upon the highlands which encircle the Piano di Sorrento, in some conditions of the atmosphere, to tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. It seems practicable, at such times, for one to take ship and sail up into heaven. I have often, indeed, seen white sails climbing up there, and fishing-boats, at secure anchor I suppose, riding apparently like balloons in the hazy air.

Sea and air and land here are all kin, I suspect, and have certain immaterial qualities in common. The contours of the sh.o.r.es and the outlines of the hills are as graceful as the mobile waves; and if there is anywhere ruggedness and sharpness, the atmosphere throws a friendly veil over it, and tones all that is inharmonious into the repose of beauty.

The atmosphere is really something more than a medium: it is a drapery, woven, one could affirm, with colors, or dipped in oriental dyes. One might account thus for the prismatic colors I have often seen on the horizon at noon, when the sun was pouring down floods of clear golden light. The simple light here, if one could ever represent it by pen, pencil, or brush, would draw the world hither to bathe in it. It is not thin sunshine, but a royal profusion, a golden substance, a transforming quality, a vesture of splendor for all these Mediterranean sh.o.r.es.

The most comprehensive idea of Sorrento and the great plain on which it stands, imbedded almost out of sight in foliage, we obtained one day from our boat, as we put out round the Capo di Sorrento, and stood away for Capri. There was not wind enough for sails, but there were chopping waves, and swell enough to toss us about, and to produce bright flashes of light far out at sea. The red-shirted rowers silently bent to their long sweeps; and I lay in the tossing bow, and studied the high, receding sh.o.r.e. The picture is simple, a precipice of rock or earth, faced with masonry in spots, almost of uniform height from point to point of the little bay, except where a deep gorge has split the rock, and comes to the sea, forming a cove, where a cl.u.s.ter of rude buildings is likely to gather. Along the precipice, which now juts and now recedes a little, are villas, hotels, old convents, gardens, and groves. I can see steps and galleries cut in the face of the cliff, and caves and caverns, natural and artificial: for one can cut this tufa with a knife; and it would hardly seem preposterous to attempt to dig out a cool, roomy mansion in this rocky front with a spade.

As we pull away, I begin to see the depth of the plain of Sorrento, with its villages, walled roads, its groves of oranges, olives, lemons, its figs, pomegranates, almonds, mulberries, and acacias; and soon the terraces above, where the vineyards are planted, and the olives also.

These terraces must be a brave sight in the spring, when the ma.s.ses of olives are white as snow with blossoms, which fill all the plain with their sweet perfume. Above the terraces, the eye reaches the fine outline of the hill; and, to the east, the bare precipice of rock, softened by the purple light; and turning still to the left, as the boat lazily swings, I have Vesuvius, the graceful dip into the plain, and the rise to the heights of Naples, Nisida, the shining houses of Pozzuoli, Cape Misenum, Procida, and rough Ischia. Rounding the headland, Capri is before us, so sharp and clear that we seem close to it; but it is a weary pull before we get under its rocky side.

Returning from Capri late in the afternoon, we had one of those effects which are the despair of artists. I had been told that twilights are short here, and that, when the sun disappeared, color vanished from the sky. There was a wonderful light on all the inner bay, as we put off from sh.o.r.e. Ischia was one ma.s.s of violet color, As we got from under the island, there was the sun, a red ball of fire, just dipping into the sea. At once the whole horizon line of water became a bright crimson, which deepened as evening advanced, glowing with more intense fire, and holding a broad band of what seemed solid color for more than three quarters of an hour. The colors, meantime, on the level water, never were on painter's palette, and never were counterfeited by the changeable silks of eastern looms; and this gorgeous spectacle continued till the stars came out, crowding the sky with silver points.

Our boatmen, who had been reinforced at Capri, and were inspired either by the wine of the island or the beauty of the night, pulled with new vigor, and broke out again and again into the wild songs of this coast.

A favorite was the Garibaldi song, which invariably ended in a cheer and a tiger, and threw the singers into such a spurt of excitement that the oars forgot to keep time, and there was more splash than speed. The singers all sang one part in minor: there was no harmony, the voices were not rich, and the melody was not remarkable; but there was, after all, a wild pathos in it. Music is very much here what it is in Naples.

I have to keep saying to myself that Italy is a land of song; else I should think that people mistake noise for music.

The boatmen are an honest set of fellows, as Italians go; and, let us hope, not unworthy followers of their patron, St. Antonino, whose chapel is on the edge of the gorge near the Villa Nardi. A silver image of the saint, half life-size, stands upon the rich marble altar. This valuable statue has been, if tradition is correct, five times captured and carried away by marauders, who have at different times sacked Sorrento of its marbles, bronzes, and precious things, and each time, by some mysterious providence, has found its way back again,--an instance of constancy in a solid silver image which is worthy of commendation. The little chapel is hung all about with votive offerings in wax of arms, legs, heads, hands, effigies, and with coa.r.s.e lithographs, in frames, of storms at sea and perils of ships, hung up by sailors who, having escaped the dangers of the deep, offer these tributes to their dear saint. The skirts of the image are worn quite smooth with kissing.

Underneath it, at the back of the altar, an oil light is always burning; and below repose the bones of the holy man.

The whole sh.o.r.e is fascinating to one in an idle mood, and is good mousing-ground for the antiquarian. For myself, I am content with one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern, circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. It is the final resort of the antiquarians.

This theory has kept me from entering the discussion, whether the substructions in the cliff under the Poggio Syracuse, a royal villa, are temples of the Sirens, or caves of Ulysses. I only know that I descend to the sea there by broad interior flights of steps, which lead through galleries and corridors, and high, vaulted pa.s.sages, whence extend apartments and caves far reaching into the solid rock. At intervals are landings, where arched windows are cut out to the sea, with stone seats and protecting walls. At the base of the cliff I find a hewn pa.s.sage, as if there had once been here a way of embarkation; and enormous fragments of rocks, with steps cut in them, which have fallen from above.

Were these anything more than royal pleasure galleries, where one could sit in coolness in the heat of summer and look on the bay and its shipping, in the days when the great Roman fleet used to lie opposite, above the point of Misenum? How many brave and gay retinues have swept down these broad interior stairways, let us say in the picturesque Middle Ages, to embark on voyages of pleasure or warlike forays! The steps are well worn, and must have been trodden for ages, by n.o.bles and robbers, peasants and sailors, priests of more than one religion, and traders of many seas, who have gone, and left no record. The sun was slanting his last rays into the corridors as I musingly looked down from one of the arched openings, quite spellbound by the strangeness and dead silence of the place, broken only by the plash of waves on the sandy beach below. I had found my way down through a wooden door half ajar; and I thought of the possibility of some one's shutting it for the night, and leaving me a prisoner to await the spectres which I have no doubt throng here when it grows dark. Hastening up out of these chambers of the past, I escaped into the upper air, and walked rapidly home through the narrow orange lanes.

ON TOP OF THE HOUSE

The tiptop of the Villa Nardi is a flat roof, with a wall about it three feet high, and some little turreted affairs, that look very much like chimneys. Joseph, the gray-haired servitor, has brought my chair and table up here to-day, and here I am, established to write.

I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the heavenly influences. It has always seemed to me that the higher one gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial voyages. Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless composition. If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in Naples--that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,--where Ta.s.so found a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that hospitable n.o.bleman. I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive sh.o.r.es, or it would have been more strongly flavored with cla.s.sic mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet found.

I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun, which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I remember such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting sweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting redder and softer day by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it is ripe, that the test is extending to other things. I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the same manner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.

It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is to-day.

It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I like the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an illimitable opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it.

There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there flecks and sparkles. But the schooners sail idly, and the fishing-boats that have put out from the marina float in the most dreamy manner. I fear that the fishermen who have made a show of industry, and got away from their wives, who are busily weaving nets on sh.o.r.e, are yielding to the seductions of the occasion, and making a day of it. And, as I look at them, I find myself debating which I would rather be, a fisherman there in the boat, rocked by the swell, and warmed by the sun, or a friar, on the terrace of the garden on the summit of Deserto, lying perfectly tranquil, and also soaked in the sun. There is one other person, now that I think of it, who may be having a good time to-day, though I do not know that I envy him. His business is a new one to me, and is an occupation that one would not care to recommend to a friend until he had tried it: it is being carried about in a basket. As I went up the new Ma.s.sa road the other day, I met a ragged, stout, and rather dirty woman, with a large shallow basket on her head. In it lay her husband, a large man, though I think a little abbreviated as to his legs. The woman asked alms. Talk of Diogenes in his tub! How must the world look to a man in a basket, riding about on his wife's head? When I returned, she had put him down beside the road in the sun, and almost in danger of the pa.s.sing vehicles. I suppose that the affectionate creature thought that, if he got a new injury in this way, his value in the beggar market would be increased. I do not mean to do this exemplary wife any injustice; and I only suggest the idea in this land, where every beggar who is born with a deformity has something to thank the Virgin for. This custom of carrying your husband on your head in a basket has something to recommend it, and is an exhibition of faith on the one hand, and of devotion on the other, that is seldom met with. Its consideration is commended to my countrywomen at home. It is, at least, a new commentary on the apostolic remark, that the man is the head of the woman. It is, in some respects, a happy division of labor in the walk of life: she furnishes the locomotive power, and he the directing brains, as he lies in the sun and looks abroad; which reminds me that the sun is getting hot on my back. The little bunch of bells in the convent tower is jangling out a suggestion of worship, or of the departure of the hours.

It is time to eat an orange.

Vesuvius appears to be about on a level with my eyes and I never knew him to do himself more credit than to-day. The whole coast of the bay is in a sort of obscuration, thicker than an Indian summer haze; and the veil extends almost to the top of Vesuvius. But his summit is still distinct, and out of it rises a gigantic billowy column of white smoke, greater in quant.i.ty than on any previous day of our sojourn; and the sun turns it to silver. Above a long line of ordinary looking clouds, float great white ma.s.ses, formed of the sulphurous vapor. This manufacture of clouds in a clear, sunny day has an odd appearance; but it is easy enough, if one has such a laboratory as Vesuvius. How it tumbles up the white smoke! It is piled up now, I should say, a thousand feet above the crater, straight into the blue sky,--a pillar of cloud by day. One might sit here all day watching it, listening the while to the melodious spring singing of the hundreds of birds which have come to take possession of the garden, receiving southern reinforcements from Sicily and Tunis every morning, and think he was happy. But the morning has gone; and I have written nothing.

THE PRICE OF ORANGES

If ever a northern wanderer could be suddenly transported to look down upon the Piano di Sorrento, he would not doubt that he saw the Garden of the Hesperides. The orange-trees cannot well be fuller: their branches bend with the weight of fruit. With the almond-trees in full flower, and with the silver sheen of the olive leaves, the oranges are apples of gold in pictures of silver. As I walk in these sunken roads, and between these high walls, the orange boughs everywhere hang over; and through the open gates of villas I look down alleys of golden glimmer, roses and geraniums by the walk, and the fruit above,--gardens of enchantment, with never a dragon, that I can see, to guard them.

All the highways and the byways, the streets and lanes, wherever I go, from the sea to the tops of the hills, are strewn with orange-peel; so that one, looking above and below, comes back from a walk with a golden dazzle in his eyes,--a sense that yellow is the prevailing color.

Perhaps the kerchiefs of the dark-skinned girls and women, which take that tone, help the impression. The inhabitants are all orange-eaters.

The high walls show that the gardens are protected with great care; yet the fruit seems to be as free as apples are in a remote New England town about cider-time.

I have been trying, ever since I have been here, to ascertain the price of oranges; not for purposes of exportation, nor yet for the personal importation that I daily practice, but in order to give an American basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths I meet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets of the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, as large as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carrying them to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots, where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women are cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes to England for preserves. I am told that these oranges are sold for a couple of francs a hundred. That seems to me so dear that I am not tempted into any speculation, but stroll back to the Tramontano, in the gardens of which I find better terms.

The only trouble is to find a sweet tree; for the Sorrento oranges are usually sour in February; and one needs to be a good judge of the fruit, and know the male orange from the female, though which it is that is the sweeter I can never remember (and should not dare to say, if I did, in the present state of feeling on the woman question),--or he might as well eat a lemon. The mercenary aspect of my query does not enter in here. I climb into a tree, and reach out to the end of the branch for an orange that has got reddish in the sun, that comes off easily and is heavy; or I tickle a large one on the top bough with a cane pole; and if it drops readily, and has a fine grain, I call it a cheap one. I can usually tell whether they are good by splitting them open and eating a quarter. The Italians pare their oranges as we do apples; but I like best to open them first, and see the yellow meat in the white casket.

After you have eaten a few from one tree, you can usually tell whether it is a good tree; but there is nothing certain about it,--one bough that gets the sun will be better than another that does not, and one half of an orange will fill your mouth with more delicious juices than the other half.

The oranges that you knock off with your stick, as you walk along the lanes, don't cost anything; but they are always sour, as I think the girls know who lean over the wall, and look on with a smile: and, in that, they are more sensible than the lively dogs which bark at you from the top, and wake all the neighborhood with their clamor. I have no doubt the oranges have a market price; but I have been seeking the value the gardeners set on them themselves. As I walked towards the heights, the other morning, and pa.s.sed an orchard, the gardener, who saw my ineffectual efforts, with a very long cane, to reach the boughs of a tree, came down to me with a basketful he had been picking. As an experiment on the price, I offered him a two-centime piece, which is a sort of satire on the very name of money,--when he desired me to help myself to as many oranges as I liked. He was a fine-looking fellow, with a spick-span new red Phrygian cap; and I had n't the heart to take advantage of his generosity, especially as his oranges were not of the sweetest. One ought never to abuse generosity.

Another experience was of a different sort, and ill.u.s.trates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of prices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would measure twelve inches in circ.u.mference, I turned to look for the owner. After some time a fellow got from the open front of the neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and sauntered towards me.

"How much for this?" I ask.

"One franc, signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holding up one finger.

I shake my head, and intimate that that is altogether too much, in fact, preposterous.

The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in an amiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it in his hand, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one, franc.

I suggest one sou as a fair price, a suggestion which he only receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain. A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned one for my admiration.

As I stand, sorting over the fruit, trying to please myself with size, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round; and I see, by a glance, that all the occupations in that neighborhood, including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade. The interest of the circle visibly increases; and others take such a part in the transaction that I begin to doubt if the first man is, after all, the proprietor.

At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There is a little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have both for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down the oranges, amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My offer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. I can see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children of the sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determine upon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napoleon of oranges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the largest oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed on me intently, and, for the first time, pull out a piece of money. It is a two-sous piece. I offer it for the four oranges.

"No, no, no, no, signor! Ah, signor! ah, signor!" in a chorus from the whole crowd.

I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got somewhere near the value; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, such indignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small a cause. It cannot be thought of; it is mere ruin! I am, in turn, as firm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and tender the money.

"No, never, never! The signor cannot be in earnest."

Looking round me for a moment, and a.s.suming a theatrical manner, befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down, and, with a sublime renunciation, stalk away.

There is instantly a buzz and a hum that rises almost to a clamor. I have not proceeded far, when a skinny old woman runs after me, and begs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.

The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me is intently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for four sous.

I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. I will give two sous for the original four, and not a centesimo more. That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesitation and renewed conference; but at last the proprietor relents; and, with the look of one who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrifice himself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead, the crowd disperses, and the street is as quiet as ever; when I walk away, bearing my hard-won treasures.

A little while after, as I sat upon the outer wall of the terrace of the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges were taken from my pockets by Americans; so that I am prevented from making any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians.

There is an immense garden of oranges and lemons at the village of Ma.s.sa, through which travelers are shown by a surly fellow, who keeps watch of his trees, and has a bulldog lurking about for the unwary.

I hate to see a bulldog in a fruit orchard. I have eaten a good many oranges there, and been astonished at the boughs of immense lemons which bend the trees to the ground. I took occasion to measure one of the lemons, called a citron-lemon, and found its circ.u.mference to be twenty-one inches one way by fifteen inches the other,--about as big as a railway conductor's lantern. These lemons are not so sour as the fellow who shows them: he is a mercenary dog, and his prices afford me no clew to the just value of oranges.