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Mr. Penny
R. Knight
1878
Wood engraving
14 cm high by 10 cm wide
Fifth illustration for Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, facing page 56(recto).
See below for passage illustrated and commentary.
Photograph, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham
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Mr. Robert Penny, boot-and shoe-maker, [was] a little man, who though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed on the north quarter of the heavens before him, so that his lower waistcoat-buttons came first, and then the remainder of his figure. His features were invisible, yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular form. [Part the First, "Winter," Chapter 1, "Mellstock Lane," p. 5]
Instead of electing to depict such significant characters as the second and third suitors of Fancy Day, Parson Maybold and the wealthy farmer Frederic Shinar, Robert Knight (possibly at the direction of the editor, William Tinseley) has devoted a number of "character" illustrations to the members of the Mellstock quire whom Hardy introduces in the first chapter. This selection of subject for the fourth and fifth illustrations has necessitated the insertion of plates where they have little or no relevance to the text, so that, for example, Michael Mail is situated thirty-five pages after the passage realised, and Thomas Leaf fully 138 pages later. Clearly, then, either the illustrator or the editor wished to emphasize the colourful village characters, even at the expense of the romantic plot.
Here, the village cobbler, Mr. Penny, reachers into the depths of his great-coat pocket to show his fellow musician's the shoe that he has been making for the new school-mistress, Fancy Day, but recently graduated from teachers' college. The cobller's showing off the shoe serves as an initiating incident in that it piques Dick Dewy's interest in Fancy even before he meets her.
Hardy, Thomas. Under The Greenwood Tree. A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1870). Il. R. Knight. London: Chatto and Windus, 1878.
Hardy, Thomas. Under The Greenwood Tree, or, The Mellstock Quire — A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872). Ed. Anna Winchcombe. Houndmills, Basingstoke, and London: Macmillan Education, 1978. [All citations from the 1878 Chatto and Windus edition have been checked against this following readily available paperback edition.]
Millgate, Michael. Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2004.
Purdy, Richard Little. Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1954, rpt. 1965.
Wright, Sarah Bird. Thomas Hardy A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 2002.
Last modified 24 June 2014