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Boundless Confidence
F. W. Pailthorpe
1885
Etching
4 by 3 ⅜ inches (10 cm by 8 cm)
"In the infinite meaning of his reply, and his boundless confidence in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off."
Dickens's Great Expectations, facing p. 508.
Scanned image and text George P. Landow
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“He thinks,” said the landlord, a weakly meditative man with a pale eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack,—“he thinks they was, what they wasn’t.”
“I knows what I thinks,” observed the Jack.
“You thinks Custom ’Us, Jack?” said the landlord.
“I do,” said the Jack.
“Then you’re wrong, Jack.”
“AM I!”
In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked into it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put it on again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he could afford to do anything.
“Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then, Jack?” asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.
“Done with their buttons?” returned the Jack. “Chucked ’em overboard. Swallered ’em. Sowed ’em, to come up small salad. Done with their buttons!”
“Don’t be cheeky, Jack,” remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy and pathetic way.
“A Custom ’Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons,” said the Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt, “when they comes betwixt him and his own light. A four and two sitters don’t go hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down with another, and both with and against another, without there being Custom ’Us at the bottom of it.” Saying which he went out in disdain; and the landlord, having no one to reply upon, found it impracticable to pursue the subject. [Chapter LIV]
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Volume IV: 740 through volume V: 495 (for 24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861).
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XIII.
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by F. W. Pailthorpe. London: Robson & Kerslake, 23 Coventry Street, Haymarket, 1885.
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by H. M. Brock. Imperial Edition. 16 vols. London: Gresham Publishing Company [34 Southampton Street, The Strand, London], 1901-3.
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. XIV.
Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. "Picaresque Novel." A Handbook to Literature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Pp. 389-390.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to Great Expectations. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 26 February 2004 Last modified 6 November 2021