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Michael Warden leaving his lawyers
Harry Furniss
1910
13.5 cm high x 9.2 cm wide, framed
Dickens's Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing VIII, 72.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"You'll live to see me making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth the star of my destiny is, Marion!"
"Take care of the stairs, Sir," replied Snitchey; "for she don't shine there. Good-night!"
"Good night!"
So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office-candles, watching him down. . . . ["Part the Second," 275]
Furniss avoids the somewhat slow-paced interview scene to focus on Michael Warden's immediate response to the advice of his lawyers: rather than embrace a penurious existence overseas for a number of years to recover the family estates, the young aristocrat believes he can repair the damage with the simple expedient of marrying Marion Jeddler. The original illustrators regard Michael Warden as an example of a profligate, young aristocrat; so that, for example, John Leech has embedded a symbolic object in Snitchey and Craggs (see below) to show that he will have to be prepared to lock the cornucopia of his family estates' revenues in order to pay off his debts. In contrast, Fred Barnard and E. A. Abbey in the Household Edition volumes realistically describe Warden's interview with his attorneys.
The key difference between Furniss's version and those of the 1870s is implying movement: Warden approaches the viewer in haste, turning back to attend to his attorneys' parting words. Furniss renders Warden in full light, but leaves Snitchey and Craggs in partial darkness at the top of the stairs, beside the balustrade. Only Warden's costume is realised in any detail in the 1910 lithograph, whereas Abbey and Barnard effectively describe the eighteenth-century garb of all three figures, although only Abbey provides much contextual detail to establish the setting as the partners' office. Although the reader perceives neither of these characters in detail in the earlier plates, the reader of the 1910 volume receives the sense of Warden's being a young man in a hurry — a "dashing" youth in both ways — in contrast to the stolid conservatism of his elders, who caution him about "stumbling in the dark" both literally and metaphorically. Significantly, Furniss does not realise the interview and the caution which Snitchey and Craggs try to impress upon the prodigal. Rather, Furniss shows the consequence of the interview, of Warden's hastening away, determined to marry Marion Jeddler as a means of repairing his fortunes and his character immediately. Consequently, one sees in these three illustrations of similar moments in the text a shift from caricature and allegory in Leech through realism in Abbey and Barnard to Impressionism in Furniss, who has modelled his Warden upon Maclise's elegant cavalier in The Secret Interview as a foil to the more reliable, middle-class youth of the story, Alfred Heathfield.
Left: John Leech's Snitchey and Craggs; right, Fred Barnard's "I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. Craggs?" (1878).
Above: E. A. Abbey's "'Now, observe, Snitchey," he continued, rising and taking him by the button, "and Craggs," taking him by the button also. (1876).
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "John Leech." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. , 1980, 141-51.
Dickens, Charles. The Battle of Life. A Love Story. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846.
__________. 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.
Thomas, Deborah A. Chapter 4, "The Chord of the Christmas Season." Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 62-93.
Created 17 July 2013
Last modified 3 January 2020