It Was A Tender Time by George du Maurier, fifth full-page composite woodblock illustration for Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta in Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XXXII (November 1875), facing page 513 — 10.3 cm high by 16 cm wide (4 ¼ by 6 ⅜ inches), framed. Engraver Joseph Swain. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated
Picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were standing, and looked down steadfastly.
‘Mr. Julian is going away,’ she continued, with determined firmness. ‘He will not see us again for a long time.’ And Ethelberta added, in a lower tone, though still in the unflinching manner of one who had set herself to say a thing, and would say it — ‘He is not to be definitely engaged to me any longer. We are not thinking of marrying, you know, Picotee. It is best that we should not.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ said Christopher hurriedly, taking up his hat. ‘Let me now wish you good-bye; and, of course, you will always know where I am, and how to find me.’
It was a tender time. He inclined forward that Ethelberta might give him her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met. Mastered by an impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, Ethelberta presented her cheek. Christopher kissed it faintly. Tears were in Ethelberta’s eyes now, and she was heartfull of many emotions. Placing her arm round Picotee’s waist, who had never lifted her eyes from the carpet, she drew the slight girl forward, and whispered quickly to him—‘Kiss her, too. She is my sister, and I am yours.’
It seemed all right and natural to their respective moods and the tone of the moment that free old Wessex manners should prevail, and Christopher stooped and dropped upon Picotee’s cheek likewise such a farewell kiss as he had imprinted upon Ethelberta’s. Picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were standing, and looked down steadfastly.
Commentary
Matters have progressed considerably by the time we arrive at the textual counterpart of the fifth plate, It Was a Tender Time. Since Du Maurier was personally fond of Victorian bric-a-brac, it is hardly surprising that his domestic interiors usually overflow with pictures, furniture, vases, fireplace screens, and so forth (especially in his plates for A Laodicean), so that his situating the farewell between the misunderstanding and misunderstood lovers in a morning room room largely devoid of interior decoration may reflect Ethelberta's concerns about how she will pay the bills for her establishment once her novelty of "romancing" has worn off. Picotee stands back exactly as in the text, eyes downcast, torn between sorrow for her sister and expectation that one day Christopher may care for them equally. Preparing to exit, he has taken his hat, and is kissing Ethelberta's cheek "faintly" (p. 189). Certainly the illustration seems to be suggesting the ultimate severing of the relationship, for the reader has already learned that Ethelberta intends to renounce him for Picotee's sake and that he realizes that he is hardly in a financial position to marry (perhaps a self-equivocation since Picotee has inadvertently led him to conclude that Ethelberta is interested in either Ladywell or Neigh as a prospective husband). Although the moment illustrated is significant in terms of plot, it lacks the visual interest that the scene of Christopher's breaking the news of the rupture to his sister Faith amidst the British Museum's bas reliefs from Nineveh.
Related Material
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "The Only Artist to Illustrate Two of Thomas Hardy's Full-length Novels, The Hand of Ethelberta and A Laodicean: George du Maurier, Illustrator and Novelist." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 40" Hardy's Artists. 2012. 4-128.
Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. The Cornhill Magazine. Vol. XXXII (1875).
Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. Intro. Robert Gittings. London: Macmillan, 1975.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Page, Norman. "Thomas Hardy's Forgotten Illustrators." Bulletin of the New York Public Library 77, 4 (Summer, 1974): 454-463.
Sutherland, John. "The Cornhill Magazine." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. 150.
Vann, J. Don. "Thomas Hardy (1840-1928. The Hand of Ethelberta in the Cornhill Magazine, July 1875-May 1876." in Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 83.
Created 16 January 2008
Last updated 16 January 2025