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Commentary

Eytinge continues with his realisation of the story of Bella Wilfer, her younger sister, Lavinia, and their dictatorial mother in the last plate of his series, illustrating a scene of the fifth chapter of the fourth book, "Concerning the Mendicant's Bride." The publisher, however, has positioned the illustration so that it falls in the previous chapter, "A Runaway Match," in which John Rokesmith makes a rendezvous with Bella and her father at Greenwhich, and marries her at the picturesque eighteenth-century church there.

As the reader encounters the illustration, Bella has just read a letter aloud to her father and new husband in which she briefly announces that she and Rokesmith have married; she has taken the interesting precaution of attempting to protect her long-suffering father from the wrath of her mother by giving her mother the impression that R. Wilfer knows nothing about the wedding ("Please tell darling Pa," 416). We now await the moment in the text when in company with Bella's ex-beau, George Sampson, and her daughter Lavinia, the imperious Mrs. Wilfer (depicted as somewhat cadaverous of face by Eytinge) receives the correspondence and reacts negatively to the news it imparts. Curiously, the illustrator has not included the letter itself in the picture, which apparently deals with the following passage:

"Ma," interposed the young lady, "I must say I think it would be much better if you would keep to the point, and not hold forth about people's flying into people's faces, which is nothing more nor less than impossible nonsense."

"How!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, knitting her dark brows.

"Just im-possible nonsense, Ma," returned Lavvy, "and George Sampson knows it is, as well as I do." [420]

Assimilating poses and utterances in this scene with much earlier descriptions that Dickens has provided of these three characters, Eytinge renders Lavinia Wilfer as a little vain, indolent, and self-centred, but not particularly upset by the news contained in the letter that her mother has just read aloud; nor does Dickens's characterizing her as "the Irrepressible" seem consistent with Eytinge's image of her. In the picture, Mrs. Wilfer is ugly to the point of being frightening; however, although she is as rigid, angular, and thin as Dickens describes her in the fourth chapter of Book One, Mrs. Wilfer is hardly "grimly heroic" (419) and majestic in this final Eytinge illustration. Dickens does not describe George Sampson as specifically gnawing the head of his cane in this chapter; rather, Eytinge has given him the pose which Dickens describes him adopting in the ninth chapter of the first book: "He put the round head of his cane in his mouth, like a stopper, when he sat down. As if he felt himself full to the throat with affecting sentiments." Eytinge correctly communicates this minor character's mental vacuity. Finally, since Eytinge does not show the girls' father, R. Wilfer, in the picture, the illustrator is implying that we are regarding the three characters from his perspective.

Bibliography

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.

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Created 19 August 2011

last updated 17 March 2023