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"I'm a going to seek my Em'ly."
W. H. C. Groome
1907
11.6 x 7.6 cm (4 ½ by 3 inches), framed
Lithograph
Dickens's David Copperfield, referencing page 454; facing page 448.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Bear a hand with this! I’m struck of a heap, and can’t do it," he said, impatiently. "Bear a hand and help me. Well!" when somebody had done so. "Now give me that theer hat!"
Ham asked him whither he was going.
"I’m a going to seek my niece. I’m a going to seek my Em’ly. I’m a going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of what was in him! As he sat afore me," he said, wildly, holding out his clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right! — I’m a going to seek my niece."
"Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
"Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me! I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!"
"No, no!" cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying. "No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you, Dan’l—what have my contraries ever been to this! — and let us speak a word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, "and you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me”, — and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter for so many, many year!"
He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too. [Chapter XXXI, "A Greater Loss," pp. 454-455]
The version of the Peggottys' reading Em'ly's note focuses on the towering figure of the girl's uncle, and relegates David to the right margin. We can readily identify Mrs. Gummidge (left) from her previous appearance (in "No, sir. I never giv him no name."), and likewise Clara Peggotty (right) and Ham (extreme left). Although the illustration does not make the setting as clear as the Phiz and Barnard illustrations of the family's reading the letter, the setting is once again the Yarmouth boathouse, "Mr. Peggotty's house" (448). Ham looks merely curious rather than distraught, and Groome has moved him well away from the centre, even though it is he who narrated Em'ly's departure that morning; the artist makes the "impatient" but determined uncle of the girl his focus. He pounds his chest as he takes upon him the quest to return the errant girl to the family, no matter where the wealthy Steerforth shall take her. Both the women seem to plead with him, as if they doubt he is equal to the task.
The chapter title, "A Greater Loss," refers to events immediately after the initial "loss," the recent death of Clara Peggotty's husband, Barkis, the carrier. Em'ly's having eloped with David's old school friend could bring his relationship with the Peggottys to the point of rupture, but Groome wisely places David in the margin to suggest his conflicted judgment. He, after all, was the one who introduced Steerforth to the family, and Steerforth was always his stalwart companion and defender at school. But Steerforth has now crossed the line, snatching away the beautiful but somewhat naive Em'ly from her family, not to marry her, but to exploit her sexually, for that is certainly the implication.
Left: Harry Furniss's Charles Dickens Library Edition version of the same
scene heightens the domestic melodrama:
Left: Kyd (Clayton J. Clarke) captures that look of perseverance in the uncle's countenance in the Player's Cigarette Card: Dan'l Peggotty (1910). Right: Barnard depicts the Peggottys' reaction to Em'ly's note of farewell: "Read it, sir," he said, in a low shivering voice (1872).
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 3.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907.
Created 7 July 2022