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He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. — P. 21.
Fred Barnard; engraver, Dalziel
1878
17.6 cm high by 12.7 cm wide (6 ⅞ by 5 inches), framed, facing title-page.
Frontispiece for Dickens's Christmas Books.
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"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." [Stave Three, "The Second of the Three Spirits," pp. 20-21]
The frontispiece sets the keynote not just for the 1843 novella, but for all five Christmas Books published in this Household Edition volume. As is especially appropriate for the first, second, and final novellas in this 1840s series, Fred Barnard has created a markedly urban scene, which he imbues with a strong sense of community as well-wishers greet Bob and Timothy Cratchit on their way home from church on Christmas morning in Camden Town. Despite his troublesome employer, wrapped up against the snowy weather, Bob is cheerful and carefree, transformed into a large child himself through the medium of play. Aside from Sol Eytinge, Junior's vignette for the Ticknor and Fields A Christmas Carol (Boston, 1868), this is the first depiction of Bob and Tiny Tim sailing through the streets of Camden Town together. This composite woodblock engraving, signed in the lower left corner by its engraver, is unusual in that it does not realise an actual, textual moment in the dramatised action, but rather one which is merely reported.
Barnard's markedly realistic style is very different from that of Dickens's original illustrator, the Punch cartoonist John Leech, and the effect of modelling — of using real bodies to produce a three-dimensional effect — is evident. However, the realistic public and private buildings in the background provide a suitable and realistically rendered social context for the action, and Bob's period costume adds verisimilitude. The arrival home of father and son occurs after this delightful social interaction among the mother and the other Cratchit children:
"No, no. There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
"So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day?"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper. [Stave Three, "The Second of the Three Spirits," 20]
Thus, Scrooge witnesses the joyful family reunion and overhears the above dialogue in which the narrator interprets Bob's behaviour as being like that of a race-horse; but all Scrooge actually sees is Bob and Tim as they enter through the Cratchit family door. The illustration, therefore, extends the text of the novella in a way that the original Leech illustrations, faithful realisations of textual passages, did not.
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Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books and Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People [Seven Sketches from "Our Parish"]. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875 [rpt. of the 1867 Ticknor & Fields volume].
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol — A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by A. E. Abbey. The Household Edition. 17 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. III: 11-39.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. XVII: 1-37.
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Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. 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.
Slater, Michael. "Introduction to A Christmas Carol." Dickens's Christmas Books. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1971. Rpt., 1978. Vol. 1: 33-44.
Slater, Michael. "A Note on the Text and Annotation." "Notes to A Christmas Carol." Dickens's Christmas Books. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1971. Rpt., 1978. Vol. 1: xxvii-xxviii; 257-261
Solberg, Sarah A. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens' Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-118.
Thomas, Deborah A. Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Created 9 August 2012
Last modified 10 June 2024
