Headnote Vignette for Book II, Chapter 22, "The Sea still rises," "A Tale of Two Cities" by John McLenan in "Harper's Weekly" (10 September 1859)

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Headnote Vignette: "his head was soon upon a pike."

John McLenan

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, Chapter 22, "The Sea Still Rises."

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

Harper's Weekly (10 September 1859): 589; this instalment had appeared in the UK on Saturday, 3 September, in All the Year Round.

The Defarges celebrate the capture and decapitation of Joseph-Francis Foullon de Doué, the unpopular Controller-General of Finances who had supposedly suggested that the starving people of Paris could eat hay during the current famine. Appropriately, he was hung from a lampost near the Hotel de Ville, and his mouth stuffed with grass. Here, the St. Antoine mob parade his severed head through the streets.

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: The Celebrated Death of Old Foullon on 22 July 1789.

"See!" cried madame, pointing with her knife. "See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!" Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play. . . . Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied — The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches — when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, "Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!"

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go — as a cat might have done to a mouse — and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of. [Book the Second — "The Golden Thread," Chapter XXII, "The Sea Still Rises," 589]

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

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 5 August 2007

Last modified 24 November 2025