"'Look here,' said Herbert." — thirty-third illustration for "Great Expectations" by John McLenan (15 June 1861)

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"Look here," said Herbert.

John McLenan

Instalment 28 (Chapters XLV and XLVI)

11.7 cm high by 11.5 cm wide (roughly 4 ½ inches square)

Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization V (15 June 1861): 366.

Plate 27, facing p. 210 in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition (1861)

The comfortable parlour reveals the benign side of the sometimes abusive alcoholic retired mariner, Bill Barley. Here, Pip and Herbert will plan their routine of rowing in the Thames, using window blinds as signals.

Passage Illustrated: Herbert and Pip at Mrs. Whimple's rooming-house on the Thames

As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.

“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little; “here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. Here’s her allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of cheese, and here’s her rum, — which I drink. This is Mr. Barley’s breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It’s stewed up together, and taken hot, and it’s a nice thing for the gout, I should think!” [Chapter XLVI, 366]

Commentary: Herbert shows Pip the old salt's maritime-themed parlour

Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the parlour and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the coloured engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a state coachman’s wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. [Chapter XLVI, 366]

Focussing on this parlour scene for his weekly illustration, John McLenan provides a comic, domestic moment to contrast with the serious, romantic scene that preceded it in the previous week's instalment in Harper's. Pip has made his way up the Thames, to Mrs. Whimple's rooming-house at Mill Pond Bank, Chinks’s Basin, where shortly Pip and Herbert intend to instal Provis in preparation for smuggling him aboard the Rotterdam-bound steamer. The enormous basket brought downstairs by Clara dominates the table, although McLenan does not show its contents in the detail given in the text. He does, however, add some interesting background details suggestive of Bill Barley's former occupation as a ship's purser, in particular the huge conch shells on the mantelpiece, and above them a coloured print depicting the death of Captain Cook in the Hawaiian Islands on 14 February 1779, i. e., the very subject to which Dickens specifically alludes as the subject of the picture in Chapter XLVI.

This last detail is particularly telling. The embedded small-scale print with just two obvious figures and a single palm tree does not match any of the well-known depictions of the battle between the British and the islanders in the historical paintings by James Webber (1781-83) and others. However, a life-long member of the Cook Society, Kieran McGovern, strongly supports this identification of its subject, seeing it as "a cameo of the actual stabbing to death of Cook in Hawaii." In correspondence with the present author, McGovern explains that "at the time of Dickens writing, the death of Captain Cook was a much spoken of event and also was the subject of a number of engravings (some fanciful in their execution)." On this basis, as well as on that of the conch shells, McGovern convincingly argues that "Cook’s death and the associated paintings, prints and illustrations were in the mind of Dickens and thereby found resonance in his description of Pip’s state of mind in the story of his endeavours toward fulfilling his great expectations." In particular, he cites Cook's famous last words, that he was driven to go "farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go," as capturing Dickens's intentions as he describes his hero's ambitions in the novel.

Related Images from Other 19th c. Editions (1876 & 1885)

Left: In his 1885 series for the Robson and Kerslake Edition, F. W. Pailthorpe presents Clara's father, old "Grumffandgrim," Bill Barley, whom Herbert finally meets in this chapter: "Here's old Bill Barley, bless your eyes". Right: F. A. Fraser's realisation of Pip's making his way upriver to Mill Pond Bank: I had had to feel my way back among the shipping (1876).

Related Material

Other Artists’ Illustrations for Great Expectations

Edward Ardizzone (2 plates selected)
H. M. Brock (8 lithographs)
J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (2 lithographs from watercolours)
Felix O. C. Darley (4 photogravure plates)
Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood engravings)
Marcus Stone (8 wood engravings)
Frederic W. Pailthorpe (21 engravings)
F. A. Fraser in the Household Edition (29 wood engravings)
Harry Furniss (28 plates)
Charles Green (10 lithographs)

Image scans and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the 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

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.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. IV and V (1860-61).

______. ("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.

______. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XIII.

______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.

______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (18 vols). London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

______. Great Expectations. Ed. Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins. Volume 2 of The Annotated Charles Dickens. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1988, 822-1115.

McGovern, Kieran Ballenteer. (personal correspondence.) "Cook's Death Alluded to in Chapter XLVI of Great Expectations." 9 December 2025.

Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.

Created 20 November 2007

last updated 11 December 2025