She Stopped, Like A Clock and the title-page of The Cornhill Magazine, Volume XXXII (July-December 1875). The frontispiece for the volume is George du Maurier's initial full-page illustration for Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta — composite woodblock engraving by George Du Maurier (illustrator) and engraver Joseph Swain, 16 cm high by 10 cm wide (6 ¼ by 4 inches), framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Realised: Ethelberta gets lost on the heath, but encounters "a tourist"
‘Surely,’ she said to herself, ‘I faced the north at starting:’ and yet on walking now with her back where her face had been set, she did not approach any marks on the horizon which might seem to signify the town. Thus dubiously, but with little real concern, she walked on till the evening light began to turn to dusk, and the shadows to darkness.
Presently in front of her Ethelberta saw a white spot in the shade, and it proved to be in some way attached to the head of a man who was coming towards her out of a slight depression in the ground. It was as yet too early in the evening to be afraid, but it was too late to be altogether courageous; and with balanced sensations Ethelberta kept her eye sharply upon him as he rose by degrees into view. The peculiar arrangement of his hat and pugree soon struck her as being that she had casually noticed on a peg in one of the rooms of the ‘Red Lion,’ and when he came close she saw that his arms diminished to a peculiar smallness at their junction with his shoulders, like those of a doll, which was explained by their being girt round at that point with the straps of a knapsack that he carried behind him. Encouraged by the probability that he, like herself, was staying or had been staying at the ‘Red Lion,’ she said, ‘Can you tell me if this is the way back to Anglebury?’
‘It is one way; but the nearest is in this direction,’ said the tourist — the same who had been criticized by the two old men.
At hearing him speak all the delicate activities in the young lady’s person stood still: she stopped like a clock. When she could again fence with the perception which had caused all this, she breathed.
‘Mr. Julian!’ she exclaimed. The words were uttered in a way which would have told anybody in a moment that here lay something connected with the light of other days.
‘Ah, Mrs. Petherwin! — Yes, I am Mr. Julian — though that can matter very little, I should think, after all these years, and what has passed.’
No remark was returned to this rugged reply, and he continued unconcernedly, ‘Shall I put you in the path — it is just here?’
‘If you please.’ [Chapter 1, "A Street in Anglebury — A Heath near — Inside The ‘Old Fox Inn,’" page 6]
Commentary
The serial novel begins dramatically, with Ethelberta's suddenly meeting her ex-lover Christopher Julian for the first time since her marriage to young Petherwin. Ethelberta experiences a range of emotions almost wholly unreflected in the first plate, which shows the heroine as mildly surprised. Nor does Du Maurier offer much evidence of Ethelberta's breathless pursuit of the duck and the hawk (which symbolically foreshadows the pursuit of Ethelberta by her various suitors); this scene is suggested only by the initial vignette. Du Maurier has, however, given us the background heather, the depression in the ground from which Christopher unexpectedly emerges, his hat, pugree, and knapsack (exotic "tourist" accoutrements), supplementing the country walking outfit as described by Hardy — but with a touch of his own, a walking stick, perhaps suggestive of Christopher Julian's gentlemanly status. Ethelberta "stops like a clock" because in the shadows her interlocutor is a mere "tourist" until she hears the familiar voice which transports her to a time before her marriage. Better realized in a small space is Ethelberta's approaching the edge of pond with the duck-hawk overhead, the scene which du Maurier captures the initial letter vignette which occurs before the scene realized in the first plate. The editors of The Cornhill, however, have made this elegant du Murier full-page composite woodblock engraving the frontispiece for Volume XXXII.
Related Material
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "The Only Artist to Illustrate Two of Thomas Hardy's Full-length Novels, The Hand of Ethelberta and A Laodicean: George du Maurier, Illustrator and Novelist." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 40" Hardy's Artists. 2012. 54-128.
Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. The Cornhill Magazine. Vol. XXXII (1875).
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 updated 17 January 2025