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The Cherub and the Lovely Woman
Sol Eytinge
Composite woodblock engraving
1867
9.9 cm high by 7.4 cm wide (3 ⅞ by 2 ⅞ inches), frontispiece for Dickens's Our Mutual Friend in the Diamond Edition (Boston: Ticknor & Fields), facing page 351.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Eytinge briefly reveals Bella Wilfer, the ward of the Boffins, in the thirteenth illustration, John Harmon. However, here, in Book Three, Chapter XV, "The Golden Dustman at his Worst," having broken with Noddy Boffin over his supposed unkindness to his Secretary, John Rokesmith, Bella appears in her father's office to break the news that she will be returning home, a penniless girl once again. The scene is the counting-house of the "drug-house" of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles, in Mincing Lane, near the Bank of England in the City. Her father, a senior clerk of the Bob Cratchit variety and possessed of genial disposition, bears the nickname "Rumpty" with which the younger, more whimsical office clerks address him on account of his initial, "R." (which, in fact, as we learn in the fourth chapter of book one, stands for "Reginald," although he always signs himself "R. Wilfer").
Gradually Bella tries to prepare her father for the news that she has lost the precuniary prospects to which she has clung for so long. She will shortly be interrupted in her narrative by the arrival of John Rokesmith (Harmon disguised) himself. Although the illustrator omits Mr. Wilfer's modest "refection" (milk and a cottage loaf, constituting his "tea") on the window-seat, Eytinge gives us the essentials of the dark, ill-heated office: the plate glass affording a view of the lane, and "Rumty's Perch" (his high desk). Details that Eytinge has provided are R. Wilfer's inverted top hat, Bella's bonnet, and the quill pen behind Rumty's ear. As she attempts to break the news, Bella rumples his whispy hair as she has been wont to do since childhood, as the illustration captures this moment:
He was falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest composure, and Bella stealing her arm a little closer about him, and at the same time sticking up his hair with an irresistible propensity to play with him, founded on the habit of her whole life . . . . [Chapter XVI, "The Feast of the Three Hobgoblins," 353]
Eytinge defines their relationship by Bella's playfulness as she dotes upon her parent as if he were her child. The curves of Rumpty's body and cheeks accord nicely with Dickens's description of him in Book One, Chapter IV ("The R. Wilfer Family"), as both "boyish" and cherubic. However, this is a far more charming and less surly and petulant Bella than the one to whom Dickens introduced us in Book One, Chapter IV. Earlier, she seemed haughty and mercenary; now she freely expresses her devotion to her father, and to the supposedly penniless secretary, John Rokesmith.
Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Vol. VIII. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Winter, William. "Charles Dickens" and "Sol Eytinge." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 181-202, 317-319.
Created 25 November 2010 last updated 17 March 2023