A Honeymoon over the Bay of Naples
A Honeymoon over the Bay of Naples is an article written by Philip Weller published in "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : Viaggio in Italia / Italian Journey" edited by Gianluca Salvatori, Enrico Solito & Roberto Vianello, in 2012 (Bobi Bazlen Edizion).
A Honeymoon over the Bay of Naples
Arthur Conan Doyle in Naples in 1907
By Philip Weller.
If you ask the average tourist for a quotation about Naples, then they will almost certainly resort to that old favorite: "See Naples and die" (Vedi Napoli e puoi muori). Thanks to Tom Behan's book and several films with that phrase as their titles, many might now think that this concept is linked solely to the Camorra, [1] but the more discerning respondents will be aware that this phrase implies that one's life is not fulfilled until one has experienced the many delights of Naples [2]. The origin of that quotation is claimed for many of those who have loved Naples, from Virgil (apocryphally) to Goethe (genuinely but not originally), but Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) certainly had many reasons for visiting the area several times. These were not just because of the stunning scenery, the delightful climate, the wonderful antiquities and the outstanding food, [3] or because of the many writers known to ACD who lived there or who visited there, but because his younger sister, Jane Adelaide Rose Foley (known within the family as Ida), lived there, as will be seen below.
ACD and members of his extended family visited Naples on various occasions, and we shall mention some of these visits to give a personal element to this portrait of the area. We know from a letter sent to his mother from Venice that ACD and his new wife, Jean, stayed in Naples from Monday 14th October until Monday 21st October, on their honeymoon in 1907:
- Hotel Royal Danieli
- So far I can see my dates, today being Wednesday, we leave on Friday, spend till Monday in Rome getting passports & Co., reach Naples (Parker's Hotel) that evening, and leave by Austrian boat the next Monday 21st reaching Constantinople the 26th & touching at Athens and Smyrna on the way. [4]
We thus also know that he stayed at what was more-correctly called "Parker's Hotel" in Naples. It had been opened in 1870 as the Tramontano, and the word "Beaurivage" was added to this title in the 1880s. It is located on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, part-way up the steep slopes of the Vomero hill, with a sweeping view of almost the whole of the Bay of Naples below it. This wide boulevard was created as part of the scheme which brought fresh air into the formerly over-crowded and disease-ridden streets of Naples. The hotel quite rightly exploited its panoramic view in one of its early postcards.
The hotel is the multi-storey building immediately to the left of the famous Pine of Naples (or Umbrella Pine) in the picture. It will be noted that Vesuvius is smoking, to the South, and this was the situation for all of ACD's visits. In 1886 a rich, young, English graduate student arrived from the University of Cambridge to stay for three months in Naples and study at the famous Aquarium in the city, with that institution then being a world-leading centre for marine biology (the Aquarium can be seen, almost in the centre of the postcard above, as it is the block-like building in the curved, tree-lined park on the shoreline of the Bay of Naples). This student's name was George Parker Bidder, and in addition to his scientific interests he had a passion for literature. He returned to Naples, for several short periods, in 1887, and then he moved into the Tramontano Beaurivage, always using the same, luxurious suite, which he found entirely to his liking. He usually slept until late every morning, but on one morning in 1889, the owner, Albert Brazil, who was a hopeless gambler, knocked loudly upon the door of the suite of George Parker Bidder. A bailiff, was threatening to arrest Albert for his massive gambling debts, and Albert pleaded for financial assistance. Mr Parker Bidder, not wishing to be disturbed further, ordered the owner to put the cost of the hotel on his bill, and the hotel thereby became Parker's Hotel. It is now the Grand Hotel Parker's, and it is one of the very finest hotels in the world. [5]
ACD bought his own postcard of the view from this area, with the photograph taken from above the level of the hotel, showing the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and the smoking Vesuvius which dominates the whole Bay area.
ACD's daughter, Mary, recalled an earlier visit to Parker's Hotel with her mother, Louise, and her brother, Kingsley:
- ... and Kingsley and I made a perfect curse of ourselves, dashing down the corridors, seizing on to speaking tubes and yelling "Va Ben" down them, in imitation of the staff. Then one day we got into the Manager's furniture store, and turned it into a gymnasium; finally we crawled through a trapdoor and got out on the roof – the story of that adventure! – crawling up the roof, wedging ourselves between chimneystacks, and seeing a shiny panorama of the bay never seen before. What it is to escape into fairy land! [6]
Mary also wrote about a different sort of escapade, with her mother narrowly avoiding embarrassment:
- Then we got down as far as Naples and I can remember lying in my Mother's bed, and the doctor coming unexpectedly, and she capering round the room in cami-knickers, a garment not worn today. Then I stayed with aunt Ida in her home on the Isola di Gaiola, Posillipo...
With this guiding reference from Mary we will now move on to the focal point of all things Doylean in the Naples area, and we will return to our introductory reference to Ida Doyle. [7]
Nelson Foley was a marine engineer, and he worked for the British shipbuilders, Hawthorn, Leslie & Company. Before the Unification of Italy, much of Italian engineering was provided by British companies working in Italy. After 1861 the Italian government insisted on the Italianisation of engineering, and Hawthorn, Leslie & Co formed an amalgamation with other British firms to create the subsidiary Italian organisation, the Società Industriale Napoletana Hawthorn-Guppy, with a shipbuilding works on the coast of the Bay of Naples, to the South of the city, at Castellammare di Stabia. Nelson Foley moved to live near Naples, with his first wife, Agnes Jane Ross Foley (known as Jane), in the late-1880s, and he bought two villas in the La Gaiola area, the Villa Bechi and what became the Villa Foley, at the Southernmost tip of the Posillipo [8] peninsula, to the South-West of Naples (see next map). [9]
The modern approach to the La Gaiola area from Naples is still by means of the two roads shown on this 1903 map, but these were in a very bad condition in 1907, with most of the expatriates and visitors complaining about the journey, especially in rainy weather, and particularly with the steep descent down a rough, narrow track to reach the beach between the Villa Bechi and the Villa Foley. We might best approach it here in the way in which many visitors reached La Gaiola in 1907, which was by boat. Nelson Foley had a steam launch which he used for getting to work across the Bay, and this was also used for journeys to and from Naples. Travelling along the coastline involved passing a near-continuous series of beautiful villas until one reached La Gaiola, after which the cliffs were too steep for further houses to be built beside the sea. One passed, for example, the Villa Rosebery, the retirement home of the former British Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. One eventually reached the fishing village of Marechiaro, which gave its name, as Marechiaro (meaning Clear Seas), to a 19th Century, Neapolitan song, written by Salvatore di Giacomo and Francesco Paolo Tosti, which is still sung by both popular and classical opera singers today. ACD's Album 1 included two postcards of this village, and of the coast leading to La Gaiola.
The light coloured area on the extreme left of the horizon consists of the islets of La Gaiola, and the redcoloured dome of the Villa Bechi can be seen slightly to the right of the islets (misleadingly seeming to be joined to the mainland). The tower of the small dome on the top of the Villa Bechi can be seen at the top of the cliff leading up from the islets. The tower of the church in Marechiaro, as the name of the church indicates (Chiesa di Santa Maria del Faro), usefully acts as a lighthouse for sailors.
A second postcard from Album 1 is important, in that it shows the Villa Foley on La Gaiola at the time when ACD visited it. The rocks behind and to the left of the fishing boat are known as the Isolotti di Gaiola, and they are the remains of the foundations of part of the Roman port of the palace of Vedius Pollio, built in the 1st Century CE. From the centre to the right is the main half of the two major islets of La Gaiola, and the three-storey Villa Foley is to the left. The structure on the corner of the islet was a storehouse. The dark area at sea level between the villa and the storehouse is an artificial cave, cut into the soft tufa rock of the area, which provided a dock for Nelson Foley's steam launch.
Given ACD's increasing interest in Spiritualism, he may well have noted one particular building in the area of La Gaiola, each time that he sailed in Nelson Foley's steam launch in the general direction of Naples, for he obtained a postcard of it. This ruined, three-storey, classical Roman building is known as the Palazzo degli Spiriti (Palace of the Spirits), and it is located at the La Gaiola end of Marechiaro. That name, however, does not come from Roman times, as it dates back only a couple of centuries, and it is derived from local people thinking that it had a mysterious atmosphere surrounding it. Once again, one can see the Villa Foley and the Isolotti di Gaiola on the left horizon.
Foley's wife, Jane, died in Naples in 1890, and she was buried in the popularly misnamed "English Cemetery" (Il cimitero acattolico di Santa Maria delle Fede). [10] That cemetery was closed for burials in 1893 and became heavily overgrown. The bodies have since been reburied elsewhere and the area (near the Piazza Garibaldi) has been converted into a park, with a few of the monumental graves being retained. Foley frequently returned to England on business trips and on 17 December 1898 he married Ida Doyle and returned with her to live on La Gaiola. [11] They visited England regularly, and, in return, they received many visitors from England. In 1896 Foley had sold the Villa Bechi to a hedonistic, amateur biologist, Norman Douglas, who renamed it as the Villa Maya. ACD visited the house whilst it was owned by Douglas, and the latter later described ACD getting stuck in a giant drain whilst inspecting the Roman antiquities of the house. [12] Douglas also mentioned ACD, E. W. Hornung (ACD's brother-in-law and creator of Holmes's antithesis, Raffles), and Francis Marion Crawford, crime writers all, as having persuaded him by their example that money could be made from what he derisively put into quotation marks as "literature". [13] Douglas was shortly to become a sometimes wonderful writer, whilst pursuing his scandalous and often illegal sexual interests. After property disputes, and with Douglas becoming persona non grata on Posillipo in about 1902, the Villa Maya was sold back to Foley and it reverted to its previous title (it has changed again, several times, since then). When Nelson Foley was in possession of the Villa Bechi, his guests usually stayed there, but they also crossed to the Villa Foley to spend time with the Foleys and went on excursions with them from there.
Mary wrote about that crossing, in a general description of what she called the Isola di Gaiola. [14]
- The island was a huge rock split down the side, and the sea came surging down the drawing-room windows. Then there was the cage – an engineering feat of uncle Nelson's – one sat on a stirrup-shaped seat on the mainland, and was drawn over the sea on two steel cords by a man called Gennaro. One held on to the sides with one's feet dangling over the sea. I simply loved it. [15]
We can best illustrate that description with a photograph, taken from the beach immediately below the cliff of the Villa Bechi.
We also have one of ACD's personal photographs, with a rather poor quality shot showing Jean being transported across to the island in the "cage" which Mary described. In spite of the darkness of the photo, we can just see, behind Jean, the waves beating against the Isolotti di Gaiola.
These Roman structures are remains of the foundations of part of the classical Roman port, seen in the large-scale map on the left (the dark markings indicate the remains of classical Greek and Roman buildings). [16] One can now clearly see the geographical relationship between the two villas, with the one on the island being marked as "Mr Foley's House", and with the "Villa Bechi" being marked in seeming isolation on the mainland (there were smaller buildings around it). The former is almost at sea level.
The larger, ten-roomed Villa Bechi, the lightcoloured building in the photograph on the next page, surmounted by a small domed structure, which was converted into a library by Douglas, with panoramic views in three cardinal directions, was located on the top of a 30 metre high cliff on the mainland, with a terraced garden cascading down to the beach. The main building extends, via an ornamental colonnade, towards the major archaeological site to the left of the photograph.
The other building, the Villa Foley, was located on the largest of a pair of small islets which were linked by a rail-less footbridge (see the same photo), and these islets were separated from the mainland by a 50 metre strip of sea. This mainland-island sea gap and the gap between the islets (the latter created in the early-19th Century when an artificial tunnel in the tufa rock collapsed) can also be seen in the photograph. The Villa Foley can, however, best be seen in the previous photograph, taken from the cliff edge in themajor archaeological site adjacent to the Villa Bechi.
The whole of this area was called Pausilypon (meaning without stress) by classical Greek settlers, because of its restful nature, and a large, classical Roman palace was built on the area in the 1st Century CE. The owner, Publius Vedius Pollio was not, however, civilised in the modern sense of the word, for it was he who was accused of feeding one of his servants to the giant, flesheating Moray Eels which he kept in sea-water tanks in his palace precincts, because that slave had broken a glass at a banquet. With the sinking of land levels, much of the palace and port site is now below sea level, but most of it can still be seen through the crystal clear waters.
We now have, on the left, two photographs from ACD's Album 1, showing ACD and his sister, Ida, and Ida's younger son, Innes who was almost five years old in 1907. They are standing on the main terrace of the Villa Bechi, with the cliff-garden dropping away beyond the low wall on the right in each photograph. In the photo of Ida and Innes the outline of Vesuvius across the Bay can just be seen. It may be noticed that ACD tends to be wearing this dark outfit, with a white boater, in almost all of the photographs of the 1907 trip, in contrast to the lightcoloured tropical outfit which he wore on his 1913 trip to the Mediterranean with Jean. This terrace can be seen more clearly, within the context of the whole building, in the photograph in the next page.
Here one can see the start of the cliff slope, leading down to the beach, and see something of the view across to Vesuvius and the Sorrento peninsula. One has to wonder how anyone can have done any serious work in the library on the top of the building! The drop beyond the terrace wall can be seen from a photograph which ACD took from the beach below, showing the windows of that library which looked out towards the Isle of Capri:
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The scale of the more-physical work which Douglas organised, in shoring up this cliff-garden, can better be appreciated from a photograph taken morerecently:
We have two further personal photographs from ACD's Album 1 which need to be considered here. The first (on the bottom left) is almost certainly from the Neapolitan area, and it may well have been taken in the archaeological area of the Pausilypon palace. It includes three of the Naples Pines which were made famous by the Posillipo School of painters, from the end of the 18th Century, which concentrated on painting landscapes, outdoors, using natural light. Posillipo artists still follow the precepts of their predecessors, and we have seen how one of these Naples Pines was used in the Parker's Hotel postcard earlier in this investigation. ACD emulated the Posillipo School with his own photograph, setting the trees against the backdrop of Vesuvius.
We also have a "mystery photograph" from ACD, with him standing amongst some small ruins (see previous article). In spite of it being of poor quality through being shot against the light, it does give an impression of being taken high above a seascape horizon, which would certainly be the situation amongst the many cliff-side ruins in the Pausilypon palace site at La Gaiola, with the outline of Capri or the Sorrento Peninsula in the background. My colleague, Stefano Guerra, has provided an alternative location in Rome, and I totally accept this as being equally justifiable. In this case, until we have more evidence, the Game is very much Afoot. We move on now to the third Neapolitan location covered in ACD's Album 1: Pompeii. There is a vast amount of material now available for those who wish to learn more about Pompeii, in films, books and on the Internet. Indeed, for those who are unfortunate enough not to have visited Pompeii, there is a Virtual Pompeii Tour available through the wonders of Google Maps, with their Street View system. The stunning atmosphere of being in a city which disappeared for centuries is still tangible in the real Pompeii, but the wonder must have been fresher when ACD visited the site in 1907, as major discoveries were still being found (rather as is now happening at nearby Herculaneum, now that the surrounding cliffs are being cut back and now that tunnels are being dug into new parts of the town where full excavation is impossible).
We know that ACD and Jean visited Pompeii in 1907, but ACD may have been there before. His daughter, Mary, certainly visited the city, and she wrote:
- Then of course there was the visit to Pompeii. Very fascinating, very tragic, especially the poor dog all tied up in knots (it must have been somebody's pet). There was the lay-out of the shops in the streets, and the grooves of chariot wheels beside the pavements. Many of the interiors were decorated in lovely colours: it must have been a very tasteful city. [17]
We have personal photographs of several streets in Pompeii in ACD's Album 1.
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ACD, with his interest in history and engineering, would have appreciated that the wheel ruts would more probably have been caused by carts, rather than by chariots. In another personal photo we have the added interest of the cause of the destruction of Pompeii, still smoking on the too-near horizon.
Given the limited number of personal photographs which we have for the 1907 trip of ACD and Jean it may seem strange that he devoted two negatives to what is essentially the same picture, but that may just be a sign of the way in which ACD was bewitched by Jean. It may also be a result of us not having all the personal photographs which were originally in Album 1. We have surely all suffered from relatives raiding our photo collections, prior to the arrival of the digital camera!
Here we have a view of the Nero's Arch, leaning at an alarmingly Pisan angle, with the view through the arch of the area beside the Forum, taken from the Northern side.
Finally, we have a photograph taken on the other side of Nero's Arch, still facing in the same direction, with the wall of the Temple of Jupiter on the right, and with the Forum beyond. The gentleman intruding from the left, wearing the natty yachting cap, may well be Nelson Foley, not just because of the nautical forename, but because he might well have given the Doyles a lift in his steam launch, from La Gaiola to one of the many ports along the coast of the Bay of Naples, near to Pompeii, or even to his normal docking location for his work. This would have made the journey far quicker and, given that the weather was good, far more comfortable than the road journey.
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As we have seen, colour was available to ACD, with some of the postcards which he collected, including this view of a purple-flanked Vesuvius along the Via di Stabia (or Stabiana as it is now known).
We also have a different section of the Via di Stabia (referred to as the Strada di Stabia in this case). This was the main business section of the old city, and we here have a better depiction of the stepping stones which allowed pedestrians to cross what were often mud-filled streets in the rainy season, without getting their feet muddy, and which also allowed the wheels of carts to pass through the gaps in the stepping stones. We can also see how this was done at a busy crossroads. The Romans were certainly fine civil engineers, but even they did not have protection against the eruption of a volcano, or even the word "volcano" at that time!
ACD needed to be careful in trusting these postcards, however, in that the one shown below claims to be of the Arco Nerone, when it is actually of the Arco di Caligola, but it does nicely frame the smoking Vesuvius.
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One might have thought that ACD, as a writer, would have obtained a postcard of the excellent home of a fellow-wordsmith, the House of the Tragic Poet. Instead, he chose a postcard of the enormous house next door, the Casa di Ponza (or Ponsa or Panza). This dates from the Samnite period, but it had been divided up into small rental apartments by the time of the eruption of Vesuvius. The photographer, incidentally, missed a chance of moving forwards a few feet, in order to have smoke seeming to come out of the chimney-like central column!
We conclude our tour of Pompeii with a site which ACD, given his materialistic tastes for such things as a demonstration of the improvements which he had made in his social standing, may well have admired. The Villa of the Vettii was the home of tw o freedmen who had become wealthy though their trade. It represents the final years of residential development and decoration in the doomed city. The interior walls had superb paintings and friezes based on mythological themes. The villa also provides the best example of the development of small villas for wealthy Pompeiians, being based around two open courtyards. The first had a colonnaded garden, derived from Greek influences, and the second had an atrium, reflecting an Italic influence.
Almost inevitably, ACD obtained a large picture of one of the casts made from impressions left in the hardened ash from the eruption of Vesuvius, using the techniques originated by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1864. The amount of detail on these casts is remarkable, and the newer technique, such as using translucent glass-fibre casting materials, have improved results only a little.
ACD and Jean will also have seen some of the relics from Pompeii when they made their visit to the splendid National Archaeological Museum in Naples, although they would not have seen all of the outrageously exaggerated, sexually-explicit exhibits which are now on display in the supposedly "Secret Room", which is well advertised and signposted, of the Museum! There were other items on display, and ACD and Jean, like all visitors would have been stunned by the famous Farnese Bull, which is a colossal sculptural group depicting the myth of Dirce. This had been found in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1546, and there is a large picture of The Baths of Caracalla elsewhere in Album 1. If there is one statue in Italy, however, where a single postcard cannot do it justice, this must be the Farnese Bull, with its intertwining figures creating a hugely different impact from every direction.
ACD also obtained a large picture of another Farnese collection sculpture in the Napoli Museum, which is of the Wounded Gladiator. ACD and Jean would notice some major changes in this exhibit if they saw it today. In the manner of the modern style of exhibiting such antiquities, the large fig leaf has been removed, as has the head of the statue, for one can see the clear line of jointing for the rather imaginative replacement head which was for a long time fitted to this figure. The renovation of the statue has also made the blood gushing from the gladiator's thigh wound much more noticeable.
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We close our examination of ACD's Album images of the Napoli area by raising a more-general point about his collection of postcards and pictures. We know that he did not always visit all of the locations depicted. We have here, for example, a charmingly romantic, coloured postcard of the Castello dell'Ovo (the Castle of the Egg) by moonlight. This castle is located on a small island, linked to the central coastal area of the city of Naples by an embankment and a bridge. This sometime fortress was built by Frederick II as a secure storehouse for his treasures. In 1907, however, ACD would have been warned by his Baedeker guide that there was no public access to the Castle, since it was by then a military prison.
Conclusion
This ends the coverage of images from Album 1 concerning Naples. There are no images from Naples in Album 2. One might wonder what good reason there might be for ACD and Jean not visiting the Naples area after 21st October 1907, especially when there was a lengthy holiday journey through Italy in 1913.
There can be no good reason, but a major change in the Doylean situation in Naples developed through 1908 and into 1909, with Nelson Foley developing Tuberculosis. He returned to England during 1908 and needing increasing levels of care. He died on 3 January 1909 and the villas on Posillipo were sold.
It is a shame that ACD did not return, for La Gaiola was a "Siren Land" (to use the title of one of Norman Douglas's books for many writers. ACD's brother-in-law, E. W. "Willie" Hornung, spent at least two long holidays there with his wife Connie, the sister of ACD, and Willie later claimed that his famous character, Raffles, was born in La Gaiola, with five of the Raffles stories being written there. Most of the action in the story, "The Fate of Faustina", clearly takes place in La Gaiola, including the use of the artificial sea caves under the Villa Maya. John Meade Falkner also based the main Neapolitan base of his hauntingly beautiful 1895 classic, The Lost Stradivarius, on the Villa Maya. To end on another personal note, for relationships with locations tend to be very personal in Italy, I will probably never obey that musical command to "Come Back to Sorrento", but I will certainly go back, as often as possible, to La Gaiola!
Notes and Sources
- ↑ ACD originally used the term "Camorra", reasonably correctly, for the criminal organisation in the manuscript for his turn-of-the-century Holmes story about Naples, London and New York, "The Red Circle". This was inappropriately changed to "Carbonari" when the story was published in 1911, possibly to avoid comparisons with the Camorra then appearing in the Raffles stories, written by ACD's brother-in-law, E. W. "Willie" Hornung. The Carbonari was the name of a political organisation which had sought the unification and liberalisation of Italy in the early decades of the 19th Century, but that organisation was extinct by the time depicted in "The Red Circle".
- ↑ I would agree with this latter interpretation, but, as an extremely proud Honorary Citizen of Sesto Fiorentino, I am certainly tempted to suggest an alternative locational imperative within Italy: "See Firenze and read Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, to find a justification for living."
- ↑ The seafood is magnificent, and the Pizza (with modern Pizza being invented in Naples in 1859) is the best in the world, but real Mozzarella di bufala campana can only be obtained from Napoli, and it is a dish "to die for"!
- ↑ Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (Eds), "Arthur Conan Doyle – A Life in Letters", Harper Press, 2007, p 546.
- ↑ My thanks go to Marianna Sarno and other staff at the Grand Hotel Parker's for hospitality, notes on the early history of the hotel and for permission to use their antique postcard. The service there is still as impeccable as it was in ACD's day, and the library in the hotel still has books by him.
- ↑ Georgina Doyle, "Out of the Shadows – The Untold Story of Arthur Conan Doyle's First Family", Calabash Press, Canada, 2004, p 92. It is almost impossible to date Mary's jottings, as she was even worse than her father for not dating texts, and she often blended one memory into another.
- ↑ Georgina Doyle, op cit, pp 94-95.
- ↑ There were at least six different versions of the spelling of the name of this peninsula in regular use when ACD visited the area, and he used "Posilippo" in the manuscript of "The Red Circle", and this is how it appeared when the story was published in 1911. Mary used what is now the generally accepted version, "Posillipo".
- ↑ R. T. Günther, "Contributions to the Study of Earth Movements in the Bay of Naples", The Geographical Journal, August 1903.
- ↑ One is tempted, in discussing links between ACD and Naples, to suggest that a permanent link was established through Jane being buried in Naples, with the Foleys being doubly linked to ACD. One might use Rupert Brooke's best-remembered lines about death in a foreign country, in his poem, "The Soldier", and say: "If I should die, think only this of me; That there's some corner of a foreign field. That is forever England." ACD, being partially descended from the Foleys, would remind us, however, that the Foleys were, like him, essentially Irish!
- ↑ Ida (and ACD) and Nelson were related, in having the same grandfather, but they had different grandmothers for that grandfather. It should be remembered that ACD's mother was a Foley.
- ↑ N. Douglas, Looking Back, Chatto and Windus, 1934, pp 374-375. Holmesians might note, incidentally, that Norman Douglas's father had the forenames of John Sholto! Norman was three-quarters Scottish, and ACD's ancestry-obsessed mother would certainly have known of one of Norman's maternal grandfathers, since he was James Ochoncar, the 17th Lord Forbes and Premier Baron of Scotland.
- ↑ N. Douglas, op cit, p 50.
- ↑ Mary did learn some Italian whilst attending the Scuola Internazionale during one of her longer stays in Naples, probably in 1902. My thanks to my friend and colleague, Enzo Mazzeo of Napoli for arranging a visit to this school. The Scuola was located just below the Parker's Hotel, and it is now the École Français de Naples in Via Francesco Crispi, with that street named in honour of the Italian Prime Minister who awarded ACD a knighthood in exchange for the use of one of the Holmes stories, "The Naval Treaty", for political purposes! Mary was accompanied to that Scuola by Nelson Foley's daughter by his first marriage, Claire, and the school alternated through a rota of four languages for use each day.
- ↑ Georgina Doyle, op cit, p 95. Holmesians will, of course, have noted the name of the man who pulled visitors across to the island on the cableway: Gennaro. This was the name which ACD gave to the Italian hero of the Sherlock Holmes story which involves Posillipo, "The Red Circle", but then Gennaro has always tended to be the most common male name in the Naples area, with Gennaro being the patron saint of the city!
- ↑ R. T. Günther, Costa meridionale di Posillipo: il litorale antico e gli edifici sommersi, undated, c 1903.
- ↑ Georgina Doyle, op cit, pp 95-96.
All the modern photographs are Copyright
©2006 The Jane & Philip Weller Collection.
