DOI chapter:
Chapter III: Past and Present - Santa Lucia, etc.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0108
Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.
passion. Under the porticoes is still occasionally seen
the figure of one of the public writers who since the
days of Goethe have been so familiar a feature in Naples.
There he sits, often under a tattered umbrella, with his
century-old paraphernalia before him. It is an institution
which disappears slowly. Schools are still compulsory
only in name ; and though army education has lessened
illiteracy, and the lottery encourages a knowledge of
figures, the very poor are as ignorant of reading and
writing as in the days when Ferdinand declared “ mon
peuple n’a pas besoin de penser.”
In the centre of the Piazza Plebiscite stands the
great fountain opened by Humbert in 1885, which
may be looked upon as the crowning monument of
modern Naples. If the ghosts of past generations
were to revisit their native town, they would surely
pause before this simple marble basin. It marks the
boundary between the night and the dawn of its
history—between the days of epidemic and disease,
of terrible and enforced squalor, of fetid water supply,
and to-day, when the water of Naples can hold its own
with the classic springs of Rome. To the Neapolitans
of our time it is a reminder of the courage and energy
of the king in promoting sanitation when the cholera
had laid bare all the hideous secrets of the city. He
was a benefactor in the widest sense of the word as
well as king, and would gladly have been the former
only, as is proved by the many stories of his simple
tastes. “ Ah,” said Humbert one day to Madame
Serao, “how gladly would I accept a journalist’s life
47
passion. Under the porticoes is still occasionally seen
the figure of one of the public writers who since the
days of Goethe have been so familiar a feature in Naples.
There he sits, often under a tattered umbrella, with his
century-old paraphernalia before him. It is an institution
which disappears slowly. Schools are still compulsory
only in name ; and though army education has lessened
illiteracy, and the lottery encourages a knowledge of
figures, the very poor are as ignorant of reading and
writing as in the days when Ferdinand declared “ mon
peuple n’a pas besoin de penser.”
In the centre of the Piazza Plebiscite stands the
great fountain opened by Humbert in 1885, which
may be looked upon as the crowning monument of
modern Naples. If the ghosts of past generations
were to revisit their native town, they would surely
pause before this simple marble basin. It marks the
boundary between the night and the dawn of its
history—between the days of epidemic and disease,
of terrible and enforced squalor, of fetid water supply,
and to-day, when the water of Naples can hold its own
with the classic springs of Rome. To the Neapolitans
of our time it is a reminder of the courage and energy
of the king in promoting sanitation when the cholera
had laid bare all the hideous secrets of the city. He
was a benefactor in the widest sense of the word as
well as king, and would gladly have been the former
only, as is proved by the many stories of his simple
tastes. “ Ah,” said Humbert one day to Madame
Serao, “how gladly would I accept a journalist’s life
47