[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> 1849 Cheap Edition —> Barnaby Rudge —> Next]
Title-page Vignette
John Absolon or Fanny Corbaux
Engraver: E. Finden
1849
Steel engraving
11.2 cm high by 9 cm wide (4 ½ inches high by 3 ½ inches wide), vignetted.
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Cheap Edition's title-page vignette (1849)
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham
Mrs. Varden’s chief aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel excrescences—Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy of notice; to be fickle, false, base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly undeserving. When particularly exasperated against them (which, scandal said, was when Sim Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed to wish with great emphasis that the whole race of women could but die off, in order that the men might be brought to know the real value of the blessings by which they set so little store; nay, her feeling for her order ran so high, that she sometimes declared, if she could only have good security for a fair, round number — say ten thousand — of young virgins following her example, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown, stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all expression. [Chapter VII, pp. 33-34]
Miss Miggs deliberated within herself for some little time, looking hard at the shop-door while she did so, as though her eyes and thoughts were both upon it; and then, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer, twisted it into a long thin spiral tube. Having filled this instrument with a quantity of small coal-dust from the forge, she approached the door, and dropping on one knee before it, dexterously blew into the keyhole as much of these fine ashes as the lock would hold. When she had filled it to the brim in a very workmanlike and skilful manner, she crept upstairs again, and chuckled as she went.
‘There!’ cried Miggs, rubbing her hands, ‘now let’s see whether you won’t be glad to take some notice of me, mister. He, he, he! You’ll have eyes for somebody besides Miss Dolly now, I think. A fat-faced puss she is, as ever I come across!’
As she uttered this criticism, she glanced approvingly at her small mirror, as who should say, I thank my stars that can’t be said of me! — as it certainly could not; for Miss Miggs’s style of beauty was of that kind which Mr. Tappertit himself had not inaptly termed, in private, ‘scraggy.’
‘I don’t go to bed this night!’ said Miggs, wrapping herself in a shawl, and drawing a couple of chairs near the window, flouncing down upon one, and putting her feet upon the other, ‘till you come home, my lad. I wouldn’t,’ said Miggs viciously, ‘no, not for five-and-forty pound!’
With that, and with an expression of face in which a great number of opposite ingredients, such as mischief, cunning, malice, triumph, and patient expectation, were all mixed up together in a kind of physiognomical punch, Miss Miggs composed herself to wait and listen, like some fair ogress who had set a trap and was watching for a nibble from a plump young traveller. [Chapter IX, pp. 43-44]
Left: Detail of the 1849 vignette and Phiz's original caricature of the Vardens' remarkably ugly maid: Miggs in the Sanctity of Her Chamber in Chapter 9 (13 March 1841); and detail of Miggs in Phiz's The Locksmith Dressing for Parade (10 July 1841). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond edition illustration: Mr. and Mrs. Varden and Miss Miggs in Chapter 18 (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's only representation of the Vardens' maid in a Varden family scene (detail), The Dressing of Varden in his Regimentals (1910).
The portrait artist (whether John Absolon or Fanny Corbaux) has revised the original Phiz-Cruikshank conception of the novel's illustrations considerably. Here, for example, instead of depicting a harridan contemplating vengeance on Sim Tappertit, the illustrator offers a far more sympathetic and markedly more feminine version of the Vardens' maid. Aside from the window, the artist offers no suggestion of the moment realised, as if that aspect of the illustration is less material than rendering the subject with sensitivity. Certainly the wan visage is neither vicious nor mischievous, but may be characterised by the phrase "patient expectation."
Darley, Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury & Evans, 1849.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. The Cheap Edition. Illustrated by H. K. Browne, J. Absolon, and F. Corbeaux. London: Chapman and Hall, 1849.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. Original pencil drawings Barnaby and Hugh, and Mrs. Varden and Miggs, two of four extra illustrations for the Cheap Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1849.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. IX.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge — A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. VII.
Created 8 March 2025