By 1912 there was no need for such a scramble, because Thomas Cook & Co. had constructed a rack-and-pinion railway almost to the summit, to which firm the thanks of tourists were due, Baedeker says, ‘for the energy with which, in face of serious difficulties, they maintain order and discipline among the guides and others, who have been accustomed for generations to practise extortion upon travellers’.
From Vesuvius our intrepid traveller would visit Pompeii, having read the Younger Pliny’s vivid account, reprinted verbatim in his Murray, of its eruption in AD 79. A copy of Bulwer-Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii may also have been in his knapsack, and if he wanted to stay overnight, Murray would tell him that the Hôtel Bellevue was ‘a new inn, close to the railway, kept by S. Prosperi, a very civil and obliging landlord’.
The guidebook leads one from ruin to ruin, describing each house in ample detail, never failing to point out the remains of the dead: ‘One cast of a young girl, part of which still exists, possessed exceeding elegance of form; the neck and breast especially were perfect models of feminine beauty.’
The House of the Vestals is: ‘A double house, comprising a vestibule, an atrium with the usual apartments on each side, formerly richly paved with mosaics and decorated with luxurious pictures by no means in accordance with the name given to it.’
This sneaky form of euphemism, perhaps intended by Murray’s handbook to indicate those risqué ornaments a gentleman might wish to see, was employed in the description of the House of Sallust, whose Venereum ‘consists of a small court, the real prototype of the Oriental harem, surrounded by a portico, of octagonal columns, a sacrarium dedicated to Diana, two sleeping-rooms at the sides with glazed windows looking into the court … Every part is elaborately decorated, and the paintings are appropriately expressive of the use to which the apartments were applied. The sleeping rooms contain pictures of Mars, Venus, and Cupid, and the entire wall at the back of the court is covered with a large painting, representing the story of Diana and Actaeon, an evident allusion to the danger of prying too closely into the mysteries of this portion of the mansion.’
One is also warned of, or guided to, the Tavern: ‘… a building so called from the number of cooking vessels, tripods, pots, and pans of bronze and earthenware which were found in it. The walls are covered with licentious paintings, representing the usual routine of low tavern scenes.’
Our attention is also directed to a baker’s shop, where: ‘The frequent occurrence of the phallus over the entrance doors, and the obscene pictures found in several of the houses, have induced the belief that this was the quarter of the courtesans.’
In the House of the Triumphant Hercules certain statues were said to be in bad taste, ‘but curious from their variety and arrangement; among them are, Love riding a dolphin, a bearded satyr, a stag, a fawn extracting a thorn from a goat’s foot, a goat caressing its young one lying in the lap of a shepherdess, and others which we need not particularise’.
Such paintings and statues presented problems to guidebook writers of the Victorian Age. Baedeker, as late as 1912, says of the Lupanare, which was locked: ‘The bad character of the house is sufficiently indicated by the paintings and inscriptions.’ In the next edition we are informed that: ‘Most of the licentious paintings have been either destroyed or removed.’
At the entrance to the House of the Vettii is ‘a representation of Priapus (covered) … Beside the kitchen is a room (locked) containing paintings not suited for general inspection and a statuette of Priapus.’ Other guidebooks ignore the issue, though a later Baedeker sums it up by saying that though the best of the paintings have been removed, many of those left ‘merit inspection. The scenes present a uniformly soft, erotic character, corresponding to the peaceful and pleasure-loving taste of the age.’
Visiting Capri in 1853 called for the hire of a ten-oared boat from Sorrento, at the cost of five ducats. The twenty miles there and back enabled the traveller to return the same evening, since accommodation on the island was said to be ‘indifferent’. An Englishman who had spent three days there, however, was so delighted with the island’s salubrity and scenery that ‘he made it his residence for thirty years’. By the next edition of Murray three inns offered ‘clean and tolerably comfortable accommodations’. He also mentions that the Blue Grotto was discovered by two Englishmen swimming off the coast in 1822.
By 1912 steamers took only two hours to do the journey, though Baedeker tells us that ‘on windy days the roughness of the water is apt to occasion sea-sickness’. Later in the nineteenth-century, when tourists (and artists) went there in large numbers, fourteen hotels are listed, as well as numerous lodgings.
J. C. Hare comments that the natives are ‘pleasant and civil in their manners, and full of courtesies to strangers. The women are frequently beautiful, and good models may be obtained here by artists more cheaply than anywhere else. One lira a day is the usual price of a model, and yet the artist may feel he is doing no injustice, as 60c. a day would be the wages of a hard day’s work in the fields.’
CHAPTER NINE
SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY
If our traveller wants to visit the provinces south of Naples he will learn from his Murray of 1853 that the inns in the remoter districts are ‘as bad and comfortless as they were in the time of Montaigne, except that the wooden shutters which kept out the light as well as wind have mostly been replaced by glazed panels. The cookery in such places is on a par with the accommodation, and we may, from experience, congratulate every traveller in the mountain and inland districts who can make his own omelet, and instruct the padrona how to cook a dish of ham and eggs. These commodities are generally to be found in the highland villages, where even milk and butter are rarely to be met with, and they are real luxuries to an Englishman after the watery soup and cheese which constitute the chief contents of a country larder.’
Baedeker tells us that Italian customers ‘have no hesitation in ordering away ill-cooked or stale viands, and they often inspect the fish or meat before it is cooked and make a bargain as to the price’. He goes on to say: ‘Moderation in eating and drinking is, of course, imperative. The appetite gradually decreases under a southern sun … The traveller should be more than usually scrupulous in rejecting fish or eggs as to whose freshness there can be the slightest suspicion.’
Sixty years after Murray, Hare wrote: ‘The vastness and sometimes ugliness of the districts to be traversed, the barrenness and filth of the inns, the roughness of the natives, the torment of mosquitoes, the terror of earthquakes, the insecurity of the roads, and the far more serious risk of malaria or of typhoid from the bad water, are natural causes which have hitherto kept strangers away from the south. But every year these risks are being lessened, and some of the travellers along the southern railways to Sicily may well be induced to linger on the way, though, with the exception of the rebuilt hotel at Reggio, the inns of Calabria are still such as none but hardy tourists may care to encounter.’
With regard to public safety, he goes on: ‘… there is a general transmitted feeling of insecurity in the south, and it is still the custom in Calabria for lonely country houses to be prepared for a state of siege, while no Italian gentleman ventures to go out unarmed and unattended, and, on returning to his country villa, is always met at the railway station by armed servants, with horses which fail not to have pistols in their holsters. It is not a great many years since the cracking of whips was forbidden on the road from Rome to Naples, because it served as a call to brigands, and the Neapolitan peasantry still regard brigandage as by no means dishonourable: it was rather an attraction by which a young fellow secured the favour of his love, and brigands were always to be pitied and sympathised with. A pedestrian foreigner is still apt to feel, especially in Calabria, as if every man’s hand was against him, and, if he travels in desolate places, entertains (though needlessly) still as much dread of a stealthy pistol or stiletto, as of the fury of the sheep-dogs, from whom the fate of Actaeon seems constantly impending. It does do to run from these latter: the sight of a man picking up a stone is usually sufficient to keep them at bay.’