Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2322 page)

Dickens went to Paris early in October, and at its close was brought again to London by the sudden death of a friend, much deplored by himself, and still more so by a distinguished lady who had his loyal service at all times. An incident before his return to France is worth brief relation. He had sallied out for one of his night walks, full of thoughts of his story, one wintery rainy evening (the 8th of November), and “pulled himself up,” outside the door of Whitechapel Workhouse, at a strange sight which arrested him there. Against the dreary enclosure of the house were leaning, in the midst of the downpouring rain and storm, what seemed to be seven heaps of rags: “dumb, wet, silent horrors” he described them, “sphinxes set up against that dead wall, and no one likely to be at the pains of solving them until the General Overthrow.” He sent in his card to the Master. Against him there was no ground of complaint; he gave prompt personal attention; but the casual ward was full, and there was no help. The rag-heaps were all girls, and Dickens gave each a shilling. One girl, “twenty or so,” had been without food a day and night. “Look at me,” she said, as she clutched the shilling, and without thanks shuffled off. So with the rest. There was not a single “thank you.” A crowd meanwhile, only less poor than these objects of misery, had gathered round the scene; but though they saw the seven shillings given away they asked for no relief to themselves, they recognised in their sad wild way the other greater wretchedness, and made room in silence for Dickens to walk on.

Not more tolerant of the way in which laws meant to be most humane are too often administered in England, he left in a day or two to resume his
Little Dorrit
in Paris. But before his life there is described, some sketches from his holiday trip to Italy with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg, and from his three summer visits to Boulogne, claim to themselves two intervening chapters.

CHAPTER III.

SWITZERLAND AND ITALY REVISITED.

1853.

Swiss People — Narrow Escape — Berne — Lausanne — An Old Friend — Genoa — Peschiere revisited — On the Way to Naples — Scene on Board Steamship — A Jaunt to Pisa — A Greek War-ship — At Naples — At Rome — Time’s Changes — At the Opera — A “Scattering” Party — Performance of Puppets — Malaria — Desolation — At Bolsena — At Venice — Habits of Gondoliers — Uses of Travel — Tintoretto — At Turin — Liking for the Sardinians — Austrian Police — Police Arrangements — Dickens and the Austrian — An Old Dislike.

The first news of the three travellers was from Chamounix, on the 20th of October; and in it there was little made of the fatigue, and much of the enjoyment, of their Swiss travel. Great attention and cleanliness at the inns, very small windows and very bleak passages, doors opening to wintery blasts, overhanging eaves and external galleries, plenty of milk, honey, cows, and goats, much singing towards sunset on mountain sides, mountains almost too solemn to look at — that was the picture of it, with the country everywhere in one of its finest aspects, as winter began to close in. They had started from Geneva the previous morning at four, and in their day’s travel Dickens had again noticed what he spoke of formerly, the ill-favoured look of the people in the valleys owing to their hard and stern climate. “All the women were like used-up men, and all the men like a sort of fagged dogs. But the good, genuine, grateful Swiss recognition of the commonest kind word — not too often thrown to them by our countrymen — made them quite radiant. I walked the greater part of the way, which was like going up the Monument.” On the day the letter was written they had been up to the Mer de Glace, finding it not so beautiful in colour as in summer, but grander in its desolation; the green ice, like the greater part of the ascent, being covered with snow. “We were alarmingly near to a very dismal accident. We were a train of four mules and two guides, going along an immense height like a chimney-piece, with sheer precipice below, when there came rolling from above, with fearful velocity, a block of stone about the size of one of the fountains in Trafalgar-square, which Egg, the last of the party, had preceded by not a yard, when it swept over the ledge, breaking away a tree, and rolled and tumbled down into the valley. It had been loosened by the heavy rains, or by some wood-cutters afterwards reported to be above.” The only place new to Dickens was Berne: “a surprisingly picturesque old Swiss town, with a view of the Alps from the outside of it singularly beautiful in the morning light.” Everything else was familiar to him: though at that winter season, when the inns were shutting up, and all who could afford it were off to Geneva, most things in the valley struck him with a new aspect. From such of his old friends as he found at Lausanne, where a day or two’s rest was taken, he had the gladdest of greetings; “and the wonderful manner in which they turned out in the wettest morning ever beheld for a Godspeed down the Lake was really quite pathetic.”

He had found time to see again the deaf, dumb, and blind youth at Mr. Haldimand’s Institution who had aroused so deep an interest in him seven years before, but, in his brief present visit, the old associations would not reawaken. “Tremendous efforts were made by Hertzel to impress him with an idea of me, and the associations belonging to me; but it seemed in my eyes quite a failure, and I much doubt if he had the least perception of his old acquaintance. According to his custom, he went on muttering strange eager sounds like Town and Down and Mown, but nothing more. I left ten francs to be spent in cigars for my old friend. If I had taken one with me, I think I could, more successfully than his master, have established my identity.” The child similarly afflicted, the little girl whom he saw at the same old time, had been after some trial discharged as an idiot.

Before October closed, the travellers had reached Genoa, having been thirty-one consecutive hours on the road from Milan. They arrived in somewhat damaged condition, and took up their lodging in the top rooms of the Croce di Malta, “overlooking the port and sea pleasantly and airily enough, but it was no joke to get so high, and the apartment is rather vast and faded.” The warmth of personal greeting that here awaited Dickens was given no less to the friends who accompanied him, and though the reader may not share in such private confidences as would show the sensation created by his reappearance, and the jovial hours that were passed among old associates, he will perhaps be interested to know how far the intervening years had changed the aspect of things and places made pleasantly familiar to us in his former letters. He wrote to his sister-in-law that the old walks were pretty much the same as ever except that there had been building behind the Peschiere up the San Bartolomeo hill, and the whole town towards San Pietro d’Arena had been quite changed. The Bisagno looked just the same, stony just then, having very little water in it; the vicoli were fragrant with the same old flavour of “very rotten cheese kept in very hot blankets;” and everywhere he saw the mezzaro as of yore. The Jesuits’ College in the Strada Nuova was become, under the changed government, the Hôtel de Ville, and a splendid caffè with a terrace-garden had arisen between it and Palaviccini’s old palace. “Pal himself has gone to the dogs.” Another new and handsome caffè had been built in the Piazza Carlo Felice, between the old one of the Bei Arti and the Strada Carlo Felice; and the Teatro Diurno had now stone galleries and seats, like an ancient amphitheatre. “The beastly gate and guardhouse in the Albaro road are still in their dear old beastly state; and the whole of that road is just as it was. The man without legs is still in the Strada Nuova; but the beggars in general are all cleared off, and our old one-arm’d Belisario made a sudden evaporation a year or two ago. I am going to the Peschiere to-day.” To myself he described his former favourite abode as converted into a girls’ college; all the paintings of gods and goddesses canvassed over, and the gardens gone to ruin; “but O! what a wonderful place!” He observed an extraordinary increase everywhere else, since he was last in the splendid city, of “life, growth, and enterprise;” and he declared his old conviction to be confirmed that for picturesque beauty and character there was nothing in Italy, Venice excepted, “near brilliant old Genoa.”

The voyage thence to Naples, written from the latter place, is too capital a description to be lost. The steamer in which they embarked was “the new express English ship,” but they found her to be already more than full of passengers from Marseilles (among them an old friend, Sir Emerson Tennent, with his family), and everything in confusion. There were no places at the captain’s table, dinner had to be taken on deck, no berth or sleeping accommodation was available, and heavy first-class fares had to be paid. Thus they made their way to Leghorn, where worse awaited them. The authorities proved to be not favourable to the “crack” English-officered vessel (she had just been started for the India mail); and her papers not being examined in time, it was too late to steam away again that day, and she had to lie all night long off the lighthouse. “The scene on board beggars description. Ladies on the tables; gentlemen under the tables; bed-room appliances not usually beheld in public airing themselves in positions where soup-tureens had been lately developing themselves; and ladies and gentlemen lying indiscriminately on the open deck, arranged like spoons on a sideboard. No mattresses, no blankets, nothing. Towards midnight attempts were made, by means of awning and flags, to make this latter scene remotely approach an Australian encampment; and we three (Collins, Egg, and self) lay together on the bare planks covered with our coats. We were all gradually dozing off, when a perfectly tropical rain fell, and in a moment drowned the whole ship. The rest of the night we passed upon the stairs, with an immense jumble of men and women. When anybody came up for any purpose we all fell down, and when anybody came down we all fell up again. Still, the good-humour in the English part of the passengers was quite extraordinary. . . . There were excellent officers aboard, and, in the morning, the first mate lent me his cabin to wash in — which I afterwards lent to Egg and Collins. Then we, the Emerson Tennents, the captain, the doctor, and the second officer, went off on a jaunt together to Pisa, as the ship was to lie all day at Leghorn. The captain was a capital fellow, but I led him, facetiously, such a life the whole day, that I got most things altered at night. Emerson Tennent’s son, with the greatest amiability, insisted on turning out of his state-room for me, and I got a good bed there. The store-room down by the hold was opened for Collins and Egg; and they slept with the moist sugar, the cheese in cut, the spices, the cruets, the apples and pears, in a perfect chandler’s shop — in company with what a friend of ours would call a hold gent, who had been so horribly wet through over night that his condition frightened the authorities; a cat; and the steward, who dozed in an arm-chair, and all-night-long fell head foremost, once every five minutes, on Egg, who slept on the counter or dresser. Last night, I had the steward’s own cabin, opening on deck, all to myself. It had been previously occupied by some desolate lady who went ashore at Civita Vecchia. There was little or no sea, thank Heaven, all the trip; but the rain was heavier than any I have ever seen, and the lightning very constant and vivid. We were, with the crew, some 200 people — provided with boats, at the utmost stretch, for one hundred perhaps. I could not help thinking what would happen if we met with any accident: the crew being chiefly Maltese, and evidently fellows who would cut off alone in the largest boat, on the least alarm; the speed very high; and the running, thro’ all the narrow rocky channels. Thank God, however, here we are.”

A whimsical postscript closed the amusing narrative. “We towed from Civita Vecchia the entire Greek navy, I believe; consisting of a little brig of war with no guns, fitted as a steamer, but disabled by having burnt the bottoms of her boilers out, in her first run. She was just big enough to carry the captain and a crew of six or so: but the captain was so covered with buttons and gold that there never would have been room for him on board to put those valuables away, if he hadn’t worn them — which he consequently did, all night. Whenever anything was wanted to be done, as slackening the tow-rope or anything of that sort, our officers roared at this miserable potentate, in violent English, through a speaking trumpet; of which he couldn’t have understood a word in the most favourable circumstances. So he did all the wrong things first, and the right thing always last. The absence of any knowledge of anything but English on the part of the officers and stewards was most ridiculous. I met an Italian gentleman on the cabin steps yesterday morning, vainly endeavouring to explain that he wanted a cup of tea for his sick wife. And when we were coming out of the harbour at Genoa, and it was necessary to order away that boat of music you remember, the chief officer (called ‘aft’ for the purpose, as ‘knowing something of Italian’) delivered himself in this explicit and clear Italian to the principal performer — ’Now Signora, if you don’t sheer off you’ll be run down, so you had better trice up that guitar of yours and put about.’“

At Naples some days were passed very merrily; going up Vesuvius and into the buried cities, with Layard who had joined them, and with the Tennents. Here a small adventure befell Dickens specially, in itself extremely unimportant; but told by him with delightful humour in a letter to his sister-in-law. The old idle Frenchman, to whom all things are possible, with his snuff-box and dusty umbrella, and all the delicate and kindly observation, would have enchanted Leigh Hunt, and made his way to the heart of Charles Lamb. After mentioning Mr. Lowther, then English chargé d’affaires in Naples, as a very agreeable fellow who had been at the Rockingham play, he alludes to a meeting at his house. “We had an exceedingly pleasant dinner of eight, preparatory to which I was near having the ridiculous adventure of not being able to find the house and coming back dinnerless. I went in an open carriage from the hotel in all state, and the coachman to my surprise pulled up at the end of the Chiaja. ‘Behold the house,’ says he, ‘of Il Signor Larthoor!’ — at the same time pointing with his whip into the seventh heaven where the early stars were shining. ‘But the Signor Larthorr,’ says I, ‘lives at Pausilippo.’ ‘It is true,’ says the coachman (still pointing to the evening star), ‘but he lives high up the Salita Sant’ Antonio where no carriage ever yet ascended, and that is the house’ (evening star as aforesaid), ‘and one must go on foot. Behold the Salita Sant’ Antonio!’ I went up it, a mile and a half I should think, I got into the strangest places among the wildest Neapolitans; kitchens, washing-places, archways, stables, vineyards; was baited by dogs, and answered, in profoundly unintelligible language, from behind lonely locked doors in cracked female voices, quaking with fear; but could hear of no such Englishman, nor any Englishman. Bye and bye, I came upon a polenta-shop in the clouds, where an old Frenchman with an umbrella like a faded tropical leaf (it had not rained in Naples for six weeks) was staring at nothing at all, with a snuff-box in his hand. To him I appealed, concerning the Signor Larthoor. ‘Sir,’ said he, with the sweetest politeness, ‘can you speak French?’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘a little.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I presume the Signer Loothere’ — you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country — ’is an Englishman?’ I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘one word more.
Has
he a servant with a wooden leg?’ ‘Great heaven, sir,’ said I, ‘how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.’ ‘It is always,’ said the Frenchman, ‘possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.’ ‘Sir,’ said I — you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own absurdity, by this time — ’that is true.’ He then took an immense pinch of snuff wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth from which I had mounted. ‘Below there, near the lamp, one finds an Englishman with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that he is the Signor Loothore.’ I had been asked at six o’clock, and it was now getting on for seven. I went back in a state of perspiration and misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the spot. But as I was going farther down to the lamp, I saw the strangest staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found it was the house, made the most of the whole story, and achieved much popularity. The best of it was that as nobody ever did find the place, Lowther had put a servant at the bottom of the Salita to wait ‘for an English gentleman;’ but the servant (as he presently pleaded), deceived by the moustache, had allowed the English gentleman to pass unchallenged.”