[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Charles Green —> Great Expectations —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
Pip and Magwich
Charles Green
1898
8 x 5 inches
Dickens's Great Expectations, Gadshill Edition, for ch. 39.
[These plates have neither captions nor pages, being inserted into the text]
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly observant of me, biting a long end of it. "I think," he answered, still with the end at his mouth and still observant of me, "that I will drink (I thank you) afore I go."
There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the table near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some hot rum and water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth — evidently forgotten — made my hand very difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full of tears. [Chapter XXXIX]
The Annotated Dickens provides the following caption, which is not in the original Gadshill Edition: "I made him some hot rum-and-water" (Ch. 39). The editors, then, leave no doubt as to which scene Green has realised: the long-awaited arrival of the mysterious benefactor — Abel Magwitch, transported felon and prosperous Australian sheep-rancher. And the quondam monster, an object of terror in Pip's memories of his childhood, becomes quite suddenly a surrogate parent, now an elderly man in need of nurturing, not the physically powerful, desperate escapee that so many illustrators have depicted. For one who has just achieved his dearest goal, seeing his "dear boy" a gentleman, Magwitch looks remarkably despondent in Green's illustration. But, then, perhaps he now realizes that his fortune will be forfeited to the Crown if he is apprehended on English soil. Another possibility, given the moment realised and the tears in his eyes, is that Magwitch is realizing the impact that his revelation will have the on the squeamish Pip, who at this moment is barely able to tolerate the ex-convict's presence. However, the passage realised suggests that the elderly Australian emigrant is crying because he has at last achieved what he set out to do all those years ago: he has indeed "made" a gentleman out of a labouring boy.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Charles Green. Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897-1908. Note: All material is reproduced courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LF.
_____. Great Expectations. Ed. Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins. The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1988. II, 822-1115.
Created 12 April 2004
Last modified 3 March 2020