"Codlin and Short in the Churchyard" — Furniss's tenth illustration for Dickens's "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1910)

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Codlin and Short in the Churchyard

Codlin, a man of careful and cautious look, was binding together a small gallows with thread, while Short, a little merry-faced man with a red nose, was fixing a new black wig, with the aid of a small hammer and some tacks, upon the head of the Radical neighbour.

Harry Furniss

1910

13.8 x 9 cm, vignetted

Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing V, 128.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Little Nell's encountering the Punch-and-Judy Men

They were two men who were seated in easy attitudes upon the grass, and so busily engaged as to be at first unconscious of intruders. It was not difficult to divine that they were of a class of itinerant showmen — exhibitors of the freaks of Punch — for, perched cross-legged upon a tombstone behind them, was a figure of that hero himself, his nose and chin as hooked and his face as beaming as usual. Perhaps his imperturbable character was never more strikingly developed, for he preserved his usual equable smile notwithstanding that his body was dangling in a most uncomfortable position, all loose and limp and shapeless, while his long peaked cap, unequally balanced against his exceedingly slight legs, threatened every instant to bring him toppling down.

In part scattered upon the ground at the feet of the two men, and in part jumbled together in a long flat box, were the other persons of the Drama. The hero’s wife and one child, the hobby-horse, the doctor, the foreign gentleman who not being familiar with the language is unable in the representation to express his ideas otherwise than by the utterance of the word "Shallabalah" three distinct times, the radical neighbour who will by no means admit that a tin bell is an organ, the executioner, and the devil, were all here. Their owners had evidently come to that spot to make some needful repairs in the stage arrangements, for one of them was engaged in binding together a small gallows with thread, while the other was intent upon fixing a new black wig, with the aid of a small hammer and some tacks, upon the head of the radical neighbour, who had been beaten bald. [Chapter XVI, 120-21]

Related Material about The Old Curiosity Shop

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. V.

Created 5 May 2020

Last modified 27 November 2020