The old order of illustrators had passed away, so far as the works of Dickens were concerned, when young Marcus Stone essayed the task of giving pictorial effect to what was to prove the last complete work of the great novelist. In looking over Mr. Stone’s illustrations to Our Mutual Friend, we are at once conscious of an enormous advance in their artistic quality and the disappearance of the old hearty humour of Phiz and Cruikshank. (19)
Dickens’s caricaturists were not fully “eclipsed” by Sixties artists, nor did their achievements “disappear” or “pass away.” Rather, when we look across illustrative periods in the evolution of the Victorian illustrated book, we see how the caricaturists provided an illustrative foundation that the realists built upon with the same artistry evident in paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Sixties artists who refashioned Dickens’s beloved characters with lifelike artistic representation could focus on figure over background detail and change the scale of a drawing, but they were not totally free to illustrate Dickens anew since the caricaturists’ designs were fixed in the public’s imagination.45 Even critic Philip Allingham, deeply invested in Sixties illustration and Fred Barnard’s champion, recognizes that Barnard “could flesh out but could not fundamentally alter the timid Tom Pinch or the hypocritical Pecksniff, their balding pates and spiked hair respectively still being the sine qua non of these Dickens originals” (“Reading” 176).46 These “Dickens originals” brought the characters to life on the illustrative page. Barnard’s illustrations for the Household Edition of David Copperfield expressly won the praise of the Dalziels because “there is just enough resemblance to the figures created by H. K. Browne to save you a shock” (337).
The Household Edition, published between 1871–79, came out in weekly numbers, monthly parts, and volumes. The twenty-two–volume, large-format Household Edition had green cloth covers—recalling the color of the paper wrappers of the original serial numbers—and black and gold stamping on the front cover with decorative sketches of Dickens’s most famous characters (for example, Samuel Pickwick). Barnard, the main illustrator for the series, provided more plates than any other artist: 60 illustrations for David Copperfield (1872), 59 for Martin Chuzzlewit (1872), 61 for Bleak House (1873), 46 for Barnaby Rudge (1874), 25 for A Tale of Two Cities (1874), 59 for Nicholas Nickleby (1875), 34 for Sketches by Boz (1876), and 28 for Christmas Books (1878).47 The other illustrators for the project were Charles Green, James Mahoney, F. A. Fraser, Harry French, Harry Furniss, and Browne (who re-illustrated Pickwick only). The series title is reminiscent of Dickens’s illustrated weekly Household Words and simultaneously projects assuring middle-class values: a “household” edition is for a middle-class reader, who, over time, could buy the entire set to read by the family hearth.48
Barnard, like Du Maurier, received art training in Paris and was an illustrator for Once a Week and Punch, although his first venture into illustration was for The Illustrated London News. Barnard is best known for his re-illustration of Dickens, but he was a realist painter who created large canvases, such as Saturday Night in the East End (1876) that captures the lowlife of East London with its grime, gin shops, and seedy inhabitants. Barnard also collaborated with G. R. Sims for a series called How the Poor Live for The Pictorial World (1883), which helped establish him as an artist who brought the urban poor into the consciousness of his middle-class viewers. Barnard’s refashioning of David Copperfield’s eccentric characters such as Wilkins Micawber and Uriah Heep shows the strongest resemblance to Phiz’s originals; however, Barnard’s drawing style is not sketchy as that of Phiz, and he made the figures look lifelike.
In chapter 11, Dickens introduces Micawber as a
stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout49 and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat,—for ornament. (DC, Norton 138)
Phiz, who first pictures Micawber in the plate “Somebody Turns Up” (see fig. 33A), visualizes Dickens’s description of Micawber’s egg-shaped pate and apparel down to the last tassel. Micawber’s trademark top hat magnifies his height and his larger-than-life personality. Cocked at an angle, the hat reveals a good bit of Micawber’s shiny oval head. Micawber’s frock coat strains at the waist to indicate his “stoutness,” and the “imposing shirt-collar” frames a face with a most congenial expression.
Phiz’s original plate also includes Mrs. Heep serving David and Uriah, who are sitting at a table covered with tea things in the Heeps’ “umble” abode. Numerous props—books untidily arranged on a sideboard, letters in a bundle, writing implements, pictures on the wall, and knickknacks on the mantel—fill the illustration, as is characteristic of the caricature school. Micawber enters into this crowded page: the text tells us that when Micawber is walking down a street in Canterbury, he spies David Copperfield (whom he last saw in London) through an open doorway and exclaims “loudly, ‘Copperfield! Is it possible!’” (DC, Norton 222). Micawber’s placement in a doorway is symbolic: one foot rests on the threshold, but the other, beyond the picture plane, is presumably still in the street. In placing Micawber neither in the house nor in the street, Phiz captures the essence of a character who occupies a transitional place from the moment he enters the novel. Micawber changes jobs, moves his family into and out of a debtor’s prison, relocates to Plymouth and then to Canterbury until, at the end of the novel, he immigrates to Australia and becomes the Port Middlebay District Magistrate. At this point in the novel, Micawber has not yet ascended, and he is—just as he appears—in between homes, jobs, and places.
Barnard’s first depiction of Micawber for the Household Edition (see fig. 33B) appears immediately after Dickens’s introduction of him in chapter 11. It is a full-page engraving with a lengthy title, “Mr. Micawber, Impressing the Names of Streets and the Shapes of Corner Houses Upon Me as We Went Along, That I Might Find My Way Back Easily in the Morning.” Phiz’s Micawber standing in the doorway, looking hopeful that something will turn up, is a model for this plate; Barnard’s Micawber is immediately recognizable to those familiar with Phiz’s original, even though the setting is urban London. The still loveable but more realistically rendered Micawber holds his arms akimbo, extends his “jaunty sort of a stick” (138) high up in the air, and occupies a great deal of space. Barnard’s Micawber has the same trademark top hat, again cocked at an angle to reveal his baldness; a large white-starched collar; and a brown surtout that fits too snugly over his large belly. Different from the original, Micawber in Barnard’s re-creation wears pants rather than hose and is a three-dimensional, lifelike figure. Barnard foregrounds figure over background in his plates, and here he positions Micawber front and center to command the reader-viewer’s attention. Micawber stands on a curb in the very bottom front of the plate, and it looks as if he could easily step off the pavement and into the world of the reader-viewer.
Figure 33. A: “Somebody Turns Up.” Illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, 1850;
Figure 33. B: “Mr. Micawber, Impressing the Names of Streets and the Shapes of Corner Houses Upon Me as We Went Along.” Illustration by Fred Barnard for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Household Edition, 1872.
The authentic background draws its inspiration from contemporary life and recalls, for example, George Elgar Hicks’s depiction of Londoners from different walks of life in his narrative painting The General Post Office, One Minute to Six (1860). Barnard pictures a similar intermingling of Londoners of different ages, social classes, occupations, and life situations on a public street. He includes a soldier confronting a rough-looking lad, who is presumably a pickpocket—an all too common criminal that Hicks also incorporates into his painting of the public space of the Vic
torian post office. The soldier may be working a prospect as we do not actually see the boy pick a pocket; however, his expression on being apprehended reveals he is guilty of some petty crime. The pathetic look on the shabbily dressed chimney sweep carrying a load of coal (positioned behind Micawber to his left) recalls the daguerreotype of the boy crossing-sweeper by Richard Beard accompanying Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1851), an early sociological text that gave voice to the street people of London. On Barnard’s London street, there are also respectable, well-dressed people. Behind Micawber and between the pickpocket and the sweep, Barnard positions a nicely dressed middle-class couple whispering together as they lean toward a public park. In this urban space, row houses are visible behind the greenery as well as a prominently placed street sign, Finsbury Square—all details that provide a believable 1870s London street scene as a background for Barnard’s very human Dickensian characters.
Other Copperfield characters bear the imprint of Phiz’s designs, such as Barnard’s re-embodiments of young David in this very plate (see fig. 33B) and Uriah Heep. Barnard sustains David’s near feminine beauty, his slight physique, and naïve wonder, trademarks of Phiz’s illustrations that we see in “Somebody Turns Up” (see fig. 33A). Granted, Barnard makes David a tad taller—likely due to the well-rendered top hat he wears in “Mr. Micawber, Impressing the Names of Streets”—and he looks more lifelike than Phiz’s David. Barnard’s David has an earnest expression as he gazes up at and listens closely to Mr. Micawber, who is giving him directions. Barnard’s Heep also unmistakably carries the imprint of Phiz’s original. Dickens describes Uriah Heep as a hideous-looking character with an equally slimy personality. In chapter 15, we spy a “cadaverous” face: “It belonged to a red-haired person—a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older—whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes” (DC, Norton 191); a few pages later, Dickens again lingers over Uriah’s eyes, suggesting they are “like two red suns and stealthily stare at me” (193). Large nostrils, pointed chin, “clammy hand” (196), and false humbleness complete Uriah’s verbal portrait.
Phiz’s “Somebody Turns Up” (see fig. 33A) depicts the scene where the Heeps invite David to their “umble” abode “and wormed things out of [him] that [he] had no desire to tell” (DC, Norton 221). Phiz captures the eyelash-less eyes, “closest stubble” (191), jutting chin, large nostrils, “clammy hand” (196), and cloyingly “umble” (221) demeanor of Heep, who seems to “writhe” over the table—a verb Dickens often uses to describe Uriah (for example, 204)—in an attempt to wheedle information out of David. Barnard renders an unmistakably similar Uriah Heep in the plate “‘Oh, Thank You, Master Copperfield,’ Said Uriah Heep, ‘For That Remark! It is So True! Umble as I Am, I Know it is So True! Oh, Thank You, Master Copperfield.’” Once again, David appears across the picture plane from Heep, who is positioned in three-quarter view. Barnard realistically re-embodies Phiz’s depiction of Heep complete with close-cropped hair, thin pointed nose, jutting chin, and “clammy hand” (196)—the touch of which David tries to rub away.50
Barnard produced sixty-one illustrations to Phiz’s forty-two, and he chose many scenes that Phiz did not illustrate. Some similar choices emerge, such as Peggotty and David saving Martha from drowning in the Thames and Mr. Peggotty’s return from Australia to visit David and Agnes. These plates reveal traces of Phiz’s original designs and incorporate Barnard’s interest in drawing contemporary London life. Barnard’s “‘Oh, The River!’ She Cried Passionately. ‘Oh, the River!’” carries the imprint of Phiz’s “The River” in its renderings of the three characters as well as the setting of the polluted Thames, although Barnard reverses the orientation of the plate. Whereas Phiz foregrounds Martha as she is about to take her life and draws David and Mr. Peggotty on a smaller scale, positioning them to her right on a dark shoreline well behind her, Barnard provides a close-up of all three figures on the polluted riverbank. Positioned to the left of Martha, David bends solicitously over the fallen woman. Martha, in Barnard’s version, bends over melodramatically in grief and covers her face with her hands while Peggotty, to Martha’s right, gazes down sympathetically at Martha. The sewage-filled shore, murky water, and smoky sky in Browne’s illustration reappear in Barnard’s plate, but Barnard pictures the setting in greater detail and with less theatricality. In doing so, Barnard recalls the third panel in Augustus Egg’s triptych Past and Present (1858), which features a fallen wife clutching her dying illegitimate child along the shoreline of the dirty Thames. Augmenting Phiz’s original design, Barnard draws more sewage, debris, and darkness surrounding Martha. His refashioning of Phiz’s original plate strengthens the Victorian view of the fallen woman as polluted, which Egg likewise captures in his triptych of marital infidelity.
Peggotty’s return from Australia to visit “Mas’r Davy,” now a grown man married to Agnes, forms the subject of Phiz’s “A Stranger Calls to See Me” (see fig. 34A) and Barnard’s “If a Ship’s Cook That Was Turning Settler, Mas’r Davy, Didn’t Make Offer Fur to Marry Mrs. Gummidge, I’m Gormed—And I Can’t Say No Fairer Than That!” (see fig. 34B). In both Phiz’s and Barnard’s versions of this scene, we see an aged Peggotty and a mature David and Agnes, now married, but there the resemblance stops. Phiz fills “A Stranger Calls to See Me” with a detailed background of props that garner as much attention as the three figures. The paintings in the parlor show settings and characters significant to David in his formative years: Blunderstone Rookery on the left, where he lived a serene childhood with his mother (a prototype for Dora) before she married Mr. Murdstone; Yarmouth, where David spent happy times with his nurse Peggotty’s family and, as a child, fell in love with Little Em’ly (here pictured in front of her nautical home); and a portrait of David’s first wife, Dora, looking down and seemingly blessing David, Agnes, and their children. Dora’s portrait placed above the mantelpiece declares her importance to the plot: Dora is the one who, on her deathbed, makes a final request to Agnes that only she “‘would occupy this vacant place’” (DC, Norton 726). Agnes holds an open book, a prop that marks her intelligence. A child buries her face in Agnes’s lap, symbolizing her role as ideal mother and wife. On the mantel, two symmetrically placed figurines of angels bless this idyllic domestic family circle. These twin angels symbolize Agnes, the quintessential angel in the house, ever guiding David “upward!” (737).
In contrast, Barnard’s reunion scene is a close-up of three characters and is absolutely free of setting and symbols. Its illustrative power lies in its lifelike rendering of the characters themselves. Daniel Peggotty with an animated smile on his face sits in the middle of the grouping, recounting a story that serves as the title for this plate. Barnard pictures Peggotty just as he is about to slap his knee to emphasize how truthful his seemingly fantastical tale is. Barnard’s David leans forward toward Peggotty and looks more fondly attached to Peggotty than Phiz’s David does in the original. While Agnes in both renditions beams angelic grace, Barnard makes Agnes look more serious as she attends to Peggotty’s humorous tale of the marital prospects in Australia for all the settlers including old Mrs. Gummidge. Crosshatching and lighting frame the trio in this handsome portrait-style illustration of three Dickens characters who, by the 1870s, had assumed lifelike stature outside the pages of Dickens’s novels.
Figure 34. A: “A Stranger Calls to See Me.” Illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, 1850;
Figure 34. B: “If a Ship’s Cook That Was Turning Settler, Mas’r Davy, Didn’t Make Offer Fur to Marry Mrs. Gummidge, I’m Gormed—And I Can’t Say No Fairer Than That!” Illustration by Fred Barnard for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Household Edition, 1872.
Those familiar with David Copperfield will delight in many of Barnard’s selections for illustrations that reshaped a beloved author to suit popular taste and extended Dickens’s popularity to a new generation of reader-vi
ewers. One such artistic illustration is a close-up of Ham Peggotty for chapter 55 entitled “Tempest.” With “determination in his face, and his look, out to sea”—(DC, Norton 667), Ham resolutely determines to save the shipwrecked man, who turns out to be Steerforth, the villain who has already robbed him of a happy future with his beloved Emily Peggotty. In the Barnard illustration entitled “The Storm,” Ham fills the center of the plate while the other seamen are clustered together in the left side of the picture plane. Seafoam emanating from the tempest splashes against Ham, who wades barefoot into the water. Pictured in profile, Ham gazes with determination at the wreck positioned in the far upper right in the background. The rope that Ham ties to his body in an attempt to lasso and save the lone shipwrecked man anticipates the heroic act that will lead to his death and Steerforth’s. But in this realistically rendered illustration, heroic Ham, framed by the raging sea and spray, singly holds the viewer’s full attention.
Beautiful, silly Dora becomes the focus of several illustrations, none more touching than “Holding the Pens.” Dora holds David’s writing implements and looks adoringly upon the budding writer, who sits at his writing desk, pen in hand, composing the novel we are presumably reading. The background of the room contains untidily arranged bookshelves and a large writing desk on a carved wooden table, but the two figures positioned close to the viewer dominate the plate. Lamplight illuminates Dora’s upturned face, betraying her awareness of her many limitations as a “child-wife” (DC, Norton 644). David, gazing upon Dora lovingly, shows an awareness of a gap widening between him, the aspiring author, and his wife contented to hold his pens.
Serials to Graphic Novels Page 16