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Listening to the Sea
Fred Barnard
1877
13.8 cm high x 10.4 cm wide, framed.
composite wood-block engraving
Dombey and Son, p. 57
Illustration for Chapter 8, "Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character," Dickens's Dombey and Son, in the fifteenth volume of the Household Edition.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
"If you were in India, Floy," said Paul, after being silent for a minute, "I should — what is it that Mama did? I forget."
"Loved me!" answered Florence.
"No, no. Don’t I love you now, Floy? What is it? — Died. If you were in India, I should die, Floy."
She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow, caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be better soon.
"Oh! I am a great deal better now!" he answered. "I don’t mean that. I mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!"
Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening. Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
"I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her face. "The sea" Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?"
She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
"Yes, yes," he said. "But I know that they are always saying something. Always the same thing. What place is over there?" He rose up, looking eagerly at the horizon.
She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he didn’t mean that: he meant further away—farther away!"
Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off, to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away. [Chapter 8, "Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character," 56]
In one of the few illustrations whose title is not an actual quotation Barnard presents Paul as an invalid being taken for airing on the seashore by his devoted sister. Aware from the start of heer importance in the narrative, Barnard emphasizes the figure of Florence Dombey by giving her more appearances than any other character in his narrative-pictorial sequence.
Left: Phiz's December 1846 introduction of the terrifying child-minder whom Paul cows in the eighth chapter, Paul and Mrs. Pipchin. Left of centre: Furniss's reinterpretation of Phiz's study of Paul at Mrs. Pipchin's fireside in Chapter 8: Paul puzzling Mrs. Pipchin (1910). Right of centre: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the ogress and Florence Dombey's devoted but sharp-tongued maid: Mrs. Pipchin and Susan Nipper (1867). Right: W. H. C. Groome's study of the Dombey children on the beach at Brighton: "She hurriedly put her work aside" (1900)
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. 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.
Created 15 December 2020