Decorative Initial "W" and vignette of Joey Chickerell — seventh wood-engraving by George du Maurier for The Cornhill Magazine edition of Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, Volume XXXII (October 1875), Chapter 16, page 490. 8.5 cm high by 3.8 cm wide (6 ¼ by 4 inches), vignetted. Engraver Joseph Swain. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Complemented
By this time the door was opened, and before him stood Ethelberta’s young brother Joey, thickly populated with little buttons, the remainder of him consisting of invisible green.
‘Ah, Joseph,’ said Christopher, instantly recognizing the boy. ‘What, are you here in office? Is your —’
Joey lifted his forefinger and spread his mouth in a genial manner, as if to signify particular friendliness mingled with general caution.
‘Yes, sir, Mrs. Petherwin is my mistress. I’ll see if she is at home, sir,’ he replied, raising his shoulders and winking a wink of strategic meanings by way of finish — all which signs showed, if evidence were wanted, how effectually this pleasant young page understood, though quite fresh from Wessex, the duties of his peculiar position. Mr. Julian was shown to the drawing-room, and there he found Ethelberta alone. [Chapter XVII, "Ethelberta's House," 490]
Commentary
The impish figure of Joey Chickerel in the fourth initial-vignette presides over the instalment in which Ethelberta's public persona could be undermined if the maid, Menlove, can penetrate the secret of Ethelberta Petherwin's humble origins. Joey in the character of the precocious, recently citified country boy provides a good deal of comedy when Picotee arrives unexpectedly, late in the instalment. Clearly, as the text suggests, Christopher Julian knows very well that Ethelberta's butler is in fact her brother.
We are now well into the story, in the fourth serial instalment (Chapters XVI through XXI), although the serial designates "a Turnpike Road" as Chapter XV rather than XIV. In the final version of the text, Chapter XI was revised, and Chapter VIII was actually formed two chapters" (Vann, 83) in the serial. The vignette stationed at the opening of serial Chapter XVII must be read proleptically: analysed, in other words, without the informing text, and then reinterpreted as the reader encounters the moment realised in the letterpress. We meet du Maurier's conception of Ethelberta's cheeky brother three chapters before we have Hardy's introductory scene in Ethelberta's house.
Related Material
Scanned images 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 images 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 20 December 2024