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Ornamental initial "I"
Charles S. Reinhart
1883
Composite woodblock engraving
4.2 by 2 vignetted
Ornamental intitial letter, The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"Where are you going, my pretty maid?"
"I'm going a milking, Sir," she said.
CHAPTER I.
It was half-past four o’clock (by the testimony of the land-surveyor, my authority for the particulars of this story, a gentleman with the faintest curve of humour on his lips); it was half-past four o’clock on a May morning in the eighteen forties. A dense white fog hung over the Valley of the Exe, ending against the hills on either side.
But though nothing in the vale could be seen from higher ground, notes of differing kinds gave pretty clear indications that bustling life was going on there. This audible presence and visual absence of an active scene had a peculiar effect above the fog level. Nature had laid a white hand over the creatures ensconced within the vale, as a hand might be laid over a nest of chirping birds. [Opening paragraphs: "It was half-past five o'clock . . . ." in The Graphic Summer Number for 1883, 4]
This plate illustrates the degree of elaboration that The Graphic provided for the typesetting of Hardy's The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid. The motif in the ornamental initial letter vignette suggests parallels not with fairy-tales, but with The Bible and Milton's Paradise Lost. The capital letter is caught in the coils of a serpent, suggestive the romantic temptation that the brooding, sexually-interesting German Baron poses for the Dorset dairy-maid. The design suggests that the Wessex "vale" is Eden, that Margery is Milton's guileless Eve, and that the mysterious outsider will lure the maiden away from filial duty and marital responsibility. The flowers in the design reinforce the bucolic background of Hardy's tale.
The mimetic effects of The Graphic's using Gothic typeface for the story's title and ornamental initial letter vignettes for each chapter were mot experienced by readers of Harper's Weekly across the Atlantic. These paratextual elements invest the magazine print with the dignity and antique style of an illuminated manuscript, as if to imply that the story is not contemporary (although the Baron's steam-yacht implies a late 19th c. setting) and that the reader is to receive it as "literature" with a capital "L."
Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Thomas Hardy's The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid." The Thomas Hardy Journal 16, 3 (October, 2000): 45-62.
Hardy, Thomas. "The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid." Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart. The Graphic (Summer) June 25 1883: 23; Harper's Weekly (14 July 1883): 437.
Purdy, Richard Little, and Michael Millgate, eds. Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Oxford: Clarendon, 1978-88. Vol. I (1840-92), 1978.
Ray, Martin. Thomas Hardy: A Textual Study of the Short Stories. London: Ashgate, 1997.
Created 27 September 2007
Last modified 7 August 2020