Fort Deavolo by Thomas Nast, in Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy, Sketches, and American Notes, twelfth chapter, "A Rapid Diorama," p. 71. Wood-engraving, 4 ⅛ high by 5 ½ inches wide (10.7 cm high by 13.5 cm wide), vignetted. Descriptive headline for page 71: "Fondi — Its People All Beggars!"
Passage Realized: A Reversion to the Picturesque
A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old town of Itrí, like a device in pastry, built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights of steps; beautiful Mola di Gaëta, whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well; another night upon the road at St. Agatha; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as the soldiers of Prætorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name; a flat road among vines festooned and looped from tree to tree; and Mount Vesuvius close at hand at last! — its cone and summit whitened with snow; and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down hill, into Naples. [Chapter Twelve, "A Rapid Diorama," 72]
Related Material
- Samuel Palmer — The Colosseum
- Marcus Stone — Italian peasants
- Marcus Stone — In the Catacombs
- Gordon Thomson — Artists' Models
- Harry Furniss — The Guide in the Catacombs
- Gordon Thomson — A Sketch at the Carnival
- Charles Dickens, the traveler — places he visited
- Charles Dickens, 1843 daguerrotype by Unbek in America; the earliest known photographic portrait of the author
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Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Samuel Palmer. London: Chapman and Hall, 1846; rpt., 1850.
__________. American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy in Works. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall: 1862, rpt. 1874.
__________. Chapter XII, "A Rapid Diorama." Pictures from Italy, Sketches by Boz, and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877. 70-82.
__________. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.
Orestano, Francesca. "Charles Dickens and Italy: The 'New Picturesque'.” Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy, ed. Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. 49-67.
Created 15 May 2019
Last modified 8 June 2020