Dan'l Peggotty by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 40: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop. 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.]
DAN'L PEGGOTTY (David Copperfield.)
A fine, hearty, rugged Yarmouth boatman, who becomes prematurely aged by the flight of his dearly-loved niece, Little Em'ly, with the fascinating and unscrupulous Steerforth. There are few things finer in literature than his steadfast, tireless search for the erring lost-one. [Verso of Card No. 40]
Passage Realised: The Stoical, Determined Uncle, Dan' Peggotty
Fred Barnard's depiction of Dan'l Peggotty's pursuing his niece and Steerforth across the Continent: Peggotty Searching for Little Emily (1912).
My shortest way home, — and I naturally took the shortest way on such a night — was through St. Martin’s Lane. Now, the church which gives its name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at that time; there being no open space before it, and the lane winding down to the Strand. As I passed the steps of the portico, I encountered, at the corner, a woman’s face. It looked in mine, passed across the narrow lane, and disappeared. I knew it. I had seen it somewhere. But I could not remember where. I had some association with it, that struck upon my heart directly; but I was thinking of anything else when it came upon me, and was confused.
On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man, who had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my seeing the face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous. I don’t think I had stopped in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on, he rose, turned, and came down towards me. I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!
Then I remembered the woman. It was Martha, to whom Emily had given the money that night in the kitchen. Martha Endell — side by side with whom, he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told me, for all the treasures wrecked in the sea. [Chapter XL, "The Wanderer," 290]
Commentary: The Wanderer Returns from Abroad in his Quest to find Little Em'ly
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers, attesting to the enduring popularity of the picaresque comic novel. The series, however, 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 Wilkens Micawber, no. 41; the oppressed child who becomes a novelist, David Copperfield, no. 39; the rigid and mean-spirited Mr. Murdstone, no. 37; the crotchety but warm-hearted Betsey Trotwood, no. 36; the devious, unctuous law clerk, Uriah Heep, no. 38; and the stalwart pater familias Dan'l Peggotty, no. 40 — characterisations based on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's regular 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.
Kyd's chief model for the stoical sailor who determines to bring his runaway niece home to England was probably A Stranger calls to see me (November 1850: Chapter 63), although in this concluding illustration Dan'l Peggotty is neither middle-aged nor in a sailor's garb, and has fulfilled his quest years before. However, for the Yarmouth mariner in his working attire Kyd had no shortage of models since the stalwart sailor appears in six other serial illustrations, as well as in Fred Barnard's Household Edition wood-engravings in volume 3 (1872), particularly the half-page wood engraving depicting David's encountering Mr. Peggotty looking for Little Em'ly in the midst of a snow-storm, "I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!" (Chapter XL, "The Wanderer"). In all likelihood, Kyd never saw an 1867 Diamond Edition volume of the novel, and therefore was not influenced by Sol Eytinge, Junior's Mr. Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, whose image is more consistent with Phiz's original than with either Barnard's or Kyd's. Another image that perhaps influenced Kyd is that of the old fisherman searching for news of his niece on the Continent in one of Fred Barnard's 1885 Character Sketches from Dickens, Peggotty Searching for Little Emily in the third series, widely reproduced, especially in America, where British authors and illustrators did not enjoy full copyright protection at the time.
David encounters Mr. Peggotty at The Golden Cross (1850, 1872, and 1910)
Left: Phiz's original serial illustration of Dan'l Peggotty's conferring
with David:
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 the images 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.
Barnard, Fred. A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, in Colour from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard Barnard. [Series 2: Tony and Sam Weller; Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter Bertha; Little Nell and her grandfather; Rogue Riderhood; Seth Pecksniff; and Dan'l Peggotty]. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1884.
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. Pp. 113-130.
Created 14 January 2015
Last modified 22 July 2025