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"Come," said Joe, putting out both hands . . .
Felix O. C. Darley
1862
9.7 x 8.3 cm vignetted
Photogravure
Frontispiece to vol. 2 of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, in the Sheldon and Company (New York) Household Edition (1861-71).
[Click on illustration to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham from his own collection.
Dolly hesitated to lead the way into the parlour, for there it was nearly dark; at the same time she hesitated to stand talking in the workshop, which was yet light and open to the street. They had got by some means, too, before the little forge; and Joe having her hand in his (which he had no right to have, for Dolly only gave it him to shake), it was so like standing before some homely altar being married, that it was the most embarrassing state of things in the world.
"I have come," said Joe, "to say good-by — to say good-by for I don't know how many years; perhaps for-ever. I am going abroad."
Now this was exactly what he should not have said. Here he was, talking like a gentleman at large who was free to come and go and roam about the world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches, and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent end and leave the business to his mother. [Chapter 31, page 44]
Dickens's original illustrators for part-publication, Phiz (H. K. Browne) and George Cattermole, realised several scenes involving the youthful protagonists of the story's romance. In chapter thirty-one of the second volume, Darley depicts Joe Willet, son the all-too-controlling proprietor of The Maypole Inn near Chigwell, determined to assert his independence from his father by joining the army. Darley's illustration, like the one Phiz created for the book's initial publication showing the jealous apprentice, Sim Tappertit, overhearing the tender conversation, a scene which Darley has both studied and assimilated, giving the figures a more modelled form and conveying the situation with a more realistic eye than the earlier illustrator. Darley chose to focus almost exclusively on the youthful couple themselves, making the heroine seem less self-centred than she appears in both Dickens's text and Phiz's illustration, but detailing admirably where the parting occurs. Whereas in the Phiz illustration Joe holds his stick and bundle in both hands, as he prepares to set off in search of glory and wealth as an enlistee in the King's army, in Darley's illustration we cannot judge his expression because her is turned away from us, and his pack is now strapped to his back so that he has both hands free to make his entreaty.
Even so charming and sympathetic a young woman as Dolly Varden, daughter of the London locksmith Gabriel Varden, could at times be a coquette, enjoying her power over such young men as the handsome Joe Willet (dominating the right of the Darley composition). For his choice of scene, both Darley and, later, Harold Copping in this instance had a ready-made model from Phiz's original illustration for the serialized version of the novel, Joe bids Dolly Good-bye (chapter 31, in part 17 of the serial in Master Humphrey's Clock (5 June 1841). The scene which Phiz had set theatrically in the forge (on the way to the parlour) in the locksmith's London home-business, The Golden Key, with fireplace, anvil, and tools, here Darley realises economically but effectively, and yet with a greater emphasis on the young couple. Darley pushes the realia of the background detailing to the scene's periphery: hammers and locks are strewn about the anvil in the left foreground to suggest that the locksmith's labour has been temporarily interrupted. The beautiful Dolly (less self-absorbed than in Phiz's illustration, but more comely) plays with her apron rather than, as in Phiz's plate, her hair-ribbon, but likewise seems to be avoiding the scrutinizing gaze of her departing lover. The background detailing makes the setting of the forge entirely credible, with a bunch of keys above the figures and basket, stool, workbench, and neatly ordered tools all conveying precisely the nature of the labour executed there. However, Darley does not lose figures in the composition and makes Joe more dynamic; Joe's gesture of heart-felt entreaty suggests that this is the narrative moment (indicated by Darley's caption) so elegantly and sentimentally realised in the 1862 photogravure: "Come," said Joe, putting out both hands, "Dolly, dear Dolly, don't let us part like this. I love you dearly, with all my heart and soul. . . ." (ch. 31, p. 46). Only after Joe has said a reluctant farewell to an undemonstrative Dolly does the reader of the text become aware of the presence of Sim Tappertit, Varden's self-centred apprentice, who in Darley's illustration is critical of the scene but who in Phiz's plate seems delighted with the discomfiture and departure of his chief rival. The focus in Darley's plate is thus not the irony of the situation nor the scene's place in the narrative-pictorial sequence, but rather the determination of the young man (back toward the reader) to elicit some sign and word of tender feeling on the part of the vain Dolly. Both the handsome Joe Willet and the coquettish Dolly are dressed very much in the upper-middle class fashions of the late eighteenth century, a manner of dress that the illustrator may have divined from studying the serial plate, although, as Henry James has noted, the England of the eighteenth century was Darley's natural milieu.
Left: Phiz's Joe Willet bids Dolly Good-bye (1841). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Juniors's Joe Willet and Dolly Varden (1867). Right: Harold Copping's Joe Willet and Dolly Varden (1924).
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Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.
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Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1862. 2 vols.
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Last modified 2 November 2015