Amongst the very few British residents is a Scottish lady who has lived hero for some considerable time, and in her charming Moorish house, with its Muezzin tower, we had tea only a short time ago.

As a peep at English life in Capri might interest the reader I shall take you with me to this hospitable homo. It is called “Discopoli.”

The house is set in a terraced garden, with shady walks under a pergola of roses and clematis. All the rooms are on the one floor. From the hall you enter a largo drawing-room on the right. Its French window leads to a veranda which overlooks the flower garden and the lemon and olivo groves. A Scotch tea in such surroundings is a soothing balm for home-sick foreigners. The man servant is Italian but the maid hails from Fifeshire.

One is glad to think that there was such enterprise amongst our uomo domestics.

Why should they not see the world, when such comfortable posts offer themselves?

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The Grand Hotel Miramare of Santa Margherita, a formidable construction, was transformed in 1904 by Giacomo Costa from a villa into a great hotel.

Since then it has been managed by a series of different families, the Kuoni-Stoppani family, the Torriani family and finally by the Fustinoni family. Innumerable important persons have been stayed here; Emperors, Kings and Queens, Princes of Royal houses, presidents of Republics, politicians, actors, singers and prestigious artists (1) have been guests.

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Capri like a fair maiden who must be wooed if her full charm is to be enjoyed.

There is a certain coyness about her, an aloofness which withdraws her from the grasp of the impatient. The winds and the waves which are seldom still around her rocks, guard her from the importunate mob.

True, thousands of tourists visit her shores every season; but the majority of those do not even land except at the Blue Grotto, photo below, and as they roll back to Naples on the Mediterranean swell, they are apt to think unkindly thoughts of that fair Siren rock which had lured them to such a fate!

The few, however, who refuse to be content with aim hour’s interview, but persist in their attentions: who settle down and fall in love with the beauty and the mystery of this elusive island, begin to discover her secret.

She exerts an almost uncanny fascination on her lovers. Once their eyes have been opened to the slender grace of her rocky sides, so tall, so straight: to the wonderful colours of her clinging garments, as from her clefts like a cascade the fragile campanula streams forth and clothes her with stars of pale amethyst, and mingles with another stream of sapphire blue lithospermum or white and purple convolvulus they become bewitched with her beauty.
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