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Engraved Title-page: John, Dot, the Baby, domestic realia — the cricket
Charles Edmund Brock
1905
8.5 x 9.8 cm, vignetted
Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, engraved title-page, 103.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very What's-his-name to pay.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, I don't know. But a live baby there was, in Mrs. Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.
He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers. [Chapter One, "Chirp the First," 110-111]
Brock has surrounded the Peerybingles and their cradled infant with a border which he has based on the popular Victorian notion of the sacred domestic hearth, with a mantelpiece at the top and fireplace implements along the sides. Brock uses the other elements, the dolls and toys such as a rocking-horse, as representative of the work of the toy-makers Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter, Bertha. Finally, representing the supernatural dimension of the seasonal novella, the cricket (lower right) presides over the domestic scene. Rounding out the realia are the boiling kettle (lower left) and the warming pan (lower right), the bellows (centre left) and tongs (lower right). Thus, the ornamental title-page emphasizes the original sub-title ("A Fairy-tale of Hearth and Home"), even though Brock has not included it, by including the common, everyday objects whose descriptions dominate the opening pages of "Chirp the First": the Kettle (105), the Cricket (p. 106), and "the jolly blaze" (107, suggested by the bellows and the firewood). Brock has represented the Haymaker from the clock as a figure on the mantle (upper right) rather than adding the Dutch clock and the Moorish Palace, but has prepared the reader for the arrival of John Peerbingle and realisation of the awkward nurse, Tilly Slowboy, in the uncaptioned headpiece for Chapter one. Oddly enough, Brock fails to mention either of these illustrations in the index on viii.
Significantly, Brock has omitted the subtitle and focussed on the story's domestic realia rather than its attendant fairies. Numerous illustrators have dealt with this family grouping that is the third in the succession of lower-middle class families in The Christmas Books, whose previous heart-warming groups include the Cratchits in A Christmas Carol (1843) and Trotty Veck, the widower, and his comely daughter, Meg, in The Chimes (1844). However, this is the first family grouping in theChristmas Books that involves a dog, a baby, and a nurse; and whereas John Perrybingle is approaching the age of both Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol and Trotty in The Chimes, he is much older than his wife, and is not a member of the lower end of the urban middle-class that Dickens and his illustrators seem to have understood so well; rather, he is an independent small-business ownerin a rural, agricultural district (Dorset) of the type whom we shall meet again in Barkis of David Copperfield.
Here, the artist emphasizes the contribution to the sentimental character comedy of the peripheral members of the cast: the juvenile nurse, Tilly Slowboy, and the toy-maker Caleb. Although the original illustrators presented Tilly as wooden and eccentric, Brock has humanized her considerably, and his sketches of Boxer, the family dog, are equal to the work of illustrator Edwin Landseer, R. A. (1802-73), in the 1845 volume, specifically the snarling mastiff Boxer in "The Second Chirp." Whereas Landseer identifies the formidable dog as the guardian of John's packages in the carrier's van, Brock introduces a smaller version of him as a family member of far less ferocious aspect, the Irish Terrier, a breed noted for loyalty — E. A. Abbey's version of Boxer (see below) in this respect is utterly foreign to the text as the American illustrator introduces Boxer as a member of a toy breed. Since Tilly plays the role of the Comic Woman of the domestic melodrama in the text, Fred Barnard's Household Edition illustration of 1878 more accurately reflects Dickens's originalcharacterisation of the gangly, awkward adoleascent.
Left: Clarkson Stanfield's interpretation of the scene in the Peerybingles' parlour after John's return, John and Dot (1845). Centre: Barnard's interpretation of the same fireside scene, John Peerybingle's Fireside, in the Household Edition (1878). Right: Harry Furniss's suggestion that the stranger threatens the Peerybingle idyll, The Shadow on the Hearth, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1912).
Above: Abbey's study of the Peerybingles and their gangly nurse, "Ain't he beautiful, John?" (1876).
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_______. Christmas Books, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. X.
_______. 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 and The Cricket on the Hearth, illustrated by C. E. [Charles Edmund] Brock. London: J. M. Dent, 1905; New York: Dutton, rpt., 1963.
_______. Christmas Stories, illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_______. The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Edwin Landseer. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1845.
Created 15 October 2015
Last modified 3 July 2020