"Ornate capital I" for Chapter One, "Barnaby Rudge," by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

Ornate capital "I"

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

c. 1841

6 x 2.8 cm. vignetted

Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Bradbury & Evans single-volume edition of December 1849, Chapter One, p. 229.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated

IN the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London — measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore — a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew. [Chapter the First, p. 229]

Commentary

Complementing George Cattermole's design of The Maypole (13 February 1841) in Master Humphrey's Clock is the ornamental letter "I," depicting a traditional Maypole dance — interrupted, apparently, by an alien visitor of reptilian aspect. The initial-letter vignette, therefore, comments upon the disconcerting arrival of a stranger at The Maypole Inn's taproom, as depicted in the next illustration.

References

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole.London: Bradbury & Evans, 1849.

Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Ed. Kathleen Tillotson. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole. The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens. London: Oxford University Press. 1954, rpt. 1987.

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978.

Last modified 1 August 2015