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entry Sept. 2003
moved Jan. 2011
Descriptions of Street Life
"Port street" by
Vincenzo Migliaro, 1893.
In another entry I
refer to the “cascade of chaos” in the pages of Harper’s
Weekly in a description of Neapolitan street
life from the mid-1800s. (A short excerpt, as a
reminder):
| …water-sellers
bawling iced water; pious minstrels
playing doleful bagpipes under a statue of
the virgin; Sicilian girls dancing the
tarantella with uncommon vigor; friars
roaring that they only want a gran more to
save a soul from hell; boys fighting for
watermelons; exchange tables loaded with
copper; lemonade-stands mounted by
triumphal arches, bedizened with gold
paper and wreathes of flowers;
macaroni-dealers ladling huge masses of
the smoking delicacy out of cauldrons, and
beseeching the crowd not to let it cool;
more monks tinkling little bells, and
knocking Punch and the conjuror over as
they hurry past with a dead man… |
I enjoy comparing that with similar passages from
other sources—famous ones—from around the same time.
Here is a short passage from Pictures of Italy
by Charles Dickens: (Click
here for the entire excerpt.)
| …for all
Naples would seem to be out of doors, and
tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of
these, the common Vetturino vehicles, are
drawn by three horses abreast, decked with
smart trappings and great abundance of
brazen ornament, and always going very
fast. Not that their loads are light; for
the smallest of them has at least six
people inside, four in front, four or five
more hanging on behind, and two or three
more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree,
where they lie half-suffocated with mud
and dust. Exhibitors of Punch, buffo
singers with guitars, reciters of poetry,
reciters of stories, a row of cheap
exhibitions with clowns and showmen,
drums, and trumpets, painted cloths
representing the wonders within, and
admiring crowds assembled without, assist
the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie
asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels;
the gentry, gaily dressed, are dashing up
and down in carriages on the Chiaji, or
walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet
letter-writers, perched behind their
little desks and inkstands under the
Portico of the Great Theatre of San Carlo,
in the public street, are waiting for
clients... |
And one from The Innocents Abroad by Mark
Twain: (Click here for
the entire excerpt.)
| …I will
observe here, in passing, that the
contrasts between opulence and poverty,
and magnificence and misery, are more
frequent and more striking in Naples than
in Paris even. One must go to the Bois de
Boulogne to see fashionable dressing,
splendid equipages, and stunning liveries,
and to the Faubourg St. An-toine to see
vice, misery, hunger, rags, dirt — but in
the thoroughfares of Naples these things
are all mixed together. Naked boys of nine
years and the fancy-dressed children of
luxury; shreds and tatters, and brilliant
uniforms; jackass carts and state
carriages; beggars, princes, and bishops,
jostle each other in every street.
At six o’clock every
evening, all Naples turns out to drive
on the Riviera di Chiaja (whatever that
may mean); and for two hours one may
stand there and see the motliest and the
worst-mixed procession go by that ever
eyes beheld. Princes (there are more
princes than policemen in Naples - the
city is infested with them) - princes
who live up seven flights of stairs and
don’t own any principalities, will keep
a carriage and go hungry; and clerks,
mechanics, milliners, and strumpets will
go without their dinners and squander
the money on a hack-ride in the Chiaja;
the rag-tag and rubbish of the city
stack themselves up, to the number of
twenty or thirty, on a rickety little
go-cart hauled by a donkey not much
bigger than a cat, and they drive in the
Chiaja; dukes and bankers, in sumptuous
carriages and with gorgeous drivers and
footmen, turn out, also, and so the
furious procession goes. For two hours
rank and wealth, and obscurity and
poverty, clatter along side by side in
the wild procession, and then go home
serene, happy, covered with glory!…
|
Today, it is still possible to catch a carriage ride
if you are a tourist and want to pay whatever
exorbitant fare they charge for clip-clopping along
the seaside on via Caracciolo—a street that
did not exist in the mid-1800s; however, some of the
romance goes out of the experience amid the din of
cars, motor-scooters, and all-around roar of
technology. It’s a tough call, but on a bad day in
modern Naples, those descriptions from the 1800s
sometimes seem almost bucolic.
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