Casamicciola, Island of Ischia, July 10, 1899.

Our coming to this volcanic islet—tossed up out of the sea an Æon ago, still warm with the earth’s vital heat—was due to chance, like most things that are worth while. We had driven over that morning from Sorrento to Castellamare through odorous orange and lemon groves, and were so filled with the beauty of land and sea, that going to any city, even to our Rome, seemed a waste of life. We reluctantly boarded the crowded train for Naples. In the same carriage were a mercante di campagna and his daughter, the most lovely Italian girl I ever saw. Her hair clustered in purple shadowed masses like bunches of grapes about her perfect face; her complexion was golden and red—no pink and white prettiness, but a rich and memorable beauty. They had left home early; to have more time in the city, they partook of their breakfast, Bologna sausage, bread, garlic, and wine on the train. They were so friendly that we forgave them everything—even their fourteen bundles which entirely filled the luggage rack—even their garlic! The father opened the conversation.

“My son, he is in America; he worked on the Brooklyner Bridger. You have seen it, yes?”

“We have seen it many times, we have even crossed it.”

This brought us all very near together. Putting his hand into his pocket the mercante di campagna brought out a fistful of rice, which he presented to me.

“Behold a sample of the rice I am taking to Naples to sell.”

Not knowing exactly what else to do with it, I tied the rice in a corner of my pocket handkerchief. He next handed me the Corriere di Napoli, two days old. The first thing in the newspaper that caught my eye was an advertisement of the SocietÀ Napoletana di Navigazione a Vapore. “The steamer for Ischia sails at eleven o’clock; return tickets eight francs.”

We were due in Naples at ten, the train for Rome left at three! Five hours in Naples, which has for us but three resources: the museum, the aquarium, the antiquarians! It was the day

of Sts. Peter and Paul, a national holiday—that meant the museum would be closed; we know every fish in the great aquarium, the finest in the world. Do we not always go there? did we not spend two hours there on our way down, pay to see the awful octopus fed, and to receive a shock from the electric fish? A visit to the antiquarians for some varieties of junk even more enticing than our Roman haunts would cost us more than eight francs.

Ischia! The name set vibrating a deep chord of memory. O Edward Lear, Edward Lear, you are responsible for many vagarious wanderings! I could think of nothing but the picture in the Nonsense Book of the old person of Ischia. Is he still growing friskier and friskier? still dancing jigs, eating figs?

“Have you ever been to Ischia?” I asked the mercante di campagna.

“Frankly, the sea incommodes me too much to make the voyage; but I have a brother who drives a cab at Casamicciola. The signori should not fail to visit the island,” he said.

The girl smiled encouragement. “This is just the season for the baths,” she said; “they are miraculous for rheumatism, gout, every kind of lameness. When they went there Olivetta, the wife of my uncle Ercole, could not walk at all—adesso, corre com’un diavolo (now she runs like a devil).”

“Pur troppo (Altogether too much)!” grumbled the mercante, just like any other brother-in-law.

“The signori will employ my uncle Ercole? he drives a piebald horse. They will give the uncle and aunt tanti saluti from me?” the beauty persisted.

Her influence, combined with Edward Lear’s, was too strong to resist. Rome is always there; it was now or never for Ischia!

We caught the little steamer which carried us steadily enough across the Bay of Naples. The shores were a living panorama done in sapphire and emerald. Fishing smacks with slanting lateen sails colored, discolored, one with a picture of Maria Stella del Mare painted upon it, flitted by us before the light breeze. The steamer had once been a private yacht; though her brasses are neglected and her deck less like polished satin than it must have been in her palmy days, she still has a sporting, rakish air, in keeping with our escapade. We passed Procida, a shining isle of beauty, where I was half tempted to land and search for the enchanted princess who must inhabit it!

We landed at Casamicciola in a small boat. The patient women waiting on the quay took our trunks on their heads, the cabmen mobbed us politely, trying to wrest our hand-bags from us.

“Ercole!” cried J. “Is Ercole, he who drives a piebald horse, among you?”

“Ecco mi quÀ, Signor Marchese (Behold me here, Lord Marquis)!” Ercole (Hercules) scarcely looks his part. He is small and wizened, but he has the merry eyes of his brother, the mercante di campagna, while his laugh oddly recalls his lovely niece’s. From the beginning Ercole took and still keeps possession of us. “First to the Piccola Sentinella,” he announced. The piebald breasted the steep hill at a sharp pace. Ten minutes’ climb brought us to the Hotel of the Small Sentinel, a low building with a roof of light corrugated iron. Most of the hotels in southern Italy are old palaces or monasteries, heavily built of stone or stucco. Madam DombrÉ, the proprietress (she is an Englishwoman and makes us exceedingly comfortable), says that all the buildings put up on the island since the earthquake have been constructed under government supervision and are lightly built like the hotel. Everything here dates from the earthquake. Ercole says such a thing took place before the terremoto, or so many years after it. Mme. DombrÉ, whose daughter was killed by it, speaks as if it happened yesterday.

“There was a concert in the dining-room of our hotel at the time, it was on the 28th of July, 1883, mid-season, you know; the house was full. There came a dreadful rumbling noise. The house shook once, twice, sideways, and then came crashing down in a ruined heap. The pianist at the piano, the singer with the song on her lips, were dashed into Purgatory without an instant’s warning! Out of a population of thirty-five hundred, seventeen hundred of our people perished in the earthquake.”

Since that time Casamicciola has been almost deserted by foreigners who are now only just beginning to return; a few more come each year.

The morning after our arrival Ercole drove me willy-nilly to the stabilimento, as they call the baths. Somehow he had divined the heel of Achilles,—my bicycle ankle. The smiling medico agreed with him that the treatment was “indicated,” and forthwith delivered me over into the hands of Olivetta—she who once was lame and now runs like a devil. The baths are large, not so smartly appointed as some of the German establishments, such as Homburg or Ems, yet they have a certain classical flavor of architecture, pleasantly suggestive of the old Greek inhabitants who were driven away from the island (they called it Pithecusa) in the fifth century B.C. by the fearful eruptions of Mt. Epomeo. Olivetta led me to a small marble room, put me in a comfortable chair, placed the offending ankle on a bench, and bade me “abbia pazienza (have patience),” while she went to get the “fango.” In five minutes she returned, bringing a jar full of liquid gray clay very like what sculptors use.

“Guardi, questo fango viene proprio caldo dalle viscere della terra (Observe, this mud comes hot from the entrails of the earth).” The giant TyphoËus, transfixed by Zeus’s thunderbolt, lies chained under the island; the roar of the earthquake is his voice, the lava flood his tears. You may believe it or not: I do not find it difficult to accept. Poor old giant, I feel sorry for him, reduced to tending hospital fires, to warming up poultices for the gouty!

Olivetta built a sort of mould of hot clay wherein the foot was comfortably coddled for thirty minutes. She next gave it a hot douche for five minutes, then left me to meditate for another thirty minutes in a warm mineral bath which smelt of hot flat-irons.

The serious business of the day over, we were free to explore the country. Ercole and the piebald took us for a nineteen-mile drive around the island, which rises sharply from the sea to its highest point, Mt. Epomeo. The vineyards wrap Ischia from seashore to mountain peak in a shimmering screen of green. The vines hang from tree to tree, making a leafy roof overhead and green sun-pierced walls to the long alleys, where innumerable classic bunches are slowly ripening. The grapes are still small and immature, but exquisite in form and color. In October, the season of the vintage, this must be the most beautiful place on earth. Here one understands why the Roman soldiers in Britain, when they first saw the Kentish hop vines, thought they had found the nearest thing to the grape that savage northland produced. In their efforts to make wine from hops they produced the first beer made in England.

On our way home we met a pair of boys driving a donkey laden with the coarse gray pottery which has been made here since the days of the Romans. The creta (gray clay) from which it is made, looks very like the mud used at the stabilimento. We stopped to examine the mugs, the jugs, the donkey, and his astonishing garments.

“Behold, Madama, l’asino del colonello!” said Ercole.

“Who is the colonel?”

“Un gran signore, un Inglese. He comes here every year for the baths.”

“What can a gran signore do with this poor little animal?”

“He protects it. When he first saw this donkey, the poor beast being much afflicted with sores, was sadly tormented by flies. The colonello taking pity upon it provided pantaloons—two pair; a pair for the hind legs, a pair for the fore legs, as you perceive. He also pays the boys two francs a month to treat the creature well; he provides petroleum to bathe its sores, and now and again orders it a sea bath. It is his idea. He may be right. How do I know? With respect, the soul of his grandmother may have entered the body of that ass.”

A little further on Ercole drew up the piebald again.

“Behold other of the colonello’s beneficiaries,” he said. Two tiny dwarfs saluted us, asking with Ischian gentleness for alms. There was no whine to their voices, no consciousness of degradation, nothing of that brazen effrontery of the Neapolitan beggar, which makes one despair of the regeneration of the Neapolitan “submerged tenth”!

“Sono buoni ed onesti (They are good and honest),” said Ercole, adding a soldo from his own pocket to what J. gave them.

“They are called Pasquale and Restituta. It is only a few years that they have been obliged to beg. They worked at their trades—he at brick making, she at straw braiding; they are past working now. They are not very old, but such people have little vigor. I remember their wedding. All the town was there, the sindaco and the schoolmaster as well. We all gave something for their housekeeping, one a goat, one a pair of fowls, one a piece of furniture. If you could have seen their little marriage-bed, Signora mia, it was like a doll’s bed.”

We drove along for another mile or two, passed the straw factory, where we were obliged to buy some ugly fans, out of respect to Ercole’s views. On the Marina he stopped again to let us see “Il Fungo,” a big mushroom-shaped rock in the sea. The setting sun touched Procida into an unearthly beauty, it shone like the golden city of Jerusalem.

“There is Teodora!” said Ercole, pointing with his whip to a group of sailors sitting on the bottom of an overturned boat. In their midst sat a strange figure mending a net.

“You see that old woman sewing? She is a deaf-mute, and she believes that she is a man. If it were true it would be miraculous, perchÉ ha fatto una figlia (because she has “made” a daughter). She avoids all women, spends all her time with the fishermen. As she cannot talk and mends their nets for them—they do not object.”

Teodora laid down the long black cigar she was smoking and took off her hat to us. Save for a short dark skirt she was dressed like a man.

“It is against the law for a woman to wear pantaloons,” Ercole explained.

“But not for asses or men?”

Ercole laughed immoderately—part of his pleasant flattery.

We made the ascent of Mt. Epomeo; after completing the course of eleven baths, we wished to put to the test what they had done for me. We drove to Fontana, taking our luncheon with us—why do things taste best out of a basket? We left Ercole and the piebald at the inn and climbed to the summit of the extinct volcano where there is a curious hermitage dedicated to St. Nicola cut out of the volcanic tufa rock. The view from here is not so fine as it is half way up the mountain. It is rather too much like looking down upon a dissected map, but it does give one a wonderful geographical sensation, fixes the relations between the Sorrentine peninsula, Vesuvius, the islands of the Sirens, Capri, the promontory of Circeo (where Circe lived), Procida the golden, and the other points of this earthly paradise, between Terracina on the north and the Punta di Campanella on the south. We were helped to orient ourselves by Lucia, a “lady guide,” who joined us half way up the mountain. She is a handsome old woman with wild white hair, bright blue eyes, and a shrewd peasant face. She hailed me at sight as an American.

“How do you know that I am not English?” I asked.

“I can always recognize the Americani, Signora mia.”

“By what sign do you know us?” I asked.

“By the expression of the countenance.”

When I first came to Italy I should have scoffed at this; now I have lived away from home so long that I too recognize the American expression,—nervous, sensitive, masterful,—the Look Dominant!

“Si vede Procida, La Spagna, io veggio a te!” Lucia crooned a stave of the old Neapolitan song, Funiculi Funicula, in a cracked voice.

“Yes, yes, I know both Americani ed Inglesi; my daughter’s husband is an Inglese.”

“Where did she meet him?”

“Here on Mt. Epomeo, where else? Una bella ragazza (She was a pretty girl)! You may not believe it, Signori, but there is no difference between my daughter and me save a matter of fifteen years. At fifty she is just what I was,—at sixteen she was her mother over again. You would not think it, eh? Well, one can speak about it, now that one is so old. She was called the most beautiful girl in all Ischia. How do I know if it was true? I could not think so, you see, because she was myself over again, and I never saw any difference between myself and the other girls.”

“I hope your daughter has a good husband.”

“Grazie a Dio, a good husband, yes, yes, a good husband.”

“Who was that pretty girl at the inn down at Fontana?” J. asked.

“Bella? quella ragazza? faccia di patate (Pretty? that girl? a potato face)! Ai! if you could have seen my Eva! The Madonna herself was not more beautiful. That girl, the innkeeper’s daughter, is as awkward as a cow, and she squints besides, as her mother did before her.”

“No, no,” J. protested; “È un bel pezzo di donna (she is a fine piece of a woman).”

Lucia gave him a keen look. “The signore should not laugh at the poor girl. Il buon Dio does not give a handsome face to every woman.”

“Fortunately, for the peace of the world, that is true.”

“But the signore is an artist? one sees that from his manner of looking at things. Well, if the innkeeper’s Anna is a pretty girl, call me a bruttona (big ugly thing). If my daughter had not been out of the common, do you think a rich gentleman would have married her? Yes, yes, I am telling you the truth. She does no work, they live in a palazzo, my daughter has servants to wait on her, do you believe it? she does not even comb her own hair! And she has jewels, such diamonds! For every child she gives him, he gives her a great pearl, each bigger than the last.”

“How many children have they?”

“Ha fatto quattro maschi e tre femmine (She has borne four males and three females), all straight and well formed. The youngest is Lucia, for the poor old nonna (grandmother) at Ischia.”

“Where do they live?”

She pointed across the sea. “What do I know of foreign countries? I am of the island. Here I was born, here I shall die.”

“You must be very proud of your grandchildren.” This is always a safe remark.

“Ha ragione, eccellenza, guardi (You are right, excellency, observe), I am only a poor ignorante, but I made the great matrimonio for my daughter. Eva was always here with me, upon the flanks of Epomeo, guiding the foreigners, but for me she would be here still, as my mother and her mother before her were here. In those days before the terremoto many strangers came to Epomeo. From the first moment the young Inglese saw the girl he was innamorato. He came every day, he pretended to sketch the mountain. I knew he was no artist; why, any one could see he was un gran signore by the way he spent his money. One day he asked leave to paint my daughter. I said, ’Scuse, Signore, you are a rich gentleman, I am only a beggar, ma io sono padrona della mia figlivola (I am the mistress of my little daughter). The day Eva takes a husband he will be padrone; till that time, scusi, Signore, ma sono padrona io!’ Would you believe it? a week from that day Eva and the Inglese were married by the priest who married her father and mother and who gave her the holy rite of baptism.”

Sing me a song of the wisdom of old women!

I was bent upon exploring the hermitage, in spite of Lucia. The hermit has departed the way of hermits and others. In his stead reigns Orlando, a cross old man, between whom and Lucia there is war to the knife.

“Their excellencies are not going down without seeing the hermitage?” he whined.

“Certainly not,” J. assured him.

“Do not go in; it is a dirty hole, and there is nothing to see,” whispered Lucia, catching me by the sleeve.

“That silly old woman is tiring out the lady,” said Orlando to J.; “drive her away, she is a pest.” As I put my foot on the lowest step of the rough-hewn rock stairway leading to the hermitage, Lucia fell back and said no more. I was evidently out of her domain and in the enemy’s territory. As she had said, there was little to see in the two rooms cut out of the living rock. Orlando’s bed, a pile of straw, occupied the outer room, the inner cell served as his kitchen and larder. He offered bread and wine; we were firm in refusing refreshment; his feelings were soothed by a mancia, and by telling him we should come again and take his photograph (our kodak had been forgotten).

“The next time their excellencies come they must not let that old chiacchierone (gossip) hang on to them. She pesters the travellers so with her talk that she frightens them away. Truly you will find it set down in the red book of the strangers (Baedeker) that a guide is unnecessary, though a few soldi are due to the person living in the hermitage, who is ready and able to explain intelligently the view and the locality.”

At the foot of the steps Lucia again took us in charge, after an exchange of malevolent glances with Orlando.

“Stregona (Big old witch),” Orlando muttered.

“Birbacaione (Big rogue),” mumbled Lucia.

She came down with us as far as the cab.

“Addio, eccellenza, e mille grazie.”

“Addio, Lucia, and thanks to you.” At the turn of the road we looked back and saw the strong, bent little woman leaning against the wall, waiting to guide the next forestieri who might turn up.

“Is it true what Lucia tells us about her daughter?” I asked Ercole.

“Who knows? these old women gossip to amuse strangers. There is a new story for every day in the week. We must not believe everything that we hear.”

Was Ercole jealous, too?

The next time I saw Olivetta she began to chatter about Lucia.

“She told you about her daughter? Yes? It is quite true. The girl caught the fancy of a rich milord, and he married her. One thing I am sure Lucia did not tell you. Her son-in-law has bought her a nice cottage, the best house in Fontana, he gives her a handsome income; truly, Lucia is rich, but she is avaricious. I ask you, does she not look like a beggar? That is all a comedy; she has good clothes and shoes. Truly, I should not be surprised if, when she dies, we should find that Lucia is the richest woman in Ischia; it is a shame that she should ask money from the strangers.”

“Perhaps it is not the money so much as the occupation Lucia likes,” I suggested.

“Ma chÉ, she is robbing others who would gladly take her place. There is the excellent Orlando, he is my relation. Poor man, he is lame and cannot work. As long as Lucia remains there is no chance for another guide; È fina quella donna (she is a sharp one, that woman). Ask the colonello,—he can tell you all about Lucia and her daughter.”

The colonello, protector of the poor and purveyor of pantaloons to suffering donkeys, is at this hotel. He is a delightful, warm-blooded creature, who cannot be quite comfortable unless everybody else in sight—even an ass—is comfortable too. Like the others, he had a great deal to say about Lucia; of all the personages we have met—the place is full of personages—she seems to have the most marked character.

“Gad, sir, the old woman is right,” said the colonel. “The day she goes out of the guide business she will go to pieces. Why should she give up her job because her daughter has married into another sphere? I’m d—d if I don’t like her spirit!”

“What is the daughter like?” I asked.

“She is a good sort,” said the colonel. “When her husband took her to his mother’s house, what do you suppose they did with her? sent her to school, had her taught like a child. She learned many things, how to talk small talk, how to behave at table, how to dress and all the rest of it. When they thought she had learned enough she came home to her husband. He gave a great dinner to introduce her to his family—oh, they all acted sensibly. The bride behaved very nicely and quietly, they all liked her for her pretty manners (you know the people hereabouts have excellent manners, better than half the aristocracy at home, I tell them) as well as for her remarkable beauty; she must have been worth seeing in those days. After the dinner was over and the guests had left the dining-room, the husband coming back for something found his wife going round the table collecting the ends of the cigars the men had left on their plates.

“‘What on earth do you want with those nasty things?’ he asked.

“‘I shall send them to my poor old father at Ischia!’

“She had been in the habit of picking up the ends of the travellers’ cigars for the old man. Do you wonder that she has made a good wife and mother? I tell you she has a good heart; if a woman has that, what else matters?”

When we made our second trip to Epomeo to keep faith with Orlando, Lucia was nowhere visible; we made the ascent without her. Orlando held undisputed possession of Epomeo.

“Where is your friend Lucia?” we asked.

He fairly spluttered, “Una vecchiarella stupida senza educazione (A stupid old woman without education)! Do you know what I believe? I believe that her daughter and son-in-law are in Ischia. When they are on the island, Lucia sits all day at her window dressed in her Sunday clothes. To see her you would never fancy that she was the guide to Mt. Epomeo—not that there is any need of a guide, as you yourselves perceive.”

On our way through Fontana we passed a neat cottage, caught a whiff of fragrance of oleanders in the garden, a glimpse of an old woman sitting bolt upright in an armchair, a flash from her sharp blue eyes. It was Lucia, our little old guide, her wild hair neatly coifed by a peasant cap; she sat up as if she were sitting for her photograph, stiff, uncomfortable, wretched in her finery.

That night at the hotel an interesting couple who had arrived since the morning sat opposite to us at dinner; a tall, silent man who looked as if he might have been in the army, and a grave, handsome woman of fifty. She has a certain noble amplitude of brow, a width between the eyes, a calm quality of face and figure, very restful in contrast to certain giddy young ladies of her age who enliven the table d’hote. She speaks English with a slight accent. We made acquaintance over the mustard, which we both prefer À l’Anglaise. The gentleman spoke of Ischia and the neighboring parts of the country with such familiarity that I asked him about my enchanted island, Procida.

“It is such an ideal looking place that it ought only to be inhabited by beautiful rose-colored maidens,” I said.

He looked at his wife as he answered me.

“Ischia is the island for handsome women,” he said. “Procida is best seen as you have seen it, from a distance. It is the place where the Italian convicts are sent.”

Was not that a sad pricking of a rainbow bubble? His next words atoned for that shattered illusion; they were addressed to his wife.

“Eva, my dear,” he said, “let me give you a little of this vino di paese (wine of the country). It comes from the vigna on Mt. Epomeo, it is the kind you used to like when you were a girl.”

At the name Eva I looked at the colonello, who was devouring green figs at the end of the table. He answered my questioning look by one of acquiesence.

Orlando was right! Lucia’s daughter and the husband of Lucia’s daughter had come to Ischia to see Lucia!

“May I trouble you to hand me that other plate of figs?” said the colonello. “The figs of Ischia are the finest in the world. I sometimes wonder how many figs a man may eat and live.”

Suddenly light dawned! The colonello is undoubtedly the “Old Person of Ischia.” On the flanks of Epomeo we had looked for him, in the sun-pierced alleys of Ischian vineyards, among the sailors on the Marina, even in the halls of the stabilimento—our quest, the magnet that drew us out of the path of duty (that led back to Rome and the studio), the hero of Lear’s verse. He was here, sleeping under the same roof with us, sitting at the same table! Have not we ourselves seen him eat scores, possibly hundreds of figs? If we could postpone our return to Rome we should doubtless get up into the thousands, for,—