Dick Swiveller at his desk
Harold Copping
1893
Photographic reproduction of line drawing, p. 114.
12 x 10 cm (4 ¾ by 3 ⅞ inches), vignetted.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, caption, and commentary below by Philip V. Allingham
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Passage Illustrated: Dick Takes Note
What he had seen troubled Dick Swiveller very much, and he thought often of the poor small servant. He was left alone a great deal in the office in the evening with nothing to do, and he used to play cribbage with a dummy.
After a time, he began to think that on those evenings he heard a kind of snorting in the direction of the door, which it occurred to him must come from the small servant, who always had a cold from damp living. ["The Marchioness," Chapter XI in Children's Stories from Dickens, 113]
Commentary: Dick Determines to Solve the Mystery of The Marchioness
Copping is here setting up the final scene in his sequence, but the Dick that Copping offers us in his colour plate Dick Swiveller's Surprise; or, Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness (1924) seems a good deal older than this startled clerk at his desk; in this regard, the colour lithograph of the Dick as a Glorious Apoller among the Raphael Tuck postcards seems much closer to the other interpretations of the delightful secondary character. Copping's "children's" version of Dick Swiveller emphasizes his gangly adolescence, rather than his drinking, posturing, fighting, or swearing. Copping's figure is much more youthful than the dissolute young clerk that the original wood-engravings for Master Humphrey's Clock depict, perhaps because Copping is attempting to narrow the age discrepancy between Dick and the Marchioness since at the conclusion of Mary Angela Dickens's chapter he marries her.
Other Illustrations of Dissolute Dick Swiveller (1840-1910)
Left: Clayton J. Clarke's eleventh Player's Cigarette Card in the Characters from Dickens series: Dick Swiveller (1910). Centre: Phiz's introduction of dissolute clerk at the Curiosity Shop: Mr. Swiveller Seeks to Gain Attention (16 May 1840). Right: Sol Eytinge's version of her in the Diamond Edition: Dick Swiveller and The Marchioness (1867).
Left: Harry Furniss's Charles Dickens Library Edition lithograph: Dick Swiveller hears the Marchioness say "No!" (1910). Centre: Charles Green offers a more comedic version of Dick as he appears with Fred Trent at the Curiosity Shop: The old man sat himself down in a chair, and, with folded hands, looked sometimes at his grandson and sometimes at his strange companion (1876). Right: Kyd's watercolour of the rakish clerk, posing with cigar and cane: Dick Swiveller, a colour lithograph: "A select convivial circle called the 'Glorious Apollers,' of which I have the honour to be Perpetual Grand".
Left: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's study of the exuberant clerk for Character Sketches from Dickens (1888): Dick Swiveller and Quilp, from 'The Old Curiosity Shop'. Centre: Thomas Worth in the American Household Edition introduces Dick with his ruler confronting the Brasses' roomer, the Single Gentleman: "You must pay for a double-bedded room." (Ch. XXXV, 1872). Right: Furniss's realisation of Dick's drinking beer with and teaching cribbage to the small servant in the evenings at the office: Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness (1910).
Left: Furniss nearly loses the tipsy clerk among the bric-a-brac and amour of the Curiosity Shop in Fred Trent visits his Grandfather (1910). Centre: Thomas Worth in a markedly realistic manner describes the general untidiness of Dick's rooms and his lifestyle in general in "Whether he lives or dies, what does it come to?" (1872). Right: Copping gives us a slightly boozier and more disreputable young clerk in Character Sketches from Dickens in Dick Swiveller's Surprise (1924).
Various Artists' Illustrations for Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (1841-1924)
- The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works."
- George Cattermole (13 plates selected)
- Hablot Knight Browne (61 wood-engravings)
- Felix O. C. Darley (4 photogravure plates)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (12 wood engravings)
- Thomas Worth (54 wood engravings)
- Charles Green (39 wood engravings)
- W. H. C. Groome (8 lithographs plus engraved title)
- J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (13 lithographs from watercolours)
- Harry Furniss (31 lithographs plus engraved title)
Bibliography
Clarke, Joseph Clayton. ('Kyd'). "Dick Swiveller (Old Curiosity Shop. - Chap. XIII.)." Characters from Dickens. Series III. London: Raphael Tuck, 1904.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman and Hall, 1841. Rpt., 1849 by Bradbury and Evans (3 vols. in 2).
_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Thomas Worth. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Bros., 1872. I.
_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
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.
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.
Created 9 October 2023