Neapolitan Lazzaroni — Book 4, chap. vii, "Last Months in Italy." Thirteenth regular illustration by Fred Barnard for John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, the twenty-second volume in The Household Edition (1879). Composite woodblock engraving by the Dalziels, 10.8 by 14.3 cm (4 ¼ by 5 ⅝ inches), framed, p. 177. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Impressions of Naples &mdash: "misery and degradation"
He went to Naples for the interval before the holy week; and his first letter from it was to say that he had found the wonderful aspects of Rome before he left, and that for loneliness and grandeur of ruin nothing could transcend the southern side of the Campagna. But farther and farther south the weather had become worse; and for a week before his letter (the 11th of February), the only bright sky he had seen was just as the sun was coming up across the sea at Terracina. "Of which place, a beautiful one, you can get a very good idea by imagining something as totally unlike the scenery in Fra Diavolo as possible." He thought the bay less striking at Naples than at Genoa, the shape of the latter being more perfect in its beauty, and the smaller size enabling you to see it all at once, and feel it more like an exquisite picture. The city he conceived the greatest dislike to. "The condition of the common people here is abject and shocking. I am afraid the conventional idea of the picturesque is associated with such misery and degradation that a new picturesque will have to be established as the world goes onward. Except Fondi, there is nothing on earth that I have seen so dirty as Naples. I don't know what to liken the streets to where the mass of the lazzaroni live. You recollect that favourite pigstye of mine near Broadstairs? They are more like streets of such apartments heaped up story on story, and tumbled house on house, than anything else I can think of, at this moment." In a later letter he was even less tolerant. "What would I give that you should see the lazzaroni as they really are — mere squalid, abject, miserable animals for vermin to batten on; slouching, slinking, ugly, shabby, scavenging scarecrows! And oh the raffish counts and more than doubtful countesses, the noodles and the blacklegs, the good society! And oh the miles of miserable streets and wretched occupants, to which Saffron-hill or the Borough-mint is a kind of small gentility, which are found to be so picturesque by English lords and ladies; to whom the wretchedness left behind at home is lowest of the low, and vilest of the vile, and commonest of all common things. Well! well! I have often thought that one of the best chances of immortality for a writer is in the Death of his language, when he immediately becomes good company; and I often think here, — What would you say to these people, milady and milord, if they spoke out of the homely dictionary of your own 'lower orders.'" He was again at Rome on Sunday the second of March. [Book IV, "London and Genoa. 1843-1845," chap. vii, "Last Months in Italy," pp. 175-176]
Comment
As a "New Man of the Sixties" and a social realist rather than a quaint caricaturist in the manner of a Phiz or a George Cruikshank, Fred Barnard approaches the subject of the Neapolitan poor living on the streets with as little sentimentality as possible, but is not unsympathetic to the plight of these mostly young urban poor. Barnard maintains his objectivity as a social commentator by rigorously depicting the casual indolence of his subjects, and has avoided romanticizing the street scene by including the city's beautiful natural backdrop in contrast to the lazzaroni. Lazzari or Lazzaroni, as Barnard intimates, were the poorest of Naples' poor, the city's 50,000 homeless who must get by as best they can: begging, doing odd jobs, or petty theft.
Related Material: Dickens and His Family in Italy, 1844
- Dickens and Family at the Villa di Bella Vista (The Bagnerello), Albaro: July-September, 1844
- "The first impressions of such a place as Albaro" (Dickens's Pictures from Italy)
- Views of Palazzo Peschiere and Genoa: A Gallery
- The Strada Nuova ("The Streets of Palaces") (Dickens's Pictures from Italy)
- Charles Dickens's Tours of Italy
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham [You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Barnard, Fred, et al. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney [and others] printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman & Hall, 1908. Page 571.
[The copy of the book from which these pictures were scanned is in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.]
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872 and 1874. 3 vols.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.
Created 15 September 2009
Last modified 15 January 2025