[Headnote vignette: Charles Darnay in solitary confinement in La Force] — illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities" by John McLenan

Headnote vignette

John McLenan

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book III, Chapter 1, "In Secret"

The twenty-first installment of the novel appeared in Harper's Weekly (24 September 1859): 621; it orginally appeared in UK on Saturday, 17 September in All the Year Round

7.9 x 4.1

Compare illustration by Phiz

[See below for passage ilustrated]

Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham; text by PVA and George P. Landow

[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. .]

Passage Illustrated

John McLenan's first illustration for the twenty-first instalment of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities depicts Charles Darnay in solitary confinement in La Force:

There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death."

"Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half." The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. "He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes." The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. "The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half." With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent — that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.

Last modified 5 August 2007