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"You be going to marry him?" asked Marian
HH 91 (Hubert von Herkomer, RA)
3 October 1891 (instalment 13)
29.3 by 22.7 cm. Full-page, 11 ¾ inches high by 9 ⅛ inches wide, framed
Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the London Graphic, Chapter XXXI, 389.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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After supper, when she reached her bedroom, they were all present. A light was burning, and each damsel was sitting up whitely in her bed, awaiting Tess, the whole like a row of avenging ghosts.
But she saw in a few moments that there was no malice in their mood. They could scarcely feel as a loss what they had never expected to have. Their condition was objective, contemplative.
“He’s going to marry her!” murmured Retty, never taking eyes off Tess. “How her face do show it!”
“You be going to marry him?” asked Marian.
“Yes,” said Tess.
“When?”
“Some day.”
They thought that this was evasiveness only.
“Yes — going to marry him — a gentleman!” repeated Izz Huett.
And by a sort of fascination the three girls, one after another, crept out of their beds, and came and stood barefooted round Tess. Retty put her hands upon Tess’s shoulders, as if to realize her friend’s corporeality after such a miracle, and the other two laid their arms round her waist, all looking into her face. [Book Fourth, "The Consequence," Chapter XXXI, 390]
From this point onward Herkomer intensifies the background shadows (the sins of the past, looming disaster, tragedy foreshadowed) through his Baroque chiaroscuro. Herkomer has only one of Tess's intimate friends sitting on her bed (defined as such by the foot-railing and the nightgowns of the young women), as if to mute the intimacy of the conversation about Angel Clare. Herkomer has highlighted the four figures more dramatically than they would be by the single light burning in the room. He invests the shadows in the bedroom with a sense of mystery. Although the three young women appear briefly in Herkomer's second illustration, here they have retired for the night, and have let their long hair loose. Marian is the speaker, sitting on the bed; Izz and Retty are undistinguished. With her centre-forward position and muscular arm, Tess dominates the group, and yet her facial expression suggests self-doubt and alienation, for her mental gaze is inward, not directed at the dairymaid chorus. What will marriage to an intellectual and a gentleman bring?
Note: The next illustration in this serialisation is by a different illustrator. Click here for the complete list.
Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles Drawn by Daniel A. Wehrschmidt, Ernest Borough-Johnson, and Joseph Sydall for the Graphic (1891)." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 24 (1997): 3-50.
Allingham, Philip V. "Six Original Illustrations for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles Drawn by Sir Hubert Von Herkomer for the Graphic (1891)." The Thomas Hardy Journal, Vol. X, No. 1 (February 1994): 52-70.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the Graphic, 1891, 4 July-26 December, pp. 11-761.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Vann, J. Don. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the Graphic, 4 July 26 — December 1891." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985, pp. 88-89.
Created 14 December 2000
Last modified 27 April 2024