Jo, the Crossing-Sweeper by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 48: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: Our Mutual Friend. 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.]
Jo. (Bleak House.)
A wretched waif — a crossing-sweeper — a denizen of “Tom-All-Alone's”; very horse, very muddy, very ragged. He first appears at the “inkwich” held upon Nemo, the law-writer who “was werry good to him, he was.” Later, being “chivvied” and “moved-on” from all points of the compass, he dies a pitiful and pathetic death beneath the roof of “Mr. George's” shooting-gallery. [Verso of Card No. 48]
Passage Realised: “it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather”
Left: Fred Barnard's composite woodblock portrait of the street-waif, “Jo” in the frontispiece of the 1873 Household Edition for Chapter XVI.
What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.
Jo lives — that is to say, Jo has not yet died — in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone’s. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. [Household Edition, Chapter XVI, “Tom-all-Alone's,” 111]
Commentary: “Toughy”
Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s composite woodblock portrait of the street-waif, working at Tom-all-Alone's: Joe in the 1867 Diamond Edition for Chapter XI, "Or Dear Brother," 87.
The models for Kyd's interpretation of Dickens's most distressed and most distressing character, Jo, the crossing-sweeper, are a pair of Phiz's original serial images, specifically, the fifth (July 1852) instalment's Consecrated Ground (Chapter 16, "Tom-all-Alone's"), and the second illustration for the fifth instalment, Jo, The Crossing-Sweeper (Chapter 16). Kyd, however, has elected not to depict any character in company with another or against a representative backdrop, so that the only contextual clues to Jo's character are his ragged clothing and his broom, signifying his menial occupation. Jo's ragged condition and filthy surroundings, somewhere in St. Giles or Drury Lane, central London, prepare us for his role in the novel as a carrier of the smallpox that infects Esther Summerson in Chapter XXXI. In Kyd's highly sympathetic treatment, the sweeper holds out his hand, as if for remuneration from the passenger whose path he has just cleared. Davis notes that Dickens based the illiterate street-boy on an interview with fourteen-year-old George Ruby "published in the EXAMINER (January 12, 1850) and later reprinted in HOUSEHOLD WORDS (HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE, January 1850)" (195).
Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Bleak House
Left: Harry Furniss's lithographic portrait of the street-waif, “Jo”, “shaking and chattering” in the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition Edition for Chapter XLIX.
- Bleak House (homepage)
- Phiz's Illustrations for Bleak House (March 1852 - September 1853)
- Sir John Gilbert's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1863)
- O. C. Darley'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 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1873)
- Harry Furniss's 28 illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these 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.
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. Bleak House. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vols. 1-4.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VI.
_______. Bleak House, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873. IV.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Harry Furniss [28 original lithographs]. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. XI.
_______, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 18: Bleak House." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XVII. 366-97.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Vann, J. Don. "Bleak House, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, October 1846—April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 69-70.
Created 21 January 2015
Last modified 25 July 2025