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She shuddered to approach the pit. . . .
Felix Octavius Carr Darley
1912?
Photogravure
13.2 cm high by 8.8 cm wide
Volume IX, 263, in Dickens's Hard Times in the Co-operative Publication Society Edition
Terry-Lynn Johnson Collection
Image scan and text by Philip V. Allingham
"O, my good Lord! He's down there! Down there!" At first this, and her terrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael, by any tears, by any prayers, by any representations, by any means. It was impossible to hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have flung herself down the shaft.
"Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven, not these dreadful cries! Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of Stephen!"
By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the agony of such a moment, Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and to look at her with a tearless face of stone.
"Rachael, Stephen may be living. You wouldn't leave him lying maimed at the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could bring help to him?"
"No, no, no!"
"Don't stir from here, for his sake! Let me go and listen."
She shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her hands and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call. She listened, but no sound replied. She called again and listened; still no answering sound. She did this, twenty, thirty times. She took a little clod of earth from the broken ground where he had stumbled, and threw it in. She could not hear it fall.
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all round her, seeing no help. "Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!" [Book Three, The Garnering"; Chapter 6, "The Starlight," The 1863 Sheldon & Co. edition, Vol. 2, page 21]
As Sissy Jupe and Rachael approach the mouth of the Old Hell Pit, they realise that Stephen Blackpool has fallen in. In this realistic but melodramatic photogravure, the poses of the young women beside the abandoned mineshaft in the north of England rather than their faces alone to convey their desperation. In the foreground is a battered hat, presumably of the type worn by American factory-workers of the 1860s rather than the cloth cap of the proletariat depicted in Sol Eytinge's image of Stephen (1867). Although C. S. Reinhart presents the same moment in the Harper and Brothers Household Edition in the next decade, Darley masterfully conveys the suspense within the accompanying text as Rachael attentively listens for the clod of soil she dropped to hit bottom. Realistically, in Darley's kinetic rendering of the incident, Sissy (dressed as a domestic servant to signal her place in the Gradgrind household) clings desperately to a young, attractive Rachael so that she, too, will not fall victim to the pernicious landform created by the carelessness of the mine's owners, who have failed to put up protective barriers and seal the fissure. In contrast to the movement and extreme emotion of the figures in the foreground, Darley presents the surrounding countryside as complementary, giving prominence to the haystacks (left of centre, rear), representing the pre-industrial life of England, but showing the contaminating effects of recent human industry through the distorted, leafless trees and the broken masonry.
Left: Sol Eytinge Junior's "Stephen and Rachael" (1867). Right: Fred Walker's "Stephen Blackpool Recovered from The Old Hell shaft." (1868). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
The Household Editions. Left: C. S. Reinhart's "Rachael caught her in both arms, with a scream that resounded over the wide landscape" (1876). Right: Harry French's dramatic 1876 illustration of Rachael's bending over the battered body of Stephen in "She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him" (1877). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vol. 2.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Fred Walker. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1868.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times and The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Charles Stanley Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. With twenty illustrations by Harry French. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877.
Dickens, Charles. Works. Photogravure-Illustrated Edition. New York and London: Co-operative Publication Society, [n. d., 1912?].
Created 12 August 2012
Last modified 3 February 2025