The May Book Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The May Book

Far aloft on the great rock was pitched, as the first note, and indeed the highest, Of the wondrous concert, the amazing creation Of the friend who had Offered me hospitality, and whom more almost than I had ever envied any one anything, I envied the privilege Of being able to reward a heated, artless pilgrim with a revelation Of effects SO incalculable. There was none but the loosest prefigurement as the creaking and puffing little boat, which had conveyed me only from Sorrento, drew Closer beneath the prodigious island - beautiful, horrible, and haunted - that does most, Of all the happy elements and accidents, towards making the Bay Of Naples, for the study Of composition, a lesson in the grand Style. There was only, above and below, through the blue Of the air and sea, a great confused Shining Of hot cliffs and crags and buttresses, a loss, from near ness, Of the splendid couchant outline and the more comprehensive mass, and an Opportunity - Oh, not lost, I assure you - to sit and meditate, even moralise, on the empty deck, while a happy brotherhood Of American and German tourists, including, Of course, many Sisters, scrambled down into little waiting, rocking tubs, and, after a few strokes, popped systematically into the small orifice Of the Blue Grotto. There was an appreciable moment when they were all lost to View in that receptacle, the daily psychological moment during which it must SO Often befall the recalci trant Observer on the deserted deck to find himself aware Of how delightful it might be if none Of them should come out again. The charm, the fascination Of the idea is not a little - though also not wholly - in the fact that, as the wave rises over the aperture, there is the most encouraging appearance that they perfectly may not. There it is. There is no more of them. It is a case to which nature has, by the neatest stroke and with the best taste in the world, just quietly attended.

Beautiful, horrible, haunted: that is the essence Of what, about itself, Capri says to you - dip again into your Tacitus and see why; and yet, while you roast a little under the awning and in the vaster shadow, it is not because the trail Of Tiberius is ineffaceable that you are most uneasy. The trail Of Germanicus in Italy to-day ramifles further and bites perhaps even deeper; a proof of which is, precisely, that his eclipse in the Blue Grotto is inexorably brief, that here he is, popping out again.

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