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I saw the shadow of no parting from her
John McLenan
11.4 cm by 11.5 cm wide (4 ½ inches square)
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V, Instalment 36 (3 August 1861): 494.
Plate 34 (facing p. 266) in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition (1861)
Scanned image, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
“I little thought,” said Estella, “that I should take leave of you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so.”
“Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and painful.”
“But you said to me,” returned Estella, very earnestly, “‘God bless you, God forgive you!’ And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now, — now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends.”
“We are friends,” said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.
“And will continue friends apart,” said Estella.
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. [Chapter LIX, 494]
This atmospheric wood-engraving, dropped into the text of Harper's Weekly for the 3 August 1861 number, marks the conclusion of the novel's initial serial run in the United States. Although Dickens had begun the serial in All the Year Round somewhat later than Harper & Bros. (1 December 1860 as opposed to 24 November 1860), the twin serialisations (serializations) had become synchronous as result of the American magazine's having to postpone the 26 January instalment. For the May 11, 18, and 25 (i. e., the twenty-fourth through twenty-sixth) instalments pictorial coverage of the conflict preempted McLenan's illustrations entirely.
Consequently, the American Civil War (which began in March 1861) provides a violent context for the Harper's fifteenth through thirty-sixth serial instalments of the novel, with reversals for the North counterpointing the suspense and sensationalism of Dickens's story of quarrel, separation, and (ultimately, in the August 3rd number) reunion amidst a shattered Eden. Fittingly, McLenan's green space in the ultimate illustration has new growth — ivy covering the old all and low trees. The scene plays out beneath the rising moon. The composition's setting and the lovers' postures seem to suggest that they have regained the Eden that Pip apparently lost at the end of the first stage of his "Expectations" at the close of Chapter XIX. Pip's upper-middle class clothing and hat remind us again of how he renounced his working-class origins for a chance to win the heroine of his personal romance. The mature lovers take each other's hands as they depart from the green world, bound doubtless for the metropolis rather than the village of their youth.
Aside from a fragment of wall that is not just a theatrical backdrop but a metonymy for the class symbol that divided them — Satis House — McLenan offers no analogue for the negative aspects of their pasts. McLenan has shaped Estella and Pip as a pyramid and a column respectively, complementary forms which convey stability. These classical "remains" suggest a more grounded and cultured history than either character has experienced. Otherwise, McLenan's space is strangely two-dimensional. Through the forms and poses of Pip and Estella, McLenan conveys an uneasy sense of this shared future they contemplate. "Seeing no shadow of another parting from her" does not mean that such a parting cannot lie ahead, for mortality is an essential part of the human condition, as the fates of Miss Havisham and Magwitch have forcibly shown them. Nevertheless, McLenan depicts the lovers as both confident and guardedly optimistic. However, culturally American readers in August 1861 probably viewed McLenan's reunited couple against the backdrop not of the ruined Satis House and garden, but of the defeat of the Union forces at the Battle of Bull Run on 21 July, the latest instalment in the cataclysm that has engulfed the serial's readers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line — the American Civil War.
Left: Harry Furniss's rather undramatic reunion of the mature, respectably dressed lovers: Estella and Pip (1910). Centre: F. A. Fraser's Household Edition version is rather low-key for a romantic finalé: We sat down on a bench that was near (1876). Right: Marcus Stone's Illustrated Library Edition conclusion of the mature Pip and Estella: With Estella after all (1862), as they stand silently, shoulder to shoulder, united at last against a starry backdrop. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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_______. "'We Can Now See That the Days of Illustrated Novels Were Drawing to an End' — Not So." The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 3, pp. 6-7.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vol. IV-V (24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861).
_______. ("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.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Watts, Alan S. "Why Wasn't Great Expectations Illustrated?" The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 2, pp. 8-9.
Waugh, Arthur. "Charles Dickens and His Illustrators." Retrospectus and Prospectus: The Nonesuch Dickens. London: Bloomsbury, 1937, rpt. 2003. Pp. 6-52.
Created 20 November 2007 Last modified 15 December 2021