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"I’ll never leave this place!"
W. H. C. Groome
1907
12.1 x 7.9 cm, (4 ¾ by 3 ⅛ inches), framed
Lithograph
Dickens's Master Humphrey's Clock, facing page 65.
[Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
I held my peace and shivered as with an ague.
Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavouring to cheer me with the hope that the boy would certainly be found, — great cheer that was for me! — when we heard a low deep howl, and presently there sprung over the wall two great dogs, who, bounding into the garden, repeated the baying sound we had heard before.
‘Bloodhounds!’ cried my visitors.
What need to tell me that! I had never seen one of that kind in all my life, but I knew what they were and for what purpose they had come. I grasped the elbows of my chair, and neither spoke nor moved.
‘They are of the genuine breed,’ said the man whom I had known abroad, ‘and being out for exercise have no doubt escaped from their keeper.’
Both he and his friend turned to look at the dogs, who with their noses to the ground moved restlessly about, running to and fro, and up and down, and across, and round in circles, careering about like wild things, and all this time taking no notice of us, but ever and again repeating the yell we had heard already, then dropping their noses to the ground again and tracking earnestly here and there. They now began to snuff the earth more eagerly than they had done yet, and although they were still very restless, no longer beat about in such wide circuits, but kept near to one spot, and constantly diminished the distance between themselves and me.
At last they came up close to the great chair on which I sat, and raising their frightful howl once more, tried to tear away the wooden rails that kept them from the ground beneath. I saw how I looked, in the faces of the two who were with me.
‘They scent some prey,’ said they, both together.
‘They scent no prey!’ cried I.
‘In Heaven’s name, move!’ said the one I knew, very earnestly, ‘or you will be torn to pieces.’
‘Let them tear me from limb to limb, I’ll never leave this place!’ cried I. ‘Are dogs to hurry men to shameful deaths? Hew them down, cut them in pieces.’ ["The Clock-Case: Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second," pp. 64-65]
The narrator dreads having to move from his chair because he is certain that bloodhounds will uncover the body of his brother's son whom he has buried underneath that very piece of sod. In the Cattermole illustration which seems to have served as Groome's model, the hounds are already tearing at the narrator's legs in order to force him to abandon his seat. The deranged look on the narrator's face in the Cattermole original certainly betokens a disturbed psychological condition, and perhaps even insanity. Although Groome does not suggest the gentleman seated in his garden is insane, the later artist's strategy is to describe the same scene as Cattermole's, but to focus tightly on the three figures.
Left: Harry Furniss's focus is on the killer, hiding in the shrubbery, rather than on his innocent victim: The Murderer Has His Victim in his Net (1910). Right: Fred Barnard in the Household Edition depicts the madman, spying on his victim from hiding: "As he sat upon a low seat bside my wife, I would peer at him for hours together from behind a tree" (1872).
Above: The goggle-eyed madman stares away from the arresting officers and directly at the reader in Hunted Down (18 April 1840).
Davis, Paul. "Master Humphrey's Clock." Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to his Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998. P. 238.
Dickens, Charles. Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by George Cattermole and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman and Hall, 4 April 1840 — 4 December 1841.
_______. Master Humphrey's Clock. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Reprinted Pieces, and Other Stories. With thirty illustrations by L. Fildes, E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. XX. Pp. 253-306.
_______. Master Humphrey's Clock and Pictures from Italy. With eight illustrations by W. H. C. Groome. Collins Pocket Editions. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907. Vol. XLIX. Pp. 1-168.
_______. Barnaby Rudge and Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. Volume VI. London: Educational Book, 1910.
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrators. "Ch. XIV. Master Humphrey's Clock ." The Charles Dickens Library. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Pp. 259-265.
Created 8 August 2022