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Commentary

According to J. A. Hammerton (1910), Phiz has realized the moment that provides the logical conclusion to the storm at Yarmouth and the subsequent discovery of Steerforth's body on the dunes:

At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. [Vol. 2, 437]

The pistols, picture of the horse and rider, and the fishing gear — "the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments," David tells us (using generalizations of little use to the illustrator) — establish a male, sporting presence quite out of character with the elderly, white-haired invalid who now occupies the bedroom. Whereas in David's lodgings and his later Highgate home he appears consistently surrounded by books, signifiers of others' ideas, tales, and observations, here we notice a single book lying discarded on the floor. Even Steerforth's dog, an active terrior (a sporting breed) seeking David's attention, contrasts to the dog in David's world: Jip the spaniel, which is essentially a lap dog and extension of his mistress. The inclusion of the dog is not something suggested to Phiz by the text. So abstracted is David as he contemplates how the women will receive the news that he fails to notice the clamouring dog which (presumably) belonged to his dead friend.

Rosa Dartle rather melodramatically regards David with a suspicious look and shrinks from him, as if recoiling from the anticipated news of James Steerforth's death. Clad largely in white rather than black as in the previous plate, Mrs. Steerforth here is not her former, imperious self. Once again, the respectably dressed David is both middle-class actor, observer, and recorder, but here he also serves as a catalyst to the action, for his very presence provokes an angry, embittered response from Steerforth's other lover, Rosa Dartle. Phiz interprets her response as shocked rejection of the news that David will announce, but the text conveys a very different sense of Rosa's reaction. Here, as in "Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Steerforth", an earlier illustration set in the Steerforths in Highgate, an unemotional David is positioned at the left; in the former plate his postion indicates the entrance to the house and the male-dominated world beyond, but here it represents the staircase that connects the main floor and drawing-room from which Mrs. Steerforth has retreated.

Additional information about the plate

First October 1850 illustration. Source: Centenary Edition (1911), volume two, facing page 436. All forty Phiz plates were etched in duplicate, as was the case with Dombey and Son, the duplicates differing only slightly from the originals. Phiz contributed forty etchings and the "life of every man" wrapper design.

References

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

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

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Last modified 19 February 2010