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She slid down upon her knees beside his foot.
E. Borough Johnson
10 October 1891
24.4 cm high by 17.7 cm wide (9 ¾ inches by 7 ⅛ inches wide), framed.
Plate 15 from the illustrated serialisation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles.
The second of two illustrations for this serial number; three-quarter-page, horizontal, with text below same page, column 2 (Ch. XXXV), p. 423.
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Scan and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains, repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind foolishness.
Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him. After stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her disclosure had imparted itself now. His face had withered. In the strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor. He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the meaning of his vague movement. When he spoke it was in the most inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard from him.
“Tess!”
“Yes, dearest.”
“Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. O you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not... My wife, my Tess — nothing in you warrants such a supposition as that?”
“I am not out of my mind,” she said.
“And yet —” He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses: “Why didn’t you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a way — but I hindered you, I remember!”
These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed. He turned away, and bent over a chair. Tess followed him to the middle of the room, where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not weep. Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and from this position she crouched in a heap.
“In the name of our love, forgive me!” she whispered with a dry mouth. “I have forgiven you for the same!” [Book Fifth, "The Woman Pays," Chapter XXXV, 423; in the 1897 volume edition, Phase the Fifth, "The Woman Pays," Chapter XXXV, pp. 295-296]
What a contrast to Angel's attitude in both the September 26th and October 10th illustrations, Clare came down from the landing above in his shirt-sleeves, and put his arms across the stair-way by Wehrschmidt and As he passed them he kissed them in succession where they stood, saying "Good-bye" to each as he did so (the wedding party on the porch of Crick's house, also by Wehrschmidt). In complete contrast, here Angel, despite his own premarital dalliance, scorns Tess's apology, as the fifteenth serial illustration makes obvious. As in Hardy's text, the interior scene plays out in front of a great fireplace redolent with associations of previous centuries in its "polished andirons" (XXXIV: 422), high mantlepiece, grate; the fire casts a lurid glow, and the fender seems to grin at Tess's predicament. As the serial reader completes the third "book" (rather than, as in the volume, the fifth "phase"), Angel seems to repudiate his marriage, despite his having admitted to having "plunged into eight-and-forty hors' dissipation with a stranger." Tess leans forward, clutching in desperation at his jacket, but he coolly brushes her aside. The collar, the watch-chain, and pocket-handkerchief bespeak his gentlemanly status, but his conduct towards his penitent and loving wife is hardly gentlemanly. Angel's supplicant has been far more "pure" and faithful to in her guileless life, as is consistent with Horace's Latin philosophical concept of "Integer vitae" ("Ode 22," translated by Thomas Campion and standard Victorian schoolboy reading) than he. His posture indicative of callous rejection underscores both his emotional immaturity and moral hypocrisy: a less honest Alec D'Urberville in a nicer package.
Note: The next illustration in this serialisation is by a different illustrator. For the complete list, see here.
Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles Drawn by Daniel A. Wehrschmidt, Ernest Borough-Johnson, and Joseph Sydall for the Graphic (1891)." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 24 (1997): 3-50.
Allingham, Philip V. "Six Original Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles Drawn by Sir Hubert Von Herkomer for the Graphic (1891)." The Thomas Hardy Journal, Vol. X, No. 1 (February 1994): 52-70.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the Graphic, 1891, 4 July-26 December, pp. 11-761.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman. Vol. I. The Wessex Novels.London: Osgood, McIlvaine, 1897.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Vann, J. Don. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the Graphic, 4 July — 26 December 1891." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985, pp. 88-89.
Created 5 December 2000
Last modified 7 May 2024