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Margaret and Richard
Harry Furniss
1910
13.5 cm high x 9 cm wide, vignetted
Fourth illustration for The Chimes in Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing VIII, 144.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
There were but two chairs in the room. She gave him hers, and stood at some short distance from him, waiting to hear what he had to say.
He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall. ["Third Quarter," 135]
We read the static illustration nine pages after encountering the passage that it realizes (analeptically) in Furniss, whereas in the original volume the comparable scene, Leech's Richard and Margaret is positioned on the page preceding the passage, creating a sense of anticipation closely followed by recognition (a proleptic reading). Moreover, there is not the air of utter hopelessness about Furniss's Richard that one detects by his posture, neglected beard, and careless hair style in the Leech original. Meg still has her youthful beauty and elegant figure in Furniss's version, whereas Leech depicts her as careworn and engaged in sheer drudgery, sewing by the light of a single candle in a scantily furnished garret. Thus, Furniss has captured Richard's despondency, but has not conveyed the full weight of defeat that should hang upon him. There is no comparable scene in either of the Household Edition volumes or in Eytinge's Diamond Edition volume. Details from illustrations realising other moments in the two Household Edition volumes reveal very different conceptions of the working-class couple (effectively suggested in Abbey's illustration by Richard's cloth cap and Meg's shawl) after Trotty's death and a steep decline in the fortunes of his daughter and her fiancé.
Left and right: details from John Leech's Richard and Margaret (1844).
Left: detail from E. A. Abbey's ""What's the matter?" (1876); right: detail from Fred Barnard's "Never more, Meg; never more!'".
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. , 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844 [dated 1845].
__________. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910, VIII, 79-157.
__________. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
__________. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Solberg, Sarah A. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens' Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-18.
Thomas, Deborah A. Chapter 4, "The Chord of the Christmas Season." Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 62-93.
Welsh, Alexander. "Time and the City in The Chimes." Dickensian 73, 1 (January 1977): 8-17.
Created 20 June 2013
Last modified 1 January 2020