Under the volcano

B J Lee

It is quite tiresome to read only negative comments about Americans. Try writing sans cliches; your readers will admire you for being unique.

Jock

You neglected to slip around the iron bars guarding the thin Via Krupp descending the cliff on the backside of Capri, and skinny dip in the lapping blue waters, just under the grotto with the secret ruins of a miniature Victorian brick mansion built inside where the arms maker used to entertain i belli ragazzi. No, all you care to notice is how expensive is the shopping. Southern Italy is utterly wasted on a plebian soul.

Jock, channeling the ghost of Norman Douglas

I take it back about Herr Krupp and i ragqazzi. Turns out all that may be a libel--utterly false--and yet it caused Krupp's wrongful disgrace, ostracism, and eventual suicide. This according to Norman Douglas who lived in Capri and should know. The gentle, elderly philanthropist, the wealthiest man in Europe, "was by far the most prominent man on the island," said Douglas. "He lived in a glass house, and it is asking to much of fish in an aquarium to engage, unobserved, in homosexual practices." It was Krupp's kindness that "proved his undoing." He took lessons in Italian from a schoolmaster and typically, overpaid him. A rival schoolmaster who had no such illustrious and lucrative client out of envy and personal spite slung at Krupp the worst mud he could think of. The schoolmaster sent to a Socialist rag called the "Propaganda" anonymous accusations of practices with young boys "with which he himself was familiar," as the schoolmaster himself had been convicted of them. Another paper, "Avanti," took up the poisonous gossip; then a German socialistic paper "Vorwärts;" it mushroomed into a major scandal fueled by the partisan press: innocent working class boys victimized by degenerate capitalist. "He was killed by a disgusting press campaign," says Douglas. This from Norman Douglas, "Looking Back," pp. 152-158. The falsehood is repeated to this day in Capri guide-books: it was in the papers at the time after all, so it must be true.