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"No, sir. I never give him no name."
W. H. C. Groome
1907
11.7 x 7.6 cm (4 ½ by 3 inches), framed
Lithograph
Dickens's David Copperfield, referencing page 37; facing page 289.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Mr. Peggotty!" says I.
"Sir," says he.
"Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of ark?"
Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:
"No, sir. I never giv him no name."
"Who gave him that name, then?" said I, putting question number two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.
"Why, sir, his father giv it him," said Mr. Peggotty.
"I thought you were his father!"
"My brother Joe was his father," said Mr. Peggotty.
"Dead, Mr. Peggotty?" I hinted, after a respectful pause.
"Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty.
I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty.
"Little Em’ly," I said, glancing at her. "She is your daughter, isn’t she, Mr. Peggotty?"
"No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father."
I couldn’t help it. " — Dead, Mr. Peggotty?" I hinted, after another respectful silence.
"Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty.
I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:
"Haven’t you any children, Mr. Peggotty?"
"No, master," he answered with a short laugh. "I’m a bacheldore."
"A bachelor!" I said, astonished. "Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?" pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.
"That’s Missis Gummidge," said Mr. Peggotty.
"Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?" [Chapter III, "I Have a Change," pp. 37-38]
The morose group that Groome describes in a nondescript Victorian parlour little resembles the animated, jolly family gathered around a blazing fire in other illustrators' versions of this domestic scene. Moreover, Groome provides no sense of the idiosyncratic physical setting, a grounded houseboat on the Yarmouth shore. In these respects, then, Groome has failed to match the vivacity and particularity of such illustrations of the synthetic Peggotty family's domestic hearth that one sees in the novel's first such illustration, I am hospitably received by Mr. Peggotty (May 1849), in which the illustrator admirably suggested that the parlour is on a boat by the large, semi-circular wooden beam that frames the top of the composition. What is worse, Groome fails to elicit either the viewer's interest in the subject or the viewer's sympathy for this unconventional but highly functional Victorian family. The identities of the children, David and Em'ly, are obvious enough, and the older, rather thin and respectably dressed man to the right must be Dan'l Peggotty (but not as readers of previous editions will have seen him rendered). But who is Clara Peggotty, who is Mrs. Gummidge, and what is the relationship between the various figures in this sombre rendering of the five figures of this nautical family?
Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition study of the same incident: "Dead, Mr. Peggotty?" I hinted, after a respectful pause. "Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty. (1872). Right: Phiz's original illustration of David with Little Em'ly at the Peggottys' fireside: I am hospitably received by Mr. Peggotty (May 1849).
Left: Sol Eytinge, Junior's portrait of the Peggottys:
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907.
Created 5 July 2022