mules awaited us on foot, in, I believe, half an hour’s time. The descent is most rapid, but, as the material on which one treads is soft, with the help of a stick or taking hold of an arm, one can jump forward without much fatigue.
Mary Berry was born in 1763 in Yorkshire. A year later arrived her sister, Agnes, with whom she was always very close. Their mother died not long after, and the sisters were brought up by their father and grandmother, first in Yorkshire and then in London.
In May 1783, their father, Robert, a wealthy merchant, took the two young women with him on a long tour of Europe, through Holland and Belgium, then along the Rhine. By February 25, 1784, they were in southern Italy, about to climb the volcano Vesuvius outside Naples.
Italy was a favorite destination for many such Grand Tour travelers, and Mount Vesuvius was one of the regular places to visit there. The idea of ladies taking such rough and risky journeys, however, was rather new. But Mary Berry was no demure and passive gentlewoman. She was someone who saw the world in her own independent way. She was also a writer already, and as they passed the sites at the foot of the volcano, she was storing the images away for her travel journal. She was not so impressed by the ruins of Roman Herculaneum, destroyed in the great eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE that had also buried Pompeii. “It is all buried seventy-five feet in a solid body of tufa [volcanic ash],” she wrote. The excavations had only begun in the 1700s, and in her view, it was all rather messy.
The English sisters were each carried in a chair by four locals as they got higher. Then they walked the last part. Mary Berry relished the effort and freedom, and then there was the wonderful moment when they reached the summit. It had only been a few years since the last big eruption, and Vesuvius was extremely active throughout the last decades of the eighteenth century. Nothing deterred the two sisters, not even the fact that “the whole of that time it threw up red-hot stones.” A dangerous place.
But this was exactly where Mary Berry experienced a moment of most intense happiness. The views of Naples and its surroundings from the summit were grand. They went “walking round the edge” of the crater, and then they “dined upon the very edge” of it—a perfect spot, because they “could look down the fiery gulf.” She felt she was in the audience for a personal performance of “the noble fireworks with which it continued to treat us.” On top of it there was the pleasure of dining with such a spectacular view. Perfect bliss.
A Visit to a Literary Salon
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, diplomat and author, writing in his journal
BERLIN • JULY 1806
The company [at Rahel Levin’s salon] was extremely lively; each one with all ease and freedom contributed his part; artifice or hypocrisy had no chance of success. The unconstrained cheerfulness of Rahel, her spirit of truth and straightforwardness, reigned supreme. I was permitted with youthful extravagance to excite myself against the French; another to air his theatrical information; the Frenchman received facetious advice concerning his love affairs; while Schack [army officer] himself listened to the democratic outpourings of Vetter.
All went smoothly on; undue seriousness was lightened by wit and pleasantry, which in its turn was followed by sensible conversation, and so all was well balanced and full of animation. The open pianoforte invited to an occasional strain of music —Rahel herself being an accomplished and enthusiastic mistress of the art—and thus perfected the whole. We separated in good time in a mood of elevated thought, which I indulged for some time, out alone in the starlight, while I vainly scanned my past life for the memory of such another evening. My impatience would only allow a few days to elapse before repeating my visit.
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense was twenty-one and a serious young man. He
Mary Berry was born in 1763 in Yorkshire. A year later arrived her sister, Agnes, with whom she was always very close. Their mother died not long after, and the sisters were brought up by their father and grandmother, first in Yorkshire and then in London.
In May 1783, their father, Robert, a wealthy merchant, took the two young women with him on a long tour of Europe, through Holland and Belgium, then along the Rhine. By February 25, 1784, they were in southern Italy, about to climb the volcano Vesuvius outside Naples.
Italy was a favorite destination for many such Grand Tour travelers, and Mount Vesuvius was one of the regular places to visit there. The idea of ladies taking such rough and risky journeys, however, was rather new. But Mary Berry was no demure and passive gentlewoman. She was someone who saw the world in her own independent way. She was also a writer already, and as they passed the sites at the foot of the volcano, she was storing the images away for her travel journal. She was not so impressed by the ruins of Roman Herculaneum, destroyed in the great eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE that had also buried Pompeii. “It is all buried seventy-five feet in a solid body of tufa [volcanic ash],” she wrote. The excavations had only begun in the 1700s, and in her view, it was all rather messy.
The English sisters were each carried in a chair by four locals as they got higher. Then they walked the last part. Mary Berry relished the effort and freedom, and then there was the wonderful moment when they reached the summit. It had only been a few years since the last big eruption, and Vesuvius was extremely active throughout the last decades of the eighteenth century. Nothing deterred the two sisters, not even the fact that “the whole of that time it threw up red-hot stones.” A dangerous place.
But this was exactly where Mary Berry experienced a moment of most intense happiness. The views of Naples and its surroundings from the summit were grand. They went “walking round the edge” of the crater, and then they “dined upon the very edge” of it—a perfect spot, because they “could look down the fiery gulf.” She felt she was in the audience for a personal performance of “the noble fireworks with which it continued to treat us.” On top of it there was the pleasure of dining with such a spectacular view. Perfect bliss.
A Visit to a Literary Salon
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, diplomat and author, writing in his journal
BERLIN • JULY 1806
The company [at Rahel Levin’s salon] was extremely lively; each one with all ease and freedom contributed his part; artifice or hypocrisy had no chance of success. The unconstrained cheerfulness of Rahel, her spirit of truth and straightforwardness, reigned supreme. I was permitted with youthful extravagance to excite myself against the French; another to air his theatrical information; the Frenchman received facetious advice concerning his love affairs; while Schack [army officer] himself listened to the democratic outpourings of Vetter.
All went smoothly on; undue seriousness was lightened by wit and pleasantry, which in its turn was followed by sensible conversation, and so all was well balanced and full of animation. The open pianoforte invited to an occasional strain of music —Rahel herself being an accomplished and enthusiastic mistress of the art—and thus perfected the whole. We separated in good time in a mood of elevated thought, which I indulged for some time, out alone in the starlight, while I vainly scanned my past life for the memory of such another evening. My impatience would only allow a few days to elapse before repeating my visit.
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense was twenty-one and a serious young man. He
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