"Drummle and Pip at The Blue Boar" by Harry Furniss — Twentieth illustration for "Great Expectations" (1910)

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Drummle and Pip at The Blue Boar

Harry Furniss

1910

6.9 x 4.6 inches

There we stood, well squared up before the fire, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, with our hands behind us. My breakfast was put on [the] table, Drummle's was cleared away, the waiter invited me to begin, I nodded, we both stood our ground." [A slightly condensed form of the text in Chapter 43.]

Dickens's Great Expectations, Charles Dickens Library Edition, 338.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Unlikely Bookends — Pip and Bentley Drummle at The Blue Boar

When we drove up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but Bentley Drummle!

As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a very lame pretence on both sides; the lamer, because we both went into the coffee-room, where he had just finished his breakfast, and where I ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him in the town, for I very well knew why he had come there.

Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine with which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before the fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker when I went up to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to know him.

“Is this a cut?” said Mr. Drummle.

“Oh!” said I, poker in hand; “it’s you, is it? How do you do? I was wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.”

With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to the fire.

“You have just come down?” said Mr. Drummle, edging me a little away with his shoulder.

“Yes,” said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder.

“Beastly place,” said Drummle. “Your part of the country, I think?”

“Yes,” I assented. “I am told it’s very like your Shropshire.”

“Not in the least like it,” said Drummle. [Chapter XLIII]

Commentary: Further Evidence of Drummle's Arrogance

Following Pailthorpe's example in the 1885 edition, Furniss introduces Pip's nemesis and romantic rival, the ill-natured but wealthy and aristocratic Bentley Drummle, as something of a "swell," in a loud suit which he wears with self-assurance. Bentley, a fellow member of the snobbish "Finches of the Grove," has come down (apparently on horseback) from his native Shropshire to the "beastly" Kentish marshes to cement his engagement to Estella by meeting her guardian, Miss Havisham. The exchange between Pip and Drummle in the coffee-room that precedes this moment in the chapter has been anything but amicable. However, now the pair of flashy Finches present a convivial picture of camaraderie to the anxious waiter (right). Although the young swells, down from London, have adopted identical postures and smug facial expressions as they lean against the mantelpiece in the coffee-room of The Blue Boar (the village's superior inn, and a far cry from The Three Jolly Bargemen, Pip's earlier haunt), Furniss distinguishes Pip by his now familiar pale face and wavy hair, and Drummle by his load suit and cigar-smoking (possibly a touch to characterize Drummle's domineering attitude). In contrast to Pailthorpe's equivalent illustration, Furniss has made Drummle's face surly and disagreeable, with evident jowls.The waiter's presence in the scene lacks textual authority since he does not appear in the pages that Furniss has selected for realisation. The waiter only appears when Drummle summons him to ask whether his horse has been saddled in preparation for his ride to visit "the lady." In these respects, then, Furniss appears to have been attending as much to the 1885 illustration as to the 1861 letterpress.

Relevant Images of Pip and Drummle from Other Editions (1876 and 1885)

Left: F. A. Fraser's depiction of Drummle on horseback at the inn: He came back, calling for a light for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten (1876). Right: F. W. Pailthorpe's study of Pip and Brummle in the coffee room of The Blue Boar: — Shoulder to Shoulder (1885).

Other Artists’ Illustrations for Dickens's Great Expectations

Edward Ardizzone (2 plates selected)
H. M. Brock (8 lithographs)
J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (2 lithographs from watercolours)
Felix O. C. Darley (2 plates)
Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood engravings)
Marcus Stone (8 wood engravings)
John McLenan (40 wood engravings)
F. A. Fraser in the Household Edition (1876) (30 wood-engravings)
Frederic W. Pailthorpe (21 lithographs)
Charles Green (10 lithographs)

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by John McLenan. [The First American Edition]. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vols. IV: 740 through V: 495 (24 November 1860-3 August 1861).

______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.

______. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1862. Rpt. in The Nonesuch Dickens, Great Expectations and Hard Times. London: Nonesuch, 1937; Overlook and Worth Presses, 2005.

______. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.

______. Great Expectations. The Gadshill Edition. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: Chapman and Hall, 1898.

______. Great Expectations. The Grande Luxe Edition, ed. Richard Garnett. Illustrated by Clayton J. Clarke ('Kyd'). London: Merrill and Baker, 1900.

______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.

Created 16 February 2007

Last updated 26 October 2021