Headnote vignette for Book II, Chapter 4, "Congratulatory," for Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" by John McLenan in "Harper's Weekly" (18 June 1859)

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Headnote Vignette

John McLenan

18 June 1859

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

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, Chapter 4, "Congratulatory."

Harper's Weekly, Vol. III, No. 129 (18 June 1859): 397; this text previously appeared in the UK in All the Year Round on 11 June 1859.

This headnote for the seventh installment, which depicts the intoxicated Carton, illustrates the episode's "curtain" or final paragraph in Ch. V.

The serial vignettes appear here courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto; the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Passage Suggested: A Portrait of Carton, Debauched and Despondent

"When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.

"'Do you particularly like the man?' he muttered, at his own image; 'why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.'

"He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him." [Book the Second — "The Golden Thread," Chapter V, "The Jackal," 399]

Comment

The winding-sheet of the tallow mentioned in the letterpress foreshadows Carton's early death, but it will be the result of making a meaningful self-sacrifice rather than of excessive drinking.

The illustration appears here courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of B. C.

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [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.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, November 1859.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. XIII.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. VIII.

_______. 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].

Created 26 November 2007

Last modified 26 November 2025