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Passage Illustrated

. . . he pushed the yielding door, and went in.

There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring.

With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage.

"What are you?" said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon the broken stair-rail.

"What do you think I am?" she answered, showing him her face again.

He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so soon disfigured . . . . [Chapter Two: "The Gift Diffused," 376-77: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]

Commentary

Although the subject of the scene is an actual incident in the story, the Hammerton caption is a metaphor for the effect that Redlaw's "gift" has on others; thus, the illustration of the young prostitute in Furniss's illustration is akin to that by John Leech of the boy and girl, Ignorance and Want, in his highly realistic delineation of these figures, allegorical and yet convincing in their suffering, in Ignorance and Want (1843). Furniss's scene here is unusual in the context of his narrative-pictorial sequences for The Christmas Books because it realises an aspect of the story which all the other illustrators of the book have avoided: the East-end slum from which the ragged urchin originates, and where, moreover, dissolute gambler George Swidger lies dying.

The original illustrators of the 1848 edition and the Household Edition illustrators of the 1870s did not shy away from depicting the poverty-stricken proletariat's representative, the cowering, ragged child in the Redlaw and the Boy and The Boy before the Fire. But neither of the Household Edition's renditions of the street boy includes his sordid origins, the East End slum from which he has come. In "Chapter 3: The Gift Reversed," Fred Barnard realises this scrawny, atavistic denizen of the London slums in "I'm not a-going to take you there. Let me be, or I'll heave some fire at you!". Furniss, then, is both conventional (in presenting an allegorical figure realistically) and daring here because he has elected to depict a marginal figure who rarely appears in Victorian book illustrations, the Fallen Woman, a type whom Dickens was shortly to explore more fully in the characters of Martha and Little Em'ly in Daavid Copperfield (1849-50).

Since one of the chief functions of Victorian book illustration auto draw the reader's attention to specific scenes, events, and characters, Furniss here is actually reshaping the reception of the novella along the lines of social relevance. Perhaps previous illustrators had elected not to draw the reader's attention to this sequence of events in the urchin's slum residence because it involves the gross improbability of Redlaw's encountering the dying George Swidger and his father and brother, Philip and William, in the apartment there. However, Furniss focuses not on this coincidence, but on the effect that Redlaw's dubious gift has upon most people — except those whose miserable existence has never permitted the formation of distinctively unpleasant memories. The depressed young prostitute whom Redlaw meets on the staircase of the slum dwelling has only the barest recollection of a more pleasant existence, and there cannot benefit from Redlaw's influence.

The composition is not particularly noteworthy in its depiction of Redlaw, wearing as in previous editions a black, full-length cloak and broad-brimmed hat to muffle his features. The first instance of this image occurs in John Tenniel's 1848 Illustrated Double-page to Ch. II, but the cloak occurs in the Eytinge (1867) and Barnard (1878) illustrations, too, specifically in Redlaw and the Boy and "Mr. Redlaw!" he exclaimed, and started up. To better engage the reader in the process of visualisation, Furniss has Redlaw turned away from the reader so that he or she must try to determine both Redlaw's expression and reaction.

Furniss has highlighted the girl to make her a contrasting figure to the black-clad, pillar-like Redlaw, so that the reader must revert to the actual passage some eight pages earlier to determine whether the girl could be considered virtuous in any sense, or whether she has brought "Sorrow, wrong, and trouble" (376) upon herself. The gift of forgetfulness, learns Redlaw, is no blessing for such a person (one among "the type of thousands," 377) in this part of the metropolis. The picture is thus far more complex than the good-evil dichotomy of light (the girl's dress) and dark (Redlaw's hat and cloak) would suggest. The girl whom Redlaw took for a drab may be redeemed by her past as a gardener's daughter in the country, since she is clearly a victim of economic and social forces beyond her control, whereas her common-law husband, George, is a victim of his own addiction to gambling and riotous living.

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)
• What was 'Fallenness' and what was Dickens's interest?
• Dickens and his involvement in Urania Cottage
• Charles Dickens's Attitudes towards Women

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.

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Created 1 August 2013


Last modified 5 January 2020