Leading the Blind Read online

  Before entering the Kingdom of Naples we pass through the town of Aversa, which has ‘acquired considerable celebrity for its lunatic asylum, called the Maddalena, established by Murat, and capable of containing 500 persons … one of the earliest to throw aside restraints, and to rely on moral influences founded on the basis of occupation and amusement for the cure. It was more interesting a few years ago, before the barbarous practices of the dark ages were abolished in other countries, than it is now, when the more recent system of England has left it somewhat in the background in regard to modern improvements.’

  Murray expatiates tediously at times on the hotels at Naples, but his main points are that travellers should bargain with landlords on arrival and ‘refuse to pay any charge which they know, from experience elsewhere, to be exorbitant. There need be no delicacy on the subject; for it is the common custom of the country. All foreigners make it a rule to adopt this precaution, and for this reason they not only pay about a third less than English travellers, but escape the annoyances and delays of disputed bills.’

  There seems to have been some justification for this advice because ‘the principal hotels rank among the best and dearest in Italy’ but the expense of staying in them is ‘greater than any which they have experienced elsewhere from the time of leaving England. No one can deny that the great hotels of Naples are distinguished by their excellent management, and by all which can reconcile the visitor to high charges; and while they continue to deserve this praise, there will always be travellers to support them without reference to expense.’ He goes on to say that the landlords ‘will still further consult their own interests by adopting in every branch of their establishments, and especially in the charges for apartments, a scale of prices which will put an end to the reproach that they have the dearest inns in Italy … In these times of railroads and steam, the general public are the best patrons; and those landlords who become known for the moderation of their charges will be abundantly repaid not only by the increased number of visitors, but by the longer period during which they will be induced to stay.’

  One hotel particularly noted is the newly built Hôtel des Etrangers, ‘well situated, and highly spoken of for reasonable charges and an obliging landlord, who has been a courier in English families. His wife, an Englishwoman, was formerly a lady’s maid in the Duke of Newcastle’s family, and has introduced many English comforts into the establishment.’ The hotel, renamed the Royal des Etrangers, still existed in 1912, and had an asterisk of commendation in Baedeker.

  The streets at Naples were not lit at night until 1840, when oil lamps were introduced. They were shortly afterwards superseded by gas, ‘which in so crowded and intricate a city has proved one of the greatest improvements which modern civilisation has effected. Within the last few years foot-pavements have been laid down in the principal thoroughfares, but such is the inveteracy of habit that even now the people can hardly be induced to relinquish their ancient custom of walking in the middle of the streets.’

  The Corso of Naples, about a mile and a half in length, was paved with flagstones and ‘from morning to night, and we almost add from night to daybreak, the Corso is thronged with people and with carriages; the people shouting at the top of their voices, and the carriages threading their way between the pagodas of the lemonade-sellers, the stalls of the vendors of iced-water, the charcoal fires of the sausage dealers, and a hundred groups of busy people, whose sole occupation appears to be to pass as much of their lives as possible in the open air. It is at all times the noisiest street in Europe, and on extraordinary occasions it presents a perfect sea of human beings, swayed here and there by each successive current, and presenting to the eye of the traveller one of the most curious spectacles it is possible to imagine.’

  The impression is of an Indian or oriental city today, but sixty years later Baedeker can still say: ‘The life of the people in Naples is carried on with greater freedom and more careless indifference to publicity than in any other town in Europe.’

  In the narrow side streets, much cooking took place in the open air, while other dealers ‘tempt the crowd with fragments from the trattorie or with trays of carefully assorted cigar-ends. The female members of the community are seen going through their toilet, and performing various unpleasing acts of attention to their children, regardless of the public gaze. In summer the children often run about quite naked.’

  In the words of J. C. Hare: ‘Naples has been described as a paradise inhabited by devils: but they are lively, and amusing devils – insouciant and idle: good-natured and thieving: kind-hearted and lying: always laughing, except if thwarted, when they will stab their best friend without a pang. Almost everybody in Naples cheats, but cheats in as lively and pleasant a manner as is compatible with possibilities. Nearly all the officials peculate, and perhaps not more than two-thirds of the taxes ever reach the public exchequer. If the traveller is robbed, he will never secure redress …

  ‘As it is the universal custom amongst the lower orders to marry at seventeen, and Neapolitan women are proverbially prolific, the tall, narrow houses in the back streets swarm with children, and are like rabbit-warrens; whole families live huddled together, but not without cleanliness or decency, though the air sometimes resounds at once with blows and cries, singing and laughter … Little, however, is needed to sustain life at Naples, and there are thousands who consider a dish of beans at midday to be sumptuous fare, while the horrible condiment called pizza (made of dough baked with garlic, rancid bacon, and strong cheese) is esteemed a feast.’ And so many people consider it in modern-day London.

  As in most other great towns Murray assumes the traveller to have a macabre interest in cemeteries. In Naples only the rich, he says, can afford to be buried in a church, the old cemetery of Naples being used for the dead of the public hospitals, ‘and for the poorest classes who cannot afford the expense of burial in the Campo Santo Nuovo or in the churches.’

  The ground forms a parallelogram of upwards of 300 feet, surrounded on three sides by a lofty wall, and bounded on the forth side by an arcade. It contains 366 deep round pits, some of which are arranged under the arcade, but the greater part are in the area. The pits are covered with large stones; their number, of course, gives one for every day of the year and one over. One of them is opened every evening, and cleared out to make room for the dead of the day. A priest resides upon the spot, and towards evening the miscellaneous funeral takes place. By this time a large pile of bodies is generally accumulated. They are brought by their relatives or by the hospital servants, stripped of every particle of clothing upon the spot, and left to be disposed of at the appointed time, unattended, in most instances, by the person to whom they were bound in life by ties of kindred or feeling. The bodies are thrown into the pit, with as much unconcern as if they were the plague patients of Florence whom Boccaccio has described; quick lime is then thrown in, and the stone covering is replaced for another year. As many as forty bodies are frequently thus disposed of in a single evening. The pits when first opened are generally so full of carbonic acid gas that a light is extinguished at its mouth; and it is said that whenever they have been examined the day after a burial, the bodies have been overrun with rats and enormous cock-roaches, which clear the bones more expeditiously than the lime.

  Perhaps there would be fewer dead to inter at such charnel houses if the hospitals were run better, Murray suggests, when mentioning the main hospital at Naples: ‘The extent of its resources are unknown, as its ample revenues are administered by one of the great officers of the court, who is practically irresponsible.’

  One of the most painful spectacles for nineteenth-century British travellers was the treatment of animals, especially donkeys and dogs, who seem, on the whole, to have had a worse time than human beings. ‘The grossest brutality to animals used to be a Neapolitan characteristic,’ J. C. Hare says, adding that the local retort to ill-usage was: ‘So what? They aren’t Christians.’ For this attitude, Hare adds, the priest was ch
iefly responsible.

  Macmillan’s guide at the turn of the century reports: ‘A local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has done a vast amount of good, though it has met with the most violent opposition from the very persons who are chiefly interested in its operations. The continual protest on the part of English travellers against acts of wanton cruelty has probably more effect upon the Neapolitan cabman than any number of police restrictions, the justice or reasonableness of which he is wholly incapable of understanding. The Society has done immense work in removing from the streets of Naples sights and sounds which were sickening to English eyes and ears. Collecting-boxes are to be found in all the best hotels.’

  In 1853 the area of the Grotto del Cane, in the environs of the city, was a place for stray dogs to avoid. ‘This celebrated cave, which the books of our early childhood classed among the wonders of the world, is nothing more than a small aperture, resembling a cellar, at the base of a rocky hill. The cavern, known to Pliny, is continually exhaling from its sides and floor volumes of steam mixed with carbonic acid gas … Cluverius says that the grotto was once used as a place of execution for Turkish captives, who were shut up within its walls and left to die of suffocation, a merciful fate compared with the lingering tortures which the Mohametan pirates of the same period inflicted on their Christian captives. It is said that Don Pedro de Toledo tried the same experiment upon two galley slaves, with fatal results. Addison, on his visit to the cavern, made a series of very interesting experiments which anticipated all those performed by subsequent observers. He found that a viper was nine minutes in dying on the first trial, and ten minutes on the second, this increased vitality being attributable, in his opinion, to the large stock of air which it had inhaled after the first trial. He found that the dog was not longer in expiring on the first experiment than on the second. It has frequently been asserted that the dog, upon which this experiment is usually performed for the amusement of travellers, is so accustomed to “die” that he becomes indifferent to his fate. We disbelieve this statement altogether, and on the simple ground that we have never seen any dog in perfect health who has long been the subject of the exhibition. The effects of the gas, moreover, are seen quite as well, if not better, in a torch, a lighted candle, or a pistol.’

  Augustus Hare says in 1911, ‘Extortionate wretches generally swarm in the neighbourhood with animals which they offer to “die” for the amusement of visitors; a dog is the favourite victim.’ Baedeker, a few years later, tells us: ‘Dogs are no longer provided for the exhibition of this cruel experiment, but the curiosity of the traveller is sufficiently gratified by observing that a light is immediately extinguished when brought in contact with the vapour.’

  The final comment on this matter will be taken from Macmillan’s guidebook of 1905: ‘The fumes being most powerful close to the floor, a dog or other animal is soon overcome by breathing the fumes, and a wretched dog is kept in readiness for the cruel and vulgar experiment, on the consent of the inhuman visitor’ – thus putting the blame where it really lay.

  After seeing the churches and picture galleries of Naples, and its street life, the traveller may now visit the asterisked environs, the first of which must surely be the ascent of Vesuvius, ‘for many centuries one of the most active volcanoes in the world’. The mid-Victorian Murray gives a blow by blow description of the fifty-three eruptions up to that time, in the last of which: ‘A young Polish officer was struck by a mass of large size, which caused a compound fracture of the thigh, lacerating the artery in such a manner that he bled to death on the spot. An American officer was struck on the arm by a stone, which stripped the flesh down to the elbow, producing alarming haemorrhage, which endangered his life for many days.’ Perhaps for the rest of his time on earth he considered that Goethe had much to answer for, in saying that Vesuvius was ‘a peak of hell, rising out of Paradise’, thus tempting all tourists to climb it.

  The ascent was usually made from Resina, reached by railway or private carriage, a place ‘infested by self-called guides, pretended mineral dealers, and padroni of horses and mules, who are most importunate in their offers of services, which are too frequently both dear and worthless’.

  A kind of sedan chair with twelve bearers ‘is required for delicate ladies and invalids. A great coat or cloak, and a warm neckerchief, to put on as soon as the ascent is made, a strong walking stick, and stout boots, may be mentioned as the desiderata of the excursion.’ During an eruption, hundreds of people assemble to witness the sight: ‘When a stream of lava is rolling slowly down the mountain, the kettle is boiled on its surface and the eggs are cooked in its crevices. Coins also are usually dropped into the lava, which is then detached from the mass and preserved as a reminiscence.

  ‘The ascent over the loose scoriae generally occupies about an hour, varying of course with the state of the cone. At times it is necessary for the guides to assist the traveller, which they do by strapping a long leathern belt around his waist, and pulling him up the steep incline by main force.’

  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.