Passage Illustrated: Austenian Comments on Marriage from "The Dear Old Creature"

"So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly," said she, drawing a chair to the fire; "and while I have it in my lap, here's Mrs. Fielding, Tilly, will tell me all about the management of Babies, and put me right in twenty points where I'm as wrong as can be. Won't you, Mrs. Fielding?"

Not even the Welsh Giant, who, according to the popular expression, was so "slow" as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch-enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the Snare prepared for him, as the old lady into this artful Pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in the Indigo trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on the part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace in the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot, she did, in half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic recipes and precepts, than would (if acted on) have utterly destroyed and done up that Young Peerybingle, though he had been an Infant Samson. ["Chirp the Second," pp. 102-104]

Robert L. Patten's Commentary on Caleb's Spurious Great-Coat

The third image [of the Plummers' workroom] . . . , of Mrs. Fielding in state before the fire providing instruction in child-rearing to Dot and May, displays a more orderly and maintained hearth not previously pictured, in which a coal fire is sending up warming puffs of smoke and light. Some of the objects Dickens details feature in each illustration, but not all the same ones. No critic has identified what the garment with "GLASS" or "CT GLASS" stitched on it stands for, but both artists included it. It's Caleb's great-coat, made out of sackcloth that once covered an old box. ["Chirping," pp. 181-182]

Related Materials and Details

• The Christmas Books of Charles Dickens
• Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s single illustration for The Cricket on the Hearth (1867)
• A. E. Abbey's Household Edition illustrations for The Christmas Books (1876)
• Fred Barnard's Household Edition illustrations for The Christmas Books (1878)
• Harry Furniss's illustrations for Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth (1910)
• Caleb Plummer's Working Room (L. Rossi, 1912)
• An Especially Festive Gathering (L. Rossi, 1912)

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Edwin Landseer. Engraved by George Dalziel, Edward Dalziel, T. Williams, J. Thompson, R. Graves, and Joseph Swain. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846 [December 1845].

Patten, Robert L. Chapter 8, "Chirping." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 169-199. [Review]

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Created 20 February 2001

Last updated 29 May 2024