The Volcano Lover

by Susan Sontag

  * * *

  He had been back for a year. Charles wrote that Catherine’s estate would yield a good income that year, and reported on his recent acquisition of a small collection of rare gems and scarabs. His friend Walpole wrote that he was unable to make the trip to visit him which he had been planning. It took one month for a letter to make the passage to or from London.

  The Cavaliere’s correspondence—in English, French, and Italian—claimed up to three or four morning hours of each day. There were dispatches to his superiors in London, with acerb portraits of the principal players on the local scene; the more candid were in cipher. A proper letter—to Charles, say, or to Walpole or to his friend Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society—was a long one and might touch on many subjects. What was happening of note at the court (“Politics is at a very low ebb here”), the state of the excavations at the dead cities, Catherine’s tattered health, new sexual pairings among the nobles and foreign residents, the enchantments of a recent excursion to Capri or to a village on the Amalfi coast, “beautiful” or “truly elegant” or “curious” objects he has acquired, and the volcano (“a fund of entertainment and instruction”). Amorous entanglements were a full-time occupation in these parts, as he noted in a letter to Lord Palmerston. He keeps busy differently, considering how disagreeable such a use of his leisure would be to Catherine, and that he is sufficiently diverted by his study of natural history, antiquities, and the volcano. He reported on the mountain’s antics, an experiment with electricity that verified one of Franklin’s experiments, the discovery of a new species of sea urchin among the exotic fish he trapped in a rock pool at the little summer house he now rented at Posillipo, and the number of boar and deer he had slaughtered in the company of the young King, and of billiard games he had contrived to lose, prudently, to the King. Letters to encourage letters. That ask for gossip, that impart gossip. Letters that say: I am the same. With nothing to complain of. I am enjoying myself. This place has not changed me, I have the same homebred superiorities, I have not gone native.

  Sometimes it felt like exile, sometimes it felt like home. Everything here was so calm. Naples continued to be pretty as pictures. The main business of the rich was entertaining themselves. The King was the most extravagant of the self-amusers, the Cavaliere the most eclectic.

  He wrote letters of recommendation … for a musician discharged from his post at the opera, for a cleric seeking ecclesiastical preferment, for the German and English painters flocking to the city, drawn by the abundance of subjects, for a picture agent, for a young Irish tenor with ginger hair, just fifteen years old, penniless and immensely talented (he would go on to have a notable international career): the Cavaliere was an assiduous benefactor. He arranged to have a pair of newly whelped Irish hounds shipped to the King. From the reluctant prime minister he wangled impossible-to-get tickets to a masked ball at the court for fifteen indignant English residents who had not been invited.

  He wrote rapidly, in uneven lines and large letters, with little punctuation; even the fair copies he made had blots and crossed-out words—he was not compulsively neat. But like many who were melancholy as children, he had a great capacity for self-discipline. He never refused an exertion, nor a commission that he could include in his large sense of duty, of calculation, of benevolence.

  Any week produced several dozen requests for aid or patronage or benefactions of some sort, including many from the other, even more exotic half of the kingdom over which the court of Naples ruled. A Sicilian count asked the Cavaliere’s help in having him restored as the chief of archaeological studies in Syracuse, from which he claimed to have been ousted by a plot hatched in Palermo. This same count had been the Cavaliere’s intermediary in prising several paintings, among them his beloved “Correggio” (still unsold!), out of the collections of newly straitened Sicilian noble families. Some petitioners sweetened their requests with gifts of information, or more tangible gifts. A monsignor in Catania, asking the Cavaliere’s help in securing for him the archbishopric of Monreale, told him of a stratum of clay between two strata of lava on Mount Etna. A canon in Palermo, who had accompanied the Cavaliere on his one climb up Etna, sent with his request for help in securing ecclesiastical promotion a report on antiquarian researches in Sicily, some samples of his collection of marine fossils, a copy of an index on stones compiled over the last twelve years, two lumps of lava from Etna, and an agate.

  As well as having a reputation for being an ideal enabler, the Cavaliere was known as someone with whom one might deposit the account of a passion, an interest, a picturesque event. A Frenchman living in Catania wrote giving him an account of the recent eruption of Etna. A monk in Monte Cassino announced that he was sending him a dictionary of Neapolitan dialects. Someone hardy enough, appetitive enough, to regard himself as interested in “everything” can expect a good many letters from strangers.

  People sent him poems and samples of volcanic ash; offered to sell him paintings, bronze helmets, vases, cinerary urns. Directors of public libraries in Italy wrote to thank him for the gift of the four volumes he had brought out on his collection of vases, or the enlarged two-volume edition of his volcanic letters with the beautiful plates by a local artist-protégé he had trained—or to request copies of these works. A maker of papier-mâché boxes in Birmingham wrote to praise the Cavaliere for having made available to him and to Josiah Wedgwood the designs on the ancient vases he collected, which were now circulating everywhere on his boxes (he hoped for the favor of an order) and on Wedgwood’s Etruria Ware, to the great improvement of contemporary taste. His admirations and his talent for benevolence connected him to many worlds. There were offers of honorary membership in the Accademia Italia of Siena and in Die Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin (the letter was in French), whose president also asked that the Cavaliere send them some volcanic rocks for their collection. A young man from Lecce wrote asking the Cavaliere’s help in obtaining justice for his sister who had been raped, and offering a charm that increases the flow of milk. One of his agents in Rome wrote giving an estimate of one hundred fifty scudi for restoring three pieces of sculpture—a Bacchic bas-relief, a small marble faun, and a head of a Cupid—which the Cavaliere had just purchased. From Verona came the prospectus for a publication on fossil fish by the Società dei Litologi Veronesi, with a request to the Cavaliere to subscribe. An envoy in Rome asked on behalf of the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau for help in securing the scarce volumes on the discoveries at Herculaneum published over the last two decades by the Royal Herculaneum Academy. Someone in Resina announced to the Cavaliere that he was sending him samples of volcanic ash. A wine merchant in Beaune wrote to inquire respectfully when he might hope to receive payment for the hundred cases of Chambertin shipped to the Cavaliere eighteen months ago. The silk manufacturer from Paterson, New Jersey, who had called on him last year, sent, as promised, a copy of his report on methods of fixing dyes with alumite used in Neapolitan silk factories. A local informant wrote to describe how the French, sailing in Neapolitan feluccas, were carrying on contraband in the region. Another informant gave an account of the career and death of the Calabrian bandit chief Tito Greco. Someone in Naples sent him an amulet to ward off the evil eye. And someone in Positano who has the evil eye, and whose neighbors were piling offal nightly before his door, asked for protection.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere had a prodigious memory. He wrote few things down. It was all in his head: the money, the sums, the objects … a prodigious profusion. He sent off lists of his library needs to book dealers in Paris and London. He corresponded with antiquarians and purveyors of art. He haggled with restorers, packers, shippers, insurers. Money was always a distraction, as it must be to a collector: both a measure and a falsifier of value.

  To picture agents and in many letters to Charles, he complained about the rising prices of what he wanted to buy—the pictures; even more, the vases. Rising, in part, because he collects them. Which has increased their
worth.

  The sweet doom of the collector (or tastemaker … but tastemakers are usually collectors): to be in advance and, as others catch up, to be priced out of the competition for what they have pioneered. (Which may come to be found less desirable, because now so many are interested in it.)

  He—for it is usually a he—comes across something unappreciated, neglected, forgotten. Too much to call this a discovery; call it a recognition. (With the force, the glee of a discovery.) He starts to collect it, or to write about it, or both. Because of these proselytizing efforts, what no one paid attention to or liked many now find interesting or admirable. Others start to collect it. It becomes more expensive. Et cetera.

  * * *

  Correggio’s art. And Venus’s groin. You can really possess—even if only for a little while. The most famous object the Cavaliere ever bought, a Roman cameo glass vase from the first century B.C., he owned for only a year. (Then he sold it to the old Duchess of Portland for twice as much as he had paid.) No matter. There are so many objects. No single one is that important. There is no such thing as a monogamous collector. Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more.

  * * *

  That tremor when you spot it. But you don’t say anything. You don’t want to make the present owner aware of its value to you; you don’t want to drive up the price, or make him decide not to sell at all. So you keep cool, you examine something else, you move on or you go out, saying you’ll be back. You perform a whole theatre of being a little interested, but not immoderately; intrigued, yes, even tempted; but not seduced, bewitched. Not ready to pay even more than is being asked, because you must have it.

  So the collector is a dissembler, someone whose joys are never unalloyed with anxiety. Because there is always more. Or something better. You must have it because it is one step toward an ideal completing of your collection. But this ideal completion for which every collector hungers is a delusive goal.

  A complete set of something is not the completeness the collector craves. The entire production of some notable dead painter could conceivably, improbably, end up in someone’s palace or cellar or yacht. (Every last canvas? Could you, imperious acquirer, be sure there was not one more?) But even if you could be sure that you had every last item, the satisfaction of having it all would eventually, inevitably, decay. A complete collection is a dead collection. It has no posterity. After having built it, you would love it less each year. Before long, you would want to sell or donate it, and embark on a new chase.

  The great collections are vast, not complete. Incomplete: motivated by the desire for completeness. There is always one more. And even if you have everything—whatever that might be—then you will perhaps want a better copy (version, edition) of what you have; or with mass-produced objects (pottery, books, artifacts), simply an extra copy, in case the one you possess is lost or stolen or broken or damaged. A backup copy. A shadow collection.

  A great private collection is a material concentrate that continually stimulates, that overexcites. Not only because it can always be added to, but because it is already too much. The collector’s need is precisely for excess, for surfeit, for profusion.

  It’s too much—and it’s just enough for me. Someone who hesitates, who asks, Do I need this? Is this really necessary? is not a collector. A collection is always more than is necessary.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere on the first floor, beyond the first antechamber, where those on business waited for a share of his attention: in his study.

  The room seemed crowded, disorderly. Antique terra-cottas and intaglios on the tables; specimens of lava, cameos, vases in the cabinets; every bit of wall covered by paintings, including one attributed to Leonardo, and gouaches by local artists of Vesuvius erupting. And telescopes at the window trained on the gulf. The motto inscribed in gold at the top of one wall under the cornice, La mia patria è dove mi trovo bene (“My homeland is where I feel well”), struck the right note of insolence. Here the Cavaliere spent most of his day, doting on his treasures. Their forms, he wrote, were simple, beautiful, and varied beyond description.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere below ground in his treasure vault, his “lumber room.”

  Here were to be found rejected vases, surplus pictures, and a hodgepodge of sarcophagi, candelabra, and overrestored antique busts. And besides inferior works deemed not worthy of display, here the Cavaliere kept such pieces of antiquity as the King and his advisers would have been unhappy to learn were in foreign hands. While every distinguished visitor was shown the objects in the Cavaliere’s study, few were taken on a tour of the cellar storage rooms. Every collector is potentially (if not actually) a thief.

  * * *

  You can’t have everything, someone has said, where would you put it? A very modern jape: something one might say now, when the world feels congested, when space is shrinking, when the telluric forces are gathering strength. Not likely to have been uttered in the Cavaliere’s time.

  Actually, you can have quite a lot. It depends on your appetite, not on your storage facilities. It depends on the degree to which you can forget yourself and how bad you really feel.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere in the observatory he had built on the top floor, on the southern and western sides of the mansion. Standing at the balconied window that went halfway around the circular room, one could take in an enormous sweep of blue sky and land and bay without turning one’s head. Nothing comparable to this view in the middle of a great city in the whole of Europe: how lucky the Cavaliere is! And he has multiplied the view he commands—installed in the middle of it, as on a cliff. Or in a camera obscura. The Cavaliere has covered the other half of the room with mirrors, in which were reflected, at sunset, the ghost of Capri opposite, and at night, the bay marbled with moonlight and, sometimes, a full moon that seemed to emerge from the crater of the volcano.

  The Cavaliere on the long brocaded seat which rings the mirrored half of the room, leaning back on the cushions, reading a book, looking up. How well he feels! What could he possibly miss? This is my homeland.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere in his sitting room on the third floor. He watched the column of grey smoke rise, swell, and balance against the sky. Night fell. He watched the reddened mass thrusting upward. Catherine playing the spinet in a nearby room. The thick stream of lava widened.

  * * *

  The Cavaliere on the slopes of the mountain, with Bartolomeo Pumo. Alone with him; just a human pair. The Cavaliere with someone younger than himself, the way it usually was with the Cavaliere—but since Bartolomeo was a servant, he did not need to be avuncular. And because the boy was so quiet and not servile in the usual way, he let himself be guided. It was pleasurable to not always know more, to be led. Just the two of them, in the democracy of nature. When there were others, Pumo fell back into his role and took his place in the chain of injustice.

  The Queen’s brother, the Archduke Joseph, was visiting, and the Cavaliere took the royal party up to watch the new eruption. For all the hundreds of servants employed in this expedition to ensure their comfort, no amount of cosseting could keep the air from becoming hotter and hotter as they approached. The King began to fret and called for his litter to be set down.

  How hot I am, he roared.

  Only to be expected, said the Queen, directing an exasperated glance of complicity at her brother.

  Oh how cold my wife is, said the King, laughing. No sympathy there. He lurched over to the neighbor litter. Feel how I’m sweating, my brother, the King shrieked, and having taken his astonished brother-in-law’s hand drew it inside his shirt. The grotesque familiarity produced an instant eruption of foul humor in the Austrian archduke. Moments later he had deemed the one-eyed boy impertinent enough to break a staff on his head. (Prudent Bartolomeo had only been shouting that it was unsafe for them to remain where they were.) And the Cavaliere, who was scanning a bank of pumice stone the volcano had spat out, couldn’t protect him. />
  The Cavaliere is no democrat. But his chilly heart is not insensitive to a certain idea of justice. Not for him the behavior of his grandfather, of whom it is told that he brained a serving boy while drunk in a tavern near London, and retired without realizing what he had done. The distraught taverner followed him to his room and said, “My lord, do you know that you killed that boy?” Stammered the Cavaliere’s ancestor: “Put him on the bill.”

  * * *

  The Cavaliere in his study, in mid-dispatch to Lord Palmerston, looking up from his desk.

  It’s arrived, said Catherine at the door.

  It? Surely not an it, my dear. They promised me a he.

  He slid the letter under the blotter and stood up.

  Where is it?

  She smiled. In a box, she said.

  Well, we must go and let him out.

  He was still in the large slatted crate, so black you could not make out his shape, bright-eyed, scratching himself. The box stank. The portly major-domo, Vincenzo, stood nearby self-importantly, handkerchief to his nose, while two young pages scratched themselves too.

  The servants must fear you are about to start a collection of animals, observed Catherine.

  There are enough wild creatures in the vicinity, the Cavaliere replied. I plan to add but one more. And to gaping Pietro and giggling Andrea: Well, let’s not keep the poor fellow in captivity any longer.

  Andrea picked up some tools, took one step forward.

  What are you waiting for? Courage! He won’t harm you.

  He’s looking at me, Excellency! I don’t like the way he looks at me.

  Of course he’s looking at you. He wonders what kind of animal you are.

  The boy stood transfixed, wide-eyed. The sweat broke out on his upper lip. The Cavaliere cuffed him gently on the side of the head, took the crowbar and hammer, and set about opening the box himself.