The Trial of Evremonde, frontispiece for the Household Edition (anticipating p. 146) by Fred Barnard. 1874. 13.3 x 17.7 cm. (5 ⅛ by 6 ⅞ inches, framed). Dr. Manette and Lucie are centre, Charles Darnay is to the left in the witness box from Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book III, Chap. IX, "The Game Made." Facing the title-page. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Passage Realised
The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep — whom many fell away from in dread — pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd. Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there. She was there, sitting beside her father.
When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy blood into his face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney Carton, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly.
Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.
Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow and the day after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-thirsting, cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try the deer.
Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor. No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising, murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other eye in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one another, before bending forward with a strained attention.
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.
To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.
The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?
“Openly, President.”
“By whom?”
“Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine.”
“Good.”
“Thérèse Defarge, his wife.”
“Good.” [Book the Third, "The Golden Thread," Chapter IX, "The Game Made," pp. 146-147]
Commentary: Behind the Scenes
The frontispiece for the slender, 176-page Household Edition of A Tale of Two Cities, first published in volume form in 1859 and reissued as one of twenty large-scale, green-bound volumes by Dickens's own publishers, Chapman and Hall, shortly after the novelist's death in the larger, double-columned, format (reminiscent of the 1850s journal Household Words, 1850-59) is consistent with the new modes of production and techniques and technologies of illustration of the late 1860s.
This large-scale composite woodblock engraving, composed of several blocks glued together, establishes this as an historical novel of epic dimensions in terms of the scope of its narrative. Fred Barnard's The Trial of Evrémonde sets the keynote, the legal and extra-legal harassment of blameless individuals caught up in the throes of great historical movements. The original victim of aristocratic malice, the former Bastille prisoner, Dr. Manette, and his married daughter, Lucie, are centre; Charles Darnay, the Liberal-minded aristocrat who has renounced his family name "St. Evrémonde," title ("Marquis"), and fortune, is to the left in the witness box. The courtroom scene from Dickens's second historical novel, the first being Barnaby Rudge (1841), is dramatic both textually and visually as Barnard envisages it as set on stage. However, in contrast to such heroic revolutionary artists as Jacques Louis David, the very English Fred Barnard conceives of this event as staged in a dingy courtroom occupied by ragtag "patriots" — proletarians (left) and a piratical jury of "Jacobins" sporting cockades and revolutionary caps (above). On the wall behind the prisoner, the neatly inscribed "Liberty" and "Equality" are paramount, whereas "Brotherhood" has been scrawled in as an afterthought, implying that the court is devoid of human sympathy and understanding in these dread tribunals. In place of a tricolour flag or other national symbol to suggest the authority of the court Barnard has placed a Phrygian cap on the outlet of the gas-jet, implying that revolutionary fervour — not to say bias — has stifled any possibility for illumination that might guide the whole proceeding.
The frontispiece thus both comments upon and anticipates the highly charged trial late in the story, in Book 3, Chapter 9, and therefore invites the reader to compare the much earlier trial of Darnay as a French spy in the Old Bailey (Book Two, "The Golden Thread," Chapter 3, "A Disappointment"). Whereas Phiz had focused on the impact of the foregone verdict in After the Sentence (December 1859) on Charles Darnay's wife (exploiting the sensational and emotional dimensions of the situation in the manner of a Victorian melodrama), Barnard treats the whole affair as mundane, as just another day in the life of a brutal but prosaic revolution. In contrast, in his headnote vignette for Book 3, Chapter 1, American illustrator John McLenan had shown an alienated Charles Darnay, ironically well-dressed for the occupant of so dismal a prison cell in In Secret, then transported to his trial under heavily armed guard in "You are a cursed emigrant," cried a farrier, then re-arrested in "The Citizen Evrémonde, Called Darnay" in Book 3, Chapter 6, and finally unseen as he is indicted by his father-in-law's own hand in "This is that paper, written" in Book 3, Chapter 8. McLenan shows us various studies of an isolated Darnay, ending with the headnote vignette for Book 3, Chapter 13 ("Fifty-two"), but fails to depict him in the context of one of the novel's most dramatic events.
Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [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.] Click on the image to enlarge it.
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1859.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly. (24 September 1859): 621; (5 October 1859): 699; (29 October 1859): 701; (19 November 1859): 748.
_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XIII.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1874. Vol. VIII.
Dickens, Charles, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Last modified 2 April 2017
Last modified 24 January 2026