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David at the milepost for Dover: Title-Page Vignette
Fred Barnard
1872
7.1 x 5.4 cm (2 ¾ by 2 ⅛ inches), vignetted
Wood Engraving
Dickens's David Copperfield in the Household Edition
[The entire title-page (9 ¾ by 7 ¼ inches)]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use these images 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.]
This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight; which happened so often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light; and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dispirited. [Chapter XIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution," 94]
How does it come about that a boy from the upper-middle-class with every expectation of going to a British public school and of eventually joining one of the professions should come to this fate? The diminutive boy, without jacket, pauses at the milestone for Dover, and appears to have a pain in his side. Working for starvation wages at the Thames-side business of Murdstone and Grinby as a bottle-washer, David Copperfield determines to gamble everything upon a difficult seventy-mile journey on foot to the port of Dover, where he intends to throw himself upon the mercy of an aunt whom he has no remembrance of meeting, the wealthy but quirky old maid Betsey Trotwood. The journey has taken him the better part of a week, and he has had to sell his vest and coat in order to survive. Thus, he arrives as we see him in Barnard's title-page vignette: aching all over, hungry, ragged, filthy — and despondent.
Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911 [rpt. from 1850]. 2 vols.
_______. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 3.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907. No. 1.
The copy of the Household Edition from which this picture was scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, Editor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2010, is this novel.
Created 17 August 2016 Last modified 8 July 2022
