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Frontispiece Vol. 3
Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz)
13 February 1841
Dickens's Master Humphrey's Clock, III.
7 ½ x 4 ¾ inches (19.4 x 12 cm) vignetted
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Bradbury & Evans single-volume edition of December 1849, frontispiece.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
IF the object an author has had, in writing a book, cannot be discovered from its perusal, the probability is that it is either very deep, or very shallow. Hoping that mine may lie somewhere between these two extremes, I shall say very little about it, and that, only in reference to one point.
No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the 'No Popery' riots of Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers of its creed. [227-228; November 1841 preface, text facing the frontispiece]
According to J. A. Hammerton in The Dickens Picture-Book (1910), this wood-engraving served as the frontispiece both to the third volume of Master Humphrey's Clock and for the December 1849, single-volume Barnaby Rudge, published by Bradbury and Evans, the printing firm with whom Dickens had compacted after he broke with Chapman and Hall in 1844. The cost over-runs associated with printing A Christmas Carol had resulted in reduced royalties, but Dickens felt he had been cheated. Only in 1859, after he quarrelled with Bradbury and Evans, did Dickens return to his former publishers, who all the while had retained their shares in his copyrights.
At the apex of Phiz's design the narrator or editor of the tale, in the manner of the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott, presides over the characters of his creation. The balding, elderly bachelor, Master Humphrey, reads from a folio. Below him is the clock whose case contains the editor's manuscripts. Aside from fanciful goblins who are mere decorative elements suggestive of the fictional nature of the volume thus introduced, particular characters from the novel occupy prominent positions: Barnaby and Gripp the raven (upper left), the conniving servant Miggs, upper right; centre left, Master Humphrey again; centre right, the devious Sir John Chester; lower left, the forthright hero of the tale, Joe Willet, the proverbially beautiful heroine, Dolly Varden, and the intellectual heroine, Emma Haredale (extreme lower right). The overall design is that of an ornate eighteenth-century mantelpiece clock, with the corpulent publican of The Maypole, John Willet, forming the weight for the pendulum (centre). Assorted rioters cavort above, imparting swirling energy to Phiz's rococco design.
Left: F. O. C. Darley's character study of the eponymous character and his shrewd avian companion: Barnaby Rudge and Grip the Raven (1888). Left of centre: Fred Barnard's Household Edition title-page vignette Barnaby and the Rioters' Standard (1874). Right of centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s frontispiece for the Diamond Edition, Barnaby Rudge and His Mother (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's frontispiece for the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Barnaby and Grip the Raven (1910).
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury & Evans, 1849.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XIV. Barnaby Rudge." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. 213-55.
Vann, J. Don. "Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February 1841-27 November 1841." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 65-6.
Last modified 28 November 2020