Headnote vignette for "A Tale of Two Cities," Book III, Chapter 10 ("The Substance of the Shadow"), by John McLenan for "Harper's Weekly" (5 November 1859)

Headnote vignette ("Will you please to enter the carriage?") for the flashback in Book III, Chapter 10 ("The Substance of the Shadow").

John McLenan

7 by 4 cm (2 ¾ inches high by 1 ⅝ inches wide)

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

The twenty-seventh installment of the novel appeared in Harper's Weekly (5 November 1859): 716-718; it had originally appeared in the UK on Saturday, 29 October in All the Year Round.

Passage Illustrated: The St. Evrémndes' Long-Kept Secret in Manette's Testament

This illustration depicts the point in Dr. Manette's long-hidden narrative that describes how the two St. Evrémonde brothers ordered him into their coach to provide medical assistance for the young woman whom they had abducted and raped, and her dying brother:

"We have been to your residence," said the first, "and not being so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?"

The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door. They were armed. I was not.

"Gentlemen," said I, "pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to which I am summoned."

The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. "Doctor, your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to enter the carriage?" [Book the Third, "The Track of a Storm," Chapter X, "The Substance of the Shadow," 718]

Commentary: An account of events in December 1757

The illustration prepares readers for the scene of the dying brother's cursing the St. Evrémnde brothers and their noble lineage for exercising their traditional tright (Droit du seigneur) as French nobles to have their way sexually with his recently married sister, the daughter of one of their tenants, in December, 1757. The first-person account is very much a retrospective as Dr. Manette is writing this "testimony" some ten years after these events when, on 31 December 1767, he completes the letter and hides it in the stones of his cell, 105 North, in the Bastille for posterity. In the headnote vignette, the St. Evrémnde brothers in Paris waylay the celebrated physician and surgeon, formerly of Beauvais, and drive him to a pair of dying patients nearly a league beyond the municipal barrier. In this dark plate, McLenan highlights the doctor in the left foreground, employing the darkness for atmospheric effect, underscoring the brothers' malignant natures, and foreshadowing Dr. Manette's unfortunate future, his arrest and secret detention in the Bastille.

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

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.]

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 30 November 2025