"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais by John McLenan. Illustration for Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book II, "The Golden Thread," Chapter XVII, "One Night." 8.4 cm high by 8 cm wide (3 ¼ by 3 ⅛ inches) in Harper's Weekly (20 August 1859): 529; this instalment appeared in UK on Saturday, 6 August, in All the Year Round. As Lucie and her father sit in the garden of their house in Soho on the night before her marriage to Charles Darnay, the stress of losing her makes Dr. Manette think of his time of as a prisoner in the Bastille. [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Communing under the Stars in the Garden at Soho
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.
"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. "I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dun and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."
The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over. [Book the Second, "The Golden Thread," Chapter XVII, "One Night," 529]
Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)
- Hablot K. Brown or 'Phiz' (16 illustrations, 1859)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior (8 illustrations, 1867)
- Fred Barnard (25 illustrations, 1874)
- A. A. Dixon (12 illustrations, 1905)
- Harry Furniss (32 illustrations, 1910)
Related Material
- John McLenan's Thirty-One Headnote Vignettes for A Tale of Two Cities in Harper's Weekly (7 May — 3 December 1859)
- Phiz's July 1859 Plates for Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
- French Revolution
- Victorian Images of the French Revolution
- "A Tale of Two Cities (1859): A Model of the Integration of History and Literature"
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates." Dickens Studies. 33 (2003): 109-158.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 7 May through 3 December 1859.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities: A story of the French Revolution. Project Gutenberg e-text by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #98].
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. With illustrations by John McLenan and Rowland Wheelwright. Orinda, Cal.: Sea Wolf Press, 2021.
Created 6 August 2007
Last modified 17 November 2025