Pictures From Italy

by Dickens, Chales

  the other evening about sunset, and couldn't help pacing up and

  down for a little time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the place:

  which is repeated hereabouts in all directions.

  I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides of a

  weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the house formed a third

  side, and a low terrace-walk, overlooking the garden and the

  neighbouring hills, the fourth. I don't believe there was an

  uncracked stone in the whole pavement. In the centre was a

  melancholy statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked exactly

  as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, and afterwards

  powdered. The stables, coach-houses, offices, were all empty, all

  ruinous, all utterly deserted.

  Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches;

  windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying

  about in clods; fowls and cats had so taken possession of the outbuildings,

  that I couldn't help thinking of the fairy tales, and

  eyeing them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting to be

  changed back again. One old Tom in particular: a scraggy brute,

  with a hungry green eye (a poor relation, in reality, I am inclined

  to think): came prowling round and round me, as if he half

  believed, for the moment, that I might be the hero come to marry

  the lady, and set all to-rights; but discovering his mistake, he

  suddenly gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous

  tail, that he couldn't get into the little hole where he lived, but

  was obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his tail had

  gone down together.

  In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this

  colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a nut;

  but the Jesuits had given them notice to go, and they had gone, and

  THAT was shut up too. The house: a wandering, echoing, thundering

  barrack of a place, with the lower windows barred up, as usual, was

  wide open at the door: and I have no doubt I might have gone in,

  and gone to bed, and gone dead, and nobody a bit the wiser. Only

  one suite of rooms on an upper floor was tenanted; and from one of

  these, the voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising bravura

  lustily, came flaunting out upon the silent evening.

  I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, with

  avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in

  stone basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling,

  under grown or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of

  slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. There was

  nothing bright in the whole scene but a firefly - one solitary

  firefly - showing against the dark bushes like the last little

  speck of the departed Glory of the house; and even it went flitting

  up and down at sudden angles, and leaving a place with a jerk, and

  describing an irregular circle, and returning to the same place

  with a twitch that startled one: as if it were looking for the

  rest of the Glory, and wondering (Heaven knows it might!) what had

  become of it.

  In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows of my

  dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into familiar

  forms and substances; and I already began to think that when the

  Page 24

  Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy

  time should come, a year hence, for closing the long holiday and

  turning back to England, I might part from Genoa with anything but

  a glad heart.

  It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day. There seems to be

  always something to find out in it. There are the most

  extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose

  your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times

  a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected

  and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest

  contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent,

  delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.

  They who would know how beautiful the country immediately

  surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top of

  Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls: a feat more

  easily performed. No prospect can be more diversified and lovely

  than the changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the two

  rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the heights along which

  the strongly fortified walls are carried, like the great wall of

  China in little. In not the least picturesque part of this ride,

  there is a fair specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the

  visitor may derive good entertainment from real Genoese dishes,

  such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German sausages, strong of garlic,

  sliced and eaten with fresh green figs; cocks' combs and sheepkidneys,

  chopped up with mutton chops and liver; small pieces of

  some unknown part of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and

  served up in a great dish like white-bait; and other curiosities of

  that kind. They often get wine at these suburban Trattorie, from

  France and Spain and Portugal, which is brought over by small

  captains in little trading-vessels. They buy it at so much a

  bottle, without asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody

  tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of which they

  label one Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite

  flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are

  comprised under these two general heads is quite extraordinary.

  The most limited range is probably from cool Gruel up to old

  Marsala, and down again to apple Tea.

  The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare

  can well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to

  live and walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind

  of well, or breathing-place. The houses are immensely high,

  painted in all sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state

  of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They are commonly let off in

  floors, or flats, like the houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or

  many houses in Paris. There are few street doors; the entrance

  halls are, for the most part, looked upon as public property; and

  any moderately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune by

  now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible for coaches to

  penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded and

  otherwise, for hire in divers places. A great many private chairs

  are also kept among the nobility and gentry; and at night these are

  trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of great

  lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. The sedans and

  lanthorns are the legitimate successors of the long strings of

  patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling their little bells

  through these confined streets all day long. They follow them, as

  regularly as the stars the sun.

  When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and

  the Strada Balbi! or how th
e former looked one summer day, when I

  first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of

  summer skies: which its narrow perspective of immense mansions,

  Page 25

  Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy

  reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness,

  looking down upon the heavy shade below! A brightness not too

  common, even in July and August, to be well esteemed: for, if the

  Truth must out, there were not eight blue skies in as many

  midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when,

  looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of

  deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and

  haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate.

  The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some of

  them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,

  heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier:

  with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up - a

  huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred

  lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars,

  strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted

  chambers: among which the eye wanders again, and again, and again,

  as every palace is succeeded by another - the terrace gardens

  between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves

  of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty,

  thirty, forty feet above the street - the painted halls,

  mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and

  still shining out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs,

  where the walls are dry - the faded figures on the outsides of the

  houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and

  downward, and standing in niches, and here and there looking

  fainter and more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh

  little Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the

  front, are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a

  blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial - the steep, steep, up-hill

  streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all that),

  with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways - the

  magnificent and innumerable Churches; and the rapid passage from a

  street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor,

  steaming with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked

  children and whole worlds of dirty people - make up, altogether,

  such a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and

  yet so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide

  awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication

  to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A

  bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a dream,

  and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality!

  The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied, all

  at once, is characteristic. For instance, the English Banker (my

  excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a good-sized

  Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. In the hall (every inch of which is

  elaborately painted, but which is as dirty as a police-station in

  London), a hook-nosed Saracen's Head with an immense quantity of

  black hair (there is a man attached to it) sells walking-sticks.

  On the other side of the doorway, a lady with a showy handkerchief

  for head-dress (wife to the Saracen's Head, I believe) sells

  articles of her own knitting; and sometimes flowers. A little

  further in, two or three blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes,

  they are visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but

  who has such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable,

  well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the

  ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of

  cellar-steps to speak to somebody. A little further in, a few men,

  perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day; or they may be

  chairmen waiting for their absent freight. If so, they have

  brought their chairs in with them, and there THEY stand also. On

  the left of the hall is a little room: a hatter's shop. On the

  first floor, is the English bank. On the first floor also, is a

  Page 26

  Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy

  whole house, and a good large residence too. Heaven knows what

  there may be above that; but when you are there, you have only just

  begun to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking

  of this; and passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the

  hall, instead of turning the other way, to get into the street

  again; it bangs behind you, making the dismallest and most lonesome

  echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the same house) which

  seems to have been unvisited by human foot, for a hundred years.

  Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not a head, thrust out of any of

  the grim, dark, jealous windows, within sight, makes the weeds in

  the cracked pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the possibility

  of there being hands to grub them up. Opposite to you, is a giant

  figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece

  of artificial rockwork; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of

  a leaden pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a small torrent down

  the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than

  this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which is

  nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a

  sepulchral child, 'All gone!' to have lapsed into a stony silence.

  In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great

  size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty:

  quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable: and emit a

  peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very

  hot blankets. Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there

  would seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new houses

  are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it has been possible to cram a

  tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If

  there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in

  any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some

  kind of habitation: looking as if it had grown there, like a

  fungus. Against the Government House, against the old Senate

  House, round about any large building, little shops stick so close,

  like parasite vermin to the great carcase. And for all this, look

  where you may: up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there

  are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down,

  leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their

  friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the

  rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further.

  One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by

  the landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being associated

  with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has

  stamped it dee
per in my mind. Here, again, the houses are very

  high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have

  (as most of the houses have) something hanging out of a great many

  windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance on the breeze.

  Sometimes, it is a curtain; sometimes, it is a carpet; sometimes,

  it is a bed; sometimes, a whole line-full of clothes; but there is

  almost always something. Before the basement of these houses, is

  an arcade over the pavement: very massive, dark, and low, like an

  old crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has turned

  quite black; and against every one of these black piles, all sorts

  of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously. Beneath

  some of the arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish

  their stalls, which are by no means inviting. The offal of a fishmarket,

  near at hand - that is to say, of a back lane, where people

  sit upon the ground and on various old bulk-heads and sheds, and

  sell fish when they have any to dispose of - and of a vegetable

  market, constructed on the same principle - are contributed to the

  decoration of this quarter; and as all the mercantile business is

  transacted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided

  flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods

  brought in from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold

  Page 27

  Dickens, Charles - Pictures From Italy

  and taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here

  also; and two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the

  gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and

  Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to yield to

  the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way: that is to say,

  by concealing the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its

  dress. So Sanctity and Beauty may, by no means, enter.

  The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the importation of

  a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. Every fourth or fifth

  man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk; and there is pretty sure

  to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic inside or outside every

  hackney carriage on the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge,

  elsewhere, of more repulsive countenances than are to be found

  among these gentry. If Nature's handwriting be at all legible,

  greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor, could