The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 2

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We halt for a moment to look at Capri, that enormous, irregular rock,
raising its huge back out of the sea) its back broken in the middle,
with the little village for a saddle. On the farther summit, above
Anacapri, a precipice of two thousand feet sheer down to the water on
the other side, hangs a light cloud. The east elevation, whence the
playful Tiberius used to amuse his green old age by casting his
prisoners eight hundred feet down into the sea, has the strong
sunlight on it; and below, the row of tooth-like rocks, which are the
extreme eastern point, shine in a warm glow. We descend through a
village, twisting about in its crooked streets. The inhabitants, who
do not see strangers every day, make free to stare at and comment on
us, and even laugh at something that seems very comical in our
appearance; which shows how ridiculous are the costumes of Paris and
New York in some places. Stalwart girls, with only an apology for
clothes, with bare legs, brown faces, and beautiful eyes, stop in
their spinning, holding the distaff suspended, while they examine us
at leisure. At our left, as we turn from the church and its sunny
piazza, where old women sit and gabble, down the ravine, is a snug
village under the mountain by the shore, with a great square medieval
tower. On the right, upon rocky points, are remains of round towers,
and temples perhaps.

We sweep away to the left round the base of the hill, over a
difficult and stony path. Soon the last dilapidated villa is passed,
the last terrace and olive-tree are left behind; and we emerge upon a
wild, rocky slope, barren of vegetation, except little tufts of grass
and a sort of lentil; a wide sweep of limestone strata set on edge,
and crumbling in the beat of centuries, rising to a considerable
height on the left. Our path descends toward the sea, still creeping
round the end of the promontory. Scattered here and there over the
rocks, like conies, are peasants, tending a few lean cattle, and
digging grasses from the crevices. The women and children are wild
in attire and manner) and set up a clamor of begging as we pass. A
group of old hags begin beating a poor child as we approach, to
excite our compassion for the abused little object, and draw out
centimes.

Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly down the rugged
path, I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sun
on the rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a man
below me sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and moves away,
a solitary figure. I say solitary; and so it is in effect, although
he is leading a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs back
to bark at me. Is this the brigand of whom I have read, and is he
luring me to his haunt? Probably. I follow. He throws his cloak
about his shoulders, exactly as brigands do in the opera, and loiters
on. At last there is the point in sight, a gray wall with blind
arches. The man disappears through a narrow archway, and I follow.
Within is an enormous square tower. I think it was built in Spanish
days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates. A bell hung in it, which
was set clanging when the white sails of the robbers appeared to the
southward; and the alarm was repeated up the coast, the towers were
manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away to the hills, I doubt
not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so much to be dreaded
as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell is gone now,
and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just passed
would be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the tower;
and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red
stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,
and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other
a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty
circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the
point. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet
way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is
very solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of
everything. The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the
worn crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is
nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified
Capri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellent
place for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured. There must
be a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refused
to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen so affected.

We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one,
was superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the
last point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us
stumbling over the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high
walls. We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa
road. For there lay the sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its
darkening groves and hundreds of twinkling lights. As we went down
the last descent, the bells of the town were all ringing, for it was
the eve of the fete of St. Antonino.

CAPRI

"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touching
his Phrygian cap. The people here abbreviate all names. With them
Massa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is
reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento
into Serent.

Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic,
and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb
the steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I have
read in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento.
But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust out
its rocky spur with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itself
has moved so far round to the south that Sorrento, which fronts
north, has lost sight of it.

We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared
from the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of
the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In
this atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the
northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as
Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to
guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a half
long, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high at
one end, and eighteen hundred feet at the other, with a depression
between. If it had been chiseled by hand and set there, it could not
be more sharply defined. So precipitous are its sides of rock, that
there are only two fit boat-landings, the marina on the north side,
and a smaller place opposite. One of those light-haired and freckled
Englishmen, whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round the
island alone in rough water, last summer, against the advice of the
boatman, and unable to make a landing, and weary with the strife of
the waves, was in considerable peril.

Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour is still most
graceful and poetic. This wonderful atmosphere softens even its
ruggedness, and drapes it with hues of enchanting beauty. Sometimes
the haze plays fantastic tricks with it,--a cloud-cap hangs on Monte
Solaro, or a mist obscures the base, and the massive summits of rock
seem to float in the air, baseless fabrics of a vision that the
rising wind will carry away perhaps. I know now what Homer means by
"wandering islands." Shall we take a boat and sail over there, and so
destroy forever another island of the imagination? The bane of
travel is the destruction of illusions.

We like to talk about Capri, and to talk of going there. The
Sorrento people have no end of gossip about the wild island; and,
simple and primitive as they are, Capri is still more out of the
world. I do not know what enchantment there is on the island; but--
whoever sets foot there, they say, goes insane or dies a drunkard. I
fancy the reason of this is found in the fact that the Capri girls
are raving beauties. I am not sure but the monotony of being
anchored off there in the bay, the monotony of rocks and precipices
that goats alone can climb, the monotony of a temperature that
scarcely ever, winter and summer, is below 55 or above 75 Fahrenheit
indoors, might drive one into lunacy. But I incline to think it is
due to the handsome Capri girls.

There are beautiful girls in Sorrento, with a beauty more than skin
deep, a glowing, hidden fire, a ripeness like that of the grape and
the peach which grows in the soft air and the sun. And they wither,
like grapes that hang upon the stem. I have never seen a handsome,
scarcely a decent-looking, old woman here. They are lank and dry,
and their bones are covered with parchment. One of these brown-
cheeked girls, with large, longing eyes, gives the stranger a start,
now and then, when he meets her in a narrow way with a basket of
oranges on her head. I hope he has the grace to go right by. Let
him meditate what this vision of beauty will be like in twenty ears.

The Capri girls are famed as magnificent beauties, but they fade like
their mainland sisters. The Saracens used to descend on their
island, and carry them off to their harems. The English, a very
adventurous people, who have no harems, have followed the Saracens.
The young lords and gentlemen have a great fondness for Capri. I
hear gossip enough about elopements, and not seldom marriages, with
the island girls,--bright girls, with the Greek mother-wit, and
surpassingly handsome; but they do not bear transportation to
civilized life (any more than some of the native wines do): they
accept no intellectual culture; and they lose their beauty as they
grow old. What then? The young English blade, who was intoxicated
by beauty into an injudicious match and might, as the proverb says,
have gone insane if he could not have made it, takes to drink now,
and so fulfills the other alternative. Alas! the fatal gift of
beauty.

But I do not think Capri is so dangerous as it is represented. For
(of course we went to Capri) neither at the marina, where a crowd of
bare-legged, vociferous maidens with donkeys assailed us, nor in the
village above, did I see many girls for whom and one little isle a
person would forswear the world. But I can believe that they grow
here. One of our donkey girls was a handsome, dark-skinned, black-
eyed girl; but her little sister, a mite of a being of six years, who
could scarcely step over the small stones in the road, and was forced
to lead the donkey by her sister in order to establish another lien
on us for buona mano, was a dirty little angel in rags, and her great
soft black eyes will look somebody into the asylum or the drunkard's
grave in time, I have no doubt. There was a stout, manly, handsome
little fellow of five years, who established himself as the guide and
friend of the tallest of our party. His hat was nearly gone; he was
sadly out of repair in the rear; his short legs made the act of
walking absurd; but he trudged up the hill with a certain dignity.
And there was nothing mercenary about his attachment: he and his
friend got upon very cordial terms: they exchanged gifts of shells
and copper coin, but nothing was said about pay.

Nearly all the inhabitants, young and old, joined us in lively
procession, up the winding road of three quarters of a mile, to the
town. At the deep gate, entering between thick walls, we stopped to
look at the sea. The crowd and clamor at our landing had been so
great that we enjoyed the sight of the quiet old woman sitting here
in the sun, and the few beggars almost too lazy to stretch out their
hands. Within the gate is a large paved square, with the government
offices and the tobacco-shop on one side, and the church opposite;
between them, up a flight of broad stone steps, is the Hotel Tiberio.
Our donkeys walk up them and into the hotel. The church and hotel
are six hundred years old; the hotel was a villa belonging to Joanna
II. of Naples. We climb to the roof of the quaint old building, and
sit there to drink in the strange oriental scene. The landlord says
it is like Jaffa or Jerusalem. The landlady, an Irish woman from
Devonshire, says it is six francs a day. In what friendly
intercourse the neighbors can sit on these flat roofs! How sightly
this is, and yet how sheltered! To the east is the height where
Augustus, and after him Tiberius, built palaces. To the west, up
that vertical wall, by means of five hundred steps cut in the face of
the rock, we go to reach the tableland of Anacapri, the primitive
village of that name, hidden from view here; the medieval castle of
Barbarossa, which hangs over a frightful precipice; and the height of
Monte Solaro. The island is everywhere strewn with Roman ruins, and
with faint traces of the Greeks.

Capri turns out not to be a barren rock. Broken and picturesque as
it is, it is yet covered with vegetation. There is not a foot, one
might say a point, of soil that does not bear something; and there is
not a niche in the rock, where a scrap of dirt will stay, that is not
made useful. The whole island is terraced. The most wonderful thing
about it, after all, is its masonry. You come to think, after a
time, that the island is not natural rock, but a mass of masonry. If
the labor that has been expended here, only to erect platforms for
the soil to rest on, had been given to our country, it would have
built half a dozen Pacific railways, and cut a canal through the
Isthmus.

But the Blue Grotto? Oh, yes! Is it so blue? That depends upon the
time of day, the sun, the clouds, and something upon the person who
enters it. It is frightfully blue to some. We bend down in our
rowboat, slide into the narrow opening which is three feet high, and
passing into the spacious cavern, remain there for half an hour. It
is, to be sure, forty feet high, and a hundred by a hundred and fifty
in extent, with an arched roof, and clear water for a floor. The
water appears to be as deep as the roof is high, and is of a light,
beautiful blue, in contrast with the deep blue of the bay. At the
entrance the water is illuminated, and there is a pleasant, mild
light within: one has there a novel subterranean sensation; but it
did not remind me of anything I have seen in the "Arabian Nights." I
have seen pictures of it that were much finer.

As we rowed close to the precipice in returning, I saw many similar
openings, not so deep, and perhaps only sham openings; and the
water-line was fretted to honeycomb by the eating waves. Beneath the
water-line, and revealed here and there when the waves receded, was a
line of bright red coral.

THE STORY OF FIAMMETTA

At vespers on the fete of St. Antonino, and in his church, I saw the
Signorina Fiammetta. I stood leaning against a marble pillar near
the altar-steps, during the service, when I saw the young girl
kneeling on the pavement in act of prayer. Her black lace veil had
fallen a little back from her head; and there was something in her
modest attitude and graceful figure that made her conspicuous among
all her kneeling companions, with their gay kerchiefs and bright
gowns. When she rose and sat down, with folded hands and eyes
downcast, there was something so pensive in her subdued mien that I
could not take my eyes from her. To say that she had the rich olive
complexion, with the gold struggling through, large, lustrous black
eyes, and harmonious features, is only to make a weak photograph,
when I should paint a picture in colors and infuse it with the sweet
loveliness of a maiden on the way to sainthood. I was sure that I
had seen her before, looking down from the balcony of a villa just
beyond the Roman wall, for the face was not one that even the most
unimpressible idler would forget. I was sure that, young as she was,
she had already a history; had lived her life, and now walked amid
these groves and old streets in a dream. The story which I heard is
not long.

In the drawing-room of the Villa Nardi was shown, and offered for
sale, an enormous counterpane, crocheted in white cotton. Loop by
loop, it must have been an immense labor to knit it; for it was
fashioned in pretty devices, and when spread out was rich and showy
enough for the royal bed of a princess. It had been crocheted by
Fiammetta for her marriage, the only portion the poor child could
bring to that sacrament. Alas! the wedding was never to be; and the
rich work, into which her delicate fingers had knit so many maiden
dreams and hopes and fears, was offered for sale in the resort of
strangers. It could not have been want only that induced her to put
this piece of work in the market, but the feeling, also, that the
time never again could return when she would have need of it. I had
no desire to purchase such a melancholy coverlet, but I could well
enough fancy why she would wish to part with what must be rather a
pall than a decoration in her little chamber.

Fiammetta lived with her mother in a little villa, the roof of which
is in sight from my sunny terrace in the Villa Nardi, just to the
left of the square old convent tower, rising there out of the silver
olive-boughs,--a tumble-down sort of villa, with a flat roof and odd
angles and parapets, in the midst of a thrifty but small grove of
lemons and oranges. They were poor enough, or would be in any
country where physical wants are greater than here, and yet did not
belong to that lowest class, the young girls of which are little more
than beasts of burden, accustomed to act as porters, bearing about on
their heads great loads of stone, wood, water, and baskets of oranges
in the shipping season. She could not have been forced to such
labor, or she never would have had the time to work that wonderful
coverlet.

Giuseppe was an honest and rather handsome young fellow of Sorrento,
industrious and good-natured, who did not bother his head much about
learning. He was, however, a skillful workman in the celebrated
inlaid and mosaic woodwork of the place, and, it is said, had even
invented some new figures for the inlaid pictures in colored woods.
He had a little fancy for the sea as well, and liked to pull an oar
over to Capri on occasion, by which he could earn a few francs easier
than he could saw them out of the orangewood. For the stupid fellow,
who could not read a word in his prayer-book, had an idea of thrift
in his head, and already, I suspect, was laying up liras with an
object. There are one or two dandies in Sorrento who attempt to
dress as they do in Naples. Giuseppe was not one of these; but there
was not a gayer or handsomer gallant than he on Sunday, or one more
looked at by the Sorrento girls, when he had on his clean suit and
his fresh red Phrygian cap. At least the good Fiammetta thought so,
when she met him at church, though I feel sure she did not allow even
his handsome figure to come between her and the Virgin. At any rate,
there can be no doubt of her sentiments after church, when she and
her mother used to walk with him along the winding Massa road above
the sea, and stroll down to the shore to sit on the greensward over
the Temple of Hercules, or the Roman Baths, or the remains of the
villa of C. Fulvius Cunctatus Cocles, or whatever those ruins
subterranean are, there on the Capo di Sorrento. Of course, this is
mere conjecture of mine. They may have gone on the hills behind the
town instead, or they may have stood leaning over the garden-wall of
her mother's little villa, looking at the passers-by in the deep
lane, thinking about nothing in the world, and talking about it all
the sunny afternoon, until Ischia was purple with the last light, and
the olive terraces behind them began to lose their gray bloom. All I
do know is, that they were in love, blossoming out in it as the
almond-trees do here in February; and that all the town knew it, and
saw a wedding in the future, just as plain as you can see Capri from
the heights above the town.

It was at this time that the wonderful counterpane began to grow, to
the continual astonishment of Giuseppe, to whom it seemed a marvel of
skill and patience, and who saw what love and sweet hope Fiammetta
was knitting into it with her deft fingers. I declare, as I think of
it, the white cotton spread out on her knees, in such contrast to the
rich olive of her complexion and her black shiny hair, while she
knits away so merrily, glancing up occasionally with those liquid,
laughing eyes to Giuseppe, who is watching her as if she were an
angel right out of the blue sky, I am tempted not to tell this story
further, but to leave the happy two there at the open gate of life,
and to believe that they entered in.

This was about the time of the change of government, after this
region had come to be a part of the Kingdom of Italy. After the
first excitement was over, and the simple people found they were not
all made rich, nor raised to a condition in which they could live
without work, there began to be some dissatisfaction. Why the
convents need have been suppressed, and especially the poor nuns
packed off, they couldn't see; and then the taxes were heavier than
ever before; instead of being supported by the government, they had
to support it; and, worst of all, the able young fellows must still
go for soldiers. Just as one was learning his trade, or perhaps had
acquired it, and was ready to earn his living and begin to make a
home for his wife, he must pass the three best years of his life in
the army. The conscription was relentless.

The time came to Giuseppe, as it did to the others. I never heard
but he was brave enough; there was no storm on the Mediterranean that
he dare not face in his little boat; and he would not have objected
to a campaign with the red shirts of Garibaldi. But to be torn away
from his occupations by which he was daily laying aside a little for
himself and Fiammetta, and to leave her for three years,--that seemed
dreadful to him. Three years is a longtime; and though he had no
doubt of the pretty Fiammetta, yet women are women, said the shrewd
fellow to himself, and who knows what might happen, if a gallant came
along who could read and write, as Fiammetta could, and, besides,
could play the guitar?

The result was, that Giuseppe did not appear at the mustering-office
on the day set; and, when the file of soldiers came for him, he was
nowhere to be found. He had fled to the mountains. I scarcely know
what his plan was, but he probably trusted to some good luck to
escape the conscription altogether, if he could shun it now; and, at
least, I know that he had many comrades who did the same, so that at
times the mountains were full of young fellows who were lurking in
them to escape the soldiers. And they fared very roughly usually,
and sometimes nearly perished from hunger; for though the sympathies
of the peasants were undoubtedly with the quasi-outlaws rather than
with the carbineers, yet the latter were at every hamlet in the
hills, and liable to visit every hut, so that any relief extended to
the fugitives was attended with great danger; and, besides, the
hunted men did not dare to venture from their retreats. Thus
outlawed and driven to desperation by hunger, these fugitives, whom
nobody can defend for running away from their duties as citizens,
became brigands. A cynical German, who was taken by them some years
ago on the road to Castellamare, a few miles above here, and held for
ransom, declared that they were the most honest fellows he had seen
in Italy; but I never could see that he intended the remark as any
compliment to them. It is certain that the inhabitants of all these
towns held very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage: the poor
fellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were hungry, and
they must live somehow.

What Fiammetta thought, down in her heart, is not told: but I presume
she shared the feelings of those about her concerning the brigands,
and, when she heard that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxious
for the safety of his body than of his soul; though I warrant she did
not forget either, in her prayers to the Virgin and St. Antonino.
And yet those must have been days, weeks, months, of terrible anxiety
to the poor child; and if she worked away at the counterpane, netting
in that elaborate border, as I have no doubt she did, it must have
been with a sad heart and doubtful fingers. I think that one of the
psychological sensitives could distinguish the parts of the bedspread
that were knit in the sunny days from those knit in the long hours of
care and deepening anxiety.

It was rarely that she received any message from him and it was then
only verbal and of the briefest; he was in the mountains above
Amalfi; one day he had come so far round as the top of the Great St.
Angelo, from which he could look down upon the piano of Sorrento,
where the little Fiammetta was; or he had been on the hills near
Salerno, hunted and hungry; or his company had descended upon some
travelers going to Paestum, made a successful haul, and escaped into
the steep mountains beyond. He didn't intend to become a regular
bandit, not at all. He hoped that something might happen so that he
could steal back into Sorrento, unmarked by the government; or, at
least, that he could escape away to some other country or island,
where Fiammetta could join him. Did she love him yet, as in the old
happy days? As for him, she was now everything to him; and he would
willingly serve three or thirty years in the army, if the government
could forget he had been a brigand, and permit him to have a little
home with Fiammetta at the end of the probation. There was not much
comfort in all this, but the simple fellow could not send anything
more cheerful; and I think it used to feed the little maiden's heart
to hear from him, even in this downcast mood, for his love for her
was a dear certainty, and his absence and wild life did not dim it.

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