"Well, What Did You Think of My Poems?" by George Du Maurier. The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XXXII (December 1875), facing page 733; second full-page illustration for Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, 10 cm high by 4.5 cm wide (3 ½ by 2 ½ inches), vignetted. Engraver Joseph Swain. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Keeping Ethelberta's Secret
‘Now, Picotee,’ continued the elder, ‘let us talk for a few minutes before I go back: we may not meet again for some time.’ She put her arm round the waist of Picotee, who did the same by Ethelberta; and thus interlaced they walked backwards and forwards upon the firm flat sand with the motion of one body animated by one will.
‘Well, what did you think of my poems?’
‘I liked them; but naturally, I did not understand all the experience you describe. It is so different from mine. Yet that made them more interesting to me. I thought I should so much like to mix in the same scenes; but that of course is impossible.’
‘I am afraid it is. And you posted the book as I said?’
‘Yes.’ She added hurriedly, as if to change the subject, ‘I have told nobody that we are sisters, or that you are known in any way to me or to mother or to any of us. I thought that would be best, from what you said.’
‘Yes, perhaps it is best for the present.’
‘The box of clothes came safely, and I find very little alteration will be necessary to make the dress do beautifully for me on Sundays. It is quite new-fashioned to me, though I suppose it was old-fashioned to you. O, and Berta, will the title of Lady Petherwin descend to you when your mother-in-law dies?’ [Chapter VI, "The Shore by Wyndway," 733]
Commentary: A Picturesque Seashore Scene
Ethelberta's conversation with Picotee on the beach near Wyndway House, the scene depicted in the second plate, confirms our suspicions that the girl whom Christopher used to encounter on the road near Sandbourne is, in fact, Ethelberta's sister: "She put her arm around the waist of Picotee, who did the same by Ethelberta and hus interlaced they walked backwards and forwards upon the firm flat sand" (Ch. 6). Since Hardy says little about this setting, Du Maurier (whose notion of a summer holidays seems to have been a seaside excursion) has had to improvise. In addition to what we might expect — seaweed, rocks, and a chalk cliff — the artist has strategically placed a symbolic tree: the two branches are suggestive of Picotee (the younger and lower, both in stature and social status) and Ethelberta (the older and higher). The similarity in their clothing is accounted for by Ethelberta's passing on her dresses from the previous season to her younger sister, Picotee, whom Du Maurier has made a few inches shorter. The plate also confirms — if the perceptive reader required such confirmation — that Ethelberta is the author of "Poems by ME" (in the volume edition, "Poems by E"), a copy which she was responsible for sending Christopher by way of Picotee.
Related Material
Scanned image 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 the image 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 4 April 2001
Last updated 20 December 2024