[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Harry Furniss —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
Stopping the Dover Mail
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 cm high x 9.4 cm wide, framed
Third illustration for A Tale of Two Cities in A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, Pictures from Italy, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing XIII, 8.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.
“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.
The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, “Sir.”
“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?”
“If so be as you're quick, sir.”
He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read — first to himself and then aloud: “'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.”
Jerry started in his saddle. “That's a Blazing strange answer, too,” said he, at his hoarsest. [Book One, Chapter Two, "The Mail," 8: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]
The opening book, "Recalled to Life," begins with Dickens's satirical commentary on the abuses of power in pre-Revolutionary France (Chapter One, "The Period"), which is heavily dependent upon Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution. Dickens then moves to a highly dramatic confrontation between a lone rider and the driver of the Dover mail-coach as it approaches Shooter's Hill, a prime spot for highway robbery. Hablot Knight Browne made this keynote scene of watchful suspicion the subject of his initial monthly serial illustration, The Mail (Instalment One, June 1859). Despite the apprehensions of the coach's guard and driver, the messenger is a legitimate — if rough-voiced and none-too-reputable in appearance — representative of Tellson's Bank, Temple Bar, London. The enigmatic message the cloak-enshrouded messenger bears, as in Phiz's celebrated steel engraving (see below), contains but three words: "Recalled to Life."
Although the original 1859 full-page engraving, a "dark" plate by Hablot Knight Browne (reminiscent of his work for Bleak House some six years earlier) intended to convey the intensity and menacing nature of the darkness on the lonely highroad, is certainly atmospheric — illuminated as it is by a single coach lamp (centre), immediately above the head of the muffled passenger — the horses, the carriage, and the four figures stand out distinctly, despite the darkness of the hour (established by the text as precisely 11:10 M.) and the deserted nature of the meeting place. Furniss, then, replaces specific detail with an impression of apprehension. However, the choice of subject is highly informative in that Furniss invites the reader of 1910 to compare his painterly interpretation of the chapter to that of Dickens's first great visual interpreter, rather than the chief Household Edition illustrator or A. A. Dixon.
A rarity among Dickens's serialised fiction, A Tale of Two Cities initially appeared without the benefit of illustration, in thirty-one instalments in Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round. Furniss nevertheless had two sets of competent illustrations available as visual references, even if he had not seen the work of American illustrators John McLenan (1859) and Sol Eytinge, Junior (1867): the sixteen steel engravings in the monthly parts illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and the twenty-five 1874 wood-engravings by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition — to say nothing of the Barnard study of Carton on the scaffold from 1879 for his first series of Character Sketches from Dickens (London: Cassell, Petter, and Gilpin, 1874-79), a version of which, by Toulouse Lautrec admirer John Hassall served to advertise Sir John Martin-Harvey's highly successful stage adaptation The Only Way at London's Lyceum Theatre (which debutéd on 16 February 1899, ran until 25 March 1899 with 168 performances, and was revived some ten times in London up to 1909).
In dramatic fashion, Furniss introduces two of the story's chief supporting characters, Tellson's confidential head clerk, Jarvis Lorry, and "The Honest Tradesman," the"resurrection man" (grave-robber) Jerry Cruncher. More subtly than McLenan, Furniss emphasizes the guard's blunderbuss, trained on the nocturnal rider whom the reader like the guard might well initially mistake for might well be a highwayman, given the lateness of the hour. The text makes plain the possibility of a stagecoach robbery as it gives the geographical location of Shooter's Hill, the highest point on the London to Dover Road, isolated in the eighteenth century, though not far from the Borough of Greenwich. Fully appreciating that this scene sets the keynote of watchful vigilance and impending danger (constituents that run throughout the narrative), Furniss seems determined to convey an impression rather than introduce characters. The coach has virtually disappeared in the fog, the guard a mere silhouette with his firearm trained on the horseman, whose gesture expresses his puzzlement over the meaning of the message which Lorry reads by the light of the coach lamp, diffused by the fog to provide extreme chiaroscuro appropriate to the high drama and sense of mystery with which Dickens embues the scene textually.
Above: Phiz's atmospheric dark plate
Left: American periodical illustrator McLennan's depiction of Jerry Cruncher's stopping the mailcoach, The figures of a horse and rider slowly came through this eddying mist (7 May 1859). Right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's dual character study, Jerry Cruncher and Wife (1867).
Left: Barnard's She curtsied to him . . . (1874). Right: Dixon's opening illustration, again set at The Royal George Hotel, Dover: ("Pray control your agitation") (1905).
Barnard, Fred. A Series of Character Sketches from Charles Dickens [Series One: Alfred Jingle, Mrs. Gamp, Bill Sikes, Little Dorrit, Samuel Pickwick, and Sidney Carton]. London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1880 [portfolio].
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1988.
Bolton, H. Phili "A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987, 395-412.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. All the Year Round. 30 April through 26 November 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. 7 May through 3 December 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London: Collins, 1905.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 13.
Created 29 May 2013
Last modified 5 January 2020