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"Seated on a carpet were two girls bending over books"
Harold Copping
1924
Line-drawing (vignetted)
6 ¼ by 5 ⅛ inches (15.9 x 13 cm)
"Jenny Wren," Chapter 4 in Children's Stories from Dickens, 43
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"Let's look at it," said Mr. Fledgeby.
"Sir, I have company there," returned Riah hesitating, "but will you please come up and see them?"
Mr. Fledgeby nodded, and the old man led the way up flight after flight of stairs, till they arrived at the house-top. Seated on a carpet, and leaning against a chimney-stack, were two girls bending over books. Some creepers were trained round the chimney-pots, and evergreens were placed round the roof, and a few more books, a basket of gaily colored scraps, and bits of tinsel, lay near. One of the girls rose on seeing that Riah had brought a visitor, but the other remarked, "I'm the person of the house downstairs, but I can't get up, whoever you are, because my back is bad, and my legs are queer."
"This is my master," said Riah speaking to the two girls, "and this," he added, turning to Mr. Fledgeby, "is Miss Jenny Wren; she lives in this house, and is a clever little dressmaker for little people. Her friend Lizzie," continued Riah, introducing the second girl. "They are good girls, both, and as busy as they are good; in spare moments they come up here, and take to book learning." ["Jenny Wren" in Children's Stories from Dickens, pp. 42-44]
Copping's plate of the girls reading together on the roof in the neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, London, is based directly on Marcus Stone's The Garden on the Roof (Part 7, November 1864), but focusses entirely on the two girls and minimizes such background details as the chimneys spewing forth smoke, and Riah and Fledgby. The style, too, is different in the Copping's version is markedly more realistic, with carefully modelled figures and effective arial perspective. In both versions, Fascination Fledgby visits his own money-lending business, Pubsey & Co., where his front-man, Riah, conducts him onto the roof where the daughter of Gaffer Hexam, Lizzie, is reading with her friend Jenny Wren, "The Doll's Dressmaker" (whose real name if Fanny Cleaver).
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. London: Chapman and Hall, 1867.
Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.
Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. "Jenny Wren." Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Pp. 42-48.
Created 13 October 2023