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"Which I meantersay, Pip."
John McLenan
11.2 cm high by 11.7 cm wide (4 ⅜ by 4 ½ inches), vignetted
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V, instalment 8 (12 January 1861): 21.
Plate 11 in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861, facing p. 70.
Scanned image, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and polite, he persisted in being to Me.
“Have you brought his indentures with you?” asked Miss Havisham.
“Well, Pip, you know,” replied Joe, as if that were a little unreasonable, “you yourself see me put ’em in my ’at, and therefore you know as they are here.” With which he took them out, and gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good fellow,—I know I was ashamed of him,—when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously. I took the indentures out of his hand and gave them to Miss Havisham.
“You expected,” said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, “no premium with the boy?”
“Joe!” I remonstrated, for he made no reply at all. “Why don’t you answer —”
“Pip,” returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, “which I meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No. You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?”
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there; and took up a little bag from the table beside her. [Chapter XII, pp. 21-22]
Now that Pip has served as the object of Estella's apprenticeship as a heart-breaker, Miss Havisham dispenses with his services. Offering to pay his premium, she formally seals the bargain with Joe to make Pip Joe's apprentice. Despite the earstwhile visits to Satis House and romantic delusions about Estella, Pip now rejoins the labouring classes. McLenann, realizing that this negotiation is not entirely to Pip's liking, turns the boy away from the viewer so that one cannot appraise Pip's feelings from his facial expression. Estella impishly studies Pip from behind Miss Havisham's shoulder as if she were the old woman's familiar spirit. She betrays no emotion whatsoever. And Joe, as in the letterpress, refuses to look directly at her, and consistently addresses himself to Pip.
Left: Miss Havisham and Estella (1867), from the Diamond Edition by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Centre: Marcus Stone's fanciful version of an enthroned, radiantly beautiful heiress as she must have appeared on her wedding day: Pip Waits on Miss Havisham, in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862). Right: F. A. Fraser's Household Edition version of Pip's presenting his benefactress to Joe for his apprenticeship: "Well, Pip, you know, . . . . you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at" (1876).
Left: Harry Furniss's portrait attends to convey Pip's initial impressions of Miss Havisham: Miss Havisham (1910). Centre: Charles Green's version of an earlier scene in the diningroom: "What do you think that is?", in the Gadshill Edition (1898). Centre: F. W. Pailthorpe's hand-tinted version of this apprenticeship scene: I present Joe to Miss Havisham, in the Robson and Kerslake Edition (1885).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Barreca, Regina. "David Lean's Great Expectations." Dickens on Screen, ed. John Glavin. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2003. Pp. 39-44.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "Chapter 16, Marcus Stone." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980. Pp. 203-209.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV.
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 10 December 2021