Milly
Harry Furniss
1910
13.3 cm high x 9.5 cm wide, vignetted
Dickens's Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition, VIII, facing 368.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated
She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of the couch, as if to take the extended hand — but it was not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at his face, and gently touched him on the brow.
"Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool as in the afternoon."
"Tut!" said the student, petulantly, "very little ails me." [Chapter Two: "The Gift Diffused," 368: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]
Commentary
Although previous illustrators have depicted Milly Swidger, the "Angel in the House" whose beneficent influence counteracts the dreadful "gift" of Redlaw's Phantom or baneful double, in j uxtaposition with such figures as the poor student, "Denham," in Frank Stone's Milly and the Student and the Tetterby children in Frank Stone's penultimate illustration in the original novella, and the Old Man, Philip Swidger, in "Merry and happy, was it?" asked the Chemist in a low voice, Furniss has chosen to study her in near isolation, with only Longford's (alias, "Denham") head on his daybed setting the context.
A great deal, of course, ails Longford in that he has just succumbed to the Phantom's curse as communicated by Professor Redkaw, and is now quite unappreciative of Milly's ministrations. Furniss's wasp-waisted Milly in fashionable bonnet and gown is somewhat less angelic than her counterpart in the three in which she appears: Frank Stone's Milly and the Old Man, Milly and the Student, and Milly and the Children. In redrafting the heroine for the early twentieth century, Furniss has accentuated her height and angularity, giving her the demure face and stylish figure of fin de siecle magazine heroines, but failing to show her as exemplifying her virtue in action. Indeed, a contemporary review of The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain in the a prominent literary magazine singled out Stone's contributions for the moral tone and specificity of description that they communicate: "Stone, the only artist who escaped [the reviwers'] hostility, was, in fact, praised at Dickens's expense. 'Were it not that Milly has been rendered 'palpable to the sense' by the pencil of Mr. Frank Stone,' observed the Athenaeum, who felt that Dickens had uncharacteristically failed to individualize his characters, 'we should regard her as a quality rather than a person'" (Henry Chorley? 23 December 1848, 1293; cited in Cohen, 187-88]
Although a bad review in the Athenaeum, which was the prime vehicle at the time for advertising new books and which commanded a weekly circulation of some 20,000 at its peak, could have a disastrous effect the sales of a new work of literature, Dickens enjoyed initial sales of about 18,000 copies for The Haunted Man. However, the fact that between its initial appearance and Furniss's illustrating it the book had been adapted for the stage in England and America only twenty-three times (as opposed to thirty-five for the Carol and thirty-one for The Battle of Life) does suggest that it lacked the staying power of the earlier Christmas Books, at least, theatrically speaking. Moreover, Robert L. Patten indicates that, by Christmas 1861, Chapman and Hall still had a stock of almost two thousand copies of the original Bradbury and Evans text, both bound and unbound. Certainly, in attempting to provide illustrations that would engage contemporary readers in 1910, Furniss preferred to dwell upon the sensational, melodramatic, and the comic elements of the story, and underplay the all too obvious strain of Victorian sentimentality that Milly Swidger embodies.
Related Materials and Details
- The Christmas Books of Charles Dickens
- Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s second illustration for The Haunted Man (1867)
- Felix O. C. Darley's frontispiece for the second volume of Christmas Stories, a character study of the brooding protagonist and his double, As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire (1861)
- A. E. Abbey's Household Edition illustrations for The Christmas Books (1876)
- Fred Barnard's Household Edition illustrations for The Christmas Books (1878)
Pertinent Illustrations in the 1848 Edition
Left: Frank Stone's Milly and the Old Man; centre, Stone's Milly and The Student; right: Stone's Milly and The Children (1848).
Bibliography
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "John Leech." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. , 1980, 141-51.
Dickens, Charles. 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.
__________. The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, John Tenniel, Frank Stone, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture Book. Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
Patten, Robert L. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1978.
Sutherland, John. "Athenaeum." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. , 1989, 32.
Thomas, Deborah A. Chapter 4, "The Chord of the Christmas Season." Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 62-93.
Created 31 July 2013
Last modified 5 January 2020