Though
I do not see them marked upon those nautical charts which the late
Admiral Magnaghi loved to draw, there must be currents in the Mediterranean
that flow consistently in the direction of Campania.
Long ago, in mythological times, the dead Siren Parthenope, floating
upon the waters, drifted landwards and found a resting-place and an
honoured tomb at Naples; a sea-current, therefore, had decided the
religion of that great city. Then, in the heroic age, came Palinurus,
pilot of Aeneas, whose body also drifted westwards till it touched
the promontory which bears his name.
The phenomenon becomes better authenticated as we enter the historical
period. Thus we possess the record of the corpse of Saint Costanzo,
patriarch of Constantinople and now patron saint of Capri, which
floated, carefully packed in a barrel, from the Euxine into the Bay
of Naples. It arrived fresh and uninjured.
And is there not a well ascertained record of the Sainted Virgin Restituta,
whose corpse was wafted from Africa to the Bay of Naples on a millstone?
The blessed body came to land near Lacco Ameno on the island of Ischia,
which is the subject of this modest sketch. In proof of the miracle,
the millstone exists to this day, as well as the church of Santa Restituta,
which stands near the famous mineral springs of the same name...
Landing one morning on this fabled and sunny beach, with my mind attuned
to the marvellous by the proximity of the commemorative shrine, I beheld
a sight that froze the blood in my veins; a human head was resting
on the sand a few yards from the water's edge. Its countenance was
turned from me and otherwise concealed under a white cloth like a towel.
The country folk walked up and down as though utterly unaware of its
existence, as if such sights were part of everyday life; sedate fishermen
mended their nets nearby, children played around, shouting merrily.
Shocked by the incredible callousness of the people, and half-suspecting
myself to be the victim of a ghastly hallucination, I stooped, trembling,
and snatched away the concealing cloth.
This innocent proceeding caused the head to burst into broken Neapolitan
mingled with a few clear snatches of the English tongue which
nothing would induce me to set down here.
It was only an Englishman taking a sand-bath for his rheumatisms. Presently
the earth heaved in huge convulsions and the modern Typhoeus emerged,
pawing, like Milton's lion, to set free his hinder parts. He had solemnly
burnt his crutches two days previously, 'and, by Jove, you cannot think
what a joy it is to toddle on one's own stumps again'. I could, though,
for I had gone through the same purgatory. (These sand-baths are
no longer taken)
It was one of the happy fables of the Greeks, this of the giant Typhoeus
enchained under the island of Ischia and perpetually struggling
to break his fetters. Hence the convulsive earthquakes. So you may
see him depicted in the frontispiece to Jasolino's work where he looks
good-natured enough - probably because the engraver did
not live to witness the catastrophe of 1883.
To believe this same author, there is not a malady on earth that cannot
be cured by one or other of the Ischia baths. The very names of some
of them are now forgotten, and I suspect that they have either
been covered by landslips, or that they have dried up in consequence
of the diminution of timber. Jasolino, to be sure, wrote in 1580, but
recent vagaries on this subject are not wanting. Does the hair of your
eyelashes drop out? Try the Bagno di Piaggia Romana. Is your complexion
unsatisfactory? The Bagno di Santa Maria del Popolo will put that
right. Are you deaf? The Bagno d'Ulmitello. Blind? Bagno delle Caionche.
Headache, chill on the liver, or kidney trouble? Bagno di Fontana.
Does your nose itch? The Sudatorio di Castiglione. Toothache, or impetigo?
Bagno di Succellaro. Perhaps your heart needs comfort? The Bagno dell'Oro
will suit your case. Are you a victim to hypochondria? The Sudatorio
di Cacciotto dispels black humours. Or have you scalded your fingers
with boiling water? Try the Bagno di Fontana again. Does your grandfather
complain of baldness, are you troubled with elephantiasis, or is your
wife anxious to be blessed with children? Hasten, all three of
you, to the Bagno di Citara.
The excellent Iulius Iasolinus medicus et philosophus: did he believe
it all? Who can tell! Others did, and Ischia began to thrive.
At Santa Restituta can be seen an ancient vase of pleasing workmanship,
now adapted to church uses. It is one of the few antiquities found
on the island, and comes from the neighbouring height of Vico, the
old Hellenic citadel. They were unfortunate in their choice of settlements,
those Ischian Greeks. Hardly had a new colony begun to thrive, before
a playful volcano burst up in their midst and scared them away. No
wonder the Sirens refused to stay on such an uncertain tenement, for
Sirens are attached to their homesteads; they prefer to dwell
near deep-rooted limestone cliffs rather than on the lid of a
cauldron. I have found little on Ischia that recalls such sea-creatures
to the mind; but at Forio there is (there was, for it is now swept
away) an islet which bears the strangely beautiful name of Impusa.
Enfin, nous sortimes de Babylone, et au clair de la lune, nous
vimes tout-a-coup une empuse... Ouida! Elle sautait sur son sabot
de fer; elle hennissait comme un âne; elle galopait dans les
rochers. II lui cria des injures; elle disparut... and whoever drives from Forio to Pansa will see, couched in
the waves, a pale rock of noble contour: a sea-sphinx. But nymphs there were
in Ischia, nitric nymphs, whose duty was to guard the healing waters. Many
antique votive tablets have been found, testifying to their friendly aid and
to that of Apollo the Healer. They have been figured by Beloch and others,
and are now in the Naples Museum, most of them.
At Nitroli, their home, the kindly element still gushes forth mirthfully
from the warm slopes of Epomeo and tumbles downhill with pleasant din,
carving a deep gully in the hillside; woodbine and wild roses trip
alongside, with here and there a tuft of rustling canes — those
very canes that whispered in olden days the dread secret: 'Midas has
asses' ears'. The water loses itself in one of the cañons that
seam the southern coast of the island and make it look, from the sea,
like the rind of an overripe melon. These burroni were
a sure refuge to the inhabitants during the troubled times of the Middle
Ages. Their crumbling walls descend perpendicularly into the abyss,
and not a year passes that some poor hay-gatherer is not found shattered
at their foot. Down in those windless depths eternal twilight reigns;
giant poplars crane their necks to reach sunshine and air; their crowns
caress the edge on either side of the horrible chasm, and a squirrel,
if such there were, could cross the gulf on this leafy viaduct.
Even now they have their uses. Criminals can skulk in them for weeks
and months waiting for a chance to escape to the mainland, if the population
favours them by bringing food supplies. Only two days ago a woman in
one of these mountain villages calmly thrust a huge knife into her
husband, who was dying at the moment of my arrival. She resented
being beaten by him.
Now, Neapolitan women are proud of this kind of treatment on the part
of their spouses, regarding it as a proof of affection — when
I urged this point of view upon the elders of the village, they excused
her on the ground that she was not a Neapolitan, and knew no better.
The whole countryside had been to examine the wound; small children
joined the tips of their thumbs and first fingers of both hands crying,
'So big, so big!' and one old crone, who was regarded with peculiar
veneration, remarked that she had seldom seen a finer sight.
Plainly, the husband was an unpopular man, and there was a general
consensus of opinion that the murderess was not going to be caught.
The old woman summed up the situation by saying: 'She will only be
caught if she is a downright fool' - meaning, presumably, if she walks
into the barracks of the carabinieri who were then supposed
to be looking for her.
The girls in the northern villages of Ischia, with the exception of
one or two at Lacco, are mostly plain, but here in the Nitroli region
you may see many of rare beauty - nymph-like creatures, flower-loving,
soft-voiced, with flashing Maenad eyes. Their good looks have been
attributed to the fact that they wash their household linen in warm
mineral water.
The boys are more commonly fair-complexioned: an interesting and anomalous
case of sexual dimorphism if it be true, as naturalists tell us, that
the dark type is everywhere tending to supplant the blonde, and that
the males ought to be the first to display this innovation.
These youths are not of the amiable variety; they do not smile and
say Buon giorno, Signore; they prefer, whenever possible,
to look in the other direction. That is only their way. The Ischiotes
are to some extent a mixed race; they lack the full-blooded homogeneity
of the people of Vesuvius. But they have a character of their own and
differ, in this respect, from those of Capri who have divested themselves
of every idiomatic feature and become mere parasites on the foreigners
at whose expense they thrive.
The apparent scowl of many of these islanders is not a scowl at all;
it is a look of distrustful shyness, born of long centuries of piratical
inroads and domestic oppression. The stupendous earthquake of 1883,
when in less than fifteen seconds over seven thousand of them
perished by the most horrible death, has also contributed its share;
it has shattered not only their houses and well-being, but their morale.
They are poor, hopelessly poor; few of them are proprietors of the
soil they cultivate - utterly different, again, from the Capri
peasants, most of whom are thrice as rich as the foreigners who visit
their 'humble' cottages.
Some Spanish pride, maybe, still lingers in their veins, for Alfonso
the Magnanimous, in one of his most magnanimous moods, removed
all the native men from the island and populated it with his Spaniards,
whom he forced to marry their widows and daughters. The historian Capaccio,
who has penned a spleenful sentence on this subject, supposes this
to have been done in order to 'soften' the Ischiote character.
But, above all, the unsteady earth with its sinister reelings has pictured
itself upon the insular mind.
If Ischia could procure a well-regulated outlet after the manner of
Stromboli, this danger might be averted and a more ridibund race of
mortals evolved. Or if Vesuvius ceased its activity, a new crater might
open at Ischia, for these two, so far as has been observed, are reciprocally
intermittent, the antique Ischia eruptions ceasing when the other began
with his grand opening entertainment at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and
only recommencing during the long mediaeval slumber of Vesuvius.
That was in 1301. A stream of lava, called the Arso or Cremato, flowed
from the mountains into the sea.
Its pathway is now discernible from its covering of stone pines; but
these were planted only about 1850 (6); unlike other lava-streams that
yield sooner or later to the inroads of vegetation, this one remained
for five long centuries a blot on the landscape, a barren desolation,
deriding every attempt at culture.
With the advent of the pines all has changed.
A wild garden with labyrinthine paths, a marvel of taste and patient
labour, covers a portion of the once arid waste. Even now the
burnt stones dominate in monstrous contortion of pinnacle and
dell, and their riven masses, painted with rosy-grey lichen, twist
themselves into threatening attitudes of earth-demons that clench their
fists and refuse to yield their ancient empire. But they are half underground
already, and their days are numbered.
Where everything else has failed, the pines have conquered. Here are
no lustrous carobs, no figs or olives, no groves of sombre ilex: pines
are everywhere. Their crowns interlace, and sunlight pours down through
their firm and coralline branches, weaving arabesque patterns on the
floor. Pleasant at all times of the day it is to tread the mazes of
this fairyland; in the hottest hours of midsummer a sea-breeze is always
felt, and heard.
Then, too, the shady ailantus, bare in winter, comes to help the pine,
and thus a lively green flits about with the months - in winter it
shines on earth, for the rocks are starred with a thousand mosses and
ferns and anemones that creep away at the approach of June; in
summer, overhead.
At all seasons the pine struggles. Its task is twofold. Below ground,
its roots must insinuate themselves into the rocks - tenderly at first,
but soon with the horrid grip of a fiend - sucking strength, by strange
alchemy, from their fire-scorched entrails. From above, meanwhile,
a noiseless shower of pine needles is descending. Ceaselessly they
fall; where they fall, they lie. The chinks of the stone receive this
aerial soil, and up springs a gay family of broom, honeysuckle, cistus,
erica, myrtle, valerian, ivy, lentiscus, quick to take advantage of
the situation. The whole flora of Ischia riots at the foot of these
glorious pines. For unlike our ravenhearted beech, this tree encourages
children and neighbours alike to take pleasure under its ample skirts.
It is easy, no doubt, to say good things of other pines. Pinus laricio
produces yet better timber; the Canary pine is more feathery; that
of Aleppo more vivid in colour and more prolific.
But considerations of utility rule the Universe. The stone pine, besides
bearing edible fruit, has sundry advantages over its rivals. It grows
faster and to a larger size; its roots are more searchingly destructive
to the lava; its wood has fewer knots. It despises a prop even in tenderest
youth; 'the stone pine grows straight by nature', say the botanists.
A thousand wooden props are a serious financial consideration in a
treeless country like Italy.
The benefactor who planted these pines has given not only health and
pleasure to posterity. In this pleasance of La Mandra alone are over
three thousand of them, and they were full-grown twenty years ago.
The cost of planting is minimal: you scratch a hole in the lava and
force your sapling into it; the tree rises aloft without more
ado. Nowadays, of course, there is no further need of planting, for
they seed themselves. If we could value each pine at the absurdly low
figure of two hundred francs, it will be seen what a fortune this worthy
successor of Varro and Columella has prepared for others, on ground,
too, where formerly not a blade of grass would grow.
Yet the work - the rock-cleaving, humanising work - of this grand tree
is not altogether accomplished. The demons are lurking at hand, ready
to emerge once more and resume dominion. If you doubt it, cut down
the pines and watch. For my part, I confess I should not be displeased
if the Great Contriver's hand could be stayed at this intermediate
moment, inasmuch as there are vineyards and cornfields galore on earth,
but few spots as fair as this harmonious pinery of La Mandra.
Some few Ischian plants, none the less, will be sought in vain here.
So the botanist Tenore, for example, made a most interesting discovery.
He found, near certain outlets of volcanic vapour, two exotic plants,
one of them native of Jamaica and the other growing in India, Arabia
and Africa. The temperature of the earth in which these have their
roots never falls below 20 degrees Reaumur, and Tenore suspects that
they are relics of the former tropical European flora - relics which
have found a refuge in these warm cavities from the ice-covering of
the Glacial Period that destroyed the others. His theory, if correct,
says much for the stability of Ischia.
Then there are the great white orchids, odourless like their fellows,
but fair to see. They grow in the woods about the extinct crater of
Monte Rotaro.
I recommend this hill as one of the most charming on the island. Its
sides are overgrown with a dense covering of ilex and arbutus, and
down below, where the fires once flamed, lies a green meadow.
In it are interred the victims of the cholera of the eighteen-thirties,
many foreigners among them. (The grave-stones have since been
removed, but their marks are still visible in the soil). It would be
hard to find a pleasanter resting-place for all eternity unless it
be the hermitage of Citrella on Capri, where simultaneously the cholera
victims of that island were buried.
But what a contrast between the two! Here the volcanic soil with its
hoary mantle of vegetation, and within that deep funnel a woodland
calm, as though storms and seas no longer existed upon earth: - Citrella,
poised like a swallow's nest upon its wind-swept limestone crag; far
below, the Titanic grandeur of South Capri and the glittering ocean
strewn with submarine boulders that make it look, from such aerial
heights, like a map of the moon enamelled in the blues and greens of
a Damascus vase.
Before the road bends downwards into the crater, it passes a grassy
tract where the traveller may rest awhile from the fatigues of the
climb, if he picks out a reliable spot; for the ground is honeycombed
with hidden volcanic vents which send forth an invisible and odourless
but steaming vapour.
One day as I sat upon this deceitful sward, I became aware of a prodigious
flight of butterflies. The air was alive with them; they sat upon me
and flew in my face - a veritable phenomenon.
There were no birds on the spot to profit by this banquet, and the
gaudy host fluttered on undisturbed. They seemed to be indifferent
whether flowers bloomed or not; driven by some strange desire of activity
they struggled hither and thither in the air till, suddenly, some impulse
came upon them and they left me. They were of the Clouded Yellow species,
and the newspapers reported that in other countries, too, the apparition
had been noted.
Only once in my life have I seen anything like it. I was in the club-house
of a tropical town, and the sole other occupant of the room at that
moment was poor old B -, who, as he himself used to confess, was fast
'running to seed'. He was staring with a troubled expression out of
the window.
'Do you have this kind of thing often?' I innocently asked.
He at once put on the solemn and aggrieved air of a drunkard who suspects
that he has been found out.
'May I ask to what you refer?'
'Why, Mr. B -, don't you see all those butterflies?'
A look of relief came over his face.
Now, if my friend had come to Ischia instead of poisoning himself with
fusel oil sold as whisky by honest colonial traders, he might have
drunk as much as he pleased and been all the better for it. For wine
is the water of Ischia, and as a vino da pasto it is surpassed
by none other south of Rome. Indeed, it is drunk all over Europe (under
other names) and a pretty sight it is to see the many-shaped craft
from foreign ports jostling each other in the little circular harbour,
one of the few pleasing mementos of Bourbon misrule.
The Austrian, battling with his Paprikahendl, or the Frenchman ogling
his omelette and his yard of bread, little dream how much Ischia has
contributed to their Gumboldskirchner or vin ordinaire. Try it therefore
through every degree of latitude on the island, from the golden torrents
of thousand-vatted Forio up to the pale primrose-hued ichor, a drink
for gods, that oozes from the dwarfed mountain grapes. Try also the
red kinds.
Try them all, over and over again. Such at least was the advice of
a Flemish gentleman whom I met in bygone years at Casamicciola.
Like most of his countrymen, Mynheer had little chiaroscuro in
his composition; he was prone to call a spade a spade; but his 'rational
view of life', as he preferred to call it, was transfigured and irradiated
by a profound love of nature.
Where there is no landscape, he used to say, there I drink without
pleasure. 'Landscape refines. Only beasts drink indoors'. Every morning
he went in search of new farmhouses in which to drink during the afternoon,
and late into the evening.
Every night, with tremendous din, he was carried to bed. He never apologised
for this disturbance; it was his yearly holiday, he explained. He must
have possessed an enviable digestion, for he was up with the lark and
I used to hear him at his toilette, singing strange ditties of Meuse
or Scheldt. Breakfast over, he would sally forth on his daily quest,
thirsty and sentimental as ever.
One day, I remember, he discovered a farmhouse more seductive than
all the rest .- 'with a view over Vesuvius and the coastline, a view,
I assure you, of entrancing loveliness!' That evening he never came
home at all....
The vineyards are steadily driving the woodlands uphill and into the
remotest recesses of Ischia. From an artistic point of view this is
much to be deplored, for the vine, however gladsome in its summer greenery,
is bare for six months of the year, when its straggling limbs have
a peculiarly unkempt and disreputable appearance. (For this reason
alone, Ischia should never be visited in winter).
The whole district from Monte Rotaro down to the Pietra Cantante and
the Cemetery is now planted with grapes; when I first knew it, there
was not a single vine visible; it was deeply embowered in chestnut
and oak woods. It is impossible nowadays to reconstruct Bergsoe charming
legend of the Pietra Cantante or Singing Stone; the locality would
never be recognised.
But the tale none the less deserves to be translated into Italian as
a historical document - it is a memento of the long Arab domination
on Ischia which seems, at this distance of time, as if it had never
been and yet has left enduring traces.
The raids of the Corsairs were trifling matters; a change of wind,
or the appearance of an Italian sail sufficed to unsettle their
ephemeral plans. (Not quite trifling matters on Ischia, however; on
one occasion Barbarossa carried off four thousand of the natives).
The rule of the Saracens, though it did not approach that of a provincial
or even military government, was wholly different. Where they dined,
they slept.
Appropriately enough, the play given at the local theatre the other
day was a drama of this period.
The theatre, I should premise, was a disused wine-cellar, and the actors
were marionettes half life-size, whose movements were regulated
by ropes affixed from above to their heads and arms, while the manager
and his wife and family did the talking and pulled the strings as occasion
required.
At first the effects of the ultra-flexible gestures of the dramatis
personae somewhat disturbed the sense of reality; instead of
walking, they fluttered a few inches above the ground after the manner
of Hindu gods, whose feet are too pure to touch mortal earth; they
likewise sat, for the most part, on air; but the illusion came quickly
enough,
in spite of the stilted language in which the play was written.
The Turks, as they are called, were all painted pitch-black (this is
traditional and de rigueur); their general was a brave fellow covered
with plumes and medals, and his favourite phrase was: 'Tremble, proud
Christian, at my wrath'.
He had reckoned without his host, for soon enough his own sister fell
desperately in love with the Christian leader. 'Climb into the camp
of the unbelievers', she whispered into the ear of a confidential
slave who swam into her presence at the proper moment, 'and seek out
the bold knight Orlando. Say I love him'. The peerless Christian
sent word to the effect that, if such were the case, she would doubtless
have no difficulty in first procuring for him the head of her warrior
brother, which he was anxious to see - without the body.
There followed a magnificent decapitation. The good pasha was sleeping
after the fatigues of the day in a most uncomfortable position, when
his sister cautiously flew into the room and, after performing an airy
war-dance, unsheathed her sword. It took no less than eight terrific
blows to sever the head from the body, and the shrieks of the pasha
were life-like beyond belief.
Their crescendo and diminuendo were rendered with
scientific precision and evoked an uproar of applause. The head continued
to groan long after its separation from the trunk; never have I heard
more realistic gurglings. I suspect that the play was to end in a wholesale
slaughter of Mussulmans — a veritable Blutbad, as the Germans
call it - but I was reluctantly compelled to leave at the culminating
point of the third act, having gathered about me as much of the micro-fauna
of Ischia as I could conveniently carry.
Economically considered, the audience of this theatre was an interesting
study. There was not one woman among them (a relic of Saracenism);
only a few little girls who are not considered as belonging to that
sex at their tender age. The males, apart from a sprinkling of priests,
were mostly young boys or quite old men. The workers have no time for
such frivolities on Ischia; they must be up with the sun, and are generally
asleep by eight o'clock.
Some of the older people bear the scars of hair-breadth escapes in
the great catastrophe of 1883, and every one of them can relate the
most improbable stories about himself or his relations; or at least
about his pigs and goats. The mythopoeic faculty is well developed
hereabouts. One respectable citizen assured me that his grandmother
was entombed under an immense mass of masonry for fourteen days, her
head protected by the leg of a chair. She was alive and cheerful
when liberated, but soon took to her bed and gradually died from fright.
At present there is hay-making going on over the ruins and a rank vegetation
partly conceals them, but in winter they arise in all their truthfulness.
Man and nature cooperate in their slow obliteration.
The peasant, careless of past experience, renews his forsaken homestead
or carries away its stones for building material elsewhere; a promiscuous
host of weeds and shrubs invades the shattered tenements, unclean lichens
eat into the walls, valerian creeps behind the plaster, the sturdier
broom and fennel thrust formidable roots into the very heart of the
masonry, disquieting the stones and ousting them from their old places;
winds and rain meanwhile beat upon the friable tufa till its edges
are worn away and the mortar, disintegrated, falls to earth; one day,
two lizards fighting, as is their wont, in an inextricable knot of
legs and tails, tumble upon a loosened block, and down it comes. At
a rough computation, I should say that fifteen more years will be required
to merge the traces of the disaster into the soil which is daily rising
up around them in upper Casamicciola; the wrecked bathing establishment
in the valley, with its ponderous masonry and hard stucco, will offer
a longer resistance, particularly as nobody seems inclined to reoccupy
the site.
The man who could tell the most blood-curdling tales of this calamity
was the old guardian of the cemetery. He was facile princeps in
this department, and revelled in his natural gifts.
'Yes, Signore, if I were to tell you all about the many poor Christians
- the arms - the legs - ah, Signore, if you had been here - why, under
this very mound of cement where you are standing they lie - a few thousand
of them at least - no coffins, no spades, not even earth to cover them
- unidentified and in the heat of summer - it became, you understand,
intolerable - so we threw them in here and a tremendous load of lime
and cement on the top of them - enough to crush down a regiment of
soldiers - ah, Signore, the poor Christians - it remained flat for
a day or two, but you observe - just where you are standing, I mean
- the covering has risen...'
Involuntarily you recoil a few paces.
He proceeds relentlessly:
'Even now, after all these years, they find them and bring them here
for burial - ah, Signore - in pieces, of course...
After such horrors, it is well, to take a plunge in the sea and purge
away the picture of man's frailty and unloveliness. The water
at Ischia is irresistibly tempting, of crystal purity and unfrequented
by devil-fish or other terrors. Once a year, maybe, a basking shark,
an amiable monster, heaves in sight and paddles towards the shore in
friendly curiosity; he generally receives a charge from a gun for his
pains.
Or you may take a boat and sail - an afternoon's excursion - to the
islet of Vivara, which may be regarded, with Procida, as a dependency
of Ischia. There is no fear of shipwreck, for your Ischiote, save he
of Forio, is a fine-weather sailor and the wealth of Croesus would
not tempt him into his boat if he can detect a ripple on the water.
Nor need you fear starvation - the boatman, like all the islanders,
has the gift of discovering relations in the most unlikely spots, and
relationship counts for much hereabouts. Half of the wrecked crater
of Vivara slumbers under the waves, but on the summit of the other
portion lies a fair champaign, with oaks and carobs, vines and fruitful
fields; a spacious farmhouse stands in the centre. A priest used to
live here, with four or five women who helped him to till the ground.
He was a passionate agriculturalist. Once every two months he
sailed to Procida to buy salt and cigars or a new spade; for the rest,
his island produced timber and water, and milk and wine and oil, and
corn and potatoes and salad, and rabbits and woodcock and quails -
everything, in short, which he required for life. Fishermen brought
him, in exchange for dispensations, the choicest red mullets, crabs,
lampreys, and other denizens of the deep, and nothing ever troubled
the calm tenor of his life, for he defended his domain with a shot-gun
and had wounded several persons who ventured to set foot on it. He
was never unfrocked, but his bishop thought him a little eccentric.
Such a state of things may constitute a mild scandal; yet this priest
lived out his life according to his own recipe, and preserved health
of body and peace of mind. He typified the South Italians who prate
of mechanics but are true lovers of the soil, and the key-note of whose
nature is anti-asceticism. The antagonism of flesh and spirit, the
most pernicious piece of crooked thinking which has ever oozed out
of our poor deluded brain, is to this day unintelligible to them.
The air on Vivara is ambrosial and I know of no place in this neighbourhood
which I would rather choose as a hermitage than this calm and fruitful
islet.
The view is superb; it embraces all Campania.
Far away, melting into the horizon, the sinuous outlines of Tyrrhenian
shores; the Ponza islands, with their grim memories of banishments;
the legendary Cape of Circe; the complex and serrated Apennines; the
Caudine Forks; Elysian Fields, Tartarus and Cimmerian gloom; the smoking
head of Vesuvius with its coral necklace of towns and villages. Ischia,
in this evening light, is an immense dome of dark green foliage, while
on the other side of the bay, the whole Sorrentine peninsula is bathed
in rosy splendour; the longdrawn shapely mountain looks like a
thing of air, an exhalation...
Or we might navigate round the whole island of Ischia, half-rowing,
half-sailing; a day's trip, if carelessly lengthened out as it should
be (for whoever takes account of time need not hope to catch the genius
loci of these regions). Nothing more delightful than this leisurely
Homeric circumgiration.
It is only from the sea that one can realise how greatly the island
might still be improved. If there were a road, for instance, along
the shore from the town of Ischia to Lacco - what a promenade for gods
and men!
And this, they say, was the original design, but the present track
was discovered
to be a trifle cheaper, and the engineers were bribed to carry it inland
over a thousand hills and dales to suit the convenience of the landowners
on either side. The old, old story: save the sous and lose the francs.
(The new road has now been built, but runs along the sea only from
Casamicciola to Lacco).
Here at least, as we sail along, is something sensible, something modern.
It is a stone reservoir at the water's edge, built to receive the excellent
Serino drinking water which can be brought from Naples in specially
constructed vessels.
There is no Serino water in it.
Why?
The usual lawsuit.
Let it not be imagined that such lawsuits are against the wishes of
either litigant; both of them are vastly enjoying the fun.
Your South Italian is a born gambler; judicial proceedings and State
lotteries are his chief forms of emotional stimulation; he would rather
be beaten than not have a lawsuit at all, and to enquire of him how
his various 'cases' are progressing is as natural as to ask how he
has passed the night. Some persons, I was told, are foolishly protesting
that the promised water is not at hand; as if the contractor's original
and patriotic idea were to count for nothing! As if they had not
their own gelid fountain, Abocoetus yclept of old, which streams down
on cunningly contrived arches from the heights overhead!
(In my old Ischian days it terminated in a stone basin with four merry
dolphins spouting water from their marble throats - now replaced by
the usual cast-iron abomination).
Let them protest a little longer! Let them thank God if they, or their
children's children, ever taste a drop of that Serino water, seeing
that there is no reason why a Neapolitan lawsuit should ever end or,
indeed, why it should ever begin.
(There is still no Serino water in it. 1929).
You will already have visited the castle-rock of Ischia, whose museum
of mummified nuns, a grisly exhibition of life in death, is alone
worth the trouble of coming to this island. It is altogether too improbably
picturesque, this towering pinnacle of basalt; too theatrical, as Symonds rightly
says, to be wholly artistic. And yet it was a fitting scene for the
loves of Colonna and Pescara whose shades will for ever haunt those
gloomy vaults. For theirs was an age of ardour and exaggeration, and
it is not always easy to take seriously these passionate lovers and
cut-throats; there is a smack of Offenbach about some of them. Let
us now not omit to crawl into that subterranean chapel whose walls
are adorned with fading frescoes of austere beauty dating, they say,
from about 1360. How well they look, underground!
Near at hand, in vine-wreathed seclusion, stands the mighty tower of
St. Anna Here may be seen mural paintings depicting the town
and castle of Ischia in the olden days. This tower is never visited
by tourists; it commands one of the finest prospects on the island
and might no doubt be bought for a song, if the usual lawsuit were
not pending as to its ownership.
The coast-scenery of Ischia is not so imposing as that of Capri, but
it has a rugged charm of its own; the tints are softer and more
varied, and there are more genuine stretches of savagery.
Capri is a microcosm whose perfection of decor and hieratic lineaments,
wrought with the simplest and poorest materials, can only have been
the inspiration of some divinely frenzied Prometheus. But its beauty,
though vital and palpitating, is cramped; there is no room on Capri
for long-drawn, smiling levels of shimmering sand, for uplands
clad in leafy foliage, for lonely promontories like that of Cornacchia,
a cataract of frozen lava tumbling in swarthy confusion into the waves.
Unlike Capri, this island can boast of few natural caves. But the inhabitants
supplant the deficiency by creating artificial ones where wine
and other household paraphernalia are stored in the dry pumiceous
earth, and where goats and goat-boys dream through the short summer
nights. Sometimes you will notice one of them deserted without apparent
cause; the goat-boy has seen the munaciello or popular domestic spirit,
and resolutely refuses to spend another night in the haunted spot.
Loudly grumbling, the peasant excavates a new cave a few yards distant
from the first, and
recommends him to sleep with his eyes shut. When he grows older, he
will know better than to be frightened at this friendly and useful
personage, who gives him lucky numbers for the lottery and sometimes
bare cash, and who is, or ought to be, consulted on all important
family matters.
These old caverns, like deserted houses and empty cisterns, become
invested with a supernatural glamour in the briefest space of time.
Every one of them engenders a treasure-legend, though the natives are
chary of supplying information on this head, fearing that the stranger
may be versed in Varte (magic) and thereby enabled to unseal the enchantment
and raise the treasure for himself.
Everyone knows that in the cave yonder a fabulous hoard is buried.
Three men went in one night and saw a heap of gold lying in a crevice,
but the torch was blown out three times and... certain other things
occurred; one of them died soon afterwards. Ah, if they had only had
the book, like that man in Fontana! They found a sheep there on the
mountain of Epomeo, a sheep of stone, which they dragged for fun
into the village.
And there it lay till one day a man, quite an ordinary Neapolitan,
arrived with a book under one arm and a sack under the other. He knew
- he knew! He just touched the sheep and it opened and a torrent
of gold poured put which he out in his sack, and away he went....
There is a sound of grating sand in your ears, and after an hour, as
it seems, the familiar rocking movement ceases and the boat harshly
strikes the shore. You open your eyes. The colours have faded out of
things — it is evening.
'The Signore wished to sleep. He has slept for three hours. We are
at San Mon-tano. The Signore wished to bathe here'.
It must have been that zuppa di pesce; or the sun. Or possibly
the wine. True enough; it is the familiar valley of San Montano.
We have missed seeing the Punta dell'Imperatore, and Citara, and
Forio...
'We will see them all tomorrow or some other day. Your Excellency is
in no hurry'.
No, His Excellency is in no hurry; haste is a child of Satan, the Arabs
say. His Excellency will proceed to wade cautiously into the still
water, for who knows what filmy creatures may not crawl up from their
caverns in a place like this and at such an hour.
A purple veil has fallen over all things. Fireflies are lighting their
inadequate lanterns, and far away, on the hillside yonder, a belated
cicada has yet to finish its daily task of instrumental music. No sound
of waves is heard on this deserted beach; an overpowering fragrance
of aromatic plants and warm earth exhales into the moonless summer
night....
Is it possible that on this lonesome shore, with its tufts of canes
and shattered hovels, was the harbour — the harbour? There is
not a trace of antiquity to be seen even by daylight, and in this dubious
gloaming the mind, concentrated upon itself, is more than ever prone
to distrust the reality of the historic record. It is all extremely
improbable; Monsieur Berard and his colleagues are taking us
in, as usual. (There is a 'Via Ulisse' on Ischia, to commemorate, maybe,
its old Homeric associations).
Who were these Greeks and Romans, if they ever lived? Their clothing
was so and so; their houses thus... Elusive shapes, none the less.
The moment you endeavour to fix them upon the retina they are gone,
swallowed up in the murk.
A black gulf yawns between them and ourselves; however clearly they
wrought or thought, their personalities glide away from us with the
swiftness of a dream. Two faces peering at one another in the night
through the windows of railway carriages...
Yet we must allow ourselves to be convinced, even at San Montano. Vases
and cinerary urns, and ancient coins and marbles, have been brought
to light within a few feet of the surface.
No doubt much soil has been washed down from the hills on either side
since those days; the sea, too, must have carried in sand and stones
and thus helped to bury traces of ancient life here. Yet only a few
days ago a fisherman drew up from the deep a classic amphora.
It was encrusted with barnacles and other marine growths that covered,
without concealing, its noble proportions. A foreigner bought it; he
considered the amphora beautiful, and its encrustation 'picturesque'.
That was correctly stated. These sea-amphorae are, to my thinking,
fit symbols of modern Campania, and their comely image rises up before
the mind's eye whenever, amid northern gloom, I remember those shores
and try to reconstruct their vanished glories. For barnacles are 'picturesque';
dirt and superstition and villainy are 'picturesque', but it needs
neither learning nor acumen to see through yesterday's growth the beauty
of the antique form.
P.S.
Silting of San Montano harbour. This is doubtless what has happened,
and a glance at the right-hand bottom corner of Jasolino's map
will show that as recently as his day - 1588 - the inlet was lake-like,
three-tongued, with its water running so far into what are now
flat fields as almost to convert the promontory of Vico into an
island (supposing this map to be correctly drawn). A comparison
with more important
old charts such as those of Magini or Coronelli should settle the point.
I have found no traces of antiquity on the Acropolis of Vico; nothing
but vineyards. Maybe those early Greeks were rough settlers living
in wooden houses, and I forget what scholars like Holm and Beloch have
to tell us about their short stay on Ischia, even as I forget the precise
deductions in Berard's Homeric Studies. Romans will have occupied
the district in later ages. On the exposed flank of Vico promontory
is the small sea-cave in which the Roman general Marius is said to
have hidden himself. SU |