Done! (1872). Fifty-second illustration by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (Chapter XLVIII, "Bears Tidings of Martin, and of Mark, as Well as of a Third Person Not Quite Unknown to the Reader. Exhibits Filial Piety in an Ugly Aspect; and Casts a Doubtful Ray of Light upon a Very Dark Place," page 369). 10.7 by 13.9 cm, or 4 ¼ high by 5 ½ inches, framed, engraved by the Dalziels. Running head: “A Mysterious Landlord." However, the plate is merely analeptic, so that we read it only after we have read Dickens's account of the murder of Tigg and its aftermath in Chapter XLVII, "Conclusion of the Enterprise of Mr. Jonas and His Friend." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated after the Fact
Never more beheld by mortal eye or heard by mortal ear; one man excepted. That man, parting the leaves and branches on the other side, near where the path emerged again, came leaping out soon afterwards.
What had he left within the wood, that he sprang out of it as if it were a hell!
The body of a murdered man. In one thick solitary spot, it lay among the last year’s leaves of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlong down. Sopping and soaking in among the leaves that formed its pillow; oozing down into the boggy ground, as if to cover itself from human sight; forcing its way between and through the curling leaves, as if those senseless things rejected and forswore it and were coiled up in abhorrence; went a dark, dark stain that dyed the whole summer night from earth to heaven.
The doer of this deed came leaping from the wood so fiercely, that he cast into the air a shower of fragments of young boughs, torn away in his passage, and fell with violence upon the grass. But he quickly gained his feet again, and keeping underneath a hedge with his body bent, went running on towards the road. The road once reached, he fell into a rapid walk, and set on toward London.
And he was not sorry for what he had done. He was frightened when he thought of it — when did he not think of it! — but he was not sorry. He had had a terror and dread of the wood when he was in it; but being out of it, and having committed the crime, his fears were now diverted, strangely, to the dark room he had left shut up at home. [Chapter XLVII, "Conclusion of the Enterprise of Mr. Jonas and His Friend," 366. Running Head: "After the Wicked Blow."]
Commentary: The Sensational Dark Plate Reflects the Violence Enacted!
Left: Harry Furniss's rather more low key approach to creating suspense in Chapter XLII, On the Road to Salisbury (1910).
In Ch. XLVII, having been dropped off by Pecksniff, Mr. Montague had pursued the lonely footpath through the woods. "Never more [was he] beheld by mortal eye, or heard by mortal ear: one man excepted." That man is the swindler's business associate and murderer, Jonas Chuzzlewit, who in this illustration is "parting the leaves and branches on the other side of the woods, near where the path emerged again" (366). Barnard does not depict the actual murder (he, like Dickens, leaves that scene to the reader's iumagination), but focuses instead on the highly dramatic moment when Jonas, elated by having acted on his atavistic impulse, bursts forth from the Darwinian jungle, tearing through the young boughs so violently "that he cast into the air a shower of fragments" (366). The reader encounters the plate after he or she turns the page on which Jonas returns home in London unobserved at 5:00 A. M. the next day. The narrative of his having committed a murder in a woodland setting has biblical echoes, of Cain's murder of his brother Abel in Genesis and Satan's having seduced Eve to commit Original Sin in Paradise Lost. See "Dickens's Jonas in Martin Chuzzlewit and Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost: "like a devilish Engine back recoils/ Upon Himself" (Paradise Lost, IV, 17-18).
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Barnard, Fred. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vol. 2 of 4.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 volumes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2. [The copy of the Household Edition from which these pictures were scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, proprietor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2008, was this 1843-44 novel.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 15: Martin Chuzzlewit." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 17. Pp. 267-294.
Kyd [Clayton J. Clarke]. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.
"The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: Fifty-nine Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-Six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney, Charles Green, A. B. Frost, Gordon Thomson, J. McL. Ralston, H. French, E. G. Dalziel, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. Printed from the Original Woodblocks Engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Pp. 185-216.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.
Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85. [See e-text in Victorian Web.]
Steig, Michael. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz. Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.
4 February 2008
Last modified 26 November 2024