Detained by an Inundation by Thomas Nast, in Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy, Sketches, and American Notes, sixth chapter, "Through Bologna and Ferrara," 36. Wood-engraving, 4 ¼ by 5 ¼ inches (10.7 cm high by 13.4 cm wide), vignetted.
Passage Illustrated: Dickens Observes a Civic Catholic Ritual
Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so came into the Austrian territory, and resumed our journey: through a country of which, for some miles, a great part was under water. The brave Courier and the soldiery had first quarrelled, for half an hour or more, over our eternal passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the Brave, who was always stricken deaf when shabby functionaries in uniform came, as they constantly did come, plunging out of wooden boxes to look at it—or in other words to beg — and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that the man might have a trifle given him, and we resume our journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the functionary in broken English: while the unfortunate man’s face was a portrait of mental agony framed in the coach window, from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to his disparagement. ["Through Bologna and Ferrara," 37]
Relevant Marcus Stone illustrations for Pictures from Italy
Related Material
- Samuel Palmer — Pictures from Italy
- Gordon Thomson — Playing at Mora
- 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 4, "BGenoa and its Neighborhood." 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. 19-32.
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. 1-381.
Created 14 May 2019
Last modified 7 June 2020