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Frontispiece: Meeting an Apparition in the Churchyard
Phiz
June 1858
Steel-engraving
14.5 cm high by 9.4 cm wide, framed
Frontispiece for W. H. Ainsworth's Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe, facing title-page.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
When crossing the fields that night from Nethercrofts to keep my appointment with Major Atherton, I was strangely agitated. What was the nature of the revelation to be made to me? Certain notions had sometimes crossed me in regard to this inscrutable personage, but they seemed so wild and extravagant that I did not dare to indulge them. Accordingly, I had dismissed them as soon as formed. But now they came back upon me with greater force than ever. The truth seemed suddenly to flash upon me. And I hurried on, eager to turn my conjectures into certainties.
Full of hope, and with a breast beating with new-born emotions. I passed through the little gate opening upon the churchyard. A wan moon, struggling through passing clouds, feebly illumined the place. By this scanty light I could distinguish that he was standing near the the grave, and I flew towards him.
He did not keep me moment in suspense, but held out his arms as I approached.
"My son! my dear son!" he exclaimed.
"My father! my dear father!" I rejoined, rushing into his embrace. [Book the Third, Chapter XIX, "Once More at the Grave," page 326]
Precisely what is the situation which the frontispiece, set in Marston churchyard, depicts? Clearly the presence of the Gypsy, Phaleg (left foreground), indicates that the scene realized is not Mervyn's meeting his father at the village churchyard for a second time in Book the Third, Chapter XIX, "Once More at the Grave." The appearance of a spirit wearing an eyepatch indicates that the central figure is (supposedly) the ghost of Uncle Mobberley, as he appears in life in the early scene Who shot the Cat> (December 1851). Indeed, Phiz is describing a Gothic scene that turns out to be another scam by that scurrilous confidence man, Simon Pownall (a. k. a., Dr. Hooker) in Book the First, Chapter XV, "I meet Phaleg at midnight in Marston churchyard, and my Uncle Mobberley's ghost appears to us" (March 1852). Consequently, although Phiz did not publish this plate until the novel's last, double-number in June 1858, he may well have composed a draft of it years earlier, when Pownall in Chapter XIV overhears the gypsy Peninnah (Phaleg's fortune-telling wife) arrange that Mervyn will rendezvous with Phaleg in the Marston village churchyard on Friday at midnight, several months after the reading of the spurious will. The presence of both Talbot the bloodhound and Phaleg with the supposed unquiet spirit and the curious protagonist, armed with a fowling-piece, suggest that the following is the moment realized in what in fact was one of the last dark plates published in the serialisation of the novel:
I was often in danger of falling into a ditch; and, in spite of all my efforts, I could not keep my teeth from chattering. While getting over a stile, I fancied I perceived a shadowy figure behind me, and strained my eyes to penetrate the gloom that shrouded it. All at once, the moon burst from behind a rack of clouds, and the figure seemed to take the form of my uncle Mobberley, but the next moment the moon was again hidden, and it melted from view.
I was dreadfully frightened, I must confess, as any one else, I suppose, would have been in my situation, and for some minutes remained fixed where I was, gazing into the vacancy, and resolved to address the spirit if it appeared again. But it declined to gratify me in this respect; and, somewhat reassured, I proceeded on my way.
Had I received a warning from the grave? Did my dead unclue intend to take part in the interview? I asked myself these questions, but felt unable to answer them. . . . . I would have turned back, but it was now too late; and, moreover, I did not like passing the spot where the phantom had appeared. The churchyard was close at hand, and I felt impelled to enter it.
It may seem strange that I had scarcely set foot within the hallowed precincts than my courage returned. Though I was now disturbing the repose of those who lay beneath the flags and rounded hillocks, and at an hour
"When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead,"
I felt none of the superstitious fears which had beset me in the lonesome fields.
I stood still, and listened. As I did so, the butt-end of my gun came in contact with a large stone, covering the entrance to a vault, and a hollow clangour was returned. There was no other sound. All was hushed as death itself. Yes, after a while there was a cry from the church tower, and a great white, ghostly object flitted past me; but it caused me no alarm, for I knew it was only an owl.
The church itself, though close at hand, showed like a huge, heavy black mass: buttress, window, and porch were indistinguishable. The dusky outline of roof and tower was alone preserved.
It required some knowledge of he gloomy locality to shape my course towards the back of the church . . . . Presently a black jagged object appeared before me. It was a yew-tree, and I then knew precisely where I was, for this tree grew at the back of the church, and close to my uncle's grave. I again came to a pause, and awaited some signal to announce Phaleg's approach.
[Phaleg now appears with a proposition for Mervyn.]. . . . "You know the valley of your uncle Mobberley's property. You know you've lost it as things now stand. S'pose I finds the missin' will, and pus it in your possession?"
"If you do, the money's yours," I replied.
"Is it a bargain?"
"It is."
As I was trembling with anxiety for the revellations hat were to ensue, a hollow groan, apparently issuing from the depths of an adjoining grave, broke on our startled hearing, and Talbot, who was standing near me, howled and ran off.
What the devil's that?" my companion ejaculated, in tones that bespoke his terror.
Another hollow groan responded to the exclamation, and the moon bursting forth at the same moment, revealed the ghostly figure of my uncle Mobberley beneath the yew-tree.
He appeared to be standing near the edge of an open grave, into which it was fortunate I had not tumbled, for I had not hitherto observed it.
His habiliments were those he had worn in life; and he was leaning upon his crutch-handled stick, with the black patch drawn over his death-like features. We both gazed at the apparition in mute terror. I would have spoken, but my tongue refused its office.
But the ghost did not require to be addressed first. Contrary to the usage of spirits, it spoke, after shaking its shadowy arm menacingly at Phaleg. The voice seemed changed, and was deeper than my uncle's, before he shuffled off his mortal coil. [Book the First, Chapter XV, "I meet Phaleg at midnight in Marston churchyard, and my Uncle Mobberley's ghost appears to us," pp. 119-121]
Thus, Phiz has admirably integrated all the atmospheric elements of the dramatic scene that spans several pages, recalling for readers at the close of the protracted serial run one of the most suspenseful moments at the conclusion of Book the First — and, moreover, a scene that sets up the remainder of the story. The illustration's function, then, seems to have been to fuse the two parts of the novel as it recalls for readers in mid-1858 that part of the story published six years earlier. Phiz uses the frontispiece to foreground Simon Pownall's ghost-impersonations, the novel's Gothic atmosphere in the second book especially, and the plot device of the purloined will which defers Malpas Sales' nemesis and Mervyn Clitheroe's coming into his inheritance.
In looking at what was originally the second March 1858 plate in the Routledge serial, The Stranger at the Grave, the reader of the volume edition encounters a scene very similar to that which Phiz and Ainsworth later selected for the frontispiece, first issued in June 1858 at the end of the serial run. In fact, the March scene in the churchyard in which, coming around the Gothic bell-tower of the village church, Mervyn sees the elderly stranger at his mother’s grave, represents a first draft for Phiz: in the March 1858 illustration the The Stranger at the Grave (Book the Third, Chapter I), the illustrator drafts the scene with all the necessary elements as dictated by the text, but does not produce an entirely harmonious dark plate because he has provided too little highlighting and he has made the block of the Choir intrude upon the central focus of the composition, the stranger at the grave who proves to be Major Atherton, Mervyn's father. When Phiz revisited the churchyard for the June 1858 frontispiece, he corrected this lack of balance and focus in the composition, eliminating the body of the church containing the Choir, and, in effect, reconfiguring the building so that the white tower, immediately overlooking the mother’s grave, produces a sharp contrast to the dark, animated branches of the yew tree, the white headstones, and the two figures. In the March 1858 horizontal plate Phiz throws much of the scene into darkness, placing the stranger closer to the viewer and a much-reduced figure of Mervyn observing the visitor from the lower right register. The overall effect of the March plate is to obscure all the elements of the scene in which Ainsworth introduces Mervyn’s father, returned from his posting in India after an absence of a quarter of a century. With muted chiaroscuro Phiz emphasizes the reflected moonlight on the water (which Mervyn has just crossed in Ned’s boat), the gable and tower of the church, and, just right of centre, the grave, immediately in front of the stained-glass window of the Choir.
Although readers following the serial instalments before purchasing or assembling the Routledge volume edition, published at the conclusion of the serial run, might have correctly decoded the scenes illustrated, despite a lack of explanatory captions, later readers might have had difficulty determining the subjects of both the frontispiece and the Vignette Title-page. The frontispiece, too, must have had an ambivalence for readers in 1858 as they might have received it as alluding to one of several of the graveyard scenes, the first of which occurs fairly early, in the fifteenth chapter of the first book. Serial readers, on the other hand, would probably have identified the passages illustrated without much difficulty as they would recently have encountered both of them in the monthly parts.
Beginning in 1847, Phiz had begun to experiment with creating dramatic effects through extreme chiaroscuro by etching 'dark plates', an effect he achieved by scoring the plate with closely set parallel lines. In such atmospheric illustrations as Phiz's interpretation of the squalid Tom-all-alone's in Chapter 46 of Bleak House(1853) the engraver uses intense shades of grey to describe twilight, evening, night, and gloomy interiors and invest them with suggestions of the moods ranging from the sinister, to the malignant, and the purely suspenseful.
When, after an hiatus of five years and seven months, Phiz returned to the project with new publishers, he had become enamored of the so-called "dark plate," an atmospheric treatment upon which he had relied heavily in the monthly illustrations for Bleak House (1853). Consequently, he employed this engraving technique for a significant number of the illustrations in Books Two and Three (December 1857 through June 1858), including the frontispiece and title-page vignette. Of the twenty-four steel-engravings for Mervyn Clitheroe, none of the eight are dark plates in Book the First (December 1851 through March 1852), but twelve of the sixteen plates for the second and third books demonstrate Phiz's mastery of this engraving technique. Aside from the frontispiece, Phiz employed the technique to some extent in the following atmospheric illustrations for Books Two and Three:
This pair of June 1858 illustrations, the frontispiece and the engraved vignette-title, Phiz may have created as early as March 1858, anticipating the conclusion of the serial run in June, if Ainsworth had explained to him the significance of the stranger in the churchyard. Over the period in which the project lay dormant Phiz had undertaken several significant commissions for other writers, notably Dickens's Bleak House in 1853 and Little Dorrit in 1855-56. However, two different influences are particularly evident in Phiz's illustrations for the protracted serialisation of Mervyn Clitheroe: his line drawings for David Copperfield (1849-50) in the illustrations for Book the First, and the dark plates from Bleak House in the second and third books. Both the frontispiece and the engraved title-vignette exhibit Phiz's recent interest in developing atmospheric dark plates, and in early 1858 he had enough time on his hands to do the painstaking work since he had few other commissions.
"Ainsworth and Friends." Chapter V: "The Lancashire Novels," in Essays on 19th Century Literature & The Gothic, posted 16 January 2013; last updated October 2018. Online version available from wordpress.com — Dr. Stephen Carver's Blog. Web. 8 October 2018.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Life and Adventures of Mervyn Clitheroe (1851-2; 1858). Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Routledge, 1882.
Carver, Stephen. The Life and Works of the Lancashire Novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, 1805–1882. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. London and Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978.
Sutherland, John. "Mervyn Clitheroe." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1989. P. 431.
Vann, J. Don. "William Harrison Ainsworth. Mervyn Clitheroe, twelve parts in eleven monthly installments, December 1851-March 1852, December 1857-June 1858." New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 27-28
Last modified 12 November 2018
