NORTH ITALIAN FOLK

View of Genoa, from the Terrace of the Acquasola.

Randolph Caldecott’s

Sketches of North Italian Folk.

Special Issue of 400 Copies
Coloured by Hand.

Each Numbered,
this Copy being No 339

PICKERING AND CHATTO,
London.

Italy—about which so much has been written—political,geographical, social, pontifical, poetical—Italyis my theme. But not the Italy of popesand priests and controversies, of civic strugglesand new kingdoms, nor the Italy of tourists orguide-books, of fame and fashion, nor even theItaly of art and artists. The folk about whommy gossip shall be are folk who, living or dead,have made the best part of Italy these many yearsgone by. They are those who, unwittingly, inheritmost of the poetry for which their nation, longago, won its fame; on them—innocent of lore andreading though they, most of them, be—has fallensomething that recalls the great names of their owngreat men of the past. They are of the people.[vi]To them rather than to others in the land belongthe freedom and freshness, the grace and good-heartedness,the frank honesty that finds a placeeven beside worldly-wise prudence, the simpleand courteous dignity which the educated classeshave not always been able to maintain. No onewho has lived long beside them could have failedto learn the grace of their ways, the humour oftheir rustic simplicity; no one who has grown upin their midst could ever forget their pleasantfaces and quaint enthusiasms, their friendly greetings,their frank speech and emphatic opinions.

I, who thus learned to know them in days goneby, can, at all events, never so forget; and I amfain now to set down some memory of those sun-litscenes of the past, for friends whose lot has neverbeen cast, as mine was, among them. My sketcheswill not always be portraits of living people orexisting things, but they will always be sketchesof things or friends that have been: recollectionsvignetted in the past, rather than photographs[vii]taken on the spot. And so, if anyone shoulddiscover aught that is inaccurate towards thepresent, let him go back a space upon the stepsof time and live away fifteen years beside thecountry housekeeper or la Pet