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The Lighthouse
Clarkson Stanfield, RA; engraver, T. Williams.
1848
12.5 cm by 7.5 cm (4 ⅞ by 3 inches), framed.
Fourth illustration for Dickens's The Haunted Man, "Chapter I, The Gift Bestowed," page 7.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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When travellers by land were bitter cold, and looked wearily on gloomy landscapes, rustling and shuddering in the blast. When mariners at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and swung above the howling ocean dreadfully. When lighthouses, on rocks and headlands, showed solitary and watchful; and benighted sea-birds breasted on against their ponderous lanterns, and fell dead. When little readers of story-books, by the firelight, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut into quarters, hanging in the Robbers’ Cave, or had some small misgivings that the fierce little old woman, with the crutch, who used to start out of the box in the merchant Abudah’s bedroom, might, one of these nights, be found upon the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky journey up to bed. [Chapter I, "The Gift Bestowed," 6-8]
Stanfield's first appearance in this text is admirably suited to his own personal history (a sailor in the British merchant navy and then the Royal Navy) and abilities as a painter of seascapes. On the bowsprit of a sailing vessel, left, four sailors (two of them quite young) struggle to reef in the jibsheet. Beneath them, in the surf, is an anchor. On a rock darkling rising from the breakers an owl-like lighthouse stands, the small gulls indicating both its size and its distance from the ship (which we must imagine, for only the bowsprit and its five supporting stays are visible). The perilous scene is not allegorical, but a visual realisation of a passage at the bottom the (left) facing page intended to contrast the snug comfort of the college interior with the rigours that some must face to earn their living at this time of the year on a "howling ocean." Perhaps Stanfield's point is that, as opposed to these young sailors who brave the deep for merchants or in service of their nation, Redlaw has enjoyed a comparatively tranquil existence, despite a mysterious trauma in the past that has embittered him. And his students will join the privileged, professional classes whose labours are less dangerous and physically demanding than those of the daring young men on the yardarm at dusk in Stanfield's stirring seascape etching.
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 29 December 2004
Last modified 6 June 2024