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Caleb Plummer and His Blind Daughter
Harold Copping
1924
Colour lithography
Approximately 7 x 5 inches (17.9 x 12.4 cm)
An illustration for The Cricket on the Hearth from Character Sketches from Dickens, facing p. 134.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Whereas John Leech's point of interest in the scene Caleb at Work in the original illustrations for the 1845 Christmas Book The Cricket on the Hearth is the delightfully crowded workshop for toys which Dickens describes in "Chirp the Second," Copping focuses on the relationship between the laughing daughter Bertha and her devoted father. Richard Doyle's treatment of the pair at the outset of "Chirp the Second" is a crude caricature even compared to Leech's more sensitive rendering, but both of the original illustrators of the novella interpret the toys as works of the imagination or fancy whose beauty and variety contrast the blandness and poverty of those who created them. Copping, in contrast, humanizes father and daughter, making them individuals worthy of our attention without reference to their creations.
Poorly-paid toymaker Caleb Plummer is bitten by care, guarding the secret of their poverty; "The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured, walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there, . . . that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off" ("Chirp the Second"), but knows their living-room and work-room are one and the same. All three artists chose to illustrate these lines: "In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll's dress-maker; Caleb painting and glazing the four-pair of a desirable family mansion."
Three illustrations of the toy-makers in their parlour: Left: Doyle's Chirp the Second (1845). Centre: John Leech's caricatural Caleb at Work (1845). Right of centre: Fred Barnard's Household Edition title-page plate for the novella, Caleb, Bertha, and Tackleton/span> (1878).
Three further late illustrations of the toy-makers and the workshop-parlour: Left: Luigi Rossi's's Caleb Plummer's Home (1912). Centre: E. A. Abbey's American Household Edition plate for The Christmas Books caricatural "Halloo! Halloo!" said Caleb. "I shall be vain presently!" (1876). Right: Harry Furniss's Caleb Plummer — The Toy Maker (1912).
Dickens, Charles. The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. London: Chapman & Hall, 1845.
Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Created 1 March 2006 Last updated 27 September 2023