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Commentary: Another Scene in Church

Phiz once again is satirising the complacent Anglicanism of mid-nineteenth century Britain, which he suggests by the cobweb on the eighteenth-century statue and the indifference of the minister. The entrapment of a fly in the web suggests victimization. In this instance, Phiz is not commenting on the protagonist's being the victim of a fraudulent scheme, but rather on his making himself a victim by acquiring so helpless and incapable "hostage to fortune" as Dora Spenlow. As Michael Steig has noted,

Of all the Dora illustrations, those depicting the marriage and her death are most elaborate. In "I am Married," marriage is presented as a joyous occasion, a miracle, as the mural of the changing of water into wine at Cana suggests, but a good deal more is conveyed through the miscellaneous crowd. At the far right two women stand with infants behind the font, presumably awaiting their children's christening; in front of the font is a young girl with a small child of two or three years. Next to the large monument at right a pair of young lovers seem oblivious to all but each other, but behind them a woman clearly intended to be a spinster turns her nose up and her mouth down at the proceedings (which include another young man who is looking at her pretty companion). From the gallery above, Peggotty, in widow's weeds, looks down, and beneath the gallery, directly behind the font and the waiting mothers, is a casket covered with a sheet, implying a recent death. The panorama of the stages of man's life echoing the cover — is thus expressed, from birth through childhood, love and marriage, to death. And the inclusion of all these within such a small compass may foreshadow the brevity of David's marriage to Dora. [Steig 122]

Certainly the presence of so many family monuments, including one (right of David) which commemorates the death of young wife, as well as the casket and winding sheet to which Steig has drawn our attention, may be construed as foreshadowing the brevity of David's first marriage and Dora's early death. According to J. A. Hammerton (1910), the moment that Phiz has realized as the culmination of the courtship plot is this:

[A dream] Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments, pews, fonts, organs, and church-windows, in which there flutter faint airs of association with my childish church at home, so long ago. [Vol. 2, 236]

How, Phiz must have wondered, can a graphic artist communicate this sense of periodic sentences each beginning with "Of"? The similarity to the first plate in the narrative-pictorial series, Our pew at church, is obvious in the general layout of the church, including the central pillar (to the left of centre in both cases), the staircase, the cherubs, monuments, and — curiously — the elderly pew-openers situated down front left in both plates, the one in the earlier illustration, having let Mr. Murdstone into his pew, being fast asleep. Of the general layout of the church nave and its pews in this illustration Guiliano and Collins note:

"Hablot Browne's I am Married illustration — including, in the foreground, the pew opener with her keys — fails to show the pews, but the novel's first illustration, 'Our Pew at Church', shows the doors" (421). Here, the pew-opener has control of her keys and is wide awake, enjoying the spectacle afforded by the young couple and the wedding party. Indeed, the whole atmosphere of the present plate is energized by the youth of the two principals and the more active nature of the much more youthful congregation.

One of the curious features of Phiz's composition is the prominence he accords to Mr. Dick (on Dora's right, down centre); the second is the relative obscurity of David's Aunt Betsey (glimpsed just behind Mr. Dick) and of his best friend, Tommy Traddles, just behind Dora and immediately recognizable by his rebellious hair. Moreover, despite their importance in Dickens's text, Phiz has placed Dora's aunts, Lavinia and Clarissa, at the foot of the staircase, up centre. Finally, since in the text David ascends to the gallery expressly to bring Clara Peggotty down, her position in the balcony as the wedding party reaches the porch is also problematic since logically she should be downstairs, and probably close to David. That Phiz has left her upstairs in the gallery suggests that he is using her to complement the earlier part of Dickens's description of the wedding, and therefore she exists as a realisation of the moment before the one upon which Phiz has chosen to focus. In other words, the action- and character-crammed illustration encompasses the entire description of David and Dora's wedding. Thus, Phiz has retained Peggotty in the gallery as appropriate to his intention to graph visually a full page of text; likewise, because their presence would realize Dickens's humorous literary allusion but would disrupt the atmosphere of youthful exuberance and ideallism, he entirely dispenses with the supernumerary boatmen and the rum-soaked "ancient mariner" (236), who does not interject his own personal narrative into the proceedings as Coleridge's does in the 1798 literary ballad.

Phiz's young women all too often resemble one another, so that Agnes and Dora here, and Martha in The Wanderer could be members of the same family. Thematically, the exterior similarities between the childish, incompetent Dora and the dutiful, mature Agnes are significant in that their narratives are complementary, and by juxtaposing them with David here Phiz embeds a conjecture in the reader-viewer's subconscious about her future relationship with David. Otherwise, the astute reader would find her position in the illustration problematic since the text indicates that she supports Dora throughout the marriage service; Agnes should, therefore, be stationed immediately behind the bride as the wedding party advances down the aisle. Instead, Phiz has placed her at David's left, and has drawn her in full, rather than merely head and shoulders as he has done Betsey Trotwood. Visually, then, Agnes becomes in effect an alternate bride, anticipating her role in the latter part of the text. Thus, through her strong visual presence Phiz implies that he already knows the use to which Dickens intends to put Agnes as he transforms the quondam "brother/sister" relationship that David and she have enjoyed since his starting school at Dr. Strong's in Canterbury.

David marries Dora at last (1872 & 1910 Editions)

Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition post-nuptial scene: "I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?" said Dora, beginning on another button of my coat. (1872). Right: Harry Furnss's treatment of the wedding focuses far more on Peggotty's support than the magnificent backdrop: Peggotty attends as Witness (1910).

Related Resources

• The Remains of the Day: Death and Dying in Victorian Illustration
• 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)
• O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1863)
• Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
• Fred Barnard's 62 Illustrations for the British Household Edition (1872)
• Harry Furniss's 29 lithographs for David Copperfield for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
• Kyd's six Player's Cigarette Card watercolours (1889)

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. P., 1980.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts-on-File and Checkmark, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. 2 vols. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. "Notes to Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. The Annotated Dickens, vol. 2. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

Hammerton, J. A., ed. The Dickens Picture-Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrations. London: Educational Book, 1910.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

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Created 17 January 2010

Last modified 16 March 2022