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A Sketch at the Carnival — Rome"
John Gordon Thomson
Engraver: E. Dalziel
1880
composite woodblock engraving
Framed, 7 inches high by 5 inches wide (17.8 cm high by 12.5 cm wide), p. 248
The Chapman and Hall anthology, Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens with illustrations from the British Household Edition (1908).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The 1908 anthology clearly ascribes the illustration to J. Gordon Thomson, placing it immediately before Artists' Models (p. 249), even though the Chapman and Hall volume of 1880 contains only seven illustrations for Pictures from Italy. Both the style of the illustration and the signature in the lower right corner are consistent with Thomson's other Household Edition composite woodblock engraving, revealing both better modelling and a higher degree of animation than the figures of Henry Townley Green in the 1868 Illustrated Library Edition. The P. F. Collier re-print of the Chapman and Hall volume includes this "sketch," but attributes it to Towneley Green, brother of Charles Green, who provided several wood-engravings for the Library Edition volume of the Christmas Stories reprinted from All the Year Round and Household Words. The volume of what had heretofore been unillustrated frame tales included fresh illustrations by such Sixties artists as F. A. Fraser, H. French, E. G. Dalziel, J. Mahoney, and Henry Townley Green's brother, Charles — "fourteen wood-cuts in all" (Kitton, 221). The monogram on A Sketch at the Carnival — Rome is the same as the initials on the other seven plates from the 1880 volume, and does not resemble that of Towneley Green.
Still, carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and diving in among the horses’ feet to pick up scattered flowers to sell again; maskers on foot (the drollest generally) in fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any particularly old lady at a window; long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks; a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and tearing to the life; a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a party of gipsy-women engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs’ faces, and lions’ tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not many actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper; in its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad humor of the time — an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four o’clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound, and seeing the dragoons begin to clear the street. [Chapter Eleven, "Rome," pp. 119-120]
This illustration from the 1908 Chapman and Hall re-printing of the entire run of Household Edition illustrations poses a bibliographical conundrum, especially since P. F. Collier in its 1880 reprint of the Chapman and Hall Pictures from Italy and American Notes for General Circulation attributes it to Towneley Green. Thomson has described this study of the carnival performers and the staid spectators as a "sketch," and therefore may be suggesting that it is not as polished as the other seven scenes. Whatever the reason, Chapman and Hall did not include it in the 1880 volume, but thought it worthy of inclusion in the 1908 anthology.
Thomson complements the author's impressions of the last two days of the carnival that he witnessed at Rome's Piazza del Popolo and the Corso just prior to Lent. Dickens finds the controlled anarchy both seductive and ridiculous: "an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums" (120). The artist undoubtedly chose the scene for its strong visual appeal and verve, and offered it as a sharp rebuke of the Picturesque "Grand Tour" architectural scenes of illustrators such as Samuel Palmer.
Although like other English tourists before him Dickens visited a number of churches in Italy, he seems to have been much more emotionally engaged with the spectacle of the Carnival or Moccoletto at Rome, which he speculates is the descendant not of mediaeval Catholicism's saints' days, but rather of the ancient Roman Saturnalia, "the likes of which he had celebrated in the festive food-revelry of the Ghost of Christms present in A Christmas Carol published less than three years before. . ." (Ledger, 89). Thomson comically contrasts the straight-laced spectators above with the outlandish costumes and flexible figures of the Carnival's participants below, whom Thomson makes the very embodiments of the "bright, and infinite, and flashing variety" of the street festival. The scene stands out as a contradiction of Dickens's continual characterization of the Rome of the Popes for its insufferable inertia, apathy, torpor, and drowsiness.
Above: Thomas Nast's realistic sketch of religious tourists and genuine pilgrims visiting the site so many Christian executions, The Cross in he Centre of the Coliseum. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Above: Thomas Nast's Leaving Rome is a realistic sketch of the Dickenses in their modern carriage, suggestive of foreign affluence. The American cartoonist contrasts the stasis of foregrounded ruins of the classical city and the modern-day beggars, with the Renaissance dome of St. Peter's looming in the background and the speeding Victorian equipage, right. [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.
Dickens, Charles. Works."Collier's Unabridged Edition." New York: P. F. Collier, 1880, Vol. III, p. 236. (These illustrations originally appeared in the British Household Edition of 1880.)
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.
Kitton, Frederic G. "Appendix I: Illustrators of the Cheap Editions." Dickens and His Illustrators: : Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz", Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes; with twenty-two portraits and facsimiles of seventy original drawings now reproduced for the first time. London: George Redway, 1899. Pp. 219-226.
Ledger, Sally. Chapter Seven, "'God Be Thanked: A Ruin!' The Embrace of Italian Modernity in Pictures From Italy and The Daily News." Dickens and Italy: Pictures From Italy and Little Dorrit, ed. Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. Pp. 82-92.
Thomson, Gordon (illustrator). "A Sketch at Carnival." Pictures from Italy: Eight Illustrations. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings, by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz); J. Mahoney; Charles Green; A. B. Frost; Gordon Thomson; J. McL. Ralston; H. French; E. G. Dalziel; F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Page 248.
Last modified 13 May 2019