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Passage Illustrated: The Perrault Original

In the days of King Alfred, there lived a poor woman whose cottage was situated in a remote country village, a great many miles from London. She had been a widow some years, and had an only child named Jack, whom she indulged to a fault. The consequence of her blind partiality was, that Jack did not pay the least attention to any thing she said, but was indolent, careless, and extravagant. His follies were not owing to a bad disposition, but that his mother had never checked him. By degrees she disposed of all she possessed—scarcely any thing remained but a cow. The poor woman one day met Jack with tears in her eyes; her distress was great, and for the first time in her life she could not help reproaching him, saying, “Oh! you wicked child, by your ungrateful course of life you have at last brought me to beggary and ruin. Cruel, cruel boy! I have not money enough to purchase even a bit of bread for another day—nothing now remains to sell but my poor cow! I am sorry to part with her; it grieves me sadly, but we must not starve.” For a few minutes, Jack felt a degree of remorse, but it was soon over, and he began teasing his mother to let him sell the cow at the next village, so much, that she at last consented. As he was going along, he met a butcher, who inquired why he was driving the cow from home? Jack replied, he was going to sell it. The butcher held some curious beans in his hat; they were of various colours, and attracted Jack’s attention. This did not pass unnoticed by the butcher, who, knowing Jack’s easy temper, thought now was the time to take an advantage of it; and determined not to let slip so good an opportunity, asked what was the price of the cow, offering at the same time all the beans in his hat for her. The silly boy could not conceal the pleasure he felt at what he supposed so great an offer, the bargain was struck instantly, and the cow exchanged for a few paltry beans. Jack made the best of his way home, calling aloud to his mother before he reached home, thinking to surprise her. — Charles Perrault.

A. Jack shows kindness to a poor Old Woman.

As Jack was hastening along to the village [looking for work after botching the sale of the cow], he saw a little old woman, in a hood and cloak, sitting by the road-side, who appeared to be bent down with age and illness. Now, although Jack was in a great hurry, his heart was too good to pass by any one who seemed in distress, so he went to the old woman and asked her if he could do anything to help her. At first she only answered by a low, moaning sort of sound, and kept rocking herself backwards and forwards; but Jack stooped down, and, speaking kindly to her, took her hand, in order to raise her from the ground. — "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," p. 9.

B. who turns out to be a Fairy, and

Her cloak and dress were of a dark, dingy brown; but as she rose up, it seemed to change to green, mixed with red, and blue, and yellow; and her aged, wrinkled face, seemed also to be changing from a pale yellow to pink; and the half-shut grey eyes seemed to open into two bright, glistening, little blue ones,​that fixed their gaze upon him. And then, slowly, the hood​, the cloak, and gown, with the old pale face, and brown wrinkled hands and arms, all disappeared or melted away into the air; and there stood before him a most charming and graceful little lady, with light flaxen hair, encircled by a wreath of little tiny flowers. She had a pair of wings like those of some beautiful butterfly, to which her dress corresponded. In one hand she held a thin light wand, and in the other a Bean, speckled with bright purple and gold. Jack started back with surprise when he beheld this pretty little figure, which he rightly guessed was a Fairy, and who thus addressed him . . . .​[9]

C. who gives him the Wonderful Bean, which he sets in the Garden.

After a hasty meal, Jack took the spade, and went into​ the garden to plant the Bean according to the Fairy's directions, whilst his mother and sister sat at the cottage door, spinning from their distaffs. Jack felt so happy and cheerful with the little digging he had done to set the Bean, that he went on digging part of the vegetable garden, to the great delight of his mother and sister, who had never seen him work with such good will before. On the following morning they were all up long before break of day, although it was summer time; and whilst they were preparing Jack's breakfast he went out to see how the Bean had got on, and came running in to tell them that it had grown — oh, such a wonderful size, and higher than he could see! [13-14]

Introduction: some time during the era of Viking raids when "the country used to be attacked by thieves, called pirates, from Denmark" [6]

In the reign of King Alfred the Great — so called because he was very clever and very good — there lived a poor woman, who had a son and a daughter; the little girl's name was Ady, and the boy's name was Jack. Their home was a very long way from London, in a deep valley, surrounded by rocks and mountains, as steep as the side of a house and as high as the clouds, so that nobody could get to the top of them; and the only way into this valley was by the sea-shore: large waterfalls poured down the sides of the the rocks, and formed a river which ran through the valley into the sea. Their dwelling was a small cottage with a nice garden, in which they grew vegetables and flowers; and they had a cow. [5]

Jack in Cruikshank's tale is as negligent, irresponsible, and immature as the original character in Charles Perrault's version, and as fundamentally good-hearted. However, Cruikshank has not merely reiterated the historical setting (the realm of Alfred the Great during the Danish raids), but has also utilised it in the class and circumstances of Jack and his family, who are the dispossessed Saxon owners of the castle that the Danish giant has illegitimately occupied, throwing the rightful owner (Jack's father, Sir Ethelbert, "a brave Saxon knight" [10]) into one of the dungeons. Thus, the wonderful country above the clouds must still be part of England, although the mountains and forbidding seacoast suggest a Welsh setting. The change in the identity of the giant results in Cruikshank's giving the Danish pirate more human, less ogreish proportions and physiognomy — and a music hall foreign accent somewhere between German and Russian. Most English children prior to Cruikshank's version would have encountered the story in "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean," which was published in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire, or an 1807 version probably derived from the 1734 text.

Jack and the Beanstalk, traditional fairy-tale of considerable antiquity first published in full in 1807. A poor boy named Jack plants an enchanted bean which instantly grows, so high that its top is soon lost in the sky. Jack climbs up, and reaches the wonderful 'Beanstalk Country' tyrannized over by a fearful giant whom Jack slays, afterwards marrying a beautiful lady. CS I; MED 21; OMF ii I; iv 16; PP 22. — Bentley et al., 131.

The story of the poor boy who makes good by doing good, the pattern for which has already been established by the first tale in the Fairy Library, "Hop-o' My-Thumb," seems to have been a favourite with the writer whose guilty childhood secret was pasting labels on bottles in Warren's Blacking Factory at 30, Hungerford Stairs, on the Thames. Dickens as a boy would have been familiar with the Horatio Alger story through an 1807 translation of the Perrault original.

Commentary

Second volume in series George Cruikshank's Fairy Library.] The History of Jack & the Bean-Stalk | Edited and illustrated with six etchings by George Cruikshank. Published by First edition of London: David Bogue 86 Fleet Street. London: Printed by G. Barclay Castle St. Leicester Sq (1853). All eight illustrations on six plates present as called for in list on verso of fly-leaf. In original green card wraps, ornately illustrated on cover, which has at its head, 'George Cruikshank's | Fairy Library'; and at its foot, 'Published By | D Bogue 86 FleetSt. | Price One Shilling'. On back cover: 'Already Published, | Hop O'My Thumb and The Seven League Boots, | Illustrated with six plates, containing nine subjects, | being | No. 1 of George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. | Preparing for Publication, | No. III. | Cinderella and Glass Slipper. | Edited | and | Illustrated | by | George Cruikshank. | Price One Shilling each.

Although the initial movement of the story resembles that of "Hop-o' My-Thumb," in terms of the family's poverty and desperation, the cause of their troubles is not the father's alcoholism but the invading Danes, in particular, the Danish giant who has usurped and imprisoned Sir Ethelbert, Jack's father and the rightful owner of the mountain-top castle. The story's second movement again involves a cannibalistic giant living in a great house into which the hero inserts himself by pleading for food and shelter with the giant's kindly wife.

The composition of the story and its illustrations follows both Dickens's satirizing Cruikshank's pedantic, teetotal moralism in "Frauds on the Fairies", the leader in the 1 October 1853 number of the weekly journal Household Words and that author's publishing his own narrative of English history from the earliest times right up the the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in A Child's History of England in Household Words from 25 January 1851 through 10 December 1853. In Dickens's child-oriented, pro-Protestant account, one of the most prominent and positive figures is Alfred the Great, 871-901, whom Dickens describes in terms that seem to have influenced Cruikshank's description: "the best and wisest king that ever lived in England" (Chapter 2, "Ancient England under the Early Saxons," p. 22). From Dickens, too, Cruikshank may have derived the name of Jack's father, "Ethelbert."

The transformation of the Old Woman in the hooded cloak into the Fairy-mentor​ involves a vivid change in colour that the black-and-white ink drawings cannot possibly render; however, with an artist's sense of colour Cruikshank effectively describes​the transformation in terms of pale yellow to pink ski,​and grey to blue eyes. The three opening scenes in the original volume occur after the frontispiece showing Jack climbing the bean-stalk, an order that is retained in the 1865 composite volume's "List of Illustrations" for the second tale, which retains, too, its own pagination. Each scene is framed by foliage to emphasize the rural setting and prepare the reader visually for the gigantic beanstalk. The third frame is the most detailed, featuring the now-familiar figure of Jack, already seen twice; in the background, his mother and sister are working with their distaffs, spinning yarn, in front of the thatched-roof cottage and cow-shed. Beside four large cabbages Jack, centre, is preparing the hole for the magic Bean.​ The three scenes are thus an interesting blend of the real and imaginative worlds of the story, set in the historical past — the reign of King Alfred — but containing such mythical elements as a magic bean, a gigantic beanstalk, a giant, and an intervening fairy.

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. The History of Jack & the Bean-Stalk. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: David Bogue, 1854. (Price one shilling) 8 etchings on 6 tipped-in pages, including frontispiece.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z. The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. A Child's History of England. Illustrated by F. W. Topham and Marcus Stone. Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. Ed. Gillian Avery. London: Everyman & J. M. Dent, 1995. Pp. 2-395.

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Perrault, Charles. "Jack and the Beanstalk." Fairy Tales and Other Traditional Stories. Lit2Go. http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/5089/jack-and-the-bean-stalk/

Vogler, Richard, The Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

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Last modified 24 June 2017