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Frontispiece
John Tenniel; engraver, Martin & Corbould.
1848
Wood engraving
10 cm by 8.9 cm (3 ¾ by 3 ½ inches), framed.
Initial illustration for Dickens's The Haunted Man, facing engraved title.
Details: top and bottom of plate.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The dread word, GHOST, recalls me.
Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my present claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He did.
Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea-weed, about his face,—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity, — but might have said he looked like a haunted man?
Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man?
Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man? [Chapter I, "The Gift Bestowed," 2]
The process of illustrating The Haunted Man began in a leisurely enough way, with Dickens interviewing John Tenniel about the initial plates on 30 October 1848, then reporting by letter to his lead artist.
The Frontispiece, a full-page illustration repeated and elaborated on later by Leech's Redlaw and the Phantom (see below), serves as an overture to the programme, but is lacking a caption. Thus, without any mediating textual comment from the narrator, the reader becomes engaged in the psychomachia of a Christmas holly wreath (preparing him for the closing words of the text, delivered in the final plate on page 188, "Lord, keep my memory green!") surrounding the vignette of an apprehensive man, seated before the fire, with a shrouded wraith whispering in his ear.
A horned demon, above, presides over the whole scene. To his left (stage right) angels rise, throwing spears and shooting arrows at demons right as other demons drag human souls down. At the very bottom a soul struggles, enmeshed in latticework. We shall never meet the angels or the demons in the printed text, but soon shall meet the seated professor (Dickens's only intellectual protagonist) and his ghostly double.
Left: Tenniel's study of the melancholy Redlaw and his malignant double, looking into the fire, Frontispiece. Centre: Leech's book-lined study frames the look-a-like profiles of the balding academic and his double Redlaw and the Phantom (1848). Right: Darley's highly atmospheric frontispiece, As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire (1861).
Left: In Barnard's Gothic treatment, the double appears to hover: "You speak to me of what is lying here," the Phantom interposed (1878). Right: Furniss's more realistic treatment of the same notion, The Phantom, possesses that later illustrator's characteristic sense of humour (1910).
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. Engraved by Martin & Corbould, T. Williams, Smith & Chellnam, and Dalziel. 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. 2 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, 365-366.
Glancy, Ruth. "Dickens at Work on The Haunted Man." Dickens Studies Annual 15 (1986): 65-85.
Patten, Robert. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 10, "Bargain Haunters." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 234-275. [Review]
Solberg, Sarah. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens's Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-118.
Created 19 October 2004
Last modified 3 June 2024
