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Context of the Illustration: Another Gothic Fireside Scene

As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered on the wall, and dropped — dead branches.

As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees,— or out of it there came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process — not to be traced by any human sense,—an awful likeness of himself!

Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without a sound. As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his face looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face bore.

This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already. This was the dread companion of the haunted man!

It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance, and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to the music. It seemed to listen too.

At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face.

“Here again!” he said.

“Here again,” replied the Phantom. [Chapter I, "The Gift Bestowed," 33-34]

Commentary

John Leech's first plate compels the reader to consider Tenniel's earlier treatment of the same theme in the Frontispiece. Here, however, the plate is accompanied by dialogue and explication which run from the previous page over to the top of the plate. The effect is that we read "through the illustration. Conveniently, the sentence "This was the dread companion of the haunted man!" sits immediately above the figures. Leech's chair is less fanciful and his version of the spirit more substantial than their counterparts in the Frontispiece (see below). Leech has made Redlaw's study lighter, permitting us to see far more detail in the bookcase at the back. We see "his drugs and instruments and books" (3), but not "the shadow of his shaded lamp . . . , motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes" (3). Thus, not only Tenniel's opening plates, but also a textual passage many pages earlier have prepared us for this scene, the second visitation of the Ghost. The moment captured is that before Redlaw notices and addresses the Phantom. While Redlaw gazes into the fire, the Phantom's thoughtful gaze is bent on the Chemist, and not on the fire, too, as in the text: "It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of it" (35). Leech seems to have made this alteration in order to make his rendering of the pair parallel Tenniel's.

Gone are the good angels and demons, replaced by commonplace objects, which nevertheless appear ominous in the half-light: is that a skull on the top shelf and a demon's mask above, or are these only ocular delusions? Redlaw's chair in Leech's plate is more prosaic (no carved gargoyle supports the arm of this chair). The spectre does not whisper at Redlaw's ear like Satan at the ear of Eve in Paradise Lost; rather, Leech brings out the physical likeness in their features as Redlaw, seeing past wrongs re-enacted in the flames, is sardonically scrutinized by his double, whose body fades into the back of the chair and the curtain, right. Redlaw's hair is less full in Leech's version; his hairline recedes, giving him a more middle-aged and careworn aspect. His demeanour is not fearful, as in Tenniel, but bemused. In addition to the small library seen also in Tenniel's plate, the bookcase behind the figures contains glass jars, indicative of Redlaw's scientific vocation. Leech has captured the moment on the preceding page when "As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back close above him" (33). One reads page 33 with anticipation, glancing back to examine the textual details more carefully once one turned the page, then moves back to that central moment hinted at in Dickens's title (top, 34). The curtain to the right appears again, but at the left, in the seventh plate, thereby connecting the two in the pictorial narrative sequence.

Relevant Illustrations from the 1848​ and three later editions

Left: Tenniel's study of the melancholy Redlaw and his malignant double, looking into the fire, Frontispiece. Centre: Tenniel's psychomachia of warring spirits frames the look-a-like profiles of the balding academic and his double Redlaw and the Phantom (1848). Right: Darley's highly atmospheric but more psychological frontispiece, As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire (1861).

Left: In Barnard's Gothic treatment, the double appears to hover: "You speak to me of what is lying here," the Phantom interposed (1878). Right: Furniss's more realistic treatment of the same notion, The Phantom, possesses that later illustrator's characteristic sense of humour (1910).

Illustrations for The Haunted Man (1848-1912)

• John Leech et al., 1848 series of sixteen engravings for Dickens's The Haunted Man
• Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispiece for the second volume of Dickens's Christmas Stories (1861)
• Sol Eytinge, Junior's 1867 illustrations for the Ticknor & Fields edition for Dickens's Christmas Books
• E. A. Abbey's 1876 illustrations for The American Household Edition of Dickens's Christmas Books
• Fred Barnard's 1878 illustrations for The Household Edition of Dickens's Christmas Books
• A. A. Dixon's 1906 Collins Pocket Edition for Dickens's Christmas Books
• Harry Furniss's 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition of Dickens's Christmas Books
• Charles Green's 1895 Pears Centenary Edition designs for Dickens's The Haunted Man (1912).

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.

_____. The Haunted Man. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1848). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, 365-366.

Glancy, Ruth. "Dickens at Work on The Haunted Man." Dickens Studies Annual 15 (1986): 65-85.

Patten, Robert L. Chapter 10, "Bargain Haunters." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 234-275. [Review]

Solberg, Sarah. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens's Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-118.

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Created 29 December 2004

Last modified 4 June 2024