Pictures From Italy

by Dickens, Chales

  There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one now rarely

  opened. The most important - the Carlo Felice: the opera-house of

  Genoa - is a very splendid, commodious, and beautiful theatre. A

  company of comedians were acting there, when we arrived: and soon

  after their departure, a second-rate opera company came. The great

  season is not until the carnival time - in the spring. Nothing

  impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty

  numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the

  audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing goodhumouredly,

  seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to

  hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the actors.

  But, as there is nothing else of a public nature at which they are

  allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are

  resolved to make the most of this opportunity.

  There are a great number of Piedmontese officers too, who are

  allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next

  to nothing: gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these gentlemen

  being insisted on, by the Governor, in all public or semi-public

  entertainments. They are lofty critics in consequence, and

  infinitely more exacting than if they made the unhappy manager's

  fortune.

  The TEATRO DIURNO, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage in the open

  air, where the performances take place by daylight, in the cool of

  the afternoon; commencing at four or five o'clock, and lasting,

  some three hours. It is curious, sitting among the audience, to

  have a fine view of the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see

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  the neighbours at their windows looking on, and to hear the bells

  of the churches and convents ringing at most complete crosspurposes

  with the scene. Beyond this, and the novelty of seeing a

  play in the fresh pleasant air, with the darkening evening closing

  in, there is nothing very exciting or characteristic in the

  performances. The actors are indifferent; and though they

  sometimes represent one of Goldoni's comedies, the staple of the

  Drama is French. Anything like nationality is dangerous to

  despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered kings.

  The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti - a famous company from Milan

  - is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I ever beheld

  in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous. They

  LOOK between four and five feet high, but are really much smaller;

  for when a musician in the orchestra happens to put his hat on the

  stage, it becomes alarmingly gigantic, and almost blots out an

  actor. They usually play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in

  the comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter in an hotel. There

  never was such a locomotive actor, since the world began. Great

  pains are taken with him. He has extra joints in his legs: and a

  practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is

  absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the initiated

  audience, mainly composed of the common people, receive (so they do

  everything else) quite as a matter of course, and as if he were a

  man. His spirits are prodigious. He continually shakes his legs,

  and winks his eye. And there is a heavy father with grey hair, who

  sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his

  daughter in the regular conventional way, who is tremendous. No

  one would suppose it possible that anything short of a real man

  could be so tedious. It is the triumph of art.

  In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride, in the very

  hour of her nuptials, He brings her to his cave, and tries to

  soothe her. They sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa! in the

  regular place, O. P. Second Entrance!) and a procession of

  musicians enters; one creature playing a drum, and knocking himself

  off his legs at every blow. These failing to delight her, dancers

  appear. Four first; then two; THE two; the flesh-coloured two.

  The way in which they dance; the height to which they spring; the

  impossible and inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the

  revelation of their preposterous legs; the coming down with a

  pause, on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it;

  the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn; and the

  lady's retiring up, when it is the gentleman's turn; the final

  passion of a pas-de-deux; and the going off with a bound! - I shall

  never see a real ballet, with a composed countenance again.

  I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called 'St.

  Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.' It began by the disclosure of

  Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at

  St. Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure

  announcement:

  'Sir Yew ud se on Low?' (the OW, as in cow).

  Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals!) was a

  perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly, with a

  monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the lowerjaw,

  to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature. He began his

  system of persecution, by calling his prisoner 'General

  Buonaparte;' to which the latter replied, with the deepest tragedy,

  'Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not thus. Repeat that phrase and

  leave me! I am Napoleon, Emperor of France!' Sir Yew ud se on,

  nothing daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of

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  the British Government, regulating the state he should preserve,

  and the furniture of his rooms: and limiting his attendants to

  four or five persons. 'Four or five for ME!' said Napoleon. 'Me!

  One hundred thousand men were lately at my sole command; and this

  English officer talks of four or five for ME!' Throughout the

  piece, Napoleon (who talked very like the real Napoleon, and was,

  for ever, having small soliloquies by himself) was very bitter on

  'these English officers,' and 'these English soldiers;' to the

  great satisfaction of the audience, who were perfectly delighted to

  have Low bullied; and who, whenever Low said 'General Buonaparte'

  (which he always did: always receiving the same correction), quite

  execrated him. It would be hard to say why; for Italians have

  little cause to sympathise with Napoleon, Heaven knows.

  There was no plot at all, except that a French officer, disguised

  as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape; and being

  discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously refused to

  steal his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged.

  In two very long speeches, which Low made memorable, by winding up

  with 'Yas!' - to show that he was English - which brought down

  thunders of applause. Napoleon was so affected by this

  catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out

  by two other puppets. Judging from what followed, it would appear

  that he never recovered the shock; for the next act showed him, in

&nb
sp; a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where a

  lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little children,

  who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent end; the

  last word on his lips being 'Vatterlo.'

  It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots were so

  wonderfully beyond control, and did such marvellous things of their

  own accord: doubling themselves up, and getting under tables, and

  dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away with him, out of

  all human knowledge, when he was in full speech - mischances which

  were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled melancholy depicted

  in his face. To put an end to one conference with Low, he had to

  go to a table, and read a book: when it was the finest spectacle I

  ever beheld, to see his body bending over the volume, like a bootjack,

  and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit.

  He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his

  shirt, and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr.

  Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like

  Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires,

  hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions

  in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was

  great at all times - a decided brute and villain, beyond all

  possibility of mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when,

  hearing the doctor and the valet say, 'The Emperor is dead!' he

  pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) by

  exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, 'Ha! ha! Eleven minutes

  to six! The General dead! and the spy hanged!' This brought the

  curtain down, triumphantly.

  There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier

  residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the Fishponds,

  whither we removed as soon as our three months' tenancy of the Pink

  Jail at Albaro had ceased and determined.

  It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof from the

  town: surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, adorned with

  statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, walks of

  orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and camellias. All

  its apartments are beautiful in their proportions and decorations;

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  but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three large

  windows at the end, overlooking the whole town of Genoa, the

  harbour, and the neighbouring sea, affords one of the most

  fascinating and delightful prospects in the world. Any house more

  cheerful and habitable than the great rooms are, within, it would

  be difficult to conceive; and certainly nothing more delicious than

  the scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined.

  It is more like an enchanted place in an Eastern story than a grave

  and sober lodging.

  How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of the

  wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their fresh

  colouring as if they had been painted yesterday; or how one floor,

  or even the great hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a

  spacious promenade; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers

  above, which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely know the

  way through; or how there is a view of a perfectly different

  character on each of the four sides of the building; matters

  little. But that prospect from the hall is like a vision to me. I

  go back to it, in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred

  times a day; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents

  from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of

  happiness.

  There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many

  churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny

  sky; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary

  convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron across at

  the end, where sometimes early in the morning, I have seen a little

  group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and

  stopping now and then to peep down upon the waking world in which

  they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good

  weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here, upon the

  left. The Fort within the walls (the good King built it to command

  the town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in

  case they should be discontented) commands that height upon the

  right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there; and that line of

  coast, beginning by the light-house, and tapering away, a mere

  speck in the rosy distance, is the beautiful coast road that leads

  to Nice. The garden near at hand, among the roofs and houses: all

  red with roses and fresh with little fountains: is the Acqua Sola

  - a public promenade, where the military band plays gaily, and the

  white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobility ride round, and

  round, and round, in state-clothes and coaches at least, if not in

  absolute wisdom. Within a stone's-throw, as it seems, the audience

  of the Day Theatre sit: their faces turned this way. But as the

  stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge of the cause,

  to see their faces changed so suddenly from earnestness to

  laughter; and odder still, to hear the rounds upon rounds of

  applause, rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls.

  But, being Sunday night, they act their best and most attractive

  play. And now, the sun is going down, in such magnificent array of

  red, and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could

  depict; and to the ringing of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at

  once, without a twilight. Then, lights begin to shine in Genoa,

  and on the country road; and the revolving lanthorn out at sea

  there, flashing, for an instant, on this palace front and portico,

  illuminates it as if there were a bright moon bursting from behind

  a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity. And this, so far as I

  know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid it after dark, and

  think it haunted.

  My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but nothing

  worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will occasionally sail away,

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  as I did one pleasant autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and

  sniff the morning air at Marseilles.

  The corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers outside

  his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the window, with

  the natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to twirl, and were

  languishing, stock still, with their beautiful faces addressed to

  blind corners of the establishment, where it was impossible for

  admirers to penetrate.

  The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of eighteen

  hours, and we were going to run back again by the Cornice road from

  Nice: not being satisfied to have seen only the outsides of the

  beautiful towns that rise in picturesque white clu
sters from among

  the olive woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the margin of the Sea.

  The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o'clock, was

  very small, and so crowded with goods that there was scarcely room

  to move; neither was there anything to cat on board, except bread;

  nor to drink, except coffee. But being due at Nice at about eight

  or so in the morning, this was of no consequence; so when we began

  to wink at the bright stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their

  winking at us, we turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool

  little cabin, and slept soundly till morning.

  The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was built,

  it was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice Harbour,

  where we very little expected anything but breakfast. But we were

  laden with wool. Wool must not remain in the Custom-house at

  Marseilles more than twelve months at a stretch, without paying

  duty. It is the custom to make fictitious removals of unsold wool

  to evade this law; to take it somewhere when the twelve months are

  nearly out; bring it straight back again; and warehouse it, as a

  new cargo, for nearly twelve months longer. This wool of ours, had

  come originally from some place in the East. It was recognised as

  Eastern produce, the moment we entered the harbour. Accordingly,

  the gay little Sunday boats, full of holiday people, which had come

  off to greet us, were warned away by the authorities; we were

  declared in quarantine; and a great flag was solemnly run up to the

  mast-head on the wharf, to make it known to all the town.

  It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, unwashed,

  undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying

  blistering in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on from a

  respectful distance, all manner of whiskered men in cocked hats

  discussing our fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures (we

  looked very hard at them through telescopes) expressive of a week's

  detention at least: and nothing whatever the matter all the time.

  But even in this crisis the brave Courier achieved a triumph. He

  telegraphed somebody (I saw nobody) either naturally connected with

  the hotel, or put EN RAPPORT with the establishment for that

  occasion only. The telegraph was answered, and in half an hour or

  less, there came a loud shout from the guard-house. The captain