Macaroni-Eating by Thomas Nast, in Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy, Sketches, and American Notes, Chapter 12, "A Rapid Diorama," 73. Wood-engraving, 4 ⅛ by 5 ½ inches (10.2 cm high by 13.3 cm wide), vignetted. Descriptive headline: "In and About Naples."
Passage Complemented: Not an Description, but an Editorial Aside
. . . so the whole party begin to labour upward over the snow, — as if they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake.
We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly about him when one of the company — not an Italian, though an habitué of the mountain for many years: whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici — suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention; more especially as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downwards.
The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flagging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword, "Courage, friend! It is to eat macaroni!" they press on, gallantly, for the summit. [Chapter Twelve, "A Rapid Diorama," 76]
Relevant Marcus Stone illustrations for Pictures from Italy
Related Material
- Samuel Palmer — The Street of the Tombs, Pompei
- Gordon Thomson — Pictures from Italy (1880)
- Charles Dickens, the traveler — places he visited
- Genoa and its Neighbourhood
- Charles Dickens's Tours of Italy
- Dickens and Family at the Villa di Bella Vista (The Bagnerello), Albaro: July-September, 1844
- Charles Dickens, 1843 daguerrotype by Unbek in America; the earliest known photographic portrait of the author
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Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Chapter 12, "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. 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 20 May 2019
Last modified 8 June 2020