And smoothing her rich hair — Fred Barnard's eighth illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities" (1874)

[Victorian Web —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Fred Barnard —> A Tale of Two Cities —> Next]

And smoothing her rich hair

Fred Barnard

Dalziel, engraver

1874

13.9 by 10.7 cm (5 ½ inches high by 4 ¼ inches wide)

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

[See commentary below]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

[You may use image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose without prior permission as long as you link to this URL in a web document or credit this site in a print one.]

Dickens describes the relationship between the beautiful Lucie Manette and her older friend — almost a surrogate mother — Miss Pross, who dotes upon the teenager, calling her "Ladybird" and generally treating her like a daughter in A Tale of Two Cities, Book the Second, "The Golden Thread," Ch. VI, "Hundreds of People." Taking into account the lengthy title of the illustration, "And smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women" (p. 45), the reader would likely make the connection between this eighth woodcut and the following passage that begins on the facing page:

Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. [44-45]

The relationship is not nearly so closely described in Phiz's original narrative-pictorial sequence for the novel, the relevant illustration being "Hundreds of People" (Dec., 1859), the frontispiece that shows Lucie with her father, Lorry, Carton, and Darnay, but significantly not Miss Pross, whom Phiz depicts clearly only in "The Double Recognition" (the other December, 1859, illustration). Her only other appearance in Barnard's sequence is the important scene in which she defies Madame Defarge, wrestles with her, and inadvertently kills the French nemesis in order to protect her "Ladybird."

John Mclenan, the American illustrator for the Harper's serialisation of the novel, appears not to have been much interested in Miss Pross, showing her in "Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry", 25 June 1859, and at the climactic moment when Miss Pross thwarts Madame Defarge's plans in "Like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground" in the 26 November 1859 weekly instalment. Certainly Barnard's old maid and proud subject of King George III is a far more formidable figure than those of Phiz and Mclenan.

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 Phiz. London: Chapman & Hall, 1859.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. Vol. VIII. London: Chapman & Hall, 1874.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly. Tenth instalment (2 July 1859): 405.

"Foulon, Joseph de Doué." Wikipedia. Accessed 28 February 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_de_Doue.

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

Knight, Charles. The Popular History of England. Vol. VII. London: Chapman and Hall, 1857.

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

Vann, J. Don. "A Tale of Two Cities in All the Year Round, 30 April — 26 November 1859." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 71-72.

Created 17 February 2011
Last updated 20 December 2025