- Uncaptioned: Donald, the Gypsy, and his dog, Bogey (31 July 1886)
- Spread out over the hearth was a deer skin, on which there lay a girl of some eighteen or twenty years (31 July 1886)
- As picturesque a figure as I ever remember to have seen (31 July 1886)
- Uncaptioned: Reading "Rob Roy" or "In Memoriam" to Miss Victoria Fitzurse (7 August 1886)
- I was suiting the action to the word, when, looking up, I saw Elfie glaring down upon us from the rock above (7 August 1886)
- She fell upon her knees, flinging the bag before my feet. (7 August 1886)
Commentary: Six Composite Woodblock Plates Dropped into the Periodical Text
The folio-page format of the magazine permitted the artist and printers to drop the woodcuts for each half of the story into the first full-page of text in the July 31 and August 7 numbers. However, the plates rarely bear much reference to that portion of text with which they are juxtaposed, leaving the reader to hunt for the moment that each plate realizes. Such a process encourages us to re-read passages as we make our way through the two-part magazine serial.
The plates themselves, both framed and vignetted, captioned and uncaptioned, are very much in Green's Sixties' style, with his focus on modelling the forms of his principals (usually two figures per plate) realistically rather than in caricature. The recurring figures are those of the young itinerant English actor who eventually becomes the "barrister" of the title, and the titular Elfie herself, who appears in four of the six composite woodblock illustrations. Pictured only in the second half of the story, the Englishman, now a middle-aged barrister, and the narrator of this tale, occurs three times. The final illustration is a suitable culmination of this first-person retrospective about thwarted love in which the protagonist obtusely fails to recognize Elfie's true feelings for him until long after his youthful adventures in Scotland as a strolling player.
Coleman's story itself, divided into seven parts, is set in the district of Loch Lomond about 1860. In consequence, Coleman has the opportunity to use a considerable amount of Scots dialect while using a speaker of London English as the narrator in order to maintain coherence in the retrospective narrative.
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Coleman, John. "Elfie: A Barister's Story — Part One." The Graphic Magazine. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. No. 870, Vol. 34. 31 July 1886, pp. 117-118. "Part Two": No. 871, Vol. 34. 7 August 1886, pp. 145-148.
Created 4 May 2025