The Naples Riviera by Herbert M Vaughan

The Naples Riviera by Herbert M Vaughan is a travel book published in 1908. I read it recently while on a trip to Naples. When old guidebooks are used in contemporary travel, it may happen that the traveler finds a must-see site that has been demolished in the intervening years, but today a cursory review through a search engine can avoid such an embarrassment. But what can be gleaned from reading what are now historical travel accounts is a sense of perspective that is almost always missing from much of the travel literature. Yes, the historical fact is always available, but its interpretation is always a variable, and it is this variability that immediately enriches a travel experience.

Vaughan describes Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri, Ischia, and the nearby bays in the early 20th century. His account indicates that these descriptions were contemporary, but also not experienced for the first time. This is clearly a seasoned traveler. It is interesting to note that he regularly reports that certain areas have become overcrowded with foreigners, or are regularly overcrowded with tourists, or are more likely to serve an English Sunday lunch than any local specialty. Perhaps gone are the barefoot baggage handlers, who are usually women and who apparently line up near the ferry hoping to make a living carrying tourists’ bags up the hill on their heads. Gone too may be traditional dances, such as the tarantella, which Vaughan says locals start spontaneously at any time of day and almost anywhere.

A surprising observation emerges at the beginning of the text, when the author refers to the city of Naples as having been largely rebuilt and thus with predominantly modern buildings. The author immediately reveals his preference for a particular period in the city’s history, a preference that despises the Baroque modernization of Gothic spaces, perhaps even questioning whether the Renaissance ever descended into Mannerism.

There is a slight surprise when the author lists the number of places in the Campania region where malaria is still endemic or was endemic just before the account was written. Vaughan then discusses the possible causes of the disease. A modern reader, when confronted with the seeming contradictions of contemporary mores, may be mildly surprised. When he confronts the author’s disbelief at the idea that mosquitoes spread malaria, one borders on stunned. But the modern search engine can once again be useful in reminding the contemporary traveler that it was less than a decade before Vaughan’s book was written that the causal link was confirmed. One lives and one learns.

Sitting in the cramped and sometimes hectic overcrowding of the Spanish Quarter matrix near Via Toledo, the contemporary traveler is often confronted with the harsh noise and smell of unburnt two-strokes as motorcycles speed by in what they looked like collision courses, both with each other and with pedestrians alike. The cyclists, mostly without helmets, recall the fact that Naples was a lucrative market for diagonally striped jerseys when the use of seat belts in cars became mandatory. One is also meant to speculate on what Vaughan’s experience on the streets might have been like without the noise of the internal combustion engine and the smell of unburned fuel. Vaughan of course reminds us that before two wheels there were four legs and that these means of transport used to leave different tracks of their passage, which also had effects on the nose.

When Vaughan visits Pompeii and Herculaneum, his descriptions are lyrical and vivid. But once again the contemporary traveler realizes that the experience of these places in the early 20th century was significantly less than it is now, as much of the archaeological and excavation work has been done in the intervening century. Anyone like Vaughan who wants to contemplate what life might have been like in these ancient Roman cities with their one-room shops and narrow streets need only stop for a while in Naples’ Old Town or Spanish Quarter, where, in addition to After the bikes, life probably looks a lot like what might have been traded along those ancient streets. From a distance, the city even looks red and yellow, the same colors that decorated most of the dwellings in the two ruined cities.

Vaughan’s description of the Naples Riviera seems surprisingly modern. It confirms that whenever and wherever we travel, what matters is the experience, the here and now, and crucially how that changes us, rather than confirming what we expected or anticipated when we decided to go there. In an age where we are told that the travel experience can be purchased as a package deal, it is interesting and instructive to travel through another’s eyes, both refreshing and enlightening to share another visitor’s vision of a different time as we explore. a new any new travel experience.