"In the Churchyard" — Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s seventeenth illustration for Dickens's "A Christmas Carol"

In the Churchyard

Sol Eytinge, Jr.

1868

Wood-engraving

12.4 x 9.6 cm (framed)

Seventeenth full-page Illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a ghost story of Christmas in the Ticknor and Fields (Boston), single-volume 1868 edition.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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The subject of this last illustration in Stave 4, "The Last of the Spirits," must have been familiar to a number of Eytinge's readers in 1868 since John Leech's The Last of the Spirits (1843), a grim memento mori set in a London churchyard in the depth of winter (as signalled by the leafless, blackened tree overhanging the black-shrouded Phantom) had already been in circulation via American pirated editions for a quarter of a century. Whereas in Leech, however, Scrooge hides his head in remorse (and, perhaps, self-pity), in Eytinge's less emblematic and more realistic In The Churchyard, terrified Scrooge grabs at the Spirit's draperies, begging for mercy as the figure relentlessly points downward, as in Leech's steel engraving, at the grave marker displaying the name "Ebenezer Scrooge," albeit less clearly lettered than in Leech's. Perhaps owing to the exigencies of the wood-engraving medium, Eytinge's 1868 version — for surely he was influenced by Leech's composition as well as Dickens's text — seems a pallid imitation singularly lacking in detail, providing only weeds and an area railing, and a less obscure, more skeletal form for The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come. Leech has placed the grave at the very centre of his composition, moving the figures towards the right and left margins, highlighting the grave marker, and sketching in the urban background more effectively. Finally, in Leech's plate Scrooge has apparently just read the stone's inscription and "on his knees" cries, "Am Ithe man who lay upon the bed?", whereas we seem to be seeing the same scene moments later in Eytinge's:

"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. [Stave 4, "The Last of the Spirits"]

The particularity with which Leech has realised the scene implies that he used a definite locale as the basis for his highly atmospheric his setting; according to Gwen Major (1932), the graveyard he had in mind was that of All Hallows Staining, Star Alley, off Mark Lane, in London's Langborn Ward. Eytinge's treatment of his backdrop is so general that it suggests no particular locale. See "Scrooge's Chambers," in the Dickensian, Winter 1932-33, in which Major also locates Scrooge's office as being in St. Michael's Alley, which appropriately was in the vicinity of the London Exchange, an area which Eytinge undoubtedly visited while in London after meeting Dickens in America in 1867.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.

Hearne, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas Carol. New York: Avenel, 1989.

Last modified 3 May 2017