Haggard Anthology Vol 16, page 63
Yet what artists were these Pompeians. All the talent of the world in our generation could not produce such statues and bronzes as have been found beneath the lava of Herculaneum and the ashes of Pompeii. Therefore it would seem that high civilisation does not favour the production of the finest art. On the other hand, neither does savagery. Nor can its appearances upon the earth as in the best Greek period, the very early Egyptian period, the period under discussion and that of the Renaissance, be accounted for as in the instance of the uprising of great writers such as Homer, Shakespeare, and others, in the occasional touching of the high-water mark of human intellect by a wave of individual genius. For at such epochs genius seems to have been a common gift. It fell like a sudden rain upon the heads of all. Then like the rain it ceased, to be followed by a long period of ineffective undewed sterility. The problem is too high for me, I abandon it.
Naples, in a domestic sense, is pre-eminently remarkable for two things, its beggars, and its method of driving horses by means of a band across the nose in place of the common bit. I have never elsewhere seen this habit of harnessing. As for the beggars, so far as the traveller is concerned, they include practically the entire population. Against him every man uplifts his hand, or rather he stretches it out. The right carriage fare for a course, that is, from any one point to another in the town, is 75 centimes; yet we saw ten francs extracted from a wretched American who still was followed with complaints and voluble abuse. One morning I sat at breakfast behind a massive window of plate glass which did not open. Nor was there any access to the street beyond under quite a moderate walk. Yet during the whole of that meal a sturdy youth stood without and begged of me. He knew that even if I was so minded I could not communicate to him the desired coin, because between us there was a great pane fixed, in short, that his was but labour wasted. And yet he begged, his nature prompting to the act. There sat an Englishman, and he must practise his trade if only in empty, unsatisfying pantomime. In Naples every one expects a fee, generally for doing nothing, and no one is satisfied with it when received. Perhaps the cabmen, some of whom are blackmailers and scoundrels of peculiar villainy, take the palm for impudent extortion. Or should it be given to the boatmen? Of them I anticipate to tell a story.
When we reached Naples on our return from Syria my nephew went ashore to see a tradesman about some statuettes which we had purchased on our first visit, that did not appear to have reached their destinations. This he did against my advice, for the vessel was only staying two hours and the man lived near the Museum. The two hours passed, the last tug came off, eight o'clock was striking. One officer after another asked me if my nephew was on board. I said that I could not see or hear him, and at last the captain announced firmly but regretfully that he had business at Marseilles and must be going. I shrugged my shoulders but inwardly I was anxious, as Naples is not a place for a young man to be left stranded without money, of which I knew he had little in his pocket. Also he wore my only ulster and I had lent him an umbrella! The time came to hoist the gangway and I gave him up. Just then through the gloom at a little distance from the ship I caught sight of my ulster struggling violently, and of my umbrella waving in the air. Now followed an indescribable hubbub. The figure of the lost one, with a Neapolitan hanging on to his leg, struggled from one boat into another boat whence, with a well-planted kick, he neatly floored the Neapolitan and, breathless but triumphant, reached the companion and the deck.
His tale was moving. It appears that he had been detained at the art-dealer's shop, and that the cabman who drove him to the quay, either by accident or very possibly on purpose, for one can never be quite certain of the designs of these men, took him a long way round. By the time he reached the embarking-place and had finished the usual altercation over his fare, the tug had gone, leaving him with something under fifteen minutes to reach the Oroya, which lay a mile or more away. Somehow, after being nearly torn to pieces, he made a bargain and got a boat, only to discover that his oarsmen either could not, or would not row at a speed needful in the situation. He coached them in the best Cambridge style, and when that proved ineffective, threatened by expressive pantomime to cast the elder of the two men into the deep, for the bellowing of the siren and the ringing of the bell on board the distant Oroya were sounds full of meaning to his ears.
Thus encouraged the rowers put on the pace and arrived at length within fifty yards of the steamer, whose donkey engines were now beginning to clank upon the anchor chains. But there they stopped and opened negotiations for blackmail. Whether he would have ever got on board the ship, or now be at the bottom of Naples Bay, or the hero of some other unpleasant predicament, had not an accident chanced, I know not. The accident was that while the altercation and mutual threats proceeded the boat drifted against another boat, into which, with commendable agility, he sprang, as I have described, the Italian hanging to his leg. Thence he gained the tug and from it the steamer.
The officers of the ship told me that these incidents are common at Naples. There it is quite customary for boatmen to bring off wretched passengers just before their vessel sails, and refuse to put them on board until they receive some exorbitant ransom. In Cyprus the traveller has no need of any defensive weapon; in most parts of Palestine he is not likely to regret its absence; but in Naples, for my part, I should in future always carry a pistol to show if necessary.
How blessed is the sun after long periods of cold and wet, especially in those lands where one expects sun and artificial heat is not embraced. The night before we visited Pompeii, for instance, was not a happy one for me. I was actually frozen out of the hotel smoking-room with its glass roof and a toy stove which did not burn. By way of consolation I manufactured myself some hot whisky and water with the help of a dreadful Etna that would not blow out, boiled over and took the vanish off the table (damage five francs at least, if it was discovered). Then I crept to bed and to such sleep as an incessant influenza cough would allow. It was not much, but towards morning I began to enjoy nightmares. One I remember particularly; it was to demonstrate on paper one hundred different methods of folding an india-rubber bath in five seconds of time, and fifty different methods of emptying the same without spilling a drop, under pain of being thrown living from the top of the Bargello tower in Florence. Another pleasing dream was that I was actually very ill in a dreadful hotel with no one to attend upon me except Italian waiters, who always demanded five francs before they would give you anything to drink, or ten if you were particularly thirsty. At length I woke up stiff and aching, and there, streaming through the window, was the sun, at last—the bright Italian sun of many a romance. I could have worshipped it.
To what the books on the subject, and their name is legion, say about Pompeii I shall attempt to add nothing. For many years I desired to see this place, and when I saw it, it did not disappoint me. It is wonderful. The houses as they were, only without their roofs—very small houses for the most part. The narrow streets down which in times of storm the water ran, with the raised stepping-stones across them. The wear of the chariot wheels upon the paving, of the children's feet at the doors of school-houses, of the merchants' feet at the entrances of shops and places of business, of the priests' feet upon the thresholds of temples. The scribblings of gladiators and even of Christian slaves upon the walls. The obscene pictures and places. The fountains in the middle of the way with holes hollowed in their solid stone by the pressure of the hands of those who for six or seven centuries had leant down to refresh themselves with their waters. The casts enclosing the actual skeletons of some of the poor creatures who were overtaken in the last catastrophe. The garden-courts still adorned with statues. All these and a hundred other things were wonderful.
But how should a man see them? From place to place he walks at the heels of an attentive guide who is full of information till he grows bewildered. Here are temples, here are baths, here a theatre, a forum, a wall, a circus, a private house with the statues still standing about the court, an abode not to be described, a baker's, a silver-smith's, an artist's shop, what not? All the wreckage of a city, none of the finest or most large, it is true, suddenly obliterated in the midst of its active life, a clock that has stopped, the case decayed but the works laid bare, sui generis—alone in the relics of the universe. It is overwhelming, to study it in detail would take weeks, and even then who would be very much the wiser?
No, I think it is best to slip away alone as I did, and seated upon some stone or wall in the soft shine of the sunlight, to let the general scene and the unique atmosphere that surrounds it, sink into the imagination. Then where no tourist disturbs, where no cicerone explains, the mind may strive to re-create. Its ears may hear the hum of voices in the populous pleasure-seeking town, its eyes may see the lost thousands in their strange attire crowding down the cramped ways, till at length something of the meaning and the pathos of it all will come home.
Yet why should this place move us so much? There are scores of dead cities strewn about the world, only more stripped by decay and man. I suppose it is because of the feebleness of our fancy, that cripple who finds it so hard to stir from the little plot of time upon which it is our chance to wander. Here it has crutches, here the evidences of the departed are plentiful. We see the bread that they baked, the trinkets which they purchased. The pleasures they pursued so fiercely, the sins that were their joy, the higher aspiration that touched them at times, the superstitions before which they cowered, are written of on every ruined stone. Therefore, thus aided by these helpful props of evidence they draw near to us and we to them.
Vesuvius towering there, Vesuvius which saw it all and so much before from the very beginnings of the world, and will see so much hereafter till the end of the world, ought to stir us more, but it does not. It is a wondrous, an awe-inspiring phenomenon of Nature, no more, something above her human sympathy. But the stone hollowed by the hands of the dead, ah! that stirs. We think that if we had lived then our palms would have helped to wear the edge of the solid water-trough, and comprehend, and are sorry. By the sign of this sharp example we remember that we too are making our faint marks upon such stones as we are fated to tread and handle. Other more imperceptible marks also upon things intangible and yet real which generations to come will look on with dull incomprehensive eyes, and though they know it not, in their own souls gather up the harvest. This knowledge makes us sympathetic, or at least I think so.
In Naples men learned in the English tongue write works on Pompeii (to them a mine of wealth) for the benefit of the traveller. One of these we purchased for half a franc at the railway station. It is infinitely more entertaining than most guide-books. Here are a few extracts:—
First of all our author is historical, and tells us "it is mentioned by Pliny: a M. Erinnius, duumvir, a Pompean who was thundered at Pompeii." One wonders whether by this the author means that the duumvir was applauded at a theatre, or that he came in sudden and unexpected contact with the electric current. If so, his fate was scarcely so bad as that of Drusus, son of Claudius.
"He was in Pompeii and took his pleasure to throw some pears in the air and then received them in his mouth, when one of those fruits strangled him, stopping up his throat."
What an occupation for the son of an emperor who had apparently but just become engaged, and what size can his mouth have been! Further on our author, who by the way is too modest to record his name, describes some of the corpses found in the ashes. Here, for instance, are Nos. 39 and 40:—
"39. A young woman fallen upon her face, her head is leaned upon her arm, the coat or shift which she was covered of was brought near her head in the act of defense or fright, and causes all her beautiful naked body to be seen. Her shoulder has some trace of dress. It is still seen a lock of hair tied on her occiput.
"40. A young woman having a ring to her finger, to her foot a buskin. Her leg is admirable."
Will some scholar kindly place the god or goddess described thus darkly as "another womanish divinity of an uncertain determination"? Perhaps the fact that Neptune "on foot" is said to be leaning upon her shoulder may assist the student.
I will pass over the account of "a xystus" adorned with porticoes which protect it from the "ardours of the sun," although curiously enough "in one of the columns is the augury that was made to a girl that she may sneeze, that is pleasingly." After this no wonder that many find the customs and manners of the ancients curious and hard to understand. But to proceed. Here is an extract in a style which may be commended to the notice of art critics. It has all the necessary obscurity and can scarcely fail to impress the unlearned. A bronze is under discussion. Our book describes it thus:—
"The counterpoise represents a nice womanish bust with a covering on its head, under which are ivy leaves; she has her hair curled on her deck. She leans softly on her cheek the index of her right hand, of which the pulse is adorned with a bracelet, and she turns her head on the right. A lamp and a beak; Jupiter, radiated on a disc, leaning on the sceptre and sitting between Minerva, armed with a lame, and the Abundance, with the cornucopea, both seated."
If it involves nothing incorrect, I confess that I should much like to learn what portion of the lady's frame is referred to as "her deck."
There is, however, information as well as amusement in these pages. Thus they call attention to a graffito scribbled on the wall of the theatre which announces that a certain Methe, a player of farce, "amat Chrestum corde sit utreisque"—loves Christ from the heart, and prays that a like fate may befall others. So within two generations of His death the Saviour had followers in heathen Pompeii even among actors.
Here is another curious inscription conceived in a very different spirit, and scratched upon the wall of the house of a certain Cecilius Jucundus: "Quis amat valeat. Pereat qui nescit amare. Bis tanto pereat, quisquis amare vetat," which I may render, "May the lover flourish! Bad luck to him who turns his back on love! But to him who bars the lover's path—damnation!"
Jucundus was a banker. It is not difficult to imagine that this vigorous screed was inscribed upon the wall by some poor aspirant for his daughter's hand, to whom he had shown the door.
The old tradition was that Pompeii perished during the summer months. As our guide-book points out, however, this theory is entirely refuted by one curious little circumstance. Near the Stabian Gate in December 1889 were discovered some human bodies and a tree, which in the words of the book "was poured there, as one habitually is used to do the liquid chalk," so that "besides the impress of its thick past remained as engraved on the ashes" the remains of the leaves and of the berries.
From the cast obtained thus obscurely (which we saw) botanists were enabled to identify the tree with its leaves and fruit as a variety of lauris nobilis, whereof the berries do not ripen until late autumn. As these particular berries were quite ripe when the ashes covered them, Pompeii, it is clear, must have perished in the winter months.
I will confess that I leave this place with a deep professional grudge against that admirable romancer, the late Lord Lytton. Who is there of our trade that would not like to write a novel about Pompeii? But Lytton bars the way. Not that it would be difficult to find another and quite different plot. It is his title which presages failure to all who would follow in his path. He had called his book "Glaucus," or "The Blind Girl," or "A Judgment from Heaven," or anything else it would not have mattered. But every one has heard of the novel named "The Last Days of Pompeii," and he who tried to treat of that city and event with the pen of fiction would certainly hear of it also. It is even possible that he might become involved in correspondence on the hoary theme of literary plagiarism.
V. NAPLES TO LARNACA
The morning of our departure from Naples came, and we departed, this time very early. Long before "the saffron-tinted dawn," as I remember when a boy at school I used to translate the Homeric phrase, had touched the red pillar of smoke above Vesuvius, I was up and doing my experienced best to arouse my companion, by arranging the electric lights in such an artistic fashion that their unveiled and concentrated rays struck full upon his "slumber-curtained eyes." But he is an excellent sleeper, and the effort was a failure. Therefore stronger measures had to be found.
At length we were off, the extreme earliness of the hour saving me something considerable in the matter of hotel tips. By the time we reached the station, however, every Italian connected with the place was wide-awake and quite ready to receive the largesse of the noble foreigner. I think that I had to fee about ten men at that station, at least eight of them for doing nothing. Gratuities were dispensed to the bus-conductor who introduced us to a porter; to the porter who led us three yards to the ticket office; to an official who inspected the tickets after we had taken them; to two other officials who showed us respectively the platform from which the train for Brindisi started and the place where the luggage must be booked; to a superior person who announced that he would see the luggage properly booked, and to various other inferior persons, each of whom prepared to carry some small article to the platform. Then being called upon suddenly to decide, and very much afraid that the said small articles would vanish in transit, I determined upon the spur of the moment to accompany them to the carriage, leaving my nephew to attend to the registration of the heavier baggage.
