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The Haunted Man and The Student
Charles Green
1895 & 1912
9 x 7.2 cm, vignetted
Dickens's The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time, The Pears' Centenary Edition, V, 94.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door.
"When sickness lays its hand on you again," he said, looking fiercely back at him, "— may it be soon! — Die here! Rot here!"
"What have you done?" returned the other, catching at his cloak. "What change have you wrought in me? What curse have you brought upon me? Give me back myself!"
"Give me back myself!" exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. "I am infected! I am infectious! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can hate them."
As he spoke — the young man still holding to his cloak — he cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air where the wind was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; and where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming in the darkness, were the Phantom's words, "The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!"
Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided company."Stave Two: The Gift Bestowed," 93-95]
The caption immediately below the illustration points directly towards the moment realised: "As he spoke — the young man still holding to his cloak — he cast him off and struck him" (94, quoted from the top of p. 95). The bare caption does not reveal, however, that Redlaw is conflicted about his feelings for the poor student since this deserving youth is the son of Longford, the man who stole the woman with whom Redlaw was in love; by the boy's own admission, his father has not treated Redlaw's first love well. Although Redlaw has intimated that he has entirely forgotten his past grievances and heartache, the reader is not convinced that his attitude towards "Mr. Denham" (that is, Longford's son who has registered at the college under a pseudonym) is not coloured by his sense of having been wronged by both of the student's parents. For this highly melodramatic situation, which verges on the sensational, Green depicts the figures caught in overwrought emotional poses. The young man in his dressing-gown and the professor, in street clothes present a study in opposites. Green appears not to have followed the original series of illustrations as his Redlaw and Longford do not much resemble these characters as drawn by Frank Stone, John Leech, Clarkson Stanfield, and John Tenniel. Perhaps he strove for a consistency that the original team of illustrators’s very different styles failed to deliver. Since Green's interest here is psychological, the illustrator reflects upon the characters' anxieties about loss of identity through selective memory loss (the Phantom's dubious "gift" to Redlaw and any with whom he comes in contact, making him a "carrier" for the mental/emotional "infection") in terms of their anguished expressions and physical conflict. Other artists illustrating the relationship between the professor and his student chose an earlier moment in the chapter, when Redlaw first arrives in Denham's apartment above the Tetterbys' rooms, possibly because the student's surprise is easier to show than his confusion at the loss of memory that Redlaw has apparently caused.
Left: Stone's study of Milly and the long-haired "Denham" whom she is tending on his couch, Milly and the Student Right: Fred Barnard's study of the surprised student and Denham's ominous visitor, "Mr. Redlaw!" he exclaimed, and started up. (1878).
Abbey's depiction of the ill student in his nightgown looks nothing like the Denham of the scene in the 1848 text, but one cannot assess the appearance and attitude of his visiting professor, his back toward the viewer in "Mr. Redlaw!" he exclaimed, and started up (1876).
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "The Illustrators of the Christmas Books, John Leech." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 1981. 141-151.
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
_____. The Haunted Man. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1848). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, and 365-66.
_____. The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. (1895). London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_____. The Haunted Man. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. The Household Edition. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861. II, 155-300.
Created 1 September 2015
Last modified 7 April 2020