Betsey Trotwood by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 36: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
BETSEY TROTWOOD (David Copperfield.)
David's aunt. A lady of strong character and very determined, inflexible will. Having adopted her homeless little nephew, she dubs him Trotwood, and devotes her days to the study of his happiness and advancement in life. A touch of romance is imparted to her otherwise methodical existence by the re-appearance of a sottish husband, supposed to be long since dead. [Verso of Card No. 36]
Passage Suggested by the Illustration: David's First Impressions of His Aunt
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands. [Chapter XIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution," The Household Edition, 96]
Commentary: One of Just Seven Female Character Cards
Right: David's first impressions of Aunt Betsey according to Fred Barnard in the Household Edition: The Battle on the Green (Ch. XIII).
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers, attesting to the enduring popularity of the picaresque comic novel. The 1910 series, does, however, include a total of six character cards from the cast of David Copperfield (May 1849 through November 1850), or 12% of the total: the affable master of English rhetoric Wilkens Micawber, no. 41; the oppressed child who becomes a novelist, David Copperfield, no. 39; the rigid and mean-spirited Mr. Murdstone, no. 37; the crotchety but warm-hearted Betsey Trotwood, no. 36; the devious, unctuous Uriah Heep, no. 38; and the stalwart pater familias Dan' Peggotty, no. 40 — characterisations based on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's regular visual interpreter in the 1840s, Phiz, who produced forty steel-engravings and the wrapper design for the Bradbury and Evans nineteen-month serial, as well as a wood-engraved frontispiece of Little Em'ly and David as children on the Yarmouth sands for the first cheap edition (1858) and two vignettes for the two-volume Library Edition, neither of which concern Aunt Betsey Trotwood.
Although Kyd's representations are largely based on the original illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), the modelling of the figures is suggestive of those of celebrated Dickensian illustrator Fred Barnard for the Household Edition, volume 3 (1871). Throughout the series Kyd exhibits a strong male bias, as he realizes only seven female characters: only the beloved Nell, the abrasive Sally Brass, and the quirky Marchioness from The Old Curiosity Shop, Sairey Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, Aunt Betsey Trotwood from David Copperfield, the burly Mrs. McStinger from Dombey and Son, and the awkward Fanny Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby appear in the essentially comic cavalcade.
Kyd's model for the good fairy in David's modern fairy tale was likely Phiz's study of the elderly spinster in her garden at Dover in I make myself known to my Aunt (September 1849: Chapter 12). However, Kyd had several other models from which to choose as David's crotchety relative appears in five illustrations, notably in My Aunt astonishes me (March 1850: Chapter 34). The illustrator had likely also studied the Betsey Trotwood illustrations of Fred Barnard for the Household Edition volume 3 (1872), particularly the half-page wood engraving depicting David's aunt chasing away the donkeys and their juvenile riders from her garden, Battle on the Green (Chapter XIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution"). In all likelihood, as a British artist Kyd never saw an 1867 Diamond Edition volume of the novel, and therefore was not influenced by Sol Eytinge, Junior's Miss Trotwood and Mr. Dick, whose image of Betsey Trotwood is in any event consistent with Phiz's original conception and Barnard's derivation. Making such a comment probably makes one guilty of what historians term "Presentism," that is, judging the past by the moral and societal standards of the present, but Kyd and his fellow nineteenth-century illustrators do not accurately convey Miss Trotwood's independent cast of mind, for she is far more than a conventional old maid wearing an age-appropriate "mob-cap" fastened under the chin and a long, white apron over a lavender dress, as in Chapter XIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution."
Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition scene of Aunt Betsey's being pursued
by her estranged husband in the street:
Relevant Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)
- David Copperfield (homepage)
- Phiz's 40 serial illustrations for David Copperfield (May 1849 - November 1850)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1863)
- Sir John Gilbert's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 4, 1863)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 wood engravings for the Diamond Edition (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 62 Composite Woodblock Engravings for the Household Edition (1872)
- W. H. C. Groome's seven lithographs for the Collins Clear-type Pocket Edition (1907)
- Harry Furniss's Twenty-nine lithographs for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910).
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 16. Betsey Trotwood, David Copperfield. The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. The Personal Experience and History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1851.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. 2 vols. London and New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.
_______. The Personal Experience and History of David Copperfield. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IV.
_______. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. Volume XV.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 10.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XVII. David Copperfield." The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., [1910], 339-438.
Kyd. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 5. "David Copperfield: Progress of a Confused Soul." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 113-130.
Created 13 January 2015
Last modified 21 July 2025