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John Approaches the Stranger's Door with a Gun in his Hand
L. Rossi after Charles Green
1912
Lithograph
9.3 cm high x 7.6 cm wide, framed
First illustration for "Chirp the Third" in Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, The Pears' Centenary Edition, III, 99.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but, staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger; and cried "Kill him! In his bed!"
He reversed the gun to beat the stock upon the door; he already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God’s sake, by the window ——
When, suddenly, the struggling fire illumined the whole chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to Chirp!
No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for this same Cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment, was again before him; her pleasant voice — O what a voice it was, for making household music at the fireside of an honest man! — thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and action.
He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the Gun aside. ["Chirp the Third," 98-100]
Rossi has already communicated clearly the moment he is realising through the title of the illustration in the index: John Approaches the Stranger's Door with a Gun in his Hand (12). He now emphasizes the exact moment that he is showing in John's moral conflict: "He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the Gun aside" (99). But that caption does not explain the presence of the cricket in the bubble, upper left. That part of the illustration, in which Rossi depicts the cricket as the voice of John's conscience, occurs in the text immediately before the excerpt that Rossi has used as his caption.
Rossi's somewhat theatrical presentation of John reversing his weapon undercuts the possibility of violence. Through John's posture and expression the illustrator implies that, although the Carrier is attempting to detect the sound of movement in his guest's room, he is rejecting a violent course of action. Now John casts an ominous shadow before the door, but his face suggests curiosity rather than rage — the response which E. A. Abbey illustrates in his Household Edition plate of John and Tackleton (see below). Rossi follows this scene of indecision or doubt with the spectacular transformation scene in which the Fairy Cricket, attended by her minions, counsels John.
Abbey's Household Edition illustration focuses on John's angry response to Tackleton's tempting him to violence: "Listen to me!" he said. "And take care that you hear me right" (1876).
Left: Doyle's version of John's long night of anguish, headnote illustration Chirp the Third, the direct consequence of the misunderstood scene in the gallery. Centre: Leech's version of the scene in which John wrestles with his conscience: John's Reverie (1845). Right: Brock's line-drawing depicts both the anguished husband and the spirit of the Fairy Cricket, rather than, as in Rossi's interpretation, a literal cricket: "Chirp the Third" (1905).
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
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].
_____. The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by L. Rossi. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
Created 24 April 2001
Last modified 23 May 2020