When General Grant, a bigot for his friends—(and thou wert one of his military family in the field)—when he, as President, nominated thee Consul at that very Naples thou so entertainest us with, what whisper, doubtless started by some rival applicant, what ridiculous whisper, was it buzzed in the lobbies, that in spite even of a Grant’s nomination, stranded thee unconfirmed by the Senate? But “Pshaw!” thou exclaimest, amused at the enthusiasm of us sophomores, when, ending thy Neapolitan romance we contendingly fire away with—
“Bravissimo!”
“Encore!”
“Write it out, Major!”
“Put it in verse!”
“Good, it will immortalize thee!”
“And consider, Dean, the glory redounding to the Club!”
To all which thy expressive “Pshaw!” and the politely proffered snuff-box by way of an added parry, and little more do we get from thee, O, Dean of the Burgundians!
Well, Major, what thou in thy impatience of pen-drudgery and indifference to any reputation except that old fashioned one of being a man of honor; what thou, for these reasons perchance, never couldst be persuaded to undertake, I, even I, unsolicited have had the temerity to essay.
And in so doing I have adopted thy earlier rendering of that Afternoon in Naples ere yet thou begannest to exclaim, “I do’nt know what the dogs is the reason, but I can’t remember anything”; that version seeming to me akin to what engravers call the first proofs, less free from the blur that ensues after repeated impressions from the plate. Moreover, not unmindful of the enthusiast’s injunction, “Put it in verse,” I have after a fashion done accordingly. As to the interspersed ballads and ditties—at the which, peradventure, thou mayst stare even as Rip Van Winkle after his resurrection did at his son—I do assure thee, Dean, they are essentially but thoughts and conceits of thine own, the product of seeds which planted and spontaneously developing in me, eventually effloresced into rhyme.
But to soften the liberty here taken, as well as the licence throughout, yes, and not without hope to propitiate and even please thee, I have so contrived matters that thou personatest the part allotted thee at the special instance of M. de Grandvin; thus in a literary way associating thee with one whose social companionship thou so unaffectedly lovest, and whose magnanimous spirit thou art ever fain to imbibe.
Vale!
An Afternoon in Naples
in the Time of Bomba
The world of fact and world of Art are two.
The sole aim of Art is beauty.
I
CHARTERING a nondescript holiday hack at his Neapolitan inn, Jack Gentian drives out, and is unexpectedly made the object of a spontaneous demonstration more to be prized by an appreciative recipient than the freedom of the City of New Jerusalem presented in a diamond box by a deputation from the Common Council of that town.
Behind a span whose cheery pace
Accorded well with gala trim—
Each hames, in arch triumphal reared,
With festive ribbons fluttering gay;
In Bomba’s Naples sallying forth
In season when the vineyards mellow,
Suddenly turning a corner round—
Ha, happy to meet you, Punchinello!
And, merrily there, in license free,
The crowd they caper, droll as he;
While, arch as any, rolled in fun,
Such tatterdemalions, many a one!
We jounced along till, just ahead,
Nor far from shrine in niche of wall,
A stoppage fell. His rug or bed
In midmost way a tumbler spread,
A posturing mountebank withall;
Who, though his stage was out of doors,
Brought down the house in jolly applause.
“Signor,” exclaims my charioteer,
Turning, and reining up, the while
Trying to touch his jaunty hat;
But here, essaying to condense
Such opposite movements into one,
Failing, and letting fall his whip,
“His Excellency stops the way!”
His Excellency there, meanwhile—
Reversed in stature, legs aloft,
And hobbling jigs on hands for heels—
Gazed up with blood-shot brow that told
The tension of that nimble play—
Gazed up as martyred Peter might;
And, noting me in landeau-seat
(Milor, there he opined, no doubt)
Brisk somersetted back, and stood
Urbanely bowing, then gave place;
While, tickled at my puzzled plight,
Yet mindful that a move was due,
And knowing me a stranger there,
With one consent the people part,
Yielding a passage, and with eyes
Of friendly fun,—how courteous too!
Catching an impulse from their air,
To feet I spring, my beaver doff
And broadcast wave a blithe salute.
In genial way how humorsome,
What pleased responses of surprise:
From o’er the Alps, and so polite!
They clap their hands in frank acclaim,
Matrons in door-ways nod and smile,
From balcony rogueish girls laugh out
Or kiss their fingers, rain their nosegays down.
At such a shower—laugh, clap, and flower—
My horses shy, the landeau tilts,
Distractedly the driver pulls.
But I, Jack Gentian, what reck I,
The popular hero, object sole
Of this ovation!—I aver
No viceroy, king, nor emperor,
Panjandrum Grand, conquistador—
Not Cæsar’s self, in car aloft
Triumphal on the Sacred Way,
No, nor young Bacchus through glad Asia borne
Pelted with grapes, exulted so
As I in hackney-landeau here
Jolting and jouncing through the waves
Of confluent commoners who in glee
Good natured pass before my prow.
II
ARRESTED by a second surprise not in harmony with the first, he is thereupon precipitated into meditations more or less profound, though a little mixed, as they say.
Flattered along by following cheers
We sped; I musing here in mind,
Beshrew me, needs be overdrawn
Those shocking stories bruited wide,
In England which I left but late,
Touching dire tyranny in Naples.
True freedom is to be care-free!
And care-free seem the people here,
A truce indeed they seem to keep,
Gay truce to care and all her brood.
But, look: what mean yon surly walls?
A fortress? and in heart of town?
Even so. And rapt I stare thereon.
The battlements black-beetling hang
Over the embrasures’ tiers of throats
Whose enfilading tongues seem trained
Less to beat alien foemen off
Than awe the town. “Rabble!” they said,
Or in dumb threatening seemed to say,
“Revolt, and we will rake your lanes!”
But what strange quietude of wall!
While musing if response would be,
Did tourist on the clampt gate tap
Politely there with slender cane—
Abrupt, to din condensed of drums
And blast of thronged trumps trooping first,
Right and left with clangor and clash
The double portals outward burst
Before thronged bayonets in flash
Like lightning’s sortie from the cloud.
Storming from the gloomy tower
Tempestuous through the caverned arch,
Like one long lance they lunge along,
A thousand strong of infantry!
The captains like to torches flaring,
Red plumes and scarlet sashes blown,
Bare sword in hand audacious gleaming;
While, like ejected lava rolled,
The files on files are vomited forth
Eruptive from their crater belched!
Sidelong, in vulpine craven sort,
On either flank at louring brows
Of tag-rag who before their sortie
Divide in way how all unlike
Their parting late before my wheels!
Who makes this sortie? who? and why?
Anon I learned. Sicilians, these—
Sicilians from Palermo shipped
In meet exchange for hirelings lent
From Naples here to hold the Isle;
And daily thus in seething town
From fort to fort are trooping streamed
To threaten, intimidate, and cow.
Flaunting the overlording flag,
Thumping the domineering drum,
With insolent march of blustering arms
They clean put out the festive stir,
Ay, quench the popular fun.
The fun they quench, but scarce the hate
In bridled imprecations pale
Of brooding hearts vindictive there,
The deadlier bent for rasping curb,
Through mutterings like deep thunder low,
Couched thunder ere the leaping bolt,
The swaggering troops and bullying trumpets go.
They fleet—they fade. And, altered much,
In serious sort my way I hold,
Till revery, taking candor’s tone
With optimistic influence plead:
Sad,—bad, confess; but solace bides!
For much has Nature done, methinks,
In offset here with kindlier aim.
If bayonets flash, what vineyards glow!
Of all these hells of wrath and wrong
How little feels the lozel light
Who, thrown upon the odorous sod
In this indulgent clime of charm
Scarce knows a thought or feels a care
Except to take his careless pleasure:
A fig for Bomba! life is fair
Squandered in superabundant leisure!
Ay, but, ye ragamuffs cutting pranks
About the capering mountebanks,
Was that indeed mirth’s true elation?
Or even in some a patched despair,
Bravery in tatters debonaire,
True devil-may-care dilapidation?
Well, be these rubs even how they may,
Smart cock-plumes in yon headstalls dance,
Each hames with ribbons flutters gay,
I see at pole our wreath advance:
Inodorous muslin garland—true:
Imposter, but of jocund hue!
Ah, could one but realities rout,
A holiday-world it were, no doubt.
But Naples, sure she lacks not cheer,
Religion, it is jubilee here—
Feast follows festa through the year;
And then such Nature all about!
No surly moor of forge and mill,
She charms us glum barbarians still,
Fleeing from frost, bad bread, or duns,
Despotic Biz, and devils blue,
And there’s our pallid invalid ones,
Their hollow eyes the scene survey;
They win this clime of more than spice,
These myrtled shores, to wait the boat
That ferries (so some pilots say),
Yes, ferries to the isles afloat,
The floating isles of Paradise
In God’s Ægean far away!
O, scarse in trivial tenor all,
Much less to mock man’s mortal sigh,
Those syllables proverbial fall,
Naples, see Naples, and then—die!
But, hark: yon low note rising clear;
A singer!—rein up, charioteer!
III
OPENING with a fervent little lyric which, if obscure in purport or anyway questionable to a Hyperborean professor of Agnostic Moral Philosophy, will nevertheless to readers as intelligently sympathetic as our honest narrator, be transparent enough and innocent as the Thirty Thousand Virgins of Cologne.
“Name me, do, that dulcet Donna
Whose perennial gifts engaging
Win the world to dote upon her,
In meridian never ageing!
“Look, in climes beyond the palms
Younger sisters bare young charms—
She the mellower graces!
Ripened heart maturely kind,
St. Martin’s summer of the mind,
And pathos of the years behind—
More than empty faces!”
Who sings? Behold him under bush
Of vintner’s ivy nigh a porch,
His rag-fair raiment patched and darned
But face much like a Delphic coin’s
New disinterred with clinging soil.
Tarnished Apollo!—But let pass.
Best here be heedful, yes, and chary,
Sentiment nowadays waxeth wary,
And idle the ever-evoked Alas.
IV
QUICK as lightning he is presented with a festive flower by the titillating fingers of a flying Peri, who thereupon spinning in pirouette, evaporates or vanishes.
A regal court where under drill
Drawn up in line the palace-guard
Behind tall iron pickets spiked
With gilded barbs, in martial din
Clanged down their muskets on the pave.
Some urchins small looked on, and men
With eye-lids squeezed, yet letting out
A flame as of quick lightning thin;
The Captain of the guard meanwhile,
A nervous corpulence, on these
Stealing a restive sidelong glance.
A curve. And rounding by the bay
Nigh Edens parked along the verge,
Brief halt was made amid the press;
And, instantaneous thereupon,
A buoyant nymph on odorous wing
Alighting on the landeau-step,
Half hovering like a humming-bird,
A flower pinned to my lapelle,
Letting a thrill from finger brush
(Sure, unaware) the sensitive chin;
Yes, badged me in a twinkling bright
With O a red and royal rose;
A Rose just flowering from the bud
Received my tribute, random coins,
Beaming received it, chirped adieu,
Twirled on her pivot, and——was gone!
An opening came; and in a trice
The horses went, my landeau rocked,
The ribbons streamed; while, ruddy now,
Flushed with the rose’s reflex bloom,
I dwelt no more on things amiss:
Come, take thine ease; lean back, my soul;
The world let spin; what signifies?
Look, she, the flower-girl—what recks she
Of
Bomba’s sortie? what indeed!
Fine sortie of her own, the witch,
But now she made upon my purse,
And e’en a craftier sally too!
V
HIS heightened spirits are for the time dashed by a tristful encounter.
A hill there is that laves its feet
In Naples’ bay and lifts its head
In jovial season, curled with vines.
Its name, in pristine years conferred
By settling Greeks, imports that none
Who take the prospect thence can pine,
For such the charm of beauty shown
Even sorrow’s self they cheerful weened
Surcease might find and thank good Pan.
Toward that Hill my landeau drew;
And there, hard by the verge, were seen
Two faces with such meaning fraught
One scarce could mark and straight pass on:
I bade my charioteer rein up.
A man it was less hoar with time
Than bleached through strange immurement long,
Retaining still, by doom depressed,
Dim trace of some aspiring prime.
Seated, he tuned a homely harp
Watched by a girl, whose filial mien
Toward one almost a child again,
Took on a staid maternal tone.
Nor might one question that the locks
Which in smoothed natural silvery curls
Fell on the bowed one’s thread-bare coat
Betrayed her ministering hand.
Anon, among some ramblers drawn
A murmur rose, “’Tis Silvio, Silvio!”
With inklings more in tone suppressed
Touching his story, part recalled:
Clandestine arrest abrupt by night;
The sole conjecturable cause