"So We Advanced into the Ghostly City" (1898) by Maurice Greiffenhagen, 1862-1931

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So we advanced into this ghostly city

Maurice Greiffenhagen

1898

Lithograph

13.9 by 8.4 cm facing page 394, framed

Dickens's Pictures from Italy in the The Gadshill Edition

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Passage illustrated: So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark shadow. [continued below]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated (Continued)

Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water. Some of these were empty; in some, the rowers lay asleep; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from the interior of a palace: gaily dressed, and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them; for a bridge, so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush us: one of the many bridges that perplexed the Dream: blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange place — with water all about us where never water was elsewhere — clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it — and, everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoarfrost or gossamer — and where, for the first time, I saw people walking — arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest; listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep. [Chapter 7, "An Italian Dream," p. 394-95]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. American Notes and Pictures from Italy. Edited by Andrew Lang. Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen. The Gadshill Edition. 32 vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's, 1898. Volume 28.

Last modified 14 January 2015