Headnote Vignette for Book II, Chapter 14 ("The Honest Tradesman") in "A Tale of Two Cities" by John McLenan in "Harper's Weekly" (7 August 1859)

Headnote Vignette

John McLenan

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, "The Golden Thread," Chapter XIV ("The Honest Tradesman.")

7 cm high by 4.3 cm wide (3 inches by 1 ¾ inches)

Harper's Weekly (Saturday, (7 August 1859): 485; the text had appeared previously in the UK on 30 July 1859 in All the Year Round.

Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham; text by PVA and George P. Landow.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Young Jerry Pursued by a Coffin

But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.

He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side — perhaps taking his arm — it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy’s kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways, too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep. [Book the Second — "The Golden Thread," Chapter XIV, Chapter 14, "The Honest Tradesman," 485]

Commentary

Having run from the cemetery where he witnessed his father and two fellow "disciples of Isaac Walton" (i. e., "fishermen") unearth a casket, Young Jerry "had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side — perhaps taking his arm — it was a pursuer to shun" (Book II, Ch. 14). As Guiliano and Collins note, Young Jerry's question the next morning about his father's describing himself as a "Resurrection-Man" indicates that Dickens had carefully researched the senior Jerry's vocation, since the term, according to the OED, was first recorded in 1781: "clearly this 'trade' was coming into prominence around this time, which is the period of the novel's action" (II, 689n).

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Materials

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates." Dickens Studies. 33 (2003): 109-158.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 7 May through 3 December 1859.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities: A story of the French Revolution. Project Gutenberg e-text by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #98].

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

Created 27 November 2007

Last modified 31 October 2025