"And at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart-wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb."
Edward G. Dalziel
Wood engraving
13.6 cm high by 10.6 cm wide
Dickens's "Doctor Marigold," p. 176, in Christmas Stories.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Dalziel's preference for relatively static composition featuring to figures and contextual background is evident here. The reader receives not only a strong impression of Marigold's cart in the rear, but also of the child's size relative to the cart's wheel immediately behind her.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
Passage Illustrated
His master's name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and I knew him to speak to. I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart-wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At the first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show; but at the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child. She was just the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.
To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beating the gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson's publics, and I put it to him, "She lies heavy on your own hands; what'll you take for her?" Mim was a most ferocious swearer. Suppressing that part of his reply which was much the longest part, his reply was, "A pair of braces." "Now I'll tell you," says I, "what I'm a going to do with you. I'm a going to fetch you half-a-dozen pair of the primest braces in the cart, and then to take her away with me." Says Mim (again ferocious), "I'll believe it when I've got the goods, and no sooner." I made all the haste I could, lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was completed, which Pickleson he was thereby so relieved in his mind that he come out at his little back door, longways like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakey in a whisper among the wheels at parting. [174]
Commentary
How does a graphic artist do justice to the racey patter of Doctor Marigold, self-styled "King of the Cheap Jacks"? Although his costume like his cart is completely believable, Dalziel's figure of the huckster conveys little of that dynamic, innovative, completely compelling voice that Dickens has created.
Diamond Edition (1867), Illustrated Library Edition (1868), Household Edition (1876-77), and Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910) Illustrations Relevant to "Doctor Marigold" (1865)
Left: E. A. Abbey's "Grandfather!" Right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's 1867 illustration "Doctor Marigold and Sophy." [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Left: E. G. Dalziel's "Doctor Marigold" (1868). Right: Harry Furniss's "Doctor Marigold teaching Sophy" (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Il. Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
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. Christmas Books and The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 10.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All The Year Round". Illustrated by Townley Green, Charles Green, Fred Walker, F. A. Fraser, Harry French, E. G. Dalziel, and J. Mahony. The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, rpt. in the Centenary Edition of Chapman & Hall and Charles Scribner's Sons (1911). 2 vols.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller and Additional Christmas Stories. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004.
Thomas, Deborah A. Dickens and The Short Story. Philadelphia: U. Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Last modified 16 April 2014