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‘I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge o’ old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives — fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em fro’ want and hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Firedamp crueller than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may read, fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n and pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need; when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another — in a muddle — every day!’

He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.

‘Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st — poor, patient, suff’rin, dear — how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!’

Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face turned up to the night sky.

‘If aw th’ things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I should’n ha’ had’n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle among ourseln, I should’n ha’ been, by my own fellow weavers and workin’ brothers, so mistook. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know’d me right — if he’d ever know’d me at aw — he would’n ha’ took’n offence wi’ me. He would’n ha’ suspect’n me. But look up yonder, Rachael! Look aboove!’

Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star. [Book the Third, "Garnering," Chapter VI, "The Starlight," pp. 151-52

Commentary: Stephen's Apotheosis

Walker's fourth plate is the most dramatic. The artist has chosen to show neither the mouth of the shaft nor the windlass used moments before in the rescue, but focuses on the moment when Rachel bends down to hold Stephen's broken right hand: "She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look at her" (Book Three, Ch. 6). However, in the interests of effective staging Walker has her use her right hand to clasp Stephen's left gently as he lies, like Christ in the manger, on a bed of straw. Sissy Jupe must be the crying woman turned away from us since the other, centre, resemblesLouisa in the first plate; the clean-shaven gentleman whose hand she holds cannot be the bearded Bounderby of the first plate, and so must be her father: "Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked down upon the solemn countenance." Apparently in the text Rachel stands to one side of Stephen, Louisa on the other, but Walker has disposed the figures so that all are facing forward. Walker places Gradgrind at the centre, even though the letter-press indicates he is not present at the moment bends down to touch Stephen. Despite the sobbing of the women, the scene is imbued with the sacred stillness of a Renaissance Lamentation scene such as Giotto's in the Arena Chapel, Padua, the torch to the left of the plate pointing upward much as the rock does in the Giotto fresco, while Rachel, like Mary in the biblical scene, bends her face towards the victim's.

Curiously, aside from the angels hovering above Giotto's scene, The Lamentation contains nineteen figures — precisely the number in Walker's plate; however, whereas Giotto's Christ lies parallel with the baseline, Walker has shown Stephen on an angle, so that his feet are closer to us than the rest of his body. Dickens mentions in specific terms only a few members of the crowd: Sissy, Rachael, Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa, Mr. Bounderby, and "the whelp," a surgeon, the crew of the windlass, the pitman, and (as in Giotto) "the women who wept aloud." Why Walker has chosen to include a child beside the figure of Gradgrind is unclear. Like young Tom, Bounderby is not evident; the gentleman beside the torch is probably the surgeon.

The text does not mention the torch, which implies the sun has already set, but focuses upon the star rising in the "night sky," The torchlight creates chiaroscuro upon the faces of those in front while those behind are obscured by the growing gloom. Thus, from the middle of the preceding page (150) to the bottom of the facing pne, the reader-viewer can alternate between verbal and visual texts, comparing and contrasting the competing narratives of Stephen's final moments. Since the four plates Walker created for the Illustrated Library Edition in 1868 reflect a careful reading of the letter-press, his obvious errors in captioning are somewhat disconcerting in that "Rachel" and "Tom Bounderby" undermine the authority of Walker's realisations.

Dickens's oblique allusion to Saint Stephen in the factory hand's Christian name becomes clear in his dying moments as his fall into and ascension from the Old Hell Shaft parallels the New Testament martyr's stoning on a trumped-up charge of blasphemy. Stephen has fallen victim both to the carelessness of the mining company's owners, who should have fenced off the shaft, and, more significantly, to the callousness of the union leadership. He is "sent to Coventry," just as the biblical Stephen was condemned his fellow religionists in the Sanhedrin.

Related Materials

• Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (homepage)
• Walker's four illustrations for Dickens's Hard Times — Introduction
• Harthouse Dines at the Bounderbys
• Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-Room
• Mr. Harthouse and Tom Bounderby [sic] in the Garden

Parallel illustrations of the scene at the Old Hell Shaft in other editions, 1863-77

• Darley: She shuddered to approach the pit (1863)
• Eytinge: Stephen and Rachael (1867)
• Reinhart: Rachael Caught Her in Both Arms, with a Scream That Resounded Over the Wide Landscape (1876)
• French: She Stooped Down On The Grass At His Side, And Bent Over Him (1877)

Above: C. S. Reinhart's evocative wood-engraving of the procession bringing Stephen's body back to Coketown: And Through Humility, And Sorrow, And Forgiveness, He Had Gone To His Redeemer's Rest [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Bibliography

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

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Fred Walker. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman & Hall, 1868.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1862. Vol 1 (frontispiece).

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times and The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. With twenty illustrations by Harry French. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877.

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

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Last modified 30 July 2018