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Mr. and Mrs. Peerybingle's First Home-coming
L. Rossi after Charles Green
1912
Lithograph
5.8 cm high x 5.8 cm wide, vignetted
Thumbnail for Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, The Pears' Centenary Edition, III, 26.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
It may have entertained the Cricket too, for anything I know; but, certainly, it now began to chirp again, vehemently.
"Heyday!" said John, in his slow way. "It’s merrier than ever, to-night, I think."
"And it’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world!"
John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed with her. But, it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing.
"The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that night when you brought me home — when you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?"
Oh yes! John remembered. I should think so!
"Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife." ["Chirp the First," Pears Centenary Edition, 26-27]
In the "List of Illustrations" on page 11 this one has the title Mr. and Mrs. Peerybingle's First Home-coming, but a different caption appears beneath it on page 26. This practice of having a short title but a much longer caption has been carried over from the previous Pears volumes. Although this was not even a year earlier, the John whom Rossi presents as a spruce bridegroom seems a far cry from the muffled giant of the previous lithograph, Mr. Peerybingle's Welcome Home on page 21. Moreover, in these illustrations of the middle-aged carrier Rossi does not seem to have consulted previous illustrators' work.
John, dressed to the nines in stylish clothing appropriate to the period of the story, in top-hat, Wellington boots, and tailcoat, a sprig in his lapel, is apparently gesturing towards the door of his cottage. However, rather than direct her gaze at the cottage, Dot, wearing a bonnet and an extensive shawl over her light-coloured wedding dress, looks adoringly at John. Although neither husband nor wife as he envisages them is particularly consistent with the interpretations of such earlier illustrators as Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, E. A. Abbey, and Fred Barnard, Rossi has ensured consistency of their images in terms of their faces and relative sizes across his program of twenty-six illustrations, in which the husband appears fourteen times and the wife eleven, making them the dominant figures in the series.
In the "List of Illustrations" (11-12), by the way, Shorter lists just "twenty-two illustrations" (as announced on the embossed cover), and appears to have discounted such thumbnails as the tailpiece on page 51, which without caption or title depicts John's dog, Boxer.
Left: Maclise's interpretation of the carrier at his domestic hearth in the frontispiece, John and Dot Peerybingle before the Fire (1845). Centre: Doyle's rather more prosaic reiteration of the same scene, Chirp the First (1845). Right: Barnard's realistic description of the middle-aged John and his young wife, John Peerbingle's Fireside (1878).
Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s emphasis is less on the family and more on the domestic realia of kettle, grate, chimney-piece, and Boxer in The Peerybingles (Diamond Edition, 1867).
Abbey's less stylish and more modest family gathering: "Ain't he beautiful, John?" (1876).
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
Dickens, Charles. The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Edwin Landseer. Engraved by George Dalziel, Edward Dalziel, T. Williams, J. Thompson, R. Graves, and Joseph Swain. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846 [December 1845].
_____. The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by L. Rossi. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
Last modified 3 April 2020