Headnote vignette for "A Tale of Two Cities," Book III, Chapter 9, by John McLenan for "Harper's Weekly" (29 October 1859)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John McLenan —> Charles Dickens —> Illustrations of A Tale of Two Cities —> Next]

Headnote vignette: Book the Third, "The Track of a Storm," Chapter IX, "The Game Made."

John McLenan

8 by 4 cm (3 inches high by 1 ⅜ inches wide)

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

The twenty-sixth installment of the novel appeared in Harper's Weekly (29 October 1859): 701-702; it had originally appeared in the UK on Saturday, 22 October in All the Year Round.

This illustration depicts Mr. Lorry and Jerry Cruncher, positioned as they are as chapter begins. The action has shifted to revlutionary Paris, where Charles Darnay (otherwise, "The Marquis de St. Evrémnde") is now in grave danger.

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

While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character." [Book the Third, "The Track of a Storm," Chapter IX, "The Game Made," 701]

Commentary: "The Sheep of the Prisons"

The term is derived from Honoré's Riouffe's account of the confinement of a prisoner in a cell with an informer — a man formerly condemned to the galleys for theft; 'Il etait placé comme mouton, c'est a dire espion . . . ' (Mémoires sur les prisons 1.73). Dickens possibly recognized the term because an English equivalent, as 'sheep-biter', was late-eighteenth slang. [Sanders 151]

The expression "Sheep of the prisons" first occurs in Book III, Chapter 8, when Carton, now in Paris, confronts John Barsad, and threatens to unmask him as a former royalist spy, and an agent of the London police. The term "Sheep of the prisons" suggests an undercover agent of the Republican committees who adopts various identities, from turnkey to prisoner, using various pseudonyms, in order to gather incriminating information.

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

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].

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

Sanders, Andrew. A Companion to "A Tale of Two Cities." The Dickens Companion Series, Vol. 4. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.

Created 25 November 2007

Last modified 29 November 2025