Off Yarmouth — Book 6, chap. vi, "Last Years in Devonshire Terrace. 1848-1851." Seventeenth regular illustration by Fred Barnard for John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, the twenty-second volume in the Household Edition (1879). Composite woodblock engraving by Dalziels, 10.7 by 13.9 cm (4 ¼ by 5 ½ inches), 264, framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the images, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Passage Illustrated: "That Celebrated Seaport" as a setting for David Copperfield
In all the latter part of the year [1848] Dickens's thoughts were turning much to the form his next book should assume. A suggestion that he should write it in the first person, by way of change, had been thrown out by me, which he took at once very gravely; and this, with other things, though as yet not dreaming of any public use of his own personal and private recollections, conspired to bring about that resolve. The determination once taken, with what a singular truthfulness he contrived to blend the fact with the fiction may be shown by a small occurrence of this time. It has been inferred, from the vividness of the boy-impressions of Yarmouth in David's earliest experiences, that the place must have been familiar to his own boyhood: but the truth was that at the close of 1848 he first saw that celebrated sea-port. One of its earlier months had been signalised by an adventure in which Leech, Lemon, and myself took part with him, when, obtaining horses from Salisbury, we passed the whole of a March day in riding over every part of the Plain; visiting Stonehenge, and exploring Hazlitt's "hut" at Winterslow, birthplace of some of his finest essays; altogether with so brilliant a success that now (13th of November) he proposed to "repeat the Salisbury Plain idea in a new direction in mid-winter, to wit, Blackgang Chine in the Isle of Wight, with dark winter cliffs and roaring oceans." But mid-winter brought with it too much dreariness of its own, to render these stormy accompaniments to it very palatable; and on the last day of the year he bethought him "it would be better to make an outburst to some old cathedral city we don't know, and what do you say to Norwich and Stanfield-hall?" Thither accordingly the three friends went, illness at the last disabling me; and of the result I heard (12th of January, 1849) that Stanfield-hall, the scene of a recent frightful tragedy, had nothing attractive unless the term might be applied to "a murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime. We arrived," continued Dickens, "between the Hall and Potass farm, as the search was going on for the pistol in a manner so consummately stupid, that there was nothing on earth to prevent any of Rush's labourers from accepting five pounds from Rush junior to find the weapon and give it to him. Norwich, a disappointment" (one pleasant face "transformeth a city," but he was unable yet to connect it with our delightful friend Elwin); "all save its place of execution, which we found fit for a gigantic scoundrel's exit. But the success of the trip, for me, was to come. Yarmouth, sir, where we went afterwards, is the strangest place in the wide world: one hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh between it and London. More when we meet. I shall certainly try my hand at it." He made it the home of his "little Em'ly." [Book VI. "At The Summit, 1847-1852," Chapter vi, "Last Years in Devonshire Terrace. 1848-1851," 262]
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Barnard, Fred, et al. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney [and others] printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman & Hall, 1908. Page 574.
[The copy of the book from which these pictures were scanned is in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.]
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872 and 1874. 3 vols.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.
Created 15 September 2009
Last modified 15 January 2025