As he kissed her hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her father — (See page 228.) Book II, chap. 1, Sixties' illustrator James Mahoney's thirty-second illustration in the Chapman and Hall Household Edition volume of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit, Household Edition, 1873. Wood-engraving by the Dalziels, 10.6 cm high by 13.5 cm wide. Page 225. {Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Passage Illustrated
"To the health of your distinguished family — of the fair ladies, your daughters!"
"Sir, I thank you again, I wish you good night. My dear, are our — ha — our people in attendance?"
"They are close by, father."
"Permit me!" said the traveller, rising and holding the door open, as the gentleman crossed the room towards it with his arm drawn through his daughter’s. "Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To to-morrow!"
"As he kissed his hand, with his best manner and his daintiest smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and passed him with a dread of touching him.
"Humph!" said the insinuating traveller, whose manner shrunk, and whose voice dropped when he was left alone. "If they all go to bed, why I must go. They are in a devil of a hurry. One would think the night would be long enough, in this freezing silence and solitude, if one went to bed two hours hence.’
"Throwing back his head in emptying his glass, he cast his eyes upon the travellers' book, which lay on the piano, open, with pens and ink beside it, as if the night's names had been registered when he was absent. Taking it in his hand, he read these entries.
William Dorrit, Esquire / And suite. From France to Italy
Frederick Dorrit, Esquire
Edward Dorrit, Esquire
Miss Dorrit
Amy Dorrit
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gowan. From France to Italy. — Book the Second, "Riches," Chapter 1, "Fellow Travellers," p. 228-229.
Commentary
The Chapman and Hall woodcut appears at approximately the same point in the New York (Harper and Brothers) edition, but has a more extensive caption in the American text: "Permit me!" said the traveller, rising and holding the door open. "Good repose! To the pleasure of seeing you once more! To to-morrow!" As he kissed her hand, with his best manner, and his daintiest smile, the young lady drew a little nearer to her father, and passed him with a dread of touching him — Book 2, chap. i.
The Dorrits, now having undergone a sea-change as a result of Pancks' investigations, are now wealthy ebnough to undertake the nineteenth-century equivalent of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour for young English aristocrats. Charles Dickens himself travelled through France and into Italy in 1844, and subsequently experienced the crossing of the St. Barnard Pass in the Alps from Switzerland into Italy. At a monastery in the Alps, the Dorrit party meets the honeymooning Gowans, as well as the rakish and insinuating Frenchman, Monsieur Blandois (the alias of Rigaud, the wife-murderer), all on their way to Rome. Amy, finding that Blandois' peculiar attentions make her feel uncomfortable, turns to her here-to-fore ineffectual father for protection. Mahoney's treatment of the foreign villain throughout the 1873 Household Edition volume is consistent with Rigaud's malignant appearance in other 19th-century programs of illustration: here we see the same Satanic smirk, the same curling moustache, the same exaggerated nose and Gallic chin (all that are visible of his face in the Mahoney illustration) that one sees in Sol Eytinge, Junior's Rigaud and Cavalletto (1867). In this illustration, Amy, dressed fashionably in a white gown and shawl (a departure from her previous, dark clothing) shrinks from the gesticulating Frenchman, whom he father regards with cold aloofness.
A relatively minor character in the original serial program who makes just four appearances (discounting his indistinct image in The Birds in the Cage (December 1855) — significantly at this point in the narrative to the extreme left, studying the English tourists in Phiz's The Travellers (Book 2, Chapter 1) — the scoundrel Rigaud, usually smoking, is very much a continuing character in Mahoney's program, introduced in the initial illustration in the Marseilles prison. In fact, in the fifty-eight illustrations, Rigaud appears thirteen times, eight of these being in Book the Second. Mahoney may, however, be overstating his importance to the plot, just as Harry Furniss has unreasonably minimized him in the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition by showing him just once.
Scenes for the first chapter of Book the Second, "Riches," in the original, Diamond, and Charles Dickens Library Editions, 1856-1910
Left: Hablot Knight Browne's original October 1856 steel-engraving of the middle-class English tourists gathered at the Swiss inn, The Travellers. Right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the haughty English governess, the genteel widow whom William Dorrit has hired to "finish" his daughters, Mrs. General (1867). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: The Harry Furniss realisation of the first scene in Book Two, when the transformed William Dorrit, now a wealthy English traveller, complains about his being treated unfairly, Mr. Dorrit and the Swiss Innkeeper (1910).[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
References
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
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. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Authentic Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1901 [rpt. of the 1868 volume, based on the 30 May 1857 volume].
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vol. 1.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by James Mahoney [58 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss [29 composite lithographs]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1919. Vol. 12.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 19: Little Dorrit." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 17. Pp. 398-427.
"Little Dorrit — Fifty-eight Illustrations by James Mahoney." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.
Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985.
Last modified 12 May 2016