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Decorative Initial "O" with Vignette of The Spruce
George du Maurier
April 1876
Composite woodblock engraving
Designed for Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, Chapter 43 vignette.
5 cm high by 4.7 cm wide (2 by 1 ¾ inches), vignetted.
The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XXXIII, p. 385.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image, caption and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It appeared that the captain of the Spruce was aiming to pass in under the lee of the pier; but a strong current of four or five knots was running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt as soon as she slowed. To come in on the other side was dangerous, the hull of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile erection, with damage to herself also. Flower, who had disappeared for a few minutes, now came back.
‘It is just possible I can make ’em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,’ he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man’s wrist, and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider’s web. In this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a headfast rope might drag the erection completely over. Flower arrived at the end, where a lantern hung.
‘Spruce ahoy!’ he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three times.
There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer. [Chapter XLV, "The Railway — The Sea — The Shore Beyond," 405]
Thus far throughout the magazine serial Du Maurier has deployed the initial-letter vignettes for each monthly instalment to emphasize the importance of a particular character in the forthcoming chapters: Ethelberta out walking (July 1875), Christopher at the keyboard (August 1875), Christopher lost in the woods (September 1875), Joey Chickerell as Ethelberta's page (October 1875), Ladywell and Neigh (November 1875), Ethelberta's father as her butler (December 1875), and Lord Mountclere (January 1876). However, the illustrator now effects a change from flagging characters to underscoring significant settings: the street in Rouen (February 1876), the pathway and bench above the sea at Knollsea (March 1876), and now the channel packet, attempting to dock at close of day at Knollsea (April 876). The textual moment is exciting because recent high winds have prevented any commercial vessel from landing at the port. It carries from the railway at Sandbourne two significant passengers: Sol Chickerell and the Honourable Edgar Mountclere, Viscount Mountclere's younger brother. Hardy describes the desperate scene vividly, with a range of voices and weather conditions, to heighten suspense. This has hardly been typical of Du Maurier's deployments of the vignettes. However, injecting suspense at the curtain of a monthly serial instalment does reflect the narrative strategy of such Sensation novelists as Wilkie Collins.
So tempestuous are the waters at the entrance to the Wessex harbour that Captain Flower determines to put about and return to Sandbourne. Consequently, Sol and Edgar will have to hire a carriage when they return to the other Channel port in their attempt to prevent Lord Mountclere's marrying Etherberta.
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.
Created 16 January 2008
Last modified 18 January 2025