David Copperfield by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 40: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: David Copperfiekd. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
DAVID COPPERFIELD (David Copperfield.)
“David Copperfield” being partly autobiographical, it may suffice to here say that many of the incidents and events which shape themselves round the hero of this favourite and well-loved work (more particularly during the “Murdstone and Grinby” period), are paraphrases of actual incidents and events taken from the author's own life. [Verso of Card No. 39]
Passage Realised: David Arrives at his Aunt's House without his Jacket and in Tatters
When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London. [Centenary Edition, Chapter XVIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution," 225]
Commentary: David's Journey from London to Dover in the Various Illustrated Editions
David's encounter with the bizarre used-clothing dealer, according to Barnard in the 1872 Household Edition: "Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?" (Ch. XIII).
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers. The card series includes a total of six character cards from the cast of David Copperfield (May 1849 through November 1850), or 12% of the total: the affable master of English rhetoric Wilkins Micawber, no. 41; the oppressed child who becomes a novelist, no. 39; the rigid and mean-spirited Mr. Murdstone, no. 37; the crotchety but warm-hearted Betsey Trotwood, no. 36; the devious, unctuous Uriah Heep, no. 38; and the stalwart pater familias Dan' Peggotty, no. 40 — characterisations largely based on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's visual interpreter in the 1840s, Phiz, who produced forty steel-engravings and the wrapper design for the Bradbury and Evans nineteen-month serial, as well as a wood-engraved frontispiece of Little Em'ly and David as children on the Yarmouth sands for the first cheap edition (1858) and two vignettes for the two-volume Library Edition: Little Em'ly and David by the Sea and Mr. Peggotty's Dream Comes True.
In this significant chapter of the Bildungsroman, David Copperfield, the young protagonist arrives in Dover after a long, arduous journey on foot from London, seeking his great-aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood. He arrives at her cottage after six days of walking and as many nights sleeping "rough," a journey marked by privation, hunger, and the loss of his belongings. He is a "dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure" when he finally reaches her home in Chapter XIII.
David's first impressions of Aunt Betsey according to Fred Barnard in the Household Edition: I make myself known to my Aunt (September 1849: Chapter 12).
Kyd's chief model for David as a child who determines to leave the loathsome toil of the wine-bottling factory (and take the road to Dover to see if his aunt will be prepared to accept him) was probably I make myself known to my Aunt (September 1849: Chapter 12), especially since in this early illustration David is wearing a battered hat, even though he does not appear to be blond-haired). However, for the facial features of David as a child Kyd had no shortage of models since the boy (in a more prosperous state) appears in ten other serial illustrations, as well as in eighteen of Fred Barnard's Household Edition composite woodblock engravings in volume 3 (1872), particularly the half-page wood engraving depicting David's encountering the insane used-clothing salesman on his way to Dover, "Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?" (Chapter XIII, "The Sequel of My Resolution").
Barnard's Household Edition title-page vignette also focuses on David's first momentous choice in life, namely to abandon London and throw himself upon the mercy of Aunt Betsey.
In all likelihood, Kyd never saw an 1867 Diamond Edition volume of the novel, and therefore was not influenced by American Sol Eytinge, Junior's David's Bargain, whose image of the ragged David is more consistent with Phiz's serial than with Kyd's. The waif who became a successful novelist is not so far from the real background of David Copperfield's creator as such later illustrators as Barnard, Kyd, and Harry Furniss well knew, all having had access to John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. In the case of Kyd's image of the ragged boy, the artist's design suggests the influence of the work of a previous illustrator, namely the uncaptioned title-page vignette in the Household Edition volume, David Copperfield at the milestone (1872), which in turn was based on an illustration of the previous year, Oliver at the milestone, the title-page vignette for James Mahoney's Household Edition volume of The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1871).
Relevant Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)
- David Copperfield (homepage)
- Phiz's 40 serial illustrations for David Copperfield (May 1849 - November 1850)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1863)
- Sir John Gilbert's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 4, 1863)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 wood engravings for the Diamond Edition (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 62 Composite Woodblock Engravings for the Household Edition (1872)
- W. H. C. Groome's seven lithographs for the Collins Clear-type Pocket Edition (1907)
- Harry Furniss's Twenty-nine lithographs for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910).
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 12. David Copperfield." The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. The Personal Experience and History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1851.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. 2 vols. London and New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.
_______. The Personal Experience and History of David Copperfield. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IV.
_______. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. Volume XV.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 10.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XVII. David Copperfield." The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., [1910]. 339-438.
Kyd. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 5. "David Copperfield: Progress of a Confused Soul." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 113-130.
Created 14 January 2015
Last modified 23 July 2025