In his “Pictures of Italy” Charles Dickens described his journey through Italy, and also painted a delightful close-up of La Spezia.
The impressions from his journey were far from being positive, his description of the at the time so fragmented country are very different from those written by his fellow “Grand Tour” travelers. He loved, indeed, Mantova, Ferrara, Pisa, Milano, but Dickens thought Venice would smother him, and that Rome’s majesty somehow suffered its own history.
His sincere words freely expressed disgust in describing the sight of a poor, run-down country in the first half of the nineteenth century, without a chance for redemption. Often his descriptions are full of irony but flow into abhorrence.
The passage from Genova to La Spezia is an exception in the whole picture, Dickens is truly charmed on one side by the “broken rocks” of our coast, and the view of the free blue sea only at times crossed by a slow “felucca”; on the other side by the “lofty hills”, with white cottages scattered around, the olive woods, the picturesque country churches and gaily painted houses.
Yet he crossed Liguria, and on the roads of that time, in winter, and was on the tough “Bracco” passage on a very stormy day, which didn’t allow to see the sea at all. La Spezia offered the writer a shelter after a very tough journey, where he had to stop because the at the time unbridged Magra river was too high to be crossed to reach Tuscany. And so this is why we have a description of the “beatiful bay” of La Spezia by Charles Dickens: we don’t know what is the “ghostly Inn” he refers to, but we think it was definitely a positive side, for the author of the Christmas Carrol, to have such a spooky atmosphere in it, and unfortunately we don’t know what was the women’s head wear fashion, but we love to think they were creative fashionists of the time!
Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, anunbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be safelycrossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until theafternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, subsided.Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at; by reason, firstly,of its beautiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly Inn; thirdly, of thehead-dress of the women, who wear, on one side of their head, asmall doll’s straw hat, stuck on to the hair; which is certainlythe oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was invented.