Lacrime e decoro borghese nell’iconotesto della prima edizione italiana di <em>David Copperfield</em>
10.13125/2039-6597/5363
Questo contributo si propone di esaminare il ruolo dell’iconotesto della prima edizione italiana del romanzo David Copperfield di Charles Dickens pubblicata sul Romanziere contemporaneo illustrato dal 1868 al 1869.
Partendo da alcune considerazioni sul rapporto di complementarità tra scrittura e immagini nella princeps londinese, Le memorie di Davide Copperfield viene inquadrato negli spazi mediali in corso di definizione dell’editoria milanese del decennio postunitario per proporre un’analisi contrastiva delle illustrazioni presenti nelle due edizioni.
L’impressione di maggiore rispettabilità del primo Copperfield italiano deriva in primo luogo dal diverso trattamento dei personaggi femminili, mai ridotti a devianti “fallen women”. Rimossi i temi più indecorosi e ogni traccia di ironia, il romanzo viene prosciugato della sua tragicomica vitalità e appiattito su un sentimentalismo romantico monodimensionale tipico delle versioni italiane del periodo.
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Nineteenth century
Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext of the First Italian Edition of <em>David Copperfield</em>
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Eleonora Gallitelli
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Nineteenth century
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Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext of the First Italian Edition of <em>David Copperfield</em>
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13
        Tears and Middle-Class Decorum
        in the Iconotext of the First Italian
            Edition of David Copperfield

                               Eleonora Gallitelli

Abstract
       This essay examines the role of the iconotext of the first Italian edition
of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, published in Il Romanziere contempo-
raneo illustrato in 1868-1869.
       Starting from some considerations on the complementary relationship
between writing and images in the first edition, Le memorie di Davide Copper-
field is framed in those areas which still were being defined in the post-unifi-
cation decade so as to propose a contrastive analysis that will highlight how
the illustrations of the Treves edition differ from those of the original.
       The impression of greater respectability given by the Italian edition is
mainly due to the different treatment of the female characters, who are never
shown as ‘fallen women’. Having purged indecorous themes and removed
irony entirely, the novel is drained of its tragicomic vitality and reduced to
a one-dimensional romantic sentimentalism typical of the Italian versions of
other foreign novels in this period.

Keywords
    Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield; translation; illustration; Italy;
Treves; Nineteenth century




Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/5363
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext




         Tears and Middle-Class Decorum
         in the Iconotext of the First Italian
            Edition of David Copperfield

                                  Eleonora Gallitelli



                                       Introduction
     «What makes the nineteenth-century illustrated book so fascinating»,
writes Robert Patten, «is, at least in part, that it mediated two competing
systems of knowing and representing the world». Whether an author was
exploring and representing human psychology or constructing a political
consciousness, in the 19th-century English novel verbal and visual codes
went hand in hand. Yet «we in the twenty-first century», regrets the critic,
«are heirs to the victory of words over pictures» (Patten 2002: 92).
     In the pages that follow, the first Italian edition of David Copperfield is
examined in an attempt to rediscover the role that illustrations played in
the way readers understood the novel. After considering the complemen-
tary relationship between writing and image in the original Bradbury &
Evans monthly edition, we shall analyse the Treves edition (published in
instalments in 1868-69)1 in the context of «the media spaces being staked
out»2 in Milanese publishing in the first decade after Italian unification. A
consideration of the iconotexts3 of both editions will then seek to assess
how the fifty-six anonymously produced etchings of the Treves edition
differ from the forty Hablot Browne illustrations that graced the English


     1
       The edition referred to in this analysis is the 1869 volume that gathers
together the instalments published in Il Romanziere Contemporaneo Illustrato. It is
held in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.
     2
       The expression is taken from the title of the second chapter of Piazza 2018.
     3
       The first reflection on the literary iconotext appears in the essay collection
Iconotextes (Montandon 1990). Peter Wagner defines an iconotext as «an artefact
in which the verbal and visual signs mingle to produce rhetoric that depends on
the copresence of words and images» (1996: 16).


46
                                                Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)



publication. Images, captions and page layout are shown to combine to-
gether to offer markedly different visions of Dickens’s characters and the
world they move in, something that radically shifts the general emotional
tone of the novel.

              1. The balance between comedy and pathos
                    in Browne’s original illustrations
      Dickens was intensely involved in the illustration of his novels, cor-
responding regularly with the eighteen artists who between 1836 and 1870
provided almost 900 images for the first editions of his works. The need to
meet monthly instalment deadlines obliged the illustrators to work in close
contact with the author over long periods, during which, as his friend and
biographer John Forster observed, «even beyond what is ordinary between
author and illustrator, [Dickens’s] requirements were exacting» (Forster
1878: 364): he gave precise instructions as to how he saw each scene, chose
which drawings to use and provided titles for the illustrations which were
often ironic. Dickens would examine not only the final versions, but also
preliminary sketches, specifying the setting, the number of characters to
include, their respective positions, their gestures, facial expressions and
clothing. He behaved, Forster concluded, as «a benevolent tyrant» (Cohen
1980: 7), such was his determination to integrate the illustrations with the
overall architecture of each instalment4.
      After collaborating with the most famous illustrators of his time,
Cruikshank and Seymour, who illustrated his first novel The Pickwick Pa-
pers in 1837, for his next works Dickens turned to the young and relatively
unknown Hablot K. Browne (known as Phiz for his ability to capture phys-
iognomy) in the hope he would prove more malleable5. Twelve years later
the two worked together to create David Copperfield – «my favourite child»
(Dickens 1981: 752) – published in twenty monthly instalments, from 1
May 1849 to 1 November 1850 by Bradbury & Evans.
      The twenty-three years of their collaboration would see a gradual de-
velopment in the way Dickens and Phiz brought together word and image;
suffice it to say, however, that in David Copperfield, the novel that took them
to the height of their fame, Browne was given free rein to offer iconograph-
ic details that would encourage particular interpretations of the story, so


    4
        Cf. Siegel 2017.
    5
        Cf. Ley 1918: 34, cit. in Cohen 1980: 62, n5.


                                                                                       47
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



long as his illustrations didn’t clash with the letter and spirit of the text.
As David grows older, for example, and his observations more mature,
Browne introduces subtly connoted details to offer comment on characters
and events, as well as characteristically Hogarthian touches emphasising
implications that are only hinted at in Dickens’s text (this will be evident
in the illustration “Our Pew at Church”, presented later in this essay). Al-
lusions were permitted to emerge at the visual level that would perhaps
have offended Victorian sensibilities, had they been made explicit in the
author’s writing6; other details in the illustrations function as ironic coun-
terpoints to the author’s sentimentalism.
      The illustrations to David Copperfield thus have at least three clear
functions: they offer comic or serious comment on characters and events;
they look forward to future developments in the story; finally and most
intriguingly they suggest, as we shall see, a possible interpretation of one
of the novel’s central ambiguities: the hero’s marriage with Agnes, which
some critics consider the moment in which David achieves maturity and
others see as nothing more than a form of evasion. By pointing to certain
narrative events and themes at the expense of others, Browne’s illustra-
tions, which we recall were produced under Dickens’s attentive supervi-
sion, offer a possible solution to this question, thus becoming, as Steig puts
it, «part of the evidence of what the novel is» (1978: 113).
      Taken from the narrator’s «earlier recollections», the first scene that
Dickens asked Browne to illustrate was “Our Pew at Church”, a plate
packed with people and remarkable for its complex composition. Even
in this opening illustration, there is no question of a slavish adherence to
Dickens’s text, which describes David as being so bored with the church
service that he starts to doze and falls off his seat; Browne, perhaps in-
spired by Hogarth’s etching “The Sleeping Congregation” (1736), extends
that boredom to the entire community of the faithful, showing the verger,
the beadle, various musicians and many others all fast asleep while Mrs
Copperfield, under the predatory gaze of Mr Murdstone, listens with low-
ered eyes as the priest reads from a Bible lying open on a cushion. Murd-
stone had not in fact been introduced to readers at this point, but later we
will hear that he was indeed present at that service, during which, and here
Browne’s illustration introduces an element not in the narration, he had his
prayer book open on the marriage service, a sign that he was already plan-
ning to dupe David’s mother. Among the many details with which Browne


     6
         Cf. Reed 1970.


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         Fig. 1. “Our Pew at Church” and “I am hospitably received by Mr. Peggotty”.


packs the scene, we notice allusions to the animal world like the cobweb
on the lamp, the spider hanging from an angel’s trumpet and a bird’s nest
with two eggs. There are also Biblical emblems, such as the bas-reliefs
showing the serpent tempting Eve and the lamb of God (something that
potentially links David’s mother iconographically with the doomed Emi-
ly), and a number of inscriptions, notably the words “Requiescat in Pace”
and “Resurgam” on the tombstones in the floor of the church7. All of these
contribute to building up a rich context around the central drama.
      This first plate exhibits many of the elements that were to be charac-
teristic of Browne’s illustrations throughout the novel: irony, exaggera-
tion, group presentations of characters in social settings, biblical allusion,
and the use of emblems and inscriptions to look forward to later narrative
events and themes. Constant throughout the illustrations, with the sole
exceptions of the frontispiece and the vignette beside it8, is the presence
of David himself, who is always interacting with one or more other char-
acters.




     7
          Cf. Steig 1978 for an analysis of the function of symbols in David Copper-
field.


                                                                                          49
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



      It should be pointed out that Browne’s approach was to some extent
determined by the etching technique predominant at the time. His draw-
ings (two per instalment) were etched on steel, which meant that they had
to be printed on separate sheets and inserted at the beginning of each in-
stalment; hence, there was the problem of illustrating the story without
spoiling it by revealing too much. Browne often overcomes this by offer-
ing images that establish the milieus around the narrative, with a striking
contrast of emotional tones. In the first instalment, for example, the sleepy
congregation in church is contrasted with the human warmth of the fisher-
man Daniel Peggotty’s cheerful family, a warmth suggested by the steam-
ing pot of tea with which the Pegottys welcome David into their curious
boat-house.
      The motif of the shared meal as an instance of affection and belong-
ing is used on a number of occasions, underlining the positive value of
inclusion, so central to a novel where the worst thing that can happen to a
character is to be excluded from this or that social group. The theme can be
found in the second instalment where the mean lunchtime trick of the sup-
posedly «friendly waiter» lines up alongside Mr Mell’s pathetic flute per-
formance at breakfast in «the poor person’s house». And again in “We are
Disturbed in our Cookery” (number 10), where Mr Micawber prepares the
lamb, and in “Mr. Micawber delivers some valedictory remarks” (number
12) where he prepares punch. The motif returns a fourth time in “My Aunt
astonishes me” (number 11), where Aunt Betsey drinks tea sitting on her
luggage with her cat on her knees, while the only illustration of David’s
married life with Dora has the young husband carving a joint in a scene of
complete chaos amid books and plates scattered on the floor. The sugges-
tion is that there is a certain precariousness to these positive moments, as if
their generous spirit were under threat.
      Groups are frequent: a noisy class of schoolboys with Steerforth at
their head, a group of men in starched-shirts at a business dinner party,
David and Dora’s wedding guests, a crowd of emigrants, and a group of
commissioners crowding at the door of a prison cell. Again these images
confirm the importance of belonging to a group or family of some kind;
only four illustrations show outside scenes, two of which are set in the vi-
cinity of a house, reminding us of communal cohabitation. The two sketch-
es for the frontispiece have Aunt Betsey peeking out of the windows of
the Copperfield home and Little Emily looking melancholy on a beach,
expelled from the happy community of those included in society.
      Sometimes the illustrations reveal an important development in
the story, as for example the paired images that show a newborn in the


50
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Murdstone family, or the illustration showing David ordering a beer in
a pub, something unseemly for a young boy, hence suggesting that he
is trying to seem more adult than he actually is in the eyes of his two
hosts, eager to be included in a group he cannot yet belong to. Other
illustrations conflate temporally separate narrative moments in the same
physical space: in “I make myself known to my Aunt” (number 5), Betsey
Trotwood is seen in her country garden surrounded by gardening tools,
while in the background three youths are trying to control their donkeys
before having them trample all over the garden, a scene that occurs much
later in the book9. In others, captions are used to give an allegorical sense
to an otherwise realistic scene: “My first fall in life” (number 7), for exam-
ple, shows a carriage pulled by four impetuous horses putting a gaggle
of geese to flight; if it were not for the caption, the reader would have no
inkling of the injustice that David will suffer at the hands of one of the
passengers.
      Not only does David do things that are unseemly, he is also presented
in ways that are droll and even disturbing. In his «momentous interview»10
with the Murdstones in his aunt’s house, for example, David is tied up
behind a chair in a corner while the three solemn adults are sitting rigidly
straight on their own chairs while they decide his destiny. Meantime all
kinds of strategies are deployed to characterise the novel’s dramatis perso-
nae: aside from their physiognomies, relational placing and proximity to
emblematic objects, some characters are associated with animals: the fawn-
ing and deeply untrustworthy Uriah Heep, for example, is shown with a
cat, perhaps suggesting his slyness.
      Sometimes, rather than introduce new characters or adventures, the
illustrations show two sides of the same literary topos, the tragic and the
farcical. In instalment 8, for example, the topos of ‘the fallen woman’ is first
ridiculed in the figure of the dwarf Miss Mowcher, then explored in all its
heavy pathos in a plate that shows Martha sitting weeping while David
and the Peggottys look on helplessly. Martha will appear again close to the
dark waters of the Thames, which seem to be drawing her towards suicide
with St Paul’s in the background, in “The River” (see Fig. 2).


     9
       This image went through multiple drafts before being approved by Dick-
ens and the final version diverges from the text, as noticed by Tobias Wilson-Bates
2016: 95.
    10
       Cf. “The Momentous Interview”, second illustration for the fifth monthly
number, containing chapters 13, 14, and 15 (September 1849).


                                                                                     51
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext




                                       Fig. 2. “The River”.


     In instalment 9 the illustrations place David’s future wives, Agnes
and Dora, side by side; in the captions Agnes is linked to David with the
pronoun «us» (“Uriah persists in hovering near us, at the dinner party”),
while Dora is associated with a loss of liberty (“I fall into Captivity”).
     In other instances it is the general mood that provides a contrast be-
tween the pared images. In instalment 12, for example, the eye passes from
a gloomy meeting in David’s house, with the chimneys of London visible
from the window, to a jolly scene around Micawber’s dinner table where
nobody seems to notice Traddles’s empty glass as it falls to the floor. Again
the purpose seems to be to suggest to the reader, at the beginning of the
instalment, that oscillation between cheerfulness and melancholy typical
of the narrative as a whole.
     As in Greek tragedy, Browne does not represent death directly in his
Copperfield illustrations; in Dora’s case, for example, her death is alluded
to through the objects previously associated with her: a guitar with broken
strings, a score of Mozart’s Requiem, and the sick dog that gives the title
to this plate, “My child-wife’s old companion” (number 17). That is, it is
a sense of absence and regret that is created, rather than the immediate
pathos of her corpse. Similarly, when the Steerforth saga comes to an end,
we do not see the shipwreck in which the young man drowned but David
announcing the news to Steerforth’s mother (“I am the bearer of evil tid-
ings”, number 18). What is stressed is the loss to the community, not the
melodrama of the death.


52
                                              Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)



      In the two plates for the final instalment Browne once again sustains
the «satisfactory balance between pathos and humor» (Cohen 1980: 101)
that characterises all his illustrations: the first, “I am shewn two interesting
penitents”, shows Uriah Heep and Mr Littimer coming out of a prison cell,
carrying books and arousing the admiration of a crowd of men in top hats,
including David and Traddles, who, however, do not seem convinced by
their supposed contrition; the second, “A Stranger calls to see me”, shows
David, Agnes and their three young children surprised, in the drawing
room, by the arrival of Mr Peggotty who has returned from Australia. As
Steig has remarked, this epilogue of domestic serenity includes, at least in
the illustration, both the other main female protagonists of the novel, Emily
and Dora, whose faces appear in two portraits that hang on the wall, each
above an angel statuette, creating a layered composition that gives tempo-
ral depth and heightened vivacity to the concept of family11. This might be
seen as an anticipation of Coventry Patmore’s poem The Angel in the House,
first published in 1854, representing the Victorian ideal of domesticity.

           2.    Respectability and sentimentalism
    in the illustrated Italian edition published by Treves
       The first Italian edition of the novel, Memorie di Davide Copperfield,
was published by Treves12 every Thursday from 2 December 1868 to 15
April 1869 in Il romanziere contemporaneo illustrato, in instalments of sixteen
two-column pages. Other novels also appeared in the same issues: in the
first, for example, we find Il Destino by F.D. Guerazzi, together with the
anonymous novelised biography Meyerberiana, George Sand’s Consuelo,
and Avventure di quattro donne by Alexander Dumas, but other titles would
appear when these novels ended. As the last page of each instalment ex-
plained, the novels were «numbered separately and printed in such a way
that each forms a volume of its own, with its own cover».
       The periodical was one of a number of initiatives by Milan-based pub-
lishers in the first decade after Italian unification, when, with the industrial


    11
        Cf. Steig 1978: 129-30.
    12
        Bacci 2009: 63 suggests that the model for Sonzogno’s Il Romanziere illus-
trato and hence also for Treves’s Il romanziere contemporaneo illustrato was Oeuvres
illustrèes published by Librairie Blanchard and Librairie Marescq et C., which
offered illustrated works by major novelists, or again Gustave Barba’s Romans
Populaires Illustrès.


                                                                                     53
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



revolution now penetrating the world of culture, it became possible to in-
troduce woodcut illustrations into such publications13. As Adolfo Albertaz-
zi observed, the novels «with pictures» appearing in these periodicals were
intended for a new middle-class readership:

          In Milan alone, for some years a variety of periodicals were being
      published for the asinine middle-classes: Sonzogno’s Il romanziere
      illustrato and II romanziere delle famiglie; Gottironi’s Il romanziere
      cosmopolita; Richiedei’s Il romanziere contemporaneo illustrato and Treves’s
      II romanziere illustrato contemporaneo [sic]. These periodicals, like the
      serialised novels and anthologies published in Milan, Turin, Livorno,
      Florence and Naples, featured for the most part foreign authors.
          However, as early as 1867, Treves, with that foresight that was
      shortly to make them the most successful of publishers, had found
      room for their love of our own literature, by publishing together in
      their Romanziere one French novel, one German or English, and one
      original Italian. (Albertazzi 1902: 285-6)14

     Some months prior to the serialisation of Davide Copperfield, Dickens
had been presented to the readers on the first page of issue 36 (6 August,
1868)15 as «the most famous novelist of all nations and all times»16. Having
mentioned his early novels, the article also cites Pitture d’Italia in the trans-
lation of Gustavo Stafforello17, as «radiating enthusiasm and deep love for
our country», while Davide Copperfield is presented as «his masterpiece
which we will shortly be publishing in translation».
     Instalments of the periodical were sold for 15 cents and formed part
of the Biblioteca utile series, which appeared between 1864 and 1881 and
included scientific and historical texts aimed at a general public as well as


     13
        Cf. Pallottino 2010: 144-6.
     14
        The announcement on the last page of every issue of the Romanziere con-
temporaneo illustrato established the hierarchy governing the choice of novels in
the periodical: first an Italian novel, then a French, then either an English, Ger-
man or Spanish.
     15
        Later collected in a volume edition as I romanzieri italiani e stranieri. Galleria
di 52 biografie e ritratti, Milan, E. Treves & c., 1868.
     16
        The article cites Cruikshank as Dickens’s first illustrator, calling him “the
English Teja”, a reference to Casimiro Teja, a celebrated Italian satirical illustrator
of the time.
     17
        In 1868 Treves would publish George Eliot’s Romola in the same periodi-
cal, translated by Stafforello.


54
                                                 Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)




              Fig. 3. Charles Dickens in Il Romanziere Contemporaneo Illustrato.

self-help books that promoted a work ideology. Within this broad church,
the Romanziere, as Isotta Piazza points out, was the first periodical entirely
dedicated to novels that «were only in part the original work of Italian
novelists, most being translations of foreign novels» (2018: 67). «Devour-
ing foreign novels», Albertazzi complained, «the frivolous middle classes
could make do with very little Italian stuff!» (1902: 286) Yet Treves’s aim
was to give a renewed dignity to the Italian novel precisely by placing it
alongside the best works from abroad.
      Treves wasn’t the first to have tried this: Sonzogno18, the other major
player in post-unification publishing, had got there first with its popular
periodical Il romanziere illustrato which appeared two years earlier, in 1865,
with the same number of pages selling at the same price; in 1868, just prior
to Treves’s Copperfield, Sonzogno had published Our Mutual Friend, in a

    18
       Giovanni Ragone speaks of a «newspaper made up entirely of novels, in-
vented, at the heart of Milanese publishing, by the most brilliant and successful of
the new publishers, Sonzogno», describing it as «the most evident example» of an
integrated system making possible «the transmigration of genres from the book
publishing to newspaper publishing and viceversa». Printed in 10,000 copies Il
romanziere illustrato was fifth for circulation in Italy in 1872. For his part Treves
«aimed at a nationwide market, looking for a formula suitable for the broad mid-
dle-brow public attracted to illustrated magazines» (1999: 31, 32 n. and 46).


                                                                                        55
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



translation by Ugo Iginio Tarchetti19. The main difference between the pres-
entation of these two Dickens novels lay in the choice of the illustrations:
while Sonzogno reproduced the illustrations from Chapman & Hall’s 1865
edition, Treves rejected Browne’s illustrations for Copperfield and appears
to have commissioned the publication’s 56 original etchings from a number
of different artists. However, the frontispiece of Treves’s Memorie di Davide
Copperfield placed no other names beside that of the great novelist; it is only
from the signatures in the illustrations that two of the artists, both French,
can be identified, Louis Paul Pierre Dumont and Auguste Pontenier20.
      As will be demonstrated here, the illustrations in the Treves edi-
tion differ radically from those Browne produced in collaboration with
Dickens himself. Nello Ajello has observed of Italian press illustrations
in this period that «whatever the scene, the impression they communi-
cated was reassuring […] solid, respectable, mannered». And he goes on:
«A persistent respect for this national bourgeois mythology guided the
editorial choices [of Treves] right down to the smallest details» (Ajello
1976: 179-80). The impression of respectability21 here is largely achieved
by deploying different iconotexts in the presentation of the characters;


     19
        According to Venuti 2008: 135, Tarchetti «was credited as the translator» in
the case of Our Mutual Friend.
     20
        Pontenier also worked for the French illustrated periodical Le Voleur illus-
tré, each issue of which contained two instalments of highly successful French
novels. However, it has proved impossible to track down information relative
to other signatures, which include Grout, H. R., O. Muntat (?), Am. R., Thenard,
Mulet, and Vahyer. The digital catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
offers no evidence of French editions of the book prior to 1868, though that does
not rule out the possibility that one was published. In any event, it is hardly sur-
prising that Treves turned to French artists since «One fact that leaps to the eye is
our dependence on foreign craftsmen and artists, who are often invited to work
at Italian chalcographers’ […] illustrated periodicals in particular continue to de-
pend on foreigners to the point […] of substituting for an Italian production that
hardly exists as a result both of political obstacles and the lack of a tradition in
the craft» (Mazzocca 1981: 409). For the 1840 illustrated edition of I promessi sposi,
Alessandro Manzoni used an Italian illustrator but had to look abroad for xylog-
raphers, noting that «the appeal of the vignette that makes an experience visible
is extremely strong. Without looking further than Milan one can see how many
illustrated French editions are being sold» (Manzoni 1970: VII, 118-9).
     21
        At the beginning of chapter XXI the word “rispettabilità”, referred to Steer-
forth’s servant, is printed in italics; in the English edition the man is described as
“a pattern of respectability”.


56
                                               Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)




                 Fig. 4. “I go to my mother in the garden (Page 4)”.


this is especially true for the female characters, who, in the Italian edition,
invariably appear as daughters, mothers, wives and aunts, maids and or-
phans, who may sometimes be mistreated or tearful but are never shown
as ‘fallen women’.
      Again, before considering the separate illustrations, the etching tech-
nique must be mentioned. While the steel etchings used in the English edi-
tion had obliged the publisher to print them separately from the text, with
the result that two illustrations were placed at the front of each instalment,
the Italian illustrations were cut into wood, something that allowed the
publisher to place them inside the text. There was thus the possibility of
illustrating the dramatic moment, rather than, as in the English edition,
creating an emotional context for the reader.
      In the first plate of the Treves edition Clara Copperfield appears in
the garden with little David: elegantly dressed, they look at each other as
the mother offers her child an apple she has just picked. Certain elements
that recur throughout the edition’s iconography are immediately evident,
above all the choice of a bucolic setting: twenty-seven of the fifty-six illus-
trations are set outside, while seven others offer views from windows onto
gardens. This seems in stark contrast to Browne’s preference for interiors,
often crowded interiors.


                                                                                      57
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext




      Fig. 5. “… she took my hand, now taking it to her mouth, now caressing it (Page
38)” and “– I see I shall have to go to Yarmouth (Page 40)”.

     Together with the shift to immediate event and drama comes a fo-
cus on physical gesturing; from this first plate on, the characters’ gestures
emphasise the theatrical pathos of Dickens’s text, particularly moments
of touch, something often associated with the expression of emotion22,
and hence indicating a high degree of intimacy between the characters23.
As many as twenty-seven of the illustrations involve characters embrac-
ing or engaged in other kinds of physical contact: Clara Copperfield puts
her arms round David’s shoulders, men and women walk arm in arm, in
three cases Pegotty shakes David’s hand, or kisses him or holds him on
his knees, while an older David shakes hands with Uriah Heep, puts a
hand on Little Emily’s and Ham Peggotty’s shoulders, twice holds hands
with Aunt Betsey, grasps Agnes’s hand and kisses Dora while holding
her hand. The only people not looking for physical contact are negative
characters like Murdstone, or outsiders like the «orfling» from St Luke’s
workhouse.

     22
          Cf. Čermáková – Mahlberg 2022: 18.
     23
          Cf. Mahlberg 2013: 117.


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   Fig. 6. “… in the future we will love each other tenderly (Page 114)”.
      The most dramatic gestures are given to Steerforth, who in one plate
grabs David’s foil while teaching him to fence and in another puts his arm
round Rosa Dartle’s waist; in this plate the woman is associated with the
musical arts by the presence of a harp that recalls her outline, while the
whole scene is presented against what looks like a theatrical backdrop (Fig.
6)24. On this occasion David is a spectator, almost an alter ego for the read-
er, sitting next to the open curtain that suggests a stage.
      The eighth plate of the Italian edition is thematically akin to the sixth
of the English (“Changes at home”, Fig. 7), allowing us to see how dif-
ferently mother-child relationships are presented. In Browne’s illustration
we see Clara sitting in a tender embrace with her baby, but with her back
turned to David who peeps in through the door; the mother’s gaze is en-
tirely for the newborn she is nursing, in what looks like a Madonna and
child pose, while David evidently feels excluded from the happy scene.
Cohen notes how the geometry of the composition, «the graceful curves of
her head, the baby’s clothes and draped bassinet, and the oval frames of
the pictures behind and above the pair» (1980: 103) contrasts sharply with


    24
       Writing about melodrama in historical and serialised novels, Giovanni
Ragone notes that «the romantic imagination is becoming more popular» and
that «the reference point for these genres is hardly the newspaper, but the opera»
(1999: 46). In this regard one might cite Gramsci’s reflection that: «The serialised
novel substitutes (and at the same time encourages) the imaginings of the com-
mon man in what amounts to a waking dream» (1971: 136).


                                                                                     59
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext




      Fig. 7. “Changes at Home” and “– He’s your brother, my mother said, caressing
me: (Page 31)”.

David’s uncertain posture and bewildered expression. Various details, in
particular the paintings above the fireplace showing scenes from the life
of Moses, hint at young David’s new predicament, now dependent on the
care of strangers and little more than an “outcast” in his own family, just as
Dickens himself had been for a period in his childhood. The act of breast-
feeding is suggested by the low neckline of the female portrait clearly vis-
ible over Clara’s head and placed alongside a painting with the theme of
the prodigal son.
     The corresponding image in the Italian edition removes the paintings
and replaces them with books, as if the publisher were eager to promote
the habit of reading. Clara’s sewing box, which in the English illustration
was tipped over on the floor, is here upright, open and in good order on
the table. Seated at the centre of the composition, Clara has her arm round
David while he takes the newborn’s hand. While in the English edition an
untidy mother is forgetful of her firstborn son, in the Italian version she
shares her affection equally with her two children in what amounts to an
«idealisation of family values» (Mazzocca: 1981: 414) typical of the period25.




60
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The caption contrives to bring together all three characters in one mawkish
phrase: “– He’s your brother, my mother said, caressing me”. Across the
page another image has David in a carriage saying goodbye to Clara who,
baby in her arms, calls to him and waves her handkerchief.
      In a gentle warning against transgressions of social decorum, the vices
of tobacco and alcohol are presented negatively in three plates: the uncouth
Daniel Pegotty, the fisherman, is shown smoking a pipe, the equally coarse
and ambiguous friends of Aunt Betsey’s husband succumb to the joys of
drink, and David is portrayed after his «first dissipation» getting out of bed
to find the eight empty bottles of the night before scattered across table and
floor.
      In sharp contrast with Browne’s illustrations, a mood of edifying sen-
timentality permeates the six scenes that show one or more characters in
tears. The illustration entitled “Joan Murdstone, replied her brother, be
quiet! (pag. 12.)” (Fig. 8), for example, shows four figures in melodramatic
poses: Murdstone points his finger at his austere sister who is clutching
a handkerchief in one hand and leaning on a chair with the other, while
Clara «crying from hot eyes» dries her tears with another handkerchief
and David weeps in his hiding place behind his mother’s chair; one notes,
in passing, that Murdstone’s face has changed radically from the previous
instalment where he was drawn by a different artist. This plate, which il-
lustrates an episode occurring in the third instalment of the Treves edition,
is actually placed in the fourth, where it has the function of reminding the




     Fig. 8. “Joan Murdstone, replied her brother, be quiet! (Page 12.)”.



                                                                                        61
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



reader of past events. In other instalments we find ‘before and after’ imag-
es arranged in narrative sequence (see Fig. 5 supra).
     Tears can also come as a consequence of shame, as when David is
mocked by his companions for the pasteboard placard he is forced to wear
on his back, on which, in one plate, we can read in Italian «Guardatevi
da lui, egli morsica» – Take care of him, he bites – and in the next, odd-
ly enough, in French «PRENEZ GARDE À VOUS, IL MORD». Of course
weeping may also be provoked by grief, as when Peggotty cries for the
death of Clara and her baby, or simply from pain, as in the case of the
common woman shoved to the ground on a dusty path by a tinker. For his
part, David weeps for the death of Steerforth, which, unlike the deaths of
Dora and his mother, is actually shown.
     Women are mainly shown intent on artistic endeavours, or sewing, or
more humble activities in the case of lower-class women: Rosa has her harp,
Dora reads (in two plates) and paints, as we can adduce from the colours
and paint brush visible on a small table beside a white canvas; Agnes plays
the piano for David and both she and Aunt Betsey are shown knitting. The
more humble Emily collects pebbles and seashells, while the wives and
daughters of the fishermen carry big wicker baskets on their backs.
     Meantime the topos of the ‘fallen woman’, personified in Little Emi-
ly and Martha, is simply removed from the Italian translation26. The long
sequences describing the two women in chapter XXII, “Some old Scenes,
and some new People”, are mostly cut from the Italian edition while the
grotesque figure of the sleazy hairdresser Miss Mowcher disappears alto-
gether. Parts of chapter XL, “The Wanderer”, where David meets Martha
again and stops to speak to Daniel Peggotty, who is desperately searching
for his niece Emily, are also cut and likewise the whole of chapter XLVII,
“Martha”. As a result, there are of course no illustrations for these sections.
There are also significant cuts in chapter XLV, which describes the mar-
riage crisis of Doctor Strong and his young wife Annie, and their eventual
reconciliation. In this case the Italian edition offers a bland illustration of
the two walking happily arm in arm in their garden.
     While most of the illustrations in the Treves edition show daylight
scenes, the novel’s most emotional moments are seen occurring at night,
by the light of a candle, the fireplace or the moon over the sea, which Da-
vid, alone in his room, gazes at from his window. Of the various scenes of


     26
        Remarkably, there appear to be no studies of the extensive cuts made to
this first Italian edition of David Copperfield.


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grief and bereavement, one has David alone near his parents’ grave, where
the tombstone bears the inscription «HIC JACET COPPERFIELD» above a
skull and crossbones. Another skull is present as a memento mori, together
with books, writing paper and an inkpot in Mr Wickfield’s room.
      There is no place for humour in the illustrations of the Italian edi-
tion. There are no dogs or cats or donkeys kicking their heels, only noble,
well-behaved horses and one tame donkey pulling the gig of a «giovanac-
cio», a street urchin. Even the childish Mr Dick, one of the book’s most
ridiculous figures, is shown only at the solemn moment when Aunt Betsey
designates him as David’s tutor. The grotesque Uriah Heep is presented
as a stern serious man, and handsome to boot, apologising to David for
his «umble» condition. Traddles, David’s friend, loses the dishevelled hair
that characterises him in both Dickens’s text and Browne’s illustrations; in
the Italian edition, he is young, very well dressed and entirely reassuring.
The plates in this edition include just two, three or four characters; the only
group scenes show pupil hijinks in classroom and playground, and men
drinking – both unworthy forms of behaviour. They do not, that is, offer
a positive vision of the large group, something typical in Dickens’s work.
Four illustrations have David alone, while in five he does not appear at all.
      The use of captions for the illustrations is also quite different in the
two books. Dickens often uses them, like his chapter titles, to emphasise
the fact that the novel is being told from David’s point of view. Hence there
are plenty of first-person pronouns and possessives. But he also deploys a
great deal of irony as adjectives like «friendly», «musical», «magnificent»
and «momentous» are made to clash comically with the scenes drawn. On
other occasions vague allusions – “Changes at Home” (number 3), “Some-
body turns up” (number 6), “A Stranger calls to see me” (number 19-20)
– offer a little mystery to excite the reader’s curiosity. In the Treves edition,
on the other hand, as seen in the examples given, all illustration captions
are simply brief quotations from the text, with a purely informational or
linking function.

                                  Conclusion
     Giorgio Bacci claimed that the illustrations used in serialised novels be-
came «a vehicle of the publisher’s agenda» and of his desire to give the book
a particular «feeling» (2009: 11)27. Similarly the captions had a «signpost»


    27
         As Segantini saw it, the point of the illustrations «would be that, going


                                                                                     63
Eleonora Gallitelli, Tears and Middle-Class Decorum in the Iconotext



function (Benjamin 1977: 228), forcibly guiding the reader’s interpretation
of the text.
      Browne’s illustrations point up the dialectics of inclusion and exclu-
sion in Dickens’s novel, offering the reader more than fifty characters, but
with the narrator David always present and never alone. With regards to
the female characters, by showing David most often with Clara Peggotty,
Little Emily, Aunt Betsey and Agnes, he suggests that they, and not Dora,
who occurs in only three scenes, are the main female protagonists.
      In the first Italian edition, David is shown most often with his mother
in the first part, and Dora in the second, thus shifting the tone of the novel
towards something more traditionally sentimental, a development in line
with the decision to remove the themes of suicide, prostitution and cruelty
to children from the text.
      The other major difference in the dialectic between text and image in
the two editions is the absence, in the Italian edition, of any of the irony and
humour that characterised Browne’s work. Carlo Izzo famously remarked
that Italians were unable to respond to Dickens comedy because «[they]
have no real taste for humour» (Izzo 1974: 121); while this claim seems to
overlook the abundant humour in the work of Manzoni, Nievo, Collodi,
Vamba, Gandolin, Yambo and De Amicis, it is nevertheless the case that in
this edition of David Copperfield the illustrations and the editorial strategy
in general tend to reinforce a moralising tone at the expense of irony and
humour.




back just to the novel’s vignettes, a month later, or a year, or two years or ten,
readers would be able to re-evoke the sensations they had experienced read-
ing the book, reconstructing its world of feeling». Giovanni Segantini, Letter to
Neera, 2 January 1898, in Quinsac 1985: 705.


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                                        Sitography
Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield”, Victorian Serial Novels Collection,
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                                              Between, vol. XIII, n. 25 (maggio/May 2023)



                                 The Author
     Eleonora Gallitelli

      Eleonora Gallitelli holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from IULM
University, Milan. Her thesis was published as Il ruolo delle traduzioni let-
terarie dall’inglese in Italia dall’Unità alla globalizzazione. Analisi diacronica e
focus su tre autori di lingua inglese: Dickens, Faulkner e Rushdie (2016). She was
awarded the Dickens Society’s 2022 Robert Partlow Prize for the essay “‘If
the true story of the matter is to be told’: Dickens and the Neapolitan Pris-
oners”. She is currently a researcher in English Language and Translation
at Roma Tre University.

      Email: eleonora.gallitelli@gmail.com



                                 The Article
     Date sent: 31/10/2022
     Date accepted: 28/02/2023
     Date published: 30/05/2023



                         How to cite this article
      Gallitelli, Eleonora, “Tears and middle-class decorum in the iconotext
of the first Italian edition of David Copperfield”, The Illustrated Fiction between
the 18th and 20th Century, Eds. C. Cao – G. Carrara – B. Seligardi, Between,
XIII.25 (2023): 45-67, http://www.betweenjournal.it/




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