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Pip and Estella Walking in the Garden
Charles Green
lithograph
1898
8 x 4.9 inches
Fifth illustration for Great Expectations in the Gadshill Edition.
[These plates have neither captions nor pages, being inserted into the text.]
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When we had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I should wheel her about a little, as in times of yore.So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said, — "I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that fight that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very much."
"You rewarded me very much.”“Did I?” she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way.
"I remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his company."
"He and I are great friends now."
"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his father?"
“Yes." I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy. [Chapter XXIX]
The Annotated Dickens provides the following caption, which is not in the original Gadshill Edition: "Estella walking in the garden at Satis House: her other hand lightly touched my shoulder as we walked" (Ch. 29). The presence of the scene (together with Pip's numerous appearances in Green's ten illustrations) in the narrative-pictorial sequence emphasizes the romantic plot-line which is but one of the many features of Dickens's 1861 novel, which adds to the fraught romantic relationship of Pip and Esrtella elements of other genres such as crime-and-detection, the Silver Fork novel, and the Bildungsroman. Green suggests the intimacy of their relationship (although Pip is apparently not aware of Estella's attitude at this point) by the way she touches his shoulder.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Charles Green. Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897-1908. Note: All material is reproduced courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LF.
_____. Great Expectations. Ed. Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins. The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1988. II, 822-1115.
Created 24 April 2004
Last modified 3 March 2020