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"Look here," said Herbert
John McLenan
Instalment 29
11.7 cm by 11.5 cm wide (roughly 4 ½ inches square)
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V (15 June 1861): 366.
Plate 27 (facing p. 210 in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition (1861)
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.
“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; “here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. Here’s her allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of cheese, and here’s her rum, — which I drink. This is Mr. Barley’s breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It’s stewed up together, and taken hot, and it’s a nice thing for the gout, I should think!” [Chapter XLVI, 366]
McLenan provides yet another comic, domestic scene to contrast with the serious, romantic scene that preceded it in the previous week's instalment. Pip has made his way up the Thames, to Mrs. Whimple's rooming-house at Mill Pond Bank, Chinks’s Basin, where shortly Pip and Herbert intend to instal Provis in preparation for getting him aboard the Rotterdam steamer. The enormous basket brought downstairs by Clara dominates the table, although McLenan does not show its contents in the detail given in the text. However, the illustrator adds some interesting background details suggestive of Bill Barley's former occupation as a ship's purser: conch shells on the mantelpiece, and above them a print of Robinson Crusoe's encountering Friday in Defoe's travelogue-adventure.
Left: In his 1885 series for the Robson and Kerslake Edition, F. W. Pailthorpe presents Clara's father, old "Grumffandgrim," Bill Barley, whom Herbert finally meets in this chapter: "Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes". Right: F. A. Fraser's realisation of Pip's making his way upriver to Mill Pond Bank: I had had to feel my way back among the shipping (1876).
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.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. IV and V (1860-61).
______. ("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.
______. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XIII.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (18 vols). London: Educational Book Co., 1910.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 last updated 8 December 2021