I Have Purchases To Make, Business To Settle, And I Must Go Hither
And Thither About The Town.
Sirocco, of course, dusks everything to
cheerless grey, but under any sky it is dispiriting to note the
changes in Naples.
Lo sventramento (the disembowelling) goes on,
and regions are transformed. It is a good thing, I suppose, that the
broad Corso Umberto I. should cut a way through the old Pendino; but
what a contrast between that native picturesqueness and the
cosmopolitan vulgarity which has usurped its place! "Napoli se ne
va!" I pass the Santa Lucia with downcast eyes, my memories of ten
years ago striving against the dulness of to-day. The harbour,
whence one used to start for Capri, is filled up; the sea has been
driven to a hopeless distance beyond a wilderness of dust-heaps.
They are going to make a long, straight embankment from the Castel
dell'Ovo to the Great Port, and before long the Santa Lucia will be
an ordinary street, shut in among huge houses, with no view at all.
Ah, the nights that one lingered here, watching the crimson glow
upon Vesuvius, tracing the dark line of the Sorrento promontory, or
waiting for moonlight to cast its magic upon floating Capri! The
odours remain; the stalls of sea-fruit are as yet undisturbed, and
the jars of the water-sellers; women still comb and bind each
other's hair by the wayside, and meals are cooked and eaten al
fresco as of old. But one can see these things elsewhere, and Santa
Lucia was unique. It has become squalid. In the grey light of this
sad billowy sky, only its ancient foulness is manifest; there needs
the golden sunlight to bring out a suggestion of its ancient charm.
Has Naples grown less noisy, or does it only seem so to me? The men
with bullock carts are strangely quiet; their shouts have nothing
like the frequency and spirit of former days. In the narrow and
thronged Strada di Chiaia I find little tumult; it used to be
deafening. Ten years ago a foreigner could not walk here without
being assailed by the clamour of cocchieri; nay, he was pursued
from street to street, until the driver had spent every phrase of
importunate invitation; now, one may saunter as one will, with
little disturbance. Down on the Piliero, whither I have been to take
my passage for Paola, I catch but an echo of the jubilant uproar
which used to amaze me. Is Naples really so much quieter? If I had
time I would go out to Fuorigrotta, once, it seemed to me, the
noisiest village on earth, and see if there also I observed a
change. It would not be surprising if the modernization of the city,
together with the state of things throughout Italy, had a subduing
effect upon Neapolitan manners. In one respect the streets are
assuredly less gay. When I first knew Naples one was never,
literally never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs,
which in general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest
of melodies; trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less
melodious, and dear to Naples.
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