Mrs. Orange, Mrs. Lemon, and the Wilful Adults — otherwise known as Initial Letter Vignette "T", first page of text for Part 4 of A Holiday Romance in Ticknor-Fields' Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV, No. 5 (p. 257), May 1868. Wood-engraving, 3.7 cm high by 8.9 cm wide (1 ½ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted. Left: The entire page.
Initial Letter Vignette: The Adults; Mrs. Orange, Mrs. Lemon, and Their Dolls
There is a country, which I will show you when I get into maps, where the children have everything their own way. It is a most delightful country to live in. The grown-up people are obliged to obey the children, and are never allowed to sit up to supper, except on their birthdays. The children order them to make jam and jelly and marmalade, and tarts and pies and puddings, and all manner of pastry. If they say they won’t, they are put in the corner till they do. They are sometimes allowed to have some; but when they have some, they generally have powders given them afterwards.
One of the inhabitants of this country, a truly sweet young creature of the name of Mrs. Orange, had the misfortune to be sadly plagued by her numerous family. Her parents required a great deal of looking after, and they had connections and companions who were scarcely ever out of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to herself, ‘I really cannot be troubled with these torments any longer: I must put them all to school.’ [Part Four, "Romance from the Pen of Miss Nettie Ashford," 274]
Commentary: The Final Role Reversal has worn a bit Thin
Whereas the main illustration for this final instalment, John Gilbert's The Obstinate Boys, the children and adult-children wear upper-class Victorian fashion, the adults in the introductory vignette are in markedly American clothing of the post-Civil War period. The girls here are wearing bourgeois pinafores and frocks. Perhaps Eytinge's vignette is lacking in inventiveness simply because Dickens has given his illustrators so little to work with. Although Dickens's satire of parliamentary language on page 262 is verbally amusing, it hardly lends itself to an equally humorous illustration.
Other Initial-letter Vignettes by Eytinge (January, March, and April)
- The Abduction: Initial-Letter Vignette 'T'
- Princess Alicia: Initial Letter 'T'
- Captain Boldheart and a Whale: Initial-Letter Vignette 'T'
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Dickens's A Holiday Romance by John Gilbert, Sol Eytinge, and G. G. White as these appeared in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. IV." Dickensian 92, 1 (Spring 1996): 31-47.
Cunnington, Phillis, and Anne Buck. Children's Costume in England 1300-1900. London: Adams and Charles Black, 1965.
Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV. Boston: Ticknor Fields, January-May, 1868. Rpt. All the Year Round, 1868.
Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. Ed. Gillian Avery. Everyman Dickens. London: J. M. Dent; Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1995.
Created 19 April 2002
Last modified 2 February 2023