Waiting for Father

Marcus Stone

Wood engraving by Dalziel

14.5 cm high x 9.4 cm wide

Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Chapter Thirteen, "Tracking the Bird of Prey"[This part of the novel originally appeared in periodical form in August 1864.]

Reverting to the plot involving the watermen Gaffer Hexam and Rogue Riderhood and the mysterious murder of John Harmon, Dickens sends Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood under the direction of a police inspector (based on the actual figure of Chief Inspector Fields of the London Metropolitan Police) in search of riverside hovel of Gaffer, whom Riderhood has accused of Harmon's murder to order to obtain the ten-thousand-pound reward posted by Boffin.

[Continued below]

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.]

Scouting out the Limehouse shack, Eugene surreptitiously watches Lizzie Hexam, who is patiently awaiting the arrival of her father. The atmospheric scene, with the interior of the hovel but indistinctly seen, functions to evoke sympathy for the poor beautiful and sensitive girl, who has attracted the attention of the barrister Eugene Wrayburn.

Passage illustrated:

She had no other light than the light of the fire. The unkindled lamp stood on the table. She sat on the ground, looking at the brazier, with her face leaning on her hand. There was a kind of film or flicker on her face, which at first he [Eugene Lightwood] took to be the fitful firelight; but, on a second look, he saw that she was weeping. A sad and solitary spectacle, as shown him by the rising and falling of the fire.

It was a little window of but four pieces of glass, and was not curtained; he chose it because the larger window near it was. It showed him the room, and the bills upon the wall respecting the drowned people starting out and receding by turns. But he glanced slightly at them, though he looked long and steadily at her. A deep rich piece of colour, with the brown flush of her cheek and the shining lustre of her hair, though sad and solitary, weeping by the rising and falling of the fire. [141]

References

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Volume 14 of the Authentic Edition. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901.

Last modified 17 November 2010