was led through a bare corridor to the salotto , in which a few pieces of furniture had been placed, without any attempt at arrangement, as if in an auction saleroom. They represented, I suspected, the whole contents of the apartment, hastily concentrated in a single room. The wallpaper â which in Naples had once signified pretension and luxury â was in both instances under attack by mould, and the paintwork on the doors and window-frames was cracked and flaking. A faintly vegetable odour noticeable in both palazzi suggested dry-rot. The general impression was one of genteel but very real poverty.
Ingeniere Losurdo and Avvocato Mosca were exactly fitted to their environment, for which reason they bore a striking resemblance to each other, and also to Lattarullo â so much so that they could easily have been members of the same family. I got the impression that they had been too poor to marry, too poor to do anything but defend themselves with considerable tenacity in the struggle to keep up appearances. They all offered an occasional, diffident reference to the fact that they were well-connected. Lattarulloâs ancestor fought with Caracciolo in the war against Nelson and the Bourbons, and Mosca was entitled to put Conte on his visiting card, but no longer bothered. They had grand manners, and hearing them talk one sometimes seemed to be listening to Dr Johnson in an Italian translation. Each of these men had gracefully come to terms with a standard of living far lower than that of an average member of the Neapolitan working class.
In Naples one tends to blame all these things on the calamity of war, but after further acquaintance with the city, it becomes clear that this is only half the story and that the phenomenon of my three friendsâ near-destitution is an old and familiar one. The war has only aggravated their plight. In 1835 Alexander Dumas, who spent some weeks in Naples, wrote of its upper classes that only four families enjoyed great fortunes, that twenty were comfortably off, and the rest had to struggle to make ends meet. What mattered was to have a well-painted carriage harnessed up to a couple of old horses, a coachman in threadbare livery, and a private boxat the San Carlo â where the social life of the town was largely conducted. People lived in their carriages or in the theatre, but their houses were barred to visitors, and hermetically sealed, as Dumas puts it, against foreigners like himself.
He discovered that all but a tiny handful of the ancient families of Naples lived in straitened circumstances, and this is roughly the situation a century later. They talked in a matter-of-fact and quite convincing way of the golden days of their families under Imperial Rome, but they had not enough to eat. The Neapolitan upper-crust of those times consumed only one meal every twenty-four hours; at two in the afternoon in winter, and at midnight in summer. Their food was almost as poor in quality and as monotonous as that served to prisoners in gaol: invariably the equivalent of a few penceâ worth of macaroni flavoured with a little fish, and washed down with Asprino dâAversa, tasting â according to Dumas â more like rough cider than wine. By way of an occasional extravagance one of these pauper-noblemen might force himself to go without bread or macaroni for a day, and spend what he had saved on an ice-cream to be eaten splendidly in public, at the fashionable Café Donzelli.
In those days the only profession open to a young man of good family was the diplomatic service, and as there were only sixty such posts offered by the Kingdom of Naples, the ninety per cent of applicants who were unsuccessful had to endure aristocratic idleness. The twentieth-century version of this situation as reflected in the somewhat sterile existences of Lattarullo, Losurdo and Mosca seemed little changed in its essentials. Nowadays the learned professions have taken the place of
Ingeniere Losurdo and Avvocato Mosca were exactly fitted to their environment, for which reason they bore a striking resemblance to each other, and also to Lattarullo â so much so that they could easily have been members of the same family. I got the impression that they had been too poor to marry, too poor to do anything but defend themselves with considerable tenacity in the struggle to keep up appearances. They all offered an occasional, diffident reference to the fact that they were well-connected. Lattarulloâs ancestor fought with Caracciolo in the war against Nelson and the Bourbons, and Mosca was entitled to put Conte on his visiting card, but no longer bothered. They had grand manners, and hearing them talk one sometimes seemed to be listening to Dr Johnson in an Italian translation. Each of these men had gracefully come to terms with a standard of living far lower than that of an average member of the Neapolitan working class.
In Naples one tends to blame all these things on the calamity of war, but after further acquaintance with the city, it becomes clear that this is only half the story and that the phenomenon of my three friendsâ near-destitution is an old and familiar one. The war has only aggravated their plight. In 1835 Alexander Dumas, who spent some weeks in Naples, wrote of its upper classes that only four families enjoyed great fortunes, that twenty were comfortably off, and the rest had to struggle to make ends meet. What mattered was to have a well-painted carriage harnessed up to a couple of old horses, a coachman in threadbare livery, and a private boxat the San Carlo â where the social life of the town was largely conducted. People lived in their carriages or in the theatre, but their houses were barred to visitors, and hermetically sealed, as Dumas puts it, against foreigners like himself.
He discovered that all but a tiny handful of the ancient families of Naples lived in straitened circumstances, and this is roughly the situation a century later. They talked in a matter-of-fact and quite convincing way of the golden days of their families under Imperial Rome, but they had not enough to eat. The Neapolitan upper-crust of those times consumed only one meal every twenty-four hours; at two in the afternoon in winter, and at midnight in summer. Their food was almost as poor in quality and as monotonous as that served to prisoners in gaol: invariably the equivalent of a few penceâ worth of macaroni flavoured with a little fish, and washed down with Asprino dâAversa, tasting â according to Dumas â more like rough cider than wine. By way of an occasional extravagance one of these pauper-noblemen might force himself to go without bread or macaroni for a day, and spend what he had saved on an ice-cream to be eaten splendidly in public, at the fashionable Café Donzelli.
In those days the only profession open to a young man of good family was the diplomatic service, and as there were only sixty such posts offered by the Kingdom of Naples, the ninety per cent of applicants who were unsuccessful had to endure aristocratic idleness. The twentieth-century version of this situation as reflected in the somewhat sterile existences of Lattarullo, Losurdo and Mosca seemed little changed in its essentials. Nowadays the learned professions have taken the place of
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