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Updated: June 1, 2025
After a vain visit to Grotta Ferrata, which was signally disappointing, in spite of the traces of a recent country fair and the historical merits of a church of the Greek rite, with a black-bearded monk coming to show it through a gardened cloister, we were glad to take the tram back to Rome and to get into the snug inside of it.
With them Massa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento into Serent. Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic, and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb the steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri.
At Grotta Ferrata, the long, long street presented a human throng of absolute density without the slightest crush, for no one stuck his elbows into his neighbour's sides. The eye could only distinguish a mass of red, yellow and white patches in the sunlight, and in between them a few donkeys' heads and mules' necks. The patches were the kerchiefs on the women's heads.
I lied to her, and in lying to her I lied also to myself. And she was only too ready to believe me, only too ready to forget. "Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to our bathing-place in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was our custom to bathe every day.
On each side of the river the sea, clear to its depths where alternate sand and rock made a tangle of capriciously mingled light and shade; its surface, here blue as the still waters of the Grotta Azzurra, there green as the olive, here again red-brown as Carthaginian marble, lay waveless, as with a sense that the beauty was too perfect to be disturbed.
There were two public-houses in the place: one dignified with the name of the Mountain House, somewhat frequented by city-people in the summer months, large-fronted, three-storied, balconied, boasting a distinct ladies'-drawing-room, and spreading a table d'hote of some pretensions; the other, "Pollard's Tahvern," in the common speech, a two-story building, with a bar-room, once famous, where there was a great smell of hay and boots and pipes and all other bucolic-flavored elements, where games of checkers were played on the back of the bellows with red and white kernels of corn, or with beans and coffee, where a man slept in a box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers, where teamsters came in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days produce on human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does on dogs in the well-known experiments related by travellers.
Lessingham to take leave of her. "The Grotta Azzurra to-morrow," he said gaily. "Perhaps you won't care to go again? My grave sister will make a very proper chaperon." "Let us discuss that when to-morrow comes. Please to limit your moon-gazing to five minutes." "At the utmost."
There were two public-houses in the place: one dignified with the name of the Mountain House, somewhat frequented by city people in the summer months, large-fronted, three-storied, balconied, boasting a distinct ladies'-drawing-room, and spreading a table d'hote of some pretensions; the other, "Pollard's Tahvern," in the common speech, a two-story building, with a bar-room, once famous, where there was a great smell of hay and boots and pipes and all other bucolic-flavored elements, where games of checkers were played on the back of the bellows with red and white kernels of corn, or with beans and coffee, where a man slept in a box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers, where teamsters came in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state of suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days produce in human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does in dogs in the well-known experiments related by travellers.
That the Grotta Azzurra was known to the Romans is evinced by the existence of a subterranean passage, leading to it from the upper heights, and now blocked up; it was also well known in the seventeenth century, when it was described by Capraanica. The late afternoon is the best time for visiting this grotto.
Our genial boatman beguiles the time of our returning by a long story, told him in his boyhood by his old grandfather, of how two English Signori had managed to rediscover the entrance to the Blue Grotto, which had been lost since the days of the Emperor Timberio, and how in expectation of the Englishmen’s reward a plucky sailor, named Ferrara, had made his way all round the island in a cask, trying to force an entrance into every possible cavern, until at last he hit upon the mouth of the Grotta Azzurra itself, and thus gained the prize.
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