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Ornate initial capital "T"
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
7 August 1841
2.8 x 1.8 cm (approximately 1 ⅛ x 1 inch), vignetted
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Bradbury & Evans single-volume edition of December 1849, Chapter Forty-nine, Vol. III, 217.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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THE mob had been divided from its first assemblage into four divisions; the London, the Westminster, the Southwark, and the Scotch. Each of these divisions being subdivided into various bodies, and these bodies being drawn up in various forms and figures, the general arrangement was, except to the few chiefs and leaders, as unintelligible as the plan of a great battle to the meanest soldier in the field. It was not without its method, however; for, in a very short space of time after being put in motion, the crowd had resolved itself into three great parties, and were prepared, as had been arranged, to cross the river by different bridges, and make for the House of Commons in separate detachments. [Initial-letter for the seventh monthly number: Chapter the Forty-ninth, 217]
The phlegmatic hangman who puffs on his short pipe as he leans on the gallows erected in an open field is not explicitly Ned Dennis, the Newgate hangman who has joined the cause of Lord George Gordon. In fact, no such gallows occurs within the confines of the forty-ninth chapter. Rather, the image may be both literal (the green space in the background may represent St. George's Fields, across the Thames, where one hundred thousand ultra-Protestant adherents of Gordon's cause gather on the morning of Friday, 2 June 1780), but also figurative. The vignette and opening paragraph imply that mob violence is about to erupt, and that these zealots and opportunists will perpetrate hanging offences (which numbered in the hundreds in the 18th c.) for the opening instalment of the August 1841 monthly number (parts 26 through 29).
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury & Evans, 1849.
________. 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. "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. "Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February-27 November 1841." New York: MLA, 1985. 65-66.
Created 5 July 2002
Last modified 26 December 2020
