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"You shall be our head gardener when we're married."
Harold Copping
1924
Colour lithography
Approximately 7 inches high by 5 inches wide (17.9 x 12.4 cm)
From Character Sketches from Dickens, facing p. 140; facing p. 14 in Children's Stories from Dickens.
Scanned image, caption, and commentary below by Philip V. Allingham
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"Master Harry Walmers's father, he lived at the Elms, away by Shooter's Hill, six or seven miles from London. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry, as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a gentleman that had a will of his own, and an eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, still he kept the command over him, and the child was a child. I was under gardener there at that time I and one morning Master Harry, he comes to me and says —
"'Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you were asked?' and he took out his little knife and began cutting that name in print all over the fence. The next day as it might be, he stops, along with Miss Norah, where I was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up —
"'Cobbs, I like you! Why do I like you do you think, Cobbs? Because Norah likes you.'
"'Indeed, sir,' says I. 'That's very gratifying.'
"'Gratifying, Cobbs?' says Master Harry. 'It's better than a million of the brightest diamonds, to be liked by Norah. You're going away ain't you, Cobbs? Then you shall be our head gardener when we're married.' And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away. ["The Runaway Couple," Children's Stories from Dickens, pp. 11-12]
The scene that Copping has chosen to illustrate was the subject of Harry French's somewhat prosaic scene depicting Cobbs, the genial "boots" and narrator of "The Holly-Tree Inn," and Mr. Harry Walmers ("Second Branch: The Boots") in the Centenary Edition (1911). Whereas French has left "the adorable Norah" out, he has included the tulip-tree; Copping has given us the large Tudor mansion and the garden in which Cobbs labours for Harry's father in the background. In its original form, in the extra Christmas number of Household Words for 1855, the short story was unillustrated.
Since in Character Sketches from Dickens, we encounter the lithograph facing page 140, three full pages after the scene in the text, we have a better understanding of the Cobbs's relationship with the runaway couple, as well as of Nora's and Harry's idyllic but utterly impractical liaison. Although Cobbs is the boots or general factotum of the Holly Tree, the illustration presents an earlier Cobbs, so to speak, as a gardener; thus, the lithograph serves to justify Harry's offering him "another situation" as Head Gardener. The text of Children's Stories from Dickens, however, presents Cobbs as both both boot-black and stablehand of the inn, and "under-gardener" (10) at the Elms estate near Shooter's Hill, outside London. It is Cobbs himself rather than an omniscient persona who narrates the chapter entitled "The Runaway Couple," which is the second in the smaller 1893 book of 143 pages, as opposed to the weighty 1924 volume of 146 pages, in which "Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior" appears last (eleven pages derived directly from Dickens's Household Words text).
The colour illustration, set in the garden, depicts Cobbs as a gardener, whereas the line-drawings Cobbs, the Boots of the Holly-Tree Inn and Master Harry consults Cobbs about breakfast depict Cobbs cleaning boots and shoes (page 13) and wearing the Boots's apron in the stableyard of the Holly Tree (page 15), which is the story's principal setting. Since the children delightedly recognize him as they alight from their coach, the garden episode is clearly a flashback in "The Runaway Couple," and is only realizing an actual scene from the opening of the 1924 text, which is based directly on the 1855 original.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File (Checkmark), 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. 19 vols. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. Vol. 3.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All the Year Round." Illustrated by Edward Dalziel. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877, rpt. 1892, 1910. Vol. 21.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All the Year Round." Illustrated by Fred Walker, F. A. Fraser, Harry French, E. G. Dalziel, J. Manhony, Townley Green, and Charles Green. The Centenary Edition. 36 vols. London: Chapman & Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 16.
Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.
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; with thirty coloured lithographs 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 2009 Last modified 8 October 2023