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Caleb's Daughter, the Dolls' Dressmaker
Harry Furniss
1910
1.5 cm x 1.7 cm, vignetted
Thumbnail illustration for The Cricket on the Hearth in Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), VIII, on the engraved title-page.
[Click on images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured, walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there, high crevices unstopped, and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested — never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word of thankfulness. ["Chirp The Second," 186]
However if the index is an error, then, including the multiple thumbnail sketches in the margins of the title-page as a single unit, there are just thirty illustrations in total. Readers of the 1910 volume would have encountered the thumbnail illustration in anticipation of the passage that they would meet in the text almost two hundred pages later. However, the characters of Bertha and Caleb Plummer were well known to readers on both sides of the Atlantic in 1910 owing to sixty-five years of dramatic adaptations of The Cricket on the Hearth particularly Dion Boucicault's Dot, which premiered at New York City's Wintergarden Theatre on 14 September 1859, with noted American comedian Joseph Jefferson as Caleb. In the original, Dickens-sanctioned production at the Lyceum, London, which opened on 20 December 1845, the role was enacted by actor-manager Keeley himself, and the part had been revived countless times between the original Albert Smith and Edward Stirling adaptations and the 1909 cinematic version, directed by D. W. Griffith. The foremost nineteenth-century actor to bring the comic-pathetic part to the boards was J. L. Toole. Bertha is happy with her narrow world and her role as a toymaker, but Furniss confirms nothing much about her character (other than her working with dolls) by providing a full-page realisation of her.
The father and daughter share a devoted companionship in sharp contrast to that of Jenny Wren, "The Dolls' Dressmaker," and her alcoholic and irresponsible parent, "Mr. Dolls," in Our Mutual Friend, a pair of figures with whom Furniss's readers would already have been familiar. Furniss has sketched Caleb in his sackcloth garment, which, for Bertha's bebnefit, he terms "beautiful blue coat," although in fact it is already hanging on a clothesline to dry at the beginning of "Chirp the Second." The prop constitutes, however, a necessary detail since it enables the reader to identify Caleb at the start of the book, a typical piece of Dickensian shorthand for the little toy-maker who strives to make his blind daughter's life more cheerful and their poverty less apparent.
Left: Richard Doyle's Chirp the Second; right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Caleb Plummer and Bertha (1867).
Left: E. A. Abbey's "Halloo! Hallo!" Said Caleb. "I shall be vain presently!"; right, Fred Barnard's rendition of Bertha, Caleb, and Tackleton.
Bolton, H. Phili "The Cricket on the Hearth." Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987, 273-95.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. , 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844 [dated 1845].
__________. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910, VIII, 79-157.
__________. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
__________. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Thomas, Deborah A. Chapter 4, "The Chord of the Christmas Season." Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 62-93.
Created 2 July 2013
Last modified 2 January 2020