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Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel.
Robert Barnes
1 May 1886 (Part Eighteen)
Composite Woodblock Engraving
17.7 cm high by 22.8 cm wide — 6 ¾ by 8 ¾ inches
Dickens's The Mayor of Casterbridge, Chapter XXXIX, p. 477.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
See below for passage illustrated and commentary.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Without waiting for Lucetta’s reply she crossed quickly to the window and pulled out one of the shutters. Lucetta glided to her side. “Let it be — hush!” she said peremptorily, in a dry voice, while she seized Elizabeth-Jane by the hand, and held up her finger. Their intercourse had been so low and hurried that not a word had been lost of the conversation without, which had thus proceeded: —
“Her neck is uncovered, and her hair in bands, and her back-comb in place; she’s got on a puce silk, and white stockings, and coloured shoes.”
Again Elizabeth-Jane attempted to close the window, but Lucetta held her by main force.
“’Tis me!” she said, with a face pale as death. “A procession —a scandal — an effigy of me, and him!”
The look of Elizabeth betrayed that the latter knew it already.
“Let us shut it out,” coaxed Elizabeth-Jane, noting that the rigid wildness of Lucetta’s features was growing yet more rigid and wild with the meaning of the noise and laughter. “Let us shut it out!”
“It is of no use!” she shrieked. “He will see it, won’t he? Donald will see it! He is just coming home — and it will break his heart — he will never love me any more — and O, it will kill me — kill me!”
Elizabeth-Jane was frantic now. “O, can’t something be done to stop it?” she cried. “Is there nobody to do it — not one?”
She relinquished Lucetta’s hands, and ran to the door. Lucetta herself, saying recklessly “I will see it!” turned to the window, threw up the sash, and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed, and put her arm round her to pull her in. Lucetta’s eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel, now dancing rapidly. The numerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid distinctness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the intended victims. [Chapter XXXIX, p. 478 in serial; volume, 337]
Above: Barnes establishes the close emotional bond between Elizabeth-Jane and Lucetta in She knelt down on the hearth, and took her friend's hands excitedly in her own (13 March 1886).
Barnes, aware that his artistic strength lies in his ability to depict characters and costume, often avoids scenes requiring movement and action, such as the Skimmington, where he elects not to show the raucous procession, but dwells instead upon the characters' reactions (somewhat melodramatic expressions on the faces of Elizabeth-Jane and Lucetta in the May 1st illustration, Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel (477). The nocturnal revellers, in fact, are directly represented by just two figures, one running so swiftly that he must hold onto his hat (left), and the other holding up a torch (right). The focus of the picture, the women's faces (the highlight presumably resulting from the reflected torches of the revellers off left), reveals the emotional impact on them of this public revelation of Lucetta's prior relationship with Henchard. However, as she was married to Henchard in Jersey in the serial version, the Skimmington here threatens Lucetta with exposure of her marriage to Farfrae as bigamous rather than her prior relationship with Henchard as bering merely indiscrete. In contrast to her companion, who is fainting rather than enduring the spectacle, Elizabeth seems almost mesmerized, momentarily frozen after the rapid motion implied by her thrown-back bonnet and upraised hand. The glare of the procession's torches is further suggested by the shadows which the railings cast on Lucetta and which the rosebush in the foreground casts upon Elizabeth. Barnes anticipates this climactic moment in the relationship between the two Casterbridge newcomers in the "confessional" scene in Lucetta's well-appointed parlour in the Chapter XXIV illustration, She knelt down on the hearth, and took her friend's hands excitedly in her own.
The fashionable clothing of the two women conveys almost as much information as their theatrical poses and expressions. Elizabeth is no longer in mourning as she was in the February 20th illustration, but wears the dress depicted in the illustrations for February 27th, March 13th, and March 27th. This rigorous visual continuity (so much Barnes's strength as it is Collier's weakness in the plates for The Trumpet Major) is repeated in Lucetta's dress, which occurs in the April 17th illustration, implying a contrast between her domestic happiness in her husband's confidence then depicted and her agony at the prospect of losing that confidence in the May 1st illustration. The fashionable dresses, the wrought-iron railing, and the symbolic rosebush are realised in carefully-drawn detail, as opposed to the shadowy street and town clock in the background. These generalized details, however, reveal that Barnes was unfamiliar with Hardy's Dorchester and the real situation of mansion, in Corn Street, which Hardy has imagined as Henchard's former residence, the clock he has drawn being the sort found in such nearby towns as Salisbury and Winchester.
How much of each Barnes illustration is actually justified by Hardy's text and how much is the artist's invention? In the May 1st illustration, "Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle of the uncanny revel" (477), for example, the chief elements, the fully-drawn figures of the two women, are derived from the text only in so far as Hardy indicates that they are both on the balcony of High Place Hall as the Skimmington ride passes. An examination of the details of the illustration indicates that Barnes carefully studied the relevant scene in Ch. XXXIX, integrating his illustration of Lucetta and Elizabeth Jane here with patterns established by previous renderings of them. Across Corn Street, for example, the town clock previously mentioned shows 8:35 in the evening, and the text suggests that it would have been somewhat after "eight o'clock" (477) that Elizabeth would have arrived, after Lucetta has overheard the exchange between the two housemaids about the identities of the two persons represented by the effigies. That no light reflects upon the women's faces from the interior of the house (right) is consistent with Hardy's mentioning that Lucetta "had not had the candles lighted," the room being illuminated only by firelight. The bonnet tipped back over Elizabeth's shoulders is consistent with her having "breathlessly" (478) addressed Lucetta as she entered the room. By the time that the pair can see the bacchic procession clearly from the balcony, "the rigid wildness of Lucetta's features" (478) has been succeeded by "a wild laugh as she stepped in" from outside. Barnes has therefore attempted to capture that moment that precedes the laugh and Lucetta's subsequent collapse in an epileptic fit. He shows Elizabeth with her right arm drawn protectively around her companion, her left hand holding Lucetta's right as she attempts "to pull her in." However, the spectacle that Lucetta confronts is either advancing or directly beneath her at that point, and cannot have passed as Barnes's illustration suggests.
Furthermore, Hardy nowhere describes the balcony's petalless rose-bush; one wonders if Barnes has added it for mere compositional or decorative effect, or whether he intends it to be a symbol, not so much of the insentience of vegetable life and its lack of awareness of the human condition (a theme Hardy has already established), but of the fruitless issue of Lucetta's marriage to Farfrae. The petalless bush may be intended to foreshadow Lucetta's miscarriage.
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. The Graphic 33 (2 January-15 May 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.
Created 28 July 2001
Last modified 24 March 2024