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David's Bargain
Sol Eytinge
Wood engraving
10 high x 7.6 cm wide (4 by 3 inches), vignetted, facing p. 105.
Sixth full-page Illustration for Dickens's David Copperfield in the Ticknor and Fields (Boston), 1867, Diamond Edition. See below for commentary. [Mouse over the text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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This sixth illustration is different from the previous five in that, instead of studying two or three characters in characteristic poses, it attempts to realize a very specific moment in the narrative. It is also the only illustration in Eytinge's series that depicts David, a middle class child reduced to the status of beggar and vagrant by the callous disregard of his stepfather. Determined to escape the squalor of London and the servitude of the wine-bottling warehouse — the equivalent of the blacking factory from the author's own childhood — in Chapter 13 David resolves to take the high road to Dover and seek out his Aunt Betsey Trotwood. At ten in the evening on the Kent Road, with the model of Micawber's practice in mind David decides to pawn his "weskit" at the second-hand clothing shop of Mr. Dolloby. The following day he attempts a similar transaction at an even more dismal and filthy shop in Rochester:
Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window, over-hung with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly gray beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of run. [Ch. XII, "Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution," 104]
Since the ogre, representative of all the repressive adult figures of David's childhood, is holding the boy's jacket, we may assume that this is the moment realized:
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great bird, out of my hair, and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
"O, how much for the jacket?" cried the old man, after examining it. "O — goroo! — how much for the jacket?" [Ch. XII, 104]
Eytinge has captured well the claw-like hands, the gigantic, bearded head, the ragged flannel waistcoat, all seeming so large when compared to the tiny jacket that he holds in his upstage (left) hand as he prances up and down, like some trained ape as the supplicating boy holds out a hat, as if soliciting change from a passerby.
Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911 [rpt. from 1850]. 2 vols.
_______. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. V.
Created 15 January 2011 Last modified 11 July 2022