"She has gone on with Mr. Henchard, you say?" by Robert Barnes. Plate 13, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, which appeared in the London The Graphic, 27 March 1886: Chapter XXVII (continued) — XXXIX, p. 341. 17.4 cm high by 22.4 cm wide — 6 ⅝ inches high by 8 ⅞ inches wide. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: The Aftermath of Henchard's rescuing Lucetta from the bull
Elizabeth soon found the muff [that Lucetta had left behind in the barn], such an article being by no means small at that time. Coming out she paused to look for a moment at the bull, now rather to be pitied with his bleeding nose, having perhaps rather intended a practical joke than a murder. Henchard had secured him by jamming the staff into the hinge of the barn-door, and wedging it there with a stake. At length she turned to hasten onward after her contemplation, when she saw a green-and-black gig approaching from the contrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Farfrae.
His presence here seemed to explain Lucetta’s walk that way. Donald saw her, drew up, and was hastily made acquainted with what had occurred. At Elizabeth-Jane mentioning how greatly Lucetta had been jeopardized, he exhibited an agitation different in kind no less than in intensity from any she had seen in him before. He became so absorbed in the circumstance that he scarcely had sufficient knowledge of what he was doing to think of helping her up beside him.
“She has gone on with Mr. Henchard, you say?” he inquired at last.
“Yes. He is taking her home. They are almost there by this time.”
“And you are sure she can get home?”
Elizabeth-Jane was quite sure.
“Your stepfather saved her?”
“Entirely.” [Chapter XXIX, 343; in volume, pp. 249-250]
Commentary
Barnes has passed up the opportunity to realise one of the novel's most exciting incidents: Henchard's rescuing Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane from a rampaging bull (depicted in the background, left). Instead, he has elected to show Farfrae's driving up in his fashionable gig as he returns from an out-of-town engagement. Lucetta, returning to Casterbridge on foot from a brief holiday in Port Bredy, had encountered Elizabeth-Jane, who had expressly left High Place Hall to meet her in Port Bredy, and accompany her home on the lonely high road. The pair have been chased into a barn by a savage and formidable bull, but fortuitously have been rescued by the sudden appearance of Michael Henchard. Without any hesitation, he has grabbed the creature's nose-ring, and subdued the beast with both expert knowledge of farm animals and considerable strength. Elizabeth has climbed, unseen, into a stack of clover, from which vantage point she has been surprised to observe Henchard take Lucetta in his arms. Shortly afterward, Farfrae turns up, looking for Lucetta (in other words, his bride), and offers to drive Elizabeth-Jane back to town. This is the moment that Barnes has elected to show readers as a tantalizing headpiece, one of the few scenes not set in Casterbridge, and Farfrae not dressed for business and wearing a Scottish tam (unspecified by Hardy). Barnes gives prominence to Lucetta's muff, Farfrae's tidy but casual dress, the bull, and the period gig.
The upshot is a series of revelations worthy of a Sensation Novel. Releasing Lucetta from her promise to marry him, Henchard on the road back to town asks her to tell his chief creditor, Mr. Grower, that they are still engaged. Now comes the shock: Lucetta cannot accede to this request because Grower (by sheer coincidence) was present in Port Bredy and agreed to serve as witness to her recent marriage to Farfrae. Henchard's financial ruin thus seems assured at the end of instalment thirteen when he proudly refuses Lucetta's offer to pay off his debt.
Related Material: Sensation Literature
- Sensation Novel Elements in The London Graphic's Twenty-Part Serialisation of Hardy The Mayor of Casterbridge (January through May, 1886)
- Thomas Hardy and Magazine Fiction, 1870-1900
- Sensational Literature (December 1864)
- The Sensation Novel — a Bibliography
- A Victorian Recipe for Sensation Novel (a Parody)
- A Philip V. Allingham's review of The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction
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. "A Consideration of Robert Barnes' Illustrations for Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as Serialised in the London Graphic: 2 January-15 May, 1886." Victorian Periodicals Review 28, 1 (Spring 1995): pp. 27-39
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Graphic 33 (1886).
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge: A Story of a Man of Character. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1895.
Jackson, Arlene. "The Mayor of Casterbridge: Realism and Metaphor."Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Pp. 96-104.
“Sensational Literature.” The Reader: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Art. London: “Published at 112, Fleet Street.” (November 1864): 597-98. Hathi Digital Library Trust web version of a copy in the Princeton University Library. 23 July 2016.
Created 28 July 2001
Last modified 23 March 2024