Tag Archives: Avignon

Dickens in Italy

Destinations: France and Italy (1844)

Book: Pictures From Italy by Charles Dickens (1846)

Reading Dickens’ descriptions of travel by coach and steamboat should put to a halt any modern grousing about minor inconveniences like Ziploc bags and barefoot security queues. It was such a chore to arrange for the travel of his party of twelve, that he hired a Frenchman as a Courier.  This man  smooths the way through customs, haggles with the landlords, and makes sure there will be meals to eat and horses to pull the coach.

Even so, in Pictures from Italy, (Free on Kindle) Dickens regales us with the condition of the roads–generally muddy and narrow; the sleeping arrangements–sometimes flea-ridden and generally drafty and the people he meets along the way–characters of a Dickensian quality, every one.

Lanterna
Lanterna, The symbol of Genoa, Italy

Perhaps it is the timeless rivalry between France and England that influences his carping about France.  He dismisses Chalon as too flat. After taking an 8-hour trip by steamboat to Lyons, he describes that city in paragraphs packed with dreary adjectives, dissing even the cathedral, where he finds the stone walls as dirty as the pavement.   But he admires Avignon…”The streets old and narrow, but tolerably clean…..quaint and lively.” His mood is unquestionably better because he is traveling in July through summer heat and in Avignon a breeze has come up. Continue reading Dickens in Italy