"The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims," etc. — Final illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities," Book III, Chapter 15, "The Footsteps Die Out Forever," by John McLenan in "Harper's Weekly" (3 December 1859)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John McLenan —> Charles Dickens —> A Tale of Two Cities —> Vignette-gallery]

"The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims," etc.

John McLenan

8.4 cm high by 8.5 cm wide (3 ¼ inches by 3 ⅜ inches)

From the thirty-first and final instalment of the novel as it appeared in Harper's Weekly (3 December 1859): 781; it had originally appeared in the UK on Saturday, 26 November 1859, in All the Year Round.

Having taken Darnay's place for imminent execution, Sydney Carton comforts his fellow-victim, the little seamstress, after their arrival by tumbrel at La Place de Sainte Guillotine (today, ironically, La Place de la Concorde), Paris.

Passage Illustrated: ". . . the knitting women count Twenty-Two."

"But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven."

"Or you to me," says Sydney Carton. "Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object."

"I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid."

"They will be rapid. Fear not!"

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom. [Book the Third — "The Track of a Storm," Chapter XV, "The Footsteps Die Out Forever," 781]

Commentary: Redemption with the humble Seamstress — "together on the dark highway"

Compare this illustration to Fred Barnard's composite woodblock engraving The Third Tumbrel for Volume VIII of The Household Edition (1874). In the American serial illustration, Carton and the seamstress have already alighted from the cart, and stand on the ground, guarded by heavily armed Jacobins. The moment in both Barnard and McLenan is something of an anti-climax since Miss Pross has already thwarted Madame Defarge's plans in Like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground in the McLenan sequence, and in "You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer . . ." in Barnard's program of illustration for Volume VIII of The Household Edition. That Carton — in contrast to the Defarges — acts purely out "of love underlines the values and forces that Dickens advances in the novel against the forces of the Devil" (Guiliano and Collins, "Note 6," 821). Certainly, the McLenan illustration focusses on Carton's personal sacrifice rather than on any promised resurrection or on the redemption of society as a whole, although such issues were very much under discussion in the some of the greatest literary works of the period.

The year 1859 was a miraculous one for British books, one of the most remarkably rich years in the history of writing. Among the many works from that year, in addition to A Tale of Two Cities, were Wilkie Collins's Woman in White, George Eliot's Adam Bede, Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, Samuel Smiles' Self-Help, and Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King. [Guiliano and Collins, "Note 6," 821]

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

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.]

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].

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. With illustrations by John McLenan and Rowland Wheelwright. Orinda, Cal.: Sea Wolf Press, 2021.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. "Introduction and Notes for A Tale of Two Cities." The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. II: 578-821.

Vann, J. Don. "A Tale of Two Cities in All the Year Round, 30 April — 26 November 1859." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 71-72.

Created 27 November 2007

Last modified 26 November 2025