"Dolge Orlick" by Harry Furniss — Sixth illustration for "Great Expectations" (1910)

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Dolge Orlick

Harry Furniss

lithograph from pen-and-ink

1910

7 x 4.5 inches (13 cm by 9.2 cm), vignetted.

Original caption: Joe Gargery kept a journeyman whose name was Orlick. He was a broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, swarthy fellow of great strength. On working-days he would come slouching, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck, and dangling on his back. — p. 105.

Dickens's Great Expectations, Library Edition, facing p. 97.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility, — but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful, half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ’prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in out of time. [Chapter XV, p. 105-106]

Commentary

Although Furniss must present a plausible image of Joe's journeyman as he appears at this point in the narrative, he must also suggest something of the antipathy he feels towards "the favoured apprentice," Pip. The narrator is withholding information here, for he already knows that Orlick's jealousy, particularly over Biddy, will prompt him to capture Pip at at the sluice house on the Marshes later in the story, and that only the timely deus-ex-machina of Herbert and Trabb's boy forestalls Pip's murder. Perhaps this sense of foreboding is reflected in the shadow that Orlick casts, and his furtive expression.

Related Material

Depictions of Dolge Orlick in other editions of Great Expectations

"Hulloa!" he growled; "Where are you two going?" (John Mclenan, 9 Feb. 1861)
Old Orlick Among the Cinders (Marcus Stone, 1862)
Orlick . . . . was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it (F. A. Fraser, 1877)
Orlick . . . very soon among the coal-dust (Charles Green, 1898)
Old Orlick Means Murder (F. W. Pailthorpe, 1885)
"Ah!" he cried . . . "the burnt child dreads the fire!" (H. M. Brock, 1903)
Old Orlick (Sol Eytinge, Jr., 1867)

Bibliography

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 16 February 2007

last updated 10 October 2021