[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Fred Barnard —> Illustrations of Dombey and Son —> Next]
Flung it down, and trod upon the glittering heap
Fred Barnard
1877
13.9 cm high by 10.6 cm wide (5 ½ by 4 ⅛ inches), three-quarter-page, framed.
composite wood-block engraving
Dombey and Son, page 225
Illustration for Chapter XXXII, "The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces," page 280, in Dickens's Dombey and Son, in the Household Edition, Vol. XV.
[Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
"Perhaps," said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in his air, "you mistook my position, when you honoured me with the negotiations in which I have been engaged here" — with a motion of his hand towards Mrs. Dombey.
"Not at all, Sir, not at all," returned the other haughtily. "You were employed —"
"Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs. Dombey. I forgot. Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!" said Carker. "I beg your pardon!"
As he bent his head to Mr. Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way.
She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up with such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit’s majesty of scorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels radiant on her head, and, plucking it off with a force that dragged and strained her rich black hair with heedless cruelty, and brought it tumbling wildly on her shoulders, cast the gems upon the ground. From each arm, she unclasped a diamond bracelet, flung it down, and trod upon the glittering heap. Without a word, without a shadow on the fire of her bright eye, without abatement of her awful smile, she looked on Mr. Dombey to the last, in moving to the door; and left him. [Chapter 47, "The Thunderbolt," 337]
This wood-engraving was reproduced as part of a book review in the 1908 Dickensian on page 301. The reviewer utilizes it as an example of Barnard's work in order to demonstrate his importance as the illustrator who shaped many late-Victorian ideas about Dickens's characters.
In truth, the parlour scene that the reviewer has chosen may not represent Barnard's best work for the Household Edition. Yet the plate does demonstrate the illustrator's penchant for theatrical scenes in which two or three characters are featured in a tight stage set, attracting the eye to the figures, rather than to the kinds of background details, notably pictures and texts, that Barnard's friend and predecessor as a Dickens illustrator, Phiz, loved to embed as symbols in his best work.
In contrast, Barnard has dressed his stage set with ornately framed pictures without even supplying recognizable images for those background elements and has elaborated neither the wallpaper nor the carpet. Furthermore, he poses the three characters in such a way that each is highly individualized and communicates a contrasting attitude (indignation, suspicion, surprise respectively here), Dombey's gripping the chair back being particularly revealing in an illustration that the Dickensian review simply entitled The Thunderbolt.
Left: Phiz's dramatisation of a different side of Edith's character as he
focuses on her relationship with her step-daughter:
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Phiz. (Hablot K. Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1848.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.
_______. Dombey and Son. With 16 Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and A. V. S. Anthony (engraver). The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [62 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.
"Dombey and Son — Sixty-two Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.
Thomas, William. [Review] "A Dickens Picture Book." The Dickensian. 1908. Pp. 300-302.
Created 10 January 2021 Last modified 11 August 2022