"The Marchioness" — Furniss's twenty-first illustration for Dickens's "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1910)

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The Marchioness

Harry Furniss

1910

14 x 8.6 cm, vignetted

Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing V, facing 352.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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A Possible Context for the Illustration: The Small Servant introduced

"Come in!" said Dick. "Don’t stand upon ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I’ve many more customers. Come in!"

"Oh, please," said a little voice very low down in the doorway, "will you come and show the lodgings?"

Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron a nd bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.

"Why, who are you?" said Dick.

To which the only reply was, "Oh, please will you come and show the lodgings?"

There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She must have b een at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of Dick, as Dick was amazed at her.

"I hav’n’t got anything to do with the lodgings," said Dick. "Tell ‘em to call again."

"Oh, but please will you come and show the lodgings," returned the girl; "It’s eighteen shillings a week and us finding plate and linen. Boots and clothes is extra, and fires in winter-time is eightpence a day."

"Why don’t you show ‘em yourself? You seem to know all about ‘em," said Dick.

"Miss Sally said I wasn’t to, because people wouldn’t believe the attendance was good if they saw how small I was first."

"Well, but they’ll see how small you are afterwards, won’t they?" said Dick.

"Ah! But then they’ll have taken ‘em for a fortnight certain,’ replied the child with a shrewd look; ‘and people don’t like moving when they’re once settled."

"This is a queer sort of thing," muttered Dick, rising. "What do you mean to say you are — the cook?"

"Yes, I do plain cooking;" replied the child. "I’m housemaid, too; I do all the work of the house." [Chapter XXXIV, 252-53]

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 8 May 2020

Last modified 27 November 2020