Tilly Slowboy

Fred Barnard

1878

Vignetted, 14 x 11 cm

The full title is a quotation intended to demonstrate Tilly's penchant for translating adult language and behaviour into babytalk: "'Did its mothers make it up a beds, then!' cried Miss Slowboy to the Baby; 'and did its hair grow brown and curly when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious pets, a sitting by the fires!'" This third illustration for the Household Edition of Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth thus depicts the foundling Tilly Slowboy rocking the Peerybingles' infant in the "nursing chair" in "Chirp the First."

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

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