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The Evidence Destroyed
Harry Furniss
lithograph from pen-and-ink
1910
13.9 x 9.1 cm framed
Twenty-thirdillustration for The Adventures of Oliver Twist in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing III, 289.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Look down," said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf. "Don't fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when you were seated over it, if that had been my game."
Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr. Bumble himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same. The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted to stem its headlong course.
"If you flung a man's body down there, where would it be to-morrow morning?" said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro in the dark well. [Chapter 38, "Containing an Account of what Passed between Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, and Mr. Monks, at their Nocturnal Interview," 288]
"Look down," said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf. "Don't fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when you were seated over it, if that had been my game." [288].
Furniss's notion of having the diabolical Monks gain possession of and destroy the scant evidence of Oliver's true origins (including a locket that would confirm the wealthy Edwin Leeford as his father) is derived both from the original serial illustration by George Cruikshank in the August 1838 number of Bentley's Miscellany,and from frontispiece The Evidence Destroyed (see below by JamesMahoney for the 1871 volume in the Household Edition.
For the third volume of the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, Furniss's rendering of the scene (still derived from Cruikshank, but incorporating the Mahoney characterisation of Monks as dark, menacing, commanding, yet obscure) heightens its drama by the sharpened contrast of the black-and-white shading, the terror on the faces of the Bumbles, and the emphatic gesture of Monks, whose facial expression the viewer cannot apprehend. That Furniss gave the figure of Monks holding the lantern a place of prominence (the lower left-hand corner) in Characters in the Story suggests that Furniss believed this was a pivotal moment in the narrative, even if he felt it necessary to depict Monks with his signature hat on in both the vignette and the full-page lithograph, which we encounter immediately after Dickens's economical but telling description in the text.
The destruction of the objects associated with Oliver's birth that might confirm his identity as the son (albeit, illegitimate) and heir of Edwin Leeford would seem to suggest that the powers of evil are now in the ascendant. The conventional aristocratic villain of melodrama, Edward Leeford (alias "Monks"), having suborned the Bumbles, discards the evidence irretrievably, seemingly cementing Oliver's obscurity. Thus, unlike Iago in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Othello, the malignancy of Monks is hardly "motiveless." Oliver's evil twin, as naturally bad (although legitimate) as Oliver is naturally good, is "consumed with a desire to corrupt and destroy his brother" (McMaster 185). To underscore this binary difference in the half-brothers, theillustrators consistently depict Monks clothed from head to foot in black and usually show him operating in darkness, whereas they consistently characterise Oliver as pale-faced and blond-haired. Apparently, Monks is not content with his own share of the patrimony — he must have all, and therefore must commit Oliver to a life of crime so that, by the peculiar terms of his father's will, Oliver will be ineligible to inherit. Whereas one might legitimately argue that Fagin's evil is a defense against poverty and social exclusion, Monks's evil is evidence of his corruption: he has not been forced into being and doing evil. The badge of his respectable, upper-middle-class status — his dark suit, cape, and top-hat — ironically in the Mahoney and Furniss illustrations becomes the signifier of his "apartness," his alienation from the genuinely Christian morality of Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies, Samaritans who show compassion for the orphan child and believe in his innate goodness.
Left: Eytinge's Monks (1867). Centre: Cruikshank's The Evidence Destroyed (1838). Right: Furniss's thumbnail vignette of Monks with the lantern, detail from Characters in the Story.
Above: Mahoney's 1871 frontispiece which erroneously implies that of Monks will prove triumphant in his quest to obliterate Oliver's true identity, The Evidence Destroyed (1871).
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Created 25 February 2015
Last modified 18 February 2020