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An Unexpected Pleasure For Pip
Harry Furniss
1910
7 x 4.5 inches
Original caption: "When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys. There was a bright flush upon her face, as though something had happened to delight her. "Come here!" she said. "You may kiss me if you like." — p. 87.
Dickens's Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing p. 88.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys. But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.
“Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.”
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against a black night-sky, and Joe’s furnace was flinging a path of fire across the road. [Chapter XI, p. 87]
Furniss adds to the piquancy of the kiss by making Pip and Estella young adults rather than mere adolescents. Estella has all the angularity of Furniss's young women. But the more interesting aspects of the scene are the glimpse of the exterior of Satis House, with leaded pane windows, and Furniss's giving his hero a form-revealing suit rather than baggy, working-class toggs. The artist reinforces the original commercial activity at Satis House which has enabled Miss Havisham to choose her reclusive existence: the beer barrels pilled high behind Estella.
Left: Miss Havisham and Estella (1867), from the Diamond Edition by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Centre: In the first American serialisation, periodical illustrator John McLenan emphasizes the close relationship between Estella and her adoptive mother when joe pays a call about pip's apprenticeship in "Which I meantersay, Pip." (12 January 1861). Right: F. A. Fraser's 1876 wood-engraving of Estella's haughty treatment of Pip: She gave a contemptuous toss . . . . and left me, in the Household Edition.
Left: Marcus Stone in the frontispiece sets the keynote by establishing Miss Havisham as a sort of fairy-godmother when the working-class lad first visits her: Pip Waits upon Miss Havisham (1862). Right: H. M. Brock establishes Miss Havisham's desire to be avenged on the male gender by training Estella to be a heart-breaker in "Well? You can break his heart". (1901).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by John McLenan. [The First American Edition]. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vols. IV: 740 through V: 495 (24 November 1860-3 August 1861).
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1862. Rpt. in The Nonesuch Dickens, Great Expectations and Hard Times. London: Nonesuch, 1937; Overlook and Worth Presses, 2005.
______. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
______. Great Expectations. The Gadshill Edition. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: Chapman and Hall, 1898.
______. Great Expectations. The Grande Luxe Edition, ed. Richard Garnett. Illustrated by Clayton J. Clarke ('Kyd'). London: Merrill and Baker, 1900.
______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 14 February 2007 last updated 9 October 2021