A Gentleman’s Tour

In a long, pillared portico, where everything was white and light save the blue of the great bay as it played up from far below or as you took it in, between shining columns, with your elbows on the parapet. Sorrento and Vesuvius were over against you; Naples furthest off, melted, in the middle of the picture, into shimmering vagueness and innocence…

The white arcades and the cool chambers offered to every step some sweet old “piece” of the past, some rounded porphyry pillar supporting a bust, some shaft of pale alabaster upholding a trellis, some mutilated marble image, some bronze that had roughly resisted…

…My friend had, among many original relics, in one of his white galleries–and how he understood the effect and the “value” of whiteness!–two or three reproductions of the finest bronzes of the Naples museum, the work of a small band of brothers whom 

 

                                                                        
 
 
 

he had found himself justified in trusting to deal with their problem honourably and to bring forth something as different as possible from the usual compromise of commerce.

They had brought forth, in especial, for him, a copy of the young resting, slightly-panting Mercury which it was a pure delight to live with, and they had come over from Naples on St. Antony’s eve, as they had done the year before, to report themselves to their patron, to keep up good relations, to drink Capri wine and to join in the tarantella.

Henry James, 1899

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