The Cricket
L. Rossi
1912
Lithograph
3.9 cm high x 3 cm wide, vignetted
Final illustration for "Chirp the Third" in Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, The Pears' Centenary Edition, III, tailpiece for final page (140).
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Well! if you’ll believe me, they have not been dancing five minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe away, takes Dot round the waist, dashes out into the room, and starts off with her, toe and heel, quite wonderfully. Tackleton no sooner sees this, than he skims across to Mrs. Fielding, takes her round the waist, and follows suit. Old Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot in the middle of the dance, and is the foremost there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the other couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it.
Hark! how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp; and how the kettle hums!
But what is this! Even as I listen to them, blithely, and turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and I am left alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child’s-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains. ["Chirp the Third," 140]
Rossi in his twenty-six illustrations uses the cricket motif on six occasions, among which four are insets. That is, in twenty-two captioned and titled plates, and a further four uncaptioned tailpieces Rossi utilizes the motif in fifteen per cent of his illustrations, whereas in the original edition a real (as opposed to a fairy) cricket appears in just two of the fourteen plates. Dickens had tried to make the point about the English household cricket is not that it is simply a benign insect like a silkworm or ladybug, but rather that it is a cheerful spirit and guardian of hearth and home. Although those unfamiliar with the actual insect might mistake Rossi's insect for a grasshopper, Rossi's representations with long antennae are reasonable facsimiles.
Dickens had thought of calling his own 1840s journal The Cricket because the English generally felt that crickets represented good luck and even intuition. Paul Schlicke in the Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens describes the origin of this third Christmas Book and its symbolic insect with reference that abortive periodical on the mid-1840s:
In July 1845 Dickens had proposed starting a periodical to be called 'The Cricket': 'Carol philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomisation of humbug, jolly good temper; papers always in season, pat to the time of year; and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful beaming reference in everything to Home, and Fireside'. When Forster objected, Dickens clung to the conception as 'a delicate and beautiful fancy for a Christmas Book, making the Cricket a little household god' (Forster 5.1). [124]
Dickens abandoned his notion of founding a topical periodical when his new publishers, Bradbury and Evans, proposed on 25 July 1845 that Dickens should become the first editor of a new national daily newspaper to be called The Daily News, whose political slant would reflect Dickens's own Liberalism and progressive views. The residue of that project remains the third Christmas Book, with its intensely personal voice, and its strong connections to matters of private rather than public life. Peter Ackroyd in his biography puts the personal dimension of The Cricket succinctly: "Dickens places himself on every level of the narrative, as if when he is working quickly and almost unconsciously his own preoccupation with himself comes most clearly forward" (484). His own anxieties and obsessions constantly intrude, like the chirping of the cricket, as if he himself has become the voice of the Lares and Penates, the household gods of the Peerybingle domestic establishment, and guardian of the open hearth. As Forster notes in his biography, Dickens identifies himself with the spirit of the English cricket: "THE CRICKET. A cheerful creature that chirrups on the Hearth. Natural History" (5.1). Forster's reminiscence from 1845 seems to support Ackroyd's contention that Dickens closely identified himself with the voice of the cricket as both observer and moral commentator:
"What do you think of a notion that has occurred to me in connection with our abandoned little weekly? It would be a delicate and beautiful fancy for a Christmas book, making the Cricket a little household god — silent in the wrong and sorrow of the tale, and loud again when all went well and happy." The reader will not need to be told that thus originated the story of the Cricket on the Hearth, a Fairy Tale of Home, which had a great popularity in the Christmas days of 1845. [5.1]
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
Left: Leech's tailpiece, The Dance. Centre: Fred Barnard's final illustration, After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling Bowl(1878). Right: Brock's final plate emphasizes Tackleton's losing his bride to her childhood sweetheart: ". . . but as she has been there once, this morning, perhaps you'll excuse her" (1905).
Above: Harry Furniss's 1910 pen-and-ink drawing transferred to lithograph, Tackleton's Wedding Day! (1910).
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
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.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872-74. 3 vols.
Schlicke, Paul (ed.). "Cricket on the Hearth, The." Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. 124.
Created 14 May 2020
Last modified 18 July 2020
