Part 12 (1/2)

These physical contrasts are strikingly paralleled in the history of the island. This little speck on the earth's surface, now given up solely to fis.h.i.+ng, pastoral pursuits, and the exploitation of tourists, and as little affected by public affairs as if it were in the midst of the Mediterranean, instead of being almost within cannon-shot of the metropolis of South Italy, has pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes, conquered in turn by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans; under Rome little known and used merely as a lighthouse station for the benefit of the corn-galleys plying from Sicily to Naples, till the old Emperor Augustus took a fancy to it, and used it as a sanatorium for his declining years. Some years later we find this isolated rock in the occupation of the infamous Tiberius, as the seat of government from which he ruled the destinies of the whole empire. Then, to run rapidly through succeeding centuries, we find Capri, after the fall of Rome, sharing in the fortunes and misfortunes of Naples, and losing all historic individuality till the beginning of the present century, when the Neapolitan Gibraltar became a political shuttlec.o.c.k, tossed about in turn between Naples, England, and France; and now it complacently accepts the destiny Nature evidently marked out for it, and has become the sanatorium of Naples, and the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque.

One cannot be many hours in Capri without being reminded of its tutelary genius Tiberius. In fact as Mr. A. J. Symonds has forcibly expressed it, ”the hoof-print of ill.u.s.trious crime is stamped upon the island.” All the _religio loci_, if such a phrase is permissible in connection with Tiberius, seems centered in this unsavoury personality. We cannot get away from him. His palaces and villas seem to occupy every prominent point in the island. Even the treasure-trove of the antiquary bears undying witness to his vices, and shows that Suetonius, in spite of recent attempts to whitewash the Emperor's memory, did not trust to mere legends and fables for his biography. Even the most ardent students of Roman history would surely be glad to be rid of this forbidding spectre that forces itself so persistently on their attention. To judge by the way in which the simple Capriotes seek to perpetuate the name of their ill.u.s.trious patron, one might almost suppose that the Emperor, whose name is proverbial as a personification of crime and vice, had gone through some process akin to canonization.

Capri, though still famous for beautiful women, whose cla.s.sic features, statuesque forms, and graceful carriage, recall the Helens and the Aphrodites of the Capitol and Vatican, and seem to invite transfer to the painter's canvas, can no longer be called the ”artist's paradise.” The pristine simplicity of these Grecian-featured daughters of the island, which made them invaluable as models, is now to a great extent lost. The march of civilization has imbued them with the commercial instinct, and they now fully appreciate their artistic value. No casual haphazard sketches of a picturesque group of peasant girls, pleased to be of service to a stranger, no impromptu portraiture of a little Capriote fisher-boy, is now possible. It has become a ”sitting” for a consideration, just as if it took place in an ordinary Paris atelier or a Rome studio. The idea that the tourist is a gift of Providence, sent for their especial benefit, to be looked at in the same light as are the ”kindly fruits of the earth,”

recalls to our mind the quaint old Indian myth of Mondamin, the beautiful stranger, with his garments green and yellow, from whose dead body sprang up the small green feathers, afterwards to be known as maize. However, the Capriotes turn their visitors to better account than that; in fact, their eminently practical notions on the point appear to gain ground in this once unsophisticated country, while the recognized methods of agriculture remain almost stationary. The appearance of a visitor armed with sketch-book or camera is now the signal for every male and female Capriote within range to pose in forced and would-be graceful att.i.tudes, or to arrange themselves in unnatural conventional groups: aged crones sprout up, as if by magic, on every doorstep; male loungers ”lean airily on posts”; while at all points of the compa.s.s bashful maidens hover around, each balancing on her head the indispensable water-jar. These vulgarizing tendencies explain why it is that painters are now beginning to desert Capri.

But we are forgetting the great boast of Capri, the Blue Grotto. Everyone has heard of this famous cave, the beauties of which have been described by Mr. A. J. Symonds in the following graphic and glowing picture in prose: Entering the crevice-like portal, ”you find yourself transported to a world of wavering, subaqueous sheen. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered upon the blue-white sand. The flesh of a diver in this water showed like the face of children playing at snap-dragon; all around him the spray leaped up with living fire; and when the oars struck the surface, it was as though a phosph.o.r.escent sea had been smitten, and the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls.” It must, however, be remembered that these marvels can only be perfectly seen on a clear and sunny day, and when, too, the sun is high in the sky. Given these favorable conditions, the least impressionable must feel the magic of the scene, and enjoy the s.h.i.+fting brilliancy of light and color. The spectators seem bathed in liquid sapphire, and the sensation of being enclosed in a gem is strange indeed. But we certainly shall not experience any such sensation if we explore this lovely grotto in the company of the noisy and excited tourists who daily arrive in shoals by the Naples steamer. To appreciate its beauties the cave must be visited alone and at leisure.

Those who complain of the village of Capri being so sadly modernized and tourist-ridden will find at Anacapri some of that Arcadian simplicity they are seeking, for the destroying (aesthetically speaking) fingers of progress and civilization have hardly touched this secluded mountain village, though scarcely an hour's walk from the ”capital” of the island.

We will, of course, take the famous steps, and ignore the excellently engineered high-road that winds round the cliffs, green with arbutus and myrtle, in serpentine gradients, looking from the heights above mere loops of white ribbon. Anacapri is delightfully situated in a richly cultivated table-land, at the foot of Monte Solaro. Climbing the slopes of the mountain, we soon reach the Hermitage, where we have a fine bird's-eye view of the island, with Anacapri spread out at our feet, and the town of Capri clinging to the hillsides on our right. But a far grander view rewards our final climb to the summit. We can see clearly outlined every beautiful feature of the Bay of Naples, with its magnificent coast-line from Misenum to Sorrento in prominent relief almost at our feet, and raising our eyes landwards we can see the Campanian Plain till it is merged in the purple haze of the Apennines. To the south the broad expanse of water stretches away to the far horizon, and to the right this incomparable prospect is bounded by that ”enchanted land” where

”Sweeps the blue Salernian bay, With its sickle of white sand.”

and on a very clear day we can faintly discern a purple, jagged outline, which shows where ”Paestum and its ruins lie.”

In spite of the undeniable beauties of Capri, it seems so given up to artists and amateur photographers that it is a relief to get away to a district not quite so well known. We have left to the last, as a fitting climax, the most beautiful bit of country, not only in the neighborhood of Naples, but in the whole of South Italy. The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi offers a delightful alternation and combination of the softest idyllic scenery with the wildest and most magnificent mountain and crag landscape. In fact, it is necessary to exercise some self-restraint in language and to curb a temptation to rhapsodize when describing this beautiful region. The drive from Naples to Castellamare is almost one continuous suburb, and the change from this monotonous succession of streets of commonplace houses to the beautiful country we reach soon after leaving the volcanic district at Castellamare is very marked. In the course of our journey we cannot help noticing the bright yellow patches of color on the beach and the flat house-tops. This is the wheat used for the manufacture of macaroni, of which Torre dell'

Annunziata is the great center. All along the road the houses, too, have their loggias and balconies festooned with the strips of finished macaroni spread out to dry. All this lights up the dismal prospect of apparently never-ending buildings, and gives a literally local color to the district.