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. . . a corner when there was no escape
Charles Edmund Brock
1905
10 x 9cm, vignetted
Dickens's A Christmas Carol, second plate for Stave Two, "The Second of the Three Spirits," 69.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
There was first a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous. No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains. [Stave Three, "The Second of the Three Spirits," 68-69]
In the coyness of the plump sister's facial expression the illustration does suggest that the game of Blind-man's Buff is a courtship ritual, even though E. C. Brock, unlike Sol Eytinge, Junior in his 1868 illustration of this passage, does not show the good-natured reactions of the onlookers to the "plight" of the quarry. Although unable to communicate Dickens's ironic tone, Brock has embedded the detail of the overturned chair to indicate that Topper is feigning being unable to see anything (although Dickens hints that he is cheating) in order to excuse his "verifying" the identity of the plump sister by touching her head-dress — and then using this occasion to propose. Brock's selection of incidents for realisation is radically from the choices made by Dickens and John Leech for the original 1843 edition of the novella as the Victorian artist offered interpretations of the "jolly Giant glorious to see" in two contrasting scenes: that of the festive abundance of the Spirit of Christmas Present enthroned in The Second of The Three Spirits; or, Scrooge's Third Visitor and that of the dire Carlylean warning about the fate of a nation that ignores the plight of the poor in Ignorance and Want. Brock has chosen scenes of a distinctly un-supernatural nature thus far for his subjects, perhaps because previous illustrators had handled that dimension of the text so adroitly.
Left: Green's interpretation of the highjinks of blindman's buff at Fred's party, The Christmas Party at Scrooge's Nephew's: "The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature." (1892) Right: Eytinge's depicts the same scene but, unlike Brock, focusses upon the social context of the game rather than just upon Topper and the plump sister in Blind-man's Buff, in the 1868 single-volume edition.
Above: Abbey's half-page rendering of the scene as a repentant Scrooge arrives at his nephew's on Christmas day, "It's I. Your Uncle Scrooge! I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?" (1878).
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.
_____. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by C. E. [Charles Edmund] Brock. London: J. M. Dent, 1905; New York: Dutton, rpt., 1963.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A. & F. Pears, 1912.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. (1843). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins, eds. The Annotated Dickens. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. 1.
Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas Carol. New York: Avenel, 1976.
Created 22 September 2015
Last modified 18 March 2020