Decorative Initial "O" by George Du Maurier for Thomas Hardy's "The Hand of Ethelberta" in "The Cornhill Magazine," Vol. XXXIII (February 1876)

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Decorative Initial "O" with street from Normandy

George du Maurier

Joseph Swain

February 1876

Composite woodblock engraving

Designed for Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, Chapter 35.

6.5 cm high by 5 cm wide (2 ½ by 2 ⅛ inches), vignetted.

The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XXXIII, p. 230.

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image, caption and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Anticipated in the French Street Scene (Chapters 35 through 38)

Nothing further of importance occurred in crossing. Ethelberta’s head ached after a while, and Cornelia’s healthy cheeks of red were found to have diminished their colour to the size of a wafer and the quality of a stain. The Speedwell entered the breakwater at Cherbourg to find the schooner already in the roadstead; and by the time the steamer was brought up Ethelberta could see the men on board the yacht clewing up and making things snug in a way from which she inferred that they were not going to leave the harbour again that day. With the aspect of a fair galleon that could easily out-manoeuvre her persevering buccaneer, Ethelberta passed alongside. Could it be possible that Lord Mountclere had on her account fixed this day for his visit across the Channel? [Chapter XXXIII, "The English Channel — Normandy," 234]

Commentary

Du Maurier makes much more of the French setting than does Hardy. Indeed, the nautical term "schooner" and "yacht" in the opening paragraphs seems to have stimulated the illustrator to provide such details as the loading of casks to suggest cross-channel maritime commerce.

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "Part Two: Du Maurier's Twenty-Two Illustrations for the Cornhill Magazine's Serialisation of Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, July, 1875-May, 1876." The Thomas Hardy Year Book No. 40: Hardy's Artists by Philip Allingham. Guernsey: Toucan Press, 2012. 58-66.

Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. The Cornhill Magazine. Vol. XXXIII (1876).

Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. Intro. Robert Gittings. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

Page, Norman. "Thomas Hardy's Forgotten Illustrators." Bulletin of the New York Public Library 77, 4 (Summer, 1974): 454-463.

Sutherland, John. "The Cornhill Magazine." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. 150.

Vann, J. Don. "Thomas Hardy (1840-1928. The Hand of Ethelberta in the Cornhill Magazine, July 1875-May 1876." in Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 83.

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George
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The Hand of
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Created 16 January 2008

Last updated 17 January 2025