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"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?"
John McLenan
20 April 1861
11.3 cm high by 10.5 cm wide (4 ⅜ by 4 ⅛ inches) framed, exclusive of caption, facing the frontispiece, "Leave this lad to me, Ma'am; leave this lad to me."
Dickens's Great Expectations, originally in Harper's Weekly 4: 741; title-page vignette for the 1861 T. B. Peterson edition.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?" (Vol. V, page 229) — Twenty-eighth wood-engraving for Dickens's Great Expectations, first published in Instalment 21, serialised in Harper's Weekly V for 20 April 1861), Chapter XXXIII. 11.5 cm by 11.6 cm wide (roughly 4 ½ inches square) Plate 22 (facing p. 156; refers to "page 95," a typographical error in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861, for which it serves as the title-page vignette). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
“Two things I can tell you,” said Estella. “First, notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may set your mind at rest that these people never will — never would in a hundred years — impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon it.”
As she gave it to me playfully, — for her darker mood had been but momentary — I held it and put it to my lips. “You ridiculous boy,” said Estella, “will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?” [Chapter XXXIII, 229]
So effective did the editorial staff of T. B. Peterson deem this rather tender-hearted illustration late in the sequence, after Pip has received his monetary "expectations," that it became the title-page vignette of the 1861 volume, underscoring the romance between Pip and Estella from the opening of the novel. McLenan makes the setting of the intimate scene fairly obvious by including the horse-racing (indicative of the class which both have joined) prints on the walls of the parlour at the coaching inn where Estella and Pip await their change of coaches.
McLenan regards the propriety of the situation, and envisages such a scene as being likely only in a private space (a private room at an inn), whereas later illustrators have set the romantic interlude outside, in the inn yard itself, to establish the travel context. In this respect, McLenan reveals that he has read this week's instalment correctly, for Estella is attired in "furred travelling-dress," and the interview does indeed occur in a private room at the inn, but one that is evidently used for public dinners: "with a dinner-table for thirty."
Left: A. A. Dixon's Lithographic reproduction of watercolour, Her calm face was like a statue's in Collins Pocket Edition (1905). Centre: H. M. Brock's treatment of the same scene: "I am going to Richmond," she told me (Imperial Edition, 1903). Right: Charles Green's treatment of the same scene: We stood in an Inn Yard, in the Gadshill Edition (1898). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
F. A. Fraser's 1876 composite woodblock engraving of Estella's putting Pip in charge of paying her travel expenses: "Oh, you must take the p urse!" (Household Edition).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
_______. "'We Can Now See That the Days of Illustrated Novels Were Drawing to an End' — Not So." The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 3, pp. 6-7.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vol. IV-V (24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861).
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Watts, Alan S. "Why Wasn't Great Expectations Illustrated?" The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 2, pp. 8-9.
Waugh, Arthur. "Charles Dickens and His Illustrators." Retrospectus and Prospectus: The Nonesuch Dickens. London: Bloomsbury, 1937, rpt. 2003. Pp. 6-52.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 25 May 2026