"Has it long gone the half-hour?" by Frederic W. Pailthorpe — sixteenth illustration for "Oliver Twist" (1886)

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"Has it long gone the half-hour?"

Frederic W. Pailthorpe

1886

8 cm by 6.5 cm wide (3 by 2 ½ inches), vignetted

Sixteenth illustration for Oliver Twist in F. W. Pailthorpe's hand-tinted engravings for the 1838 three-volume Richard Bentley (first) edition. This illustration is keyed to vol. III, p. 50.

[Click on image to enlarge it. See below for passage illustrated, commentary and comparisons with other illustrators' work; mouse over the text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Keeping a Fateful Appointment

"The laudanum has taken effect at last," murmured the girl, as she rose from the bedside. "I may be too late, even now."

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl: looking fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of Sikes’s heavy hand upon her shoulder; then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the robber’s lips; and then opening and closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the house.

A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.

"Has it long gone the half-hour?" asked the girl.

"It'll strike the hour in another quarter," said the man: raising his lantern to her face.

"And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more," muttered Nancy: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the street. [Chapter XXXIX, "Introduces Some Respectable Characters With Whom the Reader is Already Acquainted, and Shows How Monks and the Jew Laid Their Worthy Heads Together," p. 223 in the 1846 edition]

Commentary: Preparing Us for Nancy's Murder

No subsequent illustrator after George Cruikshank in The Meeting until F. W. Pailthorpe had dealt with the scene in which Nancy anxiously encounters the city watchman, "crying half-past-nine." Like Cruikshank's, Pailthorpe employs the encounter to establish an atmosphere of watchful suspicion. Here, Nancy tries to determine whether she has sufficient time to keep her appointment with Rose Maylie. Nancy worries that, although she has just drugged Bill Sikes, one of the gang may be following her as she crosses the East End of London. Unlike Pailthorpe, both Cruikshank and Furniss confirm Nancy's suspicions by depicting Noah Claypole as an eavesdropper at the bridge. Whether she arrives in time may determine whether Brownlow and Rose Maylie will solve the mystery of Oliver's origins and acquire the intelligence necessary to confront Monks. Unfortunately, when Sikes learns of her duplicity, he erroneously concludes that she has impeached on him to the Bowstreet Runners, and exacts a terrible vengeance.

Dickens's original illustrator, Cruikshank, in the December 1838 number of Bentley's Miscellany provided the scene in which Nancy, unwittingly followed by Fagin's agent, Noah Claypole, has effected a rendezvous with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on the steps of New London Bridge (Part 20, Chapter 46, "The Appointment Kept").

Illustrations from the initial serial edition (1837-39), Household Edition (1871), and Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)

Left: George Cruikshank's Mr. Fagin and his pupils recovering Nancy. Centre: James Mahoney's Then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the robber's lips. Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s dual character study of the disreputable, dispirited couple after the botched robbery: Bill Sikes and Nancy (1867). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Left: Harry Furniss's Nancy in Hysterics (1910). Right: Furniss's Rose and Nancy (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Material

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1838; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

_______. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. 1 (1820-1839).

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.

_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.

Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1774; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmetts Insurrection in 1803]. London: A & C Black, 1903. OT = pp. 1-106]. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.

Pailthorpe, Frederic W. (Illustrator). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. London: Robson & Kerslake, 1886. Set No. 118 (coloured) of 200 sets of proof impressions.

Created 13 February 2015

Last modified 6 December 2021