Francesca Orestano
Back to Italy: Dickens’s Stereoscopic Views
Unlike thefirst visit to Italy, Dickens’s second tourhas generally been considered as a (weaker) repetition of the unforgettable experience and first strong impressions gathered in our country in 1844-45. Shorter, because of the limited time allowed to his Italian tour between October and December 1853, and involving less planning, upheavals, family transfers, the second tour does not even yield material for a specific book,such as Pictures from Italy (1846). Yet there are elements for ulterior and different considerations: the second visit, while being in many ways a repetition of the first and including many places already seen (and described) nine years before, does not automatically replicate the writer’s first impressions. Re-visitation, I should like to suggest, generates a stereoscopic effect, whenever past recollections and presentperceptions produce a grotesque effect of déjà-vu, of hyper-realism, due to the mutual enhancement of two similar images; and whenever past and present are erased by amnesia, and replaced by haunting fantasies, dreams or nightmares. This disturbing complexity moulds Dickens’s response to the environment he had seen nine years before. The reference to the stereoscope is not casual.
Presented by Charles Wheatstone in 1838 to the Royal Society, this optical instrument works on the principle of binocular vision: two images of the same subject, taken at a small angular distance, yield a third, different image remarkable for its relief or depth of field (Zotti Minici 19). After William Fox Talbot made the first stereoscopic photographs, David Brewster produced in 1849 the simple tool which was on display at the Great Exhibition, soon to become so popular that each respectable Victorian parlour in the 1850s had one. “The Stereoscope”is described in a Household Wordsarticle by Henry Morley and W. H. Wills, published on September 10, 1853, just before Dicken’s departure for Italy. Availbale in all toy-shops, its effects are explained in a prose mixing lucid scientific detail, and instruction, with the fascination deriving from the wonders of science and the magic it seemed to introduce in everyday life:
There is a good deal of romance to be found even in the details of pure science, and a book of wonders could well be made out of what may be called the social history of optical discoveries. [...] Hereisabox[...]containinganyfairy-scenethatbythehelpofphotographywe maybe disposedtoconjureup.ItiscalledtheStereoscope.
Andofwhatuseisitsmagic?To gonofartherthantheparticularpicturejust suggested,ofverygreatuse. [...] It wasinventedsomeyearssincebyProfessor Wheatstonetoillustratehisdiscoveryofthe principlesofbinocularvision. (Household Words, 10 Sept 1853, 37-42. Accessed Sept.29, 2012)
Stereoscope dynamics involve erasure of two monocular images, so as to compose a new three-dimensional scene whosedepth of field reveals elements in sharp detail, not to be perceived before, as if a different image wereconjured out of time-enclosedrealities.Thus the stereoscope doesnot just belong to the social history of optical discoveries, through which the technique of the observer isrealistically encoded (Crary; Novak). It also providesthe element of romance, offering in scientific terms the visual evidence and dramatization of all kinds of human revisitations of the past in the present, because indeed “le temps rétrouvé” never connectsprecisely backwards into “le temps perdu.”
European Politics
Before entering the verbal domain of the letters from Italy written between October and December 1853, and partially included in Forster’s Life of Dickens, the European context of contemporary historical events and Dickens’s political involvement in them have to be considered. The political condition of Europe after 1848 casts over Dickens’s second Italian visit a sombre, uncertain light, which has nothing to do with the luminous, joyful views of his first stay, nor with the red-hot vibrant criticisms of our conditions voiced both in his 1844-1845 letters and in Pictures from Italy. The very quality of the 1853letters – they are somehow elusive, sometime imbued with meanigful reticence, or meanigless abundance of overstatement, and at times relating episodes of amnesia and oblivion – suggests a scenario in which erasure and excess of articulation go hand in hand, perhaps answering the reasons of a hidden agenda.
“No nineteenth-century liberal entertained utopian pictures of the Papal States, the Venetian territories ruled by Austria, or the Neapolitan kingdom of Ferdinand the II” (Johnson 296): indeed, Dickens’s commitment to Italy and the Italian cause was strong, and seemed to increase in time. Giuseppe Mazzini had been a political refugee in England since 1836. Dickens had met him and shared his views about the Giovine Italia he promoted. The Daily News of 1846, under Dickens’s editorship, supported Mazzini’s campaign of “Italy for the Italians”, expressing hope for “the deliverance of Italy” (Ledger 88); in 1847 Dickens had joined the Council of “The People’s International League” (Paroissien 12) whose ideals of freedom and progress extended to Italy as well as to other foreign countries. In addition to this,
[Mazzini] had dined at Devonshire Terrace and taken Dickens to see the school he had established at Clerkenwell for Italian organ boys. With the fall of Rome[in 1849] Dickens was anxious until he learned that Mazzini had escaped back to England. (Johnson 350)
Ther fall of the short-lived Roman Republic in which Mazzini had been directly involved as the leader of the triumvirate, with Carlo Armellini and Aurelio Saffi, in February 1849, would stir in England a public appeal on behalf of the Italian refugees, issued by Dickens and a comittee of several friends, translated for Mazzini’s periodical Italia del Popolo, and reprinted in The Examiner on 8 September 1849 (Flint xxv). Last but not least, before his first trip to Italy Dickens had been among those who complained with the Home Secretary who had ordered that Mazzini’s letters be intercepted, opened and read.
Thus in 1853, on the eve of his departure, Dickens could not ignore the different powers parcelling Italy: Sardinia in Piedmont; Austria ruling Lombardy and the North-East; the Papal State in Central Italy; Bourbons in Naples and the whole South; their satellites and relatives in smaller regions. Things were changing however: Cavour had become Prime Minister in 1852, and had sent troops to Crimea, thus siding with England against Russia to obtain England’s support for further schemes. Mazzini had escaped to Switzerland, and was hiding there: the Sardinia police were after him, as a dangerous political agitator; the French, staunch defenders of the Pope, were chasing him as the Roman Republican; the Bourbons were against the man who would empty their prisons; the Austrians indeed had started a man-hunt; and in October 1853 Mazzini was briefly in London where he could count on many friends, among them Carlyle, Swinburne, and, as we know, Dickens. Antonio Gallenga, however, hisnom- de- plume Luigi Mariotti, the Italian patriot who had formerly joined Mazzini’s Giovine Italia and conspired with him to murder the King of Sardinia (besides having been Dickens’s personal teacher of Italian (Cerutti; Verzella)), was no longer among Mazzini’s supporters: he thought, like many, that the independence of Italy would be obtained with the help of the Savoy monarchy, and Cavour’s diplomatic skill. Writing to Lady Morgan about the proclamation of the RomanRepublic in 1849, Gallenga remarked: “Of course Mazzini is playing his mad pranks in Rome.” (Abbate Badin, 28; Cerutti). These“mad pranks” were indeed well-known by the powers ruling Italy, as well as Dickens’s public commitment to the cause. Evidence of the reaction caused in Europe by Mazzini’s plots, and by the British backing of the Italian patriots, can be found in the press reports about the 1853 riot in Milan.
In 1853 yet another insurrection had been hatched in Milan, with Mazzini’s blessing and encouragement: it did break out in early February, and in a few days the Austrian army did overcome the patriots who had taken part in the riots. Radetzky ordered imprisonments, hangings, shooting, and confiscation. All the citizens were encouraged to become spies, so as to denounce the plot, thus to escape capital punishment.
At this point it is interesting to read the article by Karl Marx, published in New York Daily Tribune of March 7, 1853, entitled “The Milan Riot”, to get the notion of the widespread sensation these riot caused all over Europe. Marx acknowledges the “useless sacrifice of the Milanese patriots.”
The Milan insurrection is significant as a symptom of the approaching revolutionary crisis on the whole European continent. As the heroic act of some few proletarians[...] who, armed only with knives, marched to attack the citadel of a garrison and surrounding army of forty thousand of the finest troops in Europe, it is admirable. But as the finale of Mazzini's eternal conspiracy, of his bombastic proclamations and his arrogant capucinades against the French people, it is a very poor result.Let us hope that henceforth there will be an end of révolutions improvisées, as the French call them. Has one ever heard of great improvisators being also great poets? They are the same in politics as in poetry. Revolutions are never made to order. After the terrible experience of '48 and '49, it needs something more than paper summonses from distant leaders to evoke national revolutions. (
Accessed Sept. 10, 2012).
Mazzini, Dickens’s staunch friend and protegé, hassacrificed the Milanese patriots to a powerful army and well-organised police, while safely ensconced in England or Switzerland. In the same article Marx quotes the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung, to confirm at once the strong impression caused by theMilan riotand by the British support of the refugees:
The events at Milan have produced a deep impression here. [...] the King immediately declared that the movement was connected with a deep conspiracy, which had its ramifications everywhere, and that it showed the necessity for the close union of Prussia andAustria in presence of these revolutionary movements. [...] Negotiations immediately took place between Russia, Prussia and Austria, for a joint remonstrance to be addressed to the British Government on the subject of political refugees. So weak, so powerless are the so-called "powers." They feel the thrones of Europe vibrate to their foundations at the first forebodings of the revolutionary earthquake. In the midst of their armies, their gallows and their dungeons, they are trembling at what they call "the subversive attempts of a few paid miscreants." ( Accessed Sept. 10, 2012).
This is then the dramatic moment Dickens has chosen for his second visit to Italy:just a few months after the Milan riot and its cruel repression. Not surprisingly Austria has tightened up its regulations, especially at the frontier with Switzerland, and especially as far as English subjects – Dickens indeed – are concerned. Marx’s remark, that “immediately after the revolutionary outbreak in Milan had been crushed, Radetzky gave orders to intercept all communication with Piedmont and Switzerland”( acc. Sept. 10, 2012), throws an even more dangerous colour on Dickens’s sudden choice to visit Italy.
What the letters say – and do not say
After the completion of Bleak House in August 1853, Dickens decides to go to Italywith two younger friends, the painter Augustus Egg, and the writer and contributor to Household Words Wilkie Collins. In September he writes to Miss Burdett Coutts: “I think we shall get on very well as a Triumvirate, though I rather incline to the belief that Collins is the better traveller of my two associates” (LettersVII:164).His tongue-in-cheek allusion is indeed to Mazzini’s 1849 Roman triumvirate. The three friends plan to enter Italy from the Simplon Pass, thence to Milan, Genoa, Naples, Sicily possibly, Rome, Florence and Siena, Venice, and Turin; from there they’ll hasten to Paris,to reach London in time for Christmas (Letters VII: 153). The itinerary is the well-known beaten track of tourism, which Dickens himself had already trodden before.
Yet, on the border between Switzerland and Italy, Dickens’s letters highlight one aspect of the second tour which is going to occur again. Dickens writes to Catherine that being in Lausanne (where they had lived between June and October 1846)
[I] was amazed to find how strangely I have forgotten my way about this place. I had no idea (but a wrong one) where Cerjat was, or where Haldiman was – was quite at a loss in the town itself – and have at this moment no remembrance whatever of where the banker’s is! (Letters VII: 164)
This momentary amnesia is soon cast away by the political issue.
A Prince who dined at Miss Coutts’s told us that in consequence of a dispute with Switzerland concerning refugees from Austria, Austria would not admit English travellers coming from Switzerland, and that our first appearance in Italy must be made in Sardinia [Piedmont]. This would prevent our crossing the Simplon. Last night, I found here a note from Miss Coutts, enclosing another from the Prince, stating that he had endeavoured to get me excepted but it could not be done, and if we went that way the “consequences would be disagreable”. Here, they deny any such thing. [...] When you write, make no allusion to this, or to any political occurrences whatever, as I think my letters may be opened. [...] As soon as you receive this, write to me, Poste Restante, Genoa. (Letters VII: 165)
There is a lot of unsaid, in this letter. The unnamed Italian Prince, his message concealed in Miss Coutts’s, the warning to Catherine, and further down in the same letter again: “Give both [Wills and Forster] the same caution that I give you, in reference to any allusion to foreign politics” (Letters VII: 166).
Pressed for a timely decision, Dickens, Collins and Egg enter Italy from the Austrian Portal, as he calls it: crossing through Simplon, near the Gorge of Gondo and the Mer de Glace where “the Intrepid” climbs the glacier despite the deep snow. The passing of the frontier and the first meeting with the Austrian police are registered in highly flattering terms: “Both at the Austrian frontier and at the Gate of Milan we were received with the greatest politeness and consideration. I am bound to say that I never knew the usual passport and Custom-House regulations more obligingly enforced.” (Letters VII: 171). Is this written for those who will open his letters?
Following these episodes, the first impressions of Italy have a distinct dream-like quality:
It is so strange and like a dream to me, to hear the delicate Italian once again, and to recover the knowledge of it (such as it is) which I almost thought I had lost! So beautiful too to see the delightful sky again, and all the picturesque wonders of the country. And yet I am so restless to be doing – and always shall be, I think, so long as I have any portion in Time, that if I were to stay more than a week in any one City here, I believe I should be half desperate to beging some new story!!! (Letters VII:171)
Dreams and picturesqueness both transform the parcelled territory of Italy into ‘landscape’ – at once a visually aesthetic and poetical composition. Dickens’s restlessness here breaks the spell, as he tries to induce Collins and Egg to travel by night, to sleep in the coach, so as to save time between one town and another: but they do not conceive the idea of “not going to bed” therefore “Sicily is erased from the trip” (Letters VII: 171).
In Milan they lodge at the Hotel de la Ville, wondering why there are so few English tourists, except them. Augustus Egg and Collins are after the lions of the city, the Duomo, Brera, Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper.’ Dickens, not being interested in the beaten tracks of tourism nor in the rites of art appreciation, manages to secure his old box at La Scala. The performance is absolutely disappointing: “There seem to be no singers of note there now; and it appears for the time to have fallen off considerably.” (LettersVII:174).Verdi’s Il Trovatore and a miserable ballet do not enchant the visitors. Murray gives the explanation, which Dickens could not ignore: “The Milanese nobility have ceased to frequent it [La Scala], from their unwillingness to associate in any way with the Austrian authorities” (Letters VII: 174 n.1).And no doubt performancesagreed with the general atmosphere.
Tension was indeed palpable, after the cruel repression the February riot. Yet no political comment transpires from Dickens’s letters: when it comes to the people he meets in Italy, it is all “much lively, intimate gossip” (Letters VII: viii), recent marriages and old friends, odd lifestyles, all superficial, and nothing about Italian politics. All is varnished over in the letters, with small chit-chat. Among the aspects that are given a prominent role are his moustaches, and the attempts of Egg and Collins (as well as the new courier Edward) to grow some; to brighten up the letters, Dickens waxes about the topic of the moustache – knowing it to be funny, colourful, and harmless. Actually full of local colour, a cultural signifier of his belonging to the place, as the Italian man was conventionally perceived as having plenty of hair growing on his face, and he did not want to look like as tourist (Letters VII: 175).
Genoa is a different chapter. A new railway connecting it with Turin is almost completed. Genoa had undergone considerable changes, so that Dickens admits “I only knew the place by the lighthouse; so numerous are the new buildings, so wide the streets, so busy the people, and so thriving and busy the many signs of commerce.” (Letters VII: 177). The city thrives with progress and with new “caffés” installed next to the old JesuitCollege, now Hotel de Ville, and in the Piazza Carlo Felice. After the first shock of non-recognition, due to the modern improvements, he writes that