Abstract
This chapter explores Dickens’s complex relationship with Italy; it argues that the writer’s depiction of the country differs from other travellers’ because of his desire to understand cultural differences and explain contradictions. Dickens’s intellectual commitment in support of Italian independence along with his friendship with the Italian expatriate Giuseppe Mazzini allow him to investigate political and social dynamics and see Italy as more than just a picturesque land. His attempt to master the Italian language and the influences that the Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni had on his work offer insight into the writer’s idea of Italy and allow us to understand his role of traveller and social observant.
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Notes
- 1.
Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, edited with an introduction and notes by Kate Flint (London: Penguin Books, 1998).
- 2.
John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (London: Cecil Palmer, 1928).
- 3.
David Henry Paroissien, A Critical Edition of Charles Dickens’s Pictures from Italy (Los Angeles: University of California, 1968).
- 4.
Emilia Morelli, L’Inghilterra di Mazzini (Roma: Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1965), 40.
- 5.
Translated by the author.
- 6.
Bruno Gatta, Mazzini una vita per un sogno (Napoli: Guida, 2002), 152.
- 7.
Philip Collins, Dickens, and Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1963).
- 8.
Marjorie Stone, Joseph Mazzini, English Writers, and the Post Office Espionage Scandal: British and Italian Politics, Privacy and Twenty-First Century Parallels, in www.branchcollective.org, [accessed 26/01/14].
- 9.
Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1998), 478.
- 10.
Valerie Kennedy, Katarina Kitsi, Liminal Dickens: Rites of Passage in His Work, (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2006).
- 11.
The Letters of Charles Dickens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 168.
- 12.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 13.
Charles Peter Brand, Italy and the English Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 10.
- 14.
Dominic Rainsford, Literature, Identity, and the English Channel: Narrow Seas Expanded (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002), 59.
- 15.
Nirshan Perera, John O. Jordan (Edited by), Global Dickens (London and New York: Routledge Francis and Taylor, 2017).
- 16.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 17.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 18.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 19.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 20.
Clotilde De Stasio, “The Traveller as Liar: Dickens and the Invisible Towns in Northern Italy,” in the Dickensian, n. 450, vol. 96, 6.
- 21.
Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography, 178.
- 22.
Alessandro Vescovi, “Themes and Styles in Pictures from Italy” in English Travellers and Travelling, Luisa Conti Camaiora eds., 96–97.
- 23.
Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, Edited with an introduction and notes by Kate Flint, (London: Penguin Classics, 1998) 166.
- 24.
Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography, 178.
- 25.
Kate Flint, Dickens (Brighton: Harvest Press, 1986), 86.
- 26.
William Gilpin, Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (London: R. Blamire, 1788).
- 27.
Nancy Hill, A Reformer’s Art Dickens’ Picturesque and Grotesque Imagery (Athens Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981).
- 28.
Malcom Andrews, Dickens, Turner and the Picturesque in Imaging Italy: Victorian Writers and Travellers Edited by Michael Hollington and Catherine Waters (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).
- 29.
Annamarie McAllister, “A Pair of Naked Legs and a Ragged Red Scarf: An Overview of Victorian Discourses on Italy” in The Victorians and Italy: Literature, Travel, Politics and Art. Edited by Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita. (Milano: Polimetrica, 2009) 19–43.
- 30.
Cedric Dickens, Dining with Dickens (United Kingdom: Elvendon Press, 1984).
- 31.
Bill Ashcroft, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post Colonial Literatures (Second Edition) (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
- 32.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 33.
Nicola Bradbury, ‘Dolce Far Niente,’ in Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy. Edited by Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) 15–26.
- 34.
The Betrothed is an Italian historical novel written by Alessandro Manzoni, it was published for the first time in 1827 in three volumes. It is the most famous and widely read novel in the Italian language . It is set in northern Italy in 1628, during the oppressive years of direct Spanish rule; it is seen as a veiled attack on the Austrian Empire, which controlled the region at the time the novel was written. It is also noted for the extraordinary description of the plague that in 1630 struck Milan. It deals with a variety of themes, from the cowardly, hypocritical nature of one prelate (the parish priest don Abbondio) to the heroic sainthood of other priests (the friar Padre Cristoforo, the cardinal Federico Borromeo), to the unwavering strength of love (the relationship between Renzo and Lucia and their struggle to finally meet again and be married), and offers insights into the meanderings of the Italian mindset.
- 35.
Charles Dickens. The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Vol. 4–6. Edited by Kathleen Tillotson. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977).
- 36.
See Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita (Eds). The Victorians in Italy. Literature, Travel, Politics and Art. Segrate (Mi): Polimetrica, 2009), 151–169.
- 37.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 4, 1844–1846. Edited by Kathleen Tillotson, Nina Burgis (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1977).
- 38.
This phrase is not an example of Dickens’s linguistic competence because it became commonplace in Europe between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Pictures from Italy , it shows the unitary perception that foreigners had of Italian regional stereotypes, such as the supposed laziness of people from Campania, that here is extended to the entire population.
- 39.
See Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography (William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1998).
- 40.
Hôtel de la Ville, Milan, 25th October, 1853.
My dearest Catherine,
The road from Chamounix here takes so much more time than I supposed (for I travelled it day and night, and my companions don’t at all understand the[146] idea of never going to bed) that we only reached Milan last night, though we had been travelling twelve and fifteen hours a day. We crossed the Simplon on Sunday, when there was not (as there is not now) a particle of cloud in the whole sky, and when the pass was as nobly grand and beautiful as it possibly can be. There was a good deal of snow upon the top, but not across the road, which had been cleared. We crossed the Austrian frontier yesterday, and, both there and at the gate of Milan, received all possible consideration and politeness.
I have not seen Bairr yet. He has removed from the old hotel to a larger one at a few hours’ distance. The head-waiter remembered me very well last night after I had talked to him a little while, and was greatly interested in hearing about all the family, and about poor Roche. The boy we used to have at Lausanne is now seventeen-and-a-half—very tall, he says. The elder girl, fifteen, very like her mother, but taller and more beautiful. He described poor Mrs. Bairr’s death (I am speaking of the head-waiter before mentioned) in most vivacious Italian. It was all over in ten minutes, he said. She put her hands to her head one day, down in the courtyard, and cried out that she heard little bells ringing violently in her ears. They sent off for Bairr, who was close by. When she saw him, she stretched out her arms, said in English, “Adieu, my dear!” and fell dead. He has not married again, and he never will. She was a good woman (my friend went on), [147] excellent woman, full of charity, loved the poor, but un poco furiosa—that was nothing!
The new hotel is just like the old one, admirably kept, excellently furnished, and a model of comfort. I hope to be at Genoa on Thursday morning, and to find your letter there. We have agreed to drop Sicily, and to return home by way of Marseilles. Our projected time for reaching London is the 10th of December.
As this house is full, I daresay we shall meet some one we know at the table d’hôte to-day. It is extraordinary that the only travellers we have encountered, since we left Paris, have been one horribly vapid Englishman and wife whom we dropped at Basle, one boring Englishman whom we found (and, thank God, left) at Geneva, and two English maiden ladies, whom we found sitting on a rock (with parasols) the day before yesterday, in the most magnificent part of the Gorge of Gondo, the most awful portion of the Simplon—there awaiting their travelling chariot, in which, with their money, their parasols, and a perfect shop of baskets, they were carefully locked up by an English servant in sky blue and silver buttons. We have been in the most extraordinary vehicles—like swings, like boats, like Noah’s arks, like barges and enormous bedsteads. After dark last night, a landlord, where we changed horses, discovered that the luggage would certainly be stolen from questo porco d’uno carro—this pig of a cart—his complimentary description of our carriage, unless cords were attached to each of the[148] trunks, which cords were to hang down so that we might hold them in our hands all the way, and feel any tug that might be made at our treasures. You will imagine the absurdity of our jolting along some twenty miles in this way, exactly as if we were in three shower-baths and were afraid to pull the string.
We are going to the Scala to-night, having got the old box belonging to the hotel, the old key of which is lying beside me on the table. There seem to be no singers of note here now, and it appears for the time to have fallen off considerably. I shall now bring this to a close, hoping that I may have more interesting jottings to send you about the old scenes and people, from Genoa, where we shall stay two days. You are now, I take it, at Macready’s. I shall be greatly interested by your account of your visit there. We often talk of you all.
Edward’s Italian is (I fear) very weak. When we began to get really into the language, he reminded me of poor Roche in Germany. But he seems to have picked up a little this morning. He has been unfortunate with the unlucky Egg, leaving a pair of his shoes (his favourite shoes) behind in Paris, and his flannel dressing-gown yesterday morning at Domo d’Ossola. In all other respects he is just as he was.
Egg and Collins have gone out to kill the lions here, and I take advantage of their absence to write to you, Georgie, and Miss Coutts. Wills will have told you, I daresay, that Cerjat accompanied us on a miserably wet[149] morning, in a heavy rain, down the lake. By-the-bye, the wife of one of his cousins, born in France of German parents, living in the next house to Haldimand’s, is one of the most charming, natural, open-faced, and delightful women I ever saw. Madame de —— is set up as the great attraction of Lausanne; but this capital creature shuts her up altogether. We have called her (her—the real belle), ever since, the early closing movement.
I am impatient for letters from home; confused ideas are upon me that you are going to White’s, but I have no notion when.
Take care of yourself, and God bless you.
Ever most affectionately.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 41.
The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 1, 1833–1856 by Charles Dickens. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020]. As the example is taken from an e-text from Project Gutenberg no page references are provided.
- 42.
Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography (William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1998), 290–292.
References
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Brand, Charles Peter. Italy and the English Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
Collins, Philip. Dickens and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1963.
De Stasio, Clotilde. ‘The Traveller as Liar: Dickens and the Invisible Towns in Northern Italy,’ in the Dickensian, n. 450, vol. 96, pp. 5–13. Spring 2000.
Dickens, Cedric. Dining with Dickens. United Kingdom: Elvendon Press, 1984.
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 1, 1833–1856. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020].
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 4, 1844–1846, Edited by Kathleen Tillotson and Nina Burgis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. Edited with an introduction and notes by Kate Flint London: Penguin Group, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. http://www.gutenberg.org/. [accessed February 2020].
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Flint, Kate. Dickens. Brighton: Harvest Press, 1986.
Flint, Kate. Introduction and Notes to Pictures from Italy. London: Penguin Group, 1998.
Gatta, Bruno. Mazzini una vita per un sogno. Napoli: Guida, 2002.
Gilpin, William. Observations Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty. London: R. Blamire, 1788.
Hill, Nancy. A Reformer’s Art Dickens’ Picturesque and Grotesque Imagery. Athens Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981.
Hollington, Michael, Francesca Orestano. Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography, New York: William Morrow & Company Inc., 1998.
Kennedy, Valerie, Katarina Kitsi-Mitakou (Eds). Liminal Dickens: Rites of Passage of his Work. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
McAllister, Annamarie. ‘A Pair of Naked Legs and a Ragged Red Scarf: An Overview of Victorian Discourses on Italy in The Victorians and Italy’. Literature, Travel, Politics and Art. Edited by Alessandro Vescovi, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita, pp. 17–43. Polimetrica, 2009.
Morelli, Emilia. L’Inghilterra di Mazzini. Roma: Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, 1965.
Paroissien, David Henry. A Critical Edition of Charles Dickens’s Pictures from Italy. Los Angeles: University of California, 1968.
Perera, Nirshan, John O. Jordan (Eds). Global Dickens. London and New York: Routledge Francis and Taylor, 2017.
Rainsford, Dominic. Literature, Identity and the English Channel: Narrow Seas Expanded. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002.
Stone, Marjorie. “Joseph Mazzini, English Writers, and the Post Office Espionage Scandal: British and Italian Politics, Privacy and Twenty-First Century Parallels.” http://www.branchcollective.org/. [Accessed January 2014].
Vescovi, Alessandro, Luisa Villa, Paul Vita. The Victorians in Italy. Literature, Travel, Politics and Art. Segrate, Milano: Polimentrica, 2009.
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Cubeta, G. (2020). Transcultural Views. In: Dickens and the Italians in 'Pictures from Italy'. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47429-4_3
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