Page images
PDF
EPUB

Charles Dickens to Lady Blessington-Verona, Venice, and travel in Italy.

cisely the figure of nut-crackers that we have in toy-shops, not above two feet high, with the head almost on the knees, but monstrously gay and self-conceited.

come.

[ocr errors]

I labor, as usual, four or five hours a day. I think I shall do the best that I have done yet, and that my great glory is to Lord Byron is, I hear, at Bologna. We have read his Don Juan. It is full of good fun, excellent hits, and à mourir de rire. His blue-stocking lady is sketched off wickedly well, but his shipwreck is horrible bad taste, bad feeling, and bad policy. I see they have put in the French papers that I have left Italy for Vienna. I don't know the motive. What is to be done about Moore? We were going to write to Byron about him, poor fellow.

Love to Clarke; kisses to the children. Sans adieu !

L. M.

IX.-VERONA, VENICE, AND TRAVEL IN ITALY.

Charles Dickens to Lady Blessington.

MILAN, Wednesday, November 20th, 1844.

Appearances are against me. Don't believe them. I have written you, in intention, fifty letters, and I can claim no credit for any one of them (though they were the best letters you ever read), for they all originated in my desire to live in your memory and regard.

Since I heard from Count D'Orsay I have been beset in I don't know how many ways. First of all I went to Marseilles, and came back to Genoa. Then I moved to the Peschiere. Then some people, who had been present at the Scientific Congress here, made a sudden inroad on that establishment, and

Charles Dickens to Lady Blessington-Verona, Venice, and travel in Italy.

overran it. Then they went away. I shut myself up for one month, close and tight, over my little Christmas book, "The Chimes." All my affections and passions got twined and knotted up in it, and I became as haggard as a murderer long before I wrote "The End." When I had done that, like "The Man of Thessaly," who, having scratched his eyes out in a quickset hedge, plunged into a bramble-bush to scratch them in again, I fled to Venice to recover the composure I had disturbed. From thence I went to Verona and to Mantua. And now I am here just come up from under ground, and earthy all over, from seeing that extraordinary tomb in which the dead saint lies in an alabaster case, with sparkling jewels all about him to mock his dusky eyes, not to mention the twenty-franc pieces which devout votaries were ringing down upon a sort of skylight in the Cathedral pavement above, as if it were the counter of his heavenly shop.

You know Verona? You know every thing in Italy, I know. I am not learned in geography, and it was a great blow to me to find that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty miles. It was a greater blow to me to see the old house of the Capulets, with their cognizance still carved in stone over the gateway of the court-yard. It is a most miserable little inn, at this time ankle deep in dirt, and noisy vetturini and muddy market carts were disputing possession of the yard with a brood of geese, all splashed and bespattered as if they had their yesterday's white trowsers on. There was nothing to connect it with the beautiful story but a very unsentimental middle-aged lady (the Padrona I suppose) in the doorway, who resembled old Capulet in the one particular of being very great indeed in the family-way.

The Roman amphitheatre delighted me beyond expression. I never saw any thing so full of solemn, ancient interest. There

Charles Dickens to Lady Blessington-Verona, Venice, and travel in Italy.

are the four-and-forty rows of seats, as fresh and perfect as if their occupants had vacated them but yesterday; the entrances, passages, dens, rooms, corridors, the numbers over some of the arches. An equestrian troop had been there some days before, and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the arena, and had their performances in that spot. I should like to have seen it, of all things, for its very dreariness.

Fancy a handful of people sprinkled over one corner of the great place (the whole population of Verona wouldn't fill it), and a spangled cavalier bowing to the echoes and the grass-grown walls! I climbed to the topmost seat and looked away at the beautiful view for some minutes; when I turned round and looked down into the theatre again, it had exactly the appearance of an immense straw hat, to which the helmet in the Castle of Otranto was a baby; the rows of seats representing the different plaits of straw, and the arena the inside of the crown.

I had great expectations of Venice, but they fall immeasurably short of the wonderful reality. The short time I passed there went by me in a dream. I hardly think it possible to exaggerate its beauties, its sources of interest, its uncommon novelty and freshness. A thousand and one realizations of the thousand and one nights could scarcely captivate and enchant me more than Venice.

Your old house at Albaro-Il Paradiso-is spoken of as yours to this day. What a gallant place it is! I don't know the present inmate, but I hear that he bought and furnished it not long since with great splendor, in the French style, and that he wishes to sell it. I wish I were rich, and could buy it. There is a third-rate wine shop below Byron's house, and the place looks dull, and miserable, and ruinous enough.

Charles Dickens to Lady Blessington-Verona, Venice, and travel in Italy.

Old is a trifle uglier than when I first arrived. He has periodical parties, at which there are a great many flowerpots and a few ices; no other refreshments. He goes about constantly, charged with extemporaneous poetry, and is always ready, like tavern dinners, on the shortest notice and the most reasonable terms. He keeps a gigantic harp in his bedroom, together with pen, ink, and paper, for fixing his ideas as they flow; a kind of profane King David, but truly good-natured and very harmless.

Pray say to Count D'Orsay every thing that is cordial and loving from me. The travelling purse he gave me has been of immense service; it has been constantly opened. All Italy seems to yearn to put its hand in it. I think of hanging it, when I come back to England, on a nail as a trophy, and of gashing the brim like the blade of an old sword, and saying to my son and heir, as they do upon the stage, "You see this notch, boy? Five hundred francs were laid low on that day for post-horses. Where this gap is, a waiter charged your father treble the correct amount—and got it. This end, worn into teeth like the rasped edge of an old file, is sacred to the custom-houses, boy, this passport, and the shabby soldiers at town gates, who put an open hand and a dirty coat-cuff into the coach windows of all Forestieri. Take it, boy, thy father has nothing else to give!”

My desk is cooling itself in a mail-coach somewhere down at the back of the cathedral, and the pens and ink in this house are so detestable that I have no hope of your ever getting to this portion of my letter. But I have the less misery in this state of mind, from knowing that it has nothing in it to repay you for the trouble of perusal. CHARLES DICKENS.

Lord Byron to Mr. Murray-Milan. Correspondence of Lucretia Borgia.

X.-MILAN-CORRESPONDENCE OF LUCRETIA BORGIA.

Lord Byron to Mr. Murray.

[ocr errors]

MILAN, Oct. 15th, 1816.

I hear that Mr. Davies has arrived in England, but that, of some letters committed to his care by Mr. Hobhouse, only half have been delivered. This intelligence naturally makes me feel a little anxious for mine, and among them for the MS. which I wished to have compared with them sent by me through the hands of Mr. Shelley. I trust that it has arrived safely; and, indeed, not less so that some little crystals from Mont Blanc, for my daughter and niece, have reached their address. Pray have the goodness to ascertain from Mr. Davies that no accident (by custom-house or loss) has befallen them, and satisfy me on this point at your earliest convenience.

If I recollect rightly, you told me that Mr. Gifford had kindly undertaken to correct the press (at my request) during my absence; at least I hope so. It will add to my many obligations to that gentleman.

I wrote to you on my way here a short note, dated Martigny. Mr. Hobhouse and myself arrived here a few days ago, by the Simplon and Lago Maggiore routes. Of course, we visited the Borromean islands, which are fine, but too artificial. The Simplon is magnificent in its nature and its art; both God and man have done wonders, to say nothing of the Devil, who must certainly have had a hand (or a hoof) in some of the rocks and ravines, through and over which the works are carried.

Milan is striking; the cathedral superb. The city altogether reminds me of Seville, but a little inferior. We had heard divers bruits and took precautions on the road, near the frontier, against.

« PreviousContinue »