Naples: June 29
One often hears people say that Naples is “disappointing.” The disappointment depends on what you expect, on your standard of comparison, and on the nature of the conditions under which you see Naples.
There was once upon a time an Englishwoman who came out to Rome to live there. She was the wife of a scholar. She was asked by one of her compatriots whether she liked Rome. She said it was a great come-down after what she had been used to.
“And where,” asked the second Englishwoman, “used you to live in England?”
“Surbiton,” she answered.
Have you ever seen Surbiton? It is a small suburban town on the Southwestern Railway, about half an hour’s distance by rail from London.
Well, if you go to a place like Naples and you expect to find a place like Sheerness, you will be disappointed.
Then as to the conditions. These depend on the weather; and I know by experience that the weather at Naples can make disappointment a certainty. The first time I went there it rained. That was in spring. The second time I went there it snowed. That was in winter. The third time I went there I chose the month of May so as to insure good weather. There was a thick fog the whole time. You couldn’t even see Vesuvius. Nevertheless I persevered and went there a fourth time, and was rewarded. This time I found the proper weather for Naples. It is broiling hot, with just a slight sea-breeze.
NAPLES—THREE IMPRESSIONS
It is St. Peter’s Day, consequently I anticipated that the shops would be shut. I spoke my fear to one of the talkative and gesticulative guides who boarded the ship.
He said No.
“But it’s ‘festa,’” I said.
“St. Peter,” he answered with a sniff; “St. Peter’s the patron Saint of Rome, but here, no!”—and he made a gesture of indifferent contempt, which no man can do so well as an Italian. “We’ve got St. Januarius,” he added.
St. Peter, he gave one to understand, was, as far as Naples is concerned, a very secondary person, a poor affair. And this is odd, because St. Peter was a fisherman, and Naples is a city of fishermen. At Naples St. Januarius overshadows every one and everything which is connected with the Life Sacred: besides the fact of having a miracle that works plumb, and to which the unbeliever bears witness.
Some of the shops were shut, some were open. The churches were decorated with red hangings and crowded with people—old fishermen, decrepit women, quantities of children and young women, and some smart young men in white ducks and flannels.
I hold that in many ways Naples is the most characteristic, the most Italian, of all Italy’s cities. It is the most exaggeratedly Italian of them all. L’Italie au grand complet. It is there you see the bluest of blue skies, the yellowest of yellow houses, where you hear Italian talk at its most garrulous, Italian smells at their most pungent, and Italian song at its most nasal sentimental pitch, those squalling, pathetic, imploring, slightly flat love songs, the best of all love songs, because they express real love without any nonsense, plain love, unendurable, excruciating love.
“Excruciating” is the word. It is the love Catullus sings of in one of the shortest of poems:—
I hate and I love; and if you want to know how that can be, I can’t tell you, but I feel it, and I am excruciated—that is to say, I am in agony.
I imagine Catullus living at Naples and sailing on the bay in his yacht (phaselus ille) and going out to dinner and drinking too much wine, and being witty and sometimes insolent to important people such as Julius Cæsar, and squalling love songs, bitter-sweet, desperate, passionate songs, in the gardens of his Lesbia, whose real name was Clodia.
She was the wife of a politician called, I think, Metellus Celer, and the professors say she was very, very bad. I don’t trust the professors. I don’t believe they know what the Romans, and especially the she-Romans, were like. I distrust their knowledge. But I trust Catullus’s verse, and from that it is evident that he was very much in love, indeed, and very unhappy. Wretched Catullus, as he calls himself. And she, Lesbia, didn’t care a rap. And in his misery he calls her hard names, which were probably well deserved. The note you hear in his poetry is the same you get in certain Neapolitan songs you hear in the street. You can get them on the gramophone, sung by Anselmi.
“At Florence,” according to an Italian saying, “you think; at Rome, you pray; at Venice, you love; at Naples, you look.” There is plenty to look at, especially in the evening, when Vesuvius turns rosy and transparent and the sea becomes phosphorescent; and plenty even in the daytime, when you watch
The poets do hit it sometimes. And that is an exact description of Capri. It quivers in the wave’s intenser day. As you drive along to Posilippo, the hills of Sorrento seem like phantoms; the vegetation on the hill is gorgeously luxuriant and green; you pass donkey carts laden with bright-coloured fruits; the driver carries a huge yellow or green parasol; every now and then somebody shouts; trams whistle by. It is hot, swelteringly hot, but freshness comes from the sea. Vesuvius is dormant, but crowned by a little cloud which pretends to be an eruption and isn’t.
You are glutted with sunshine and beauty and heat and colour. This is Italy, the quintessence of Italy, a panorama of azure, and sun, and dust. To-day, in any case, there is nothing disappointing about it—and I wish I were going to bathe in the reaches near Posilippo, and to sail in a boat at night and listen to the squealing, love-sick Neapolitan songsters.
When I get back to the ship, the passengers are all looking on at the boys diving for pennies, and carefully distinguishing between copper and silver, under the sea; till at last we leave behind the noise, the chatter, and the importunate vendors who want to sell you opera-glasses for almost nothing, and steam past Vesuvius, Sorrento, and Capri, away into the blue Mediterranean. Addio, Napoli.