The Old Curiosity Club discussion

Dear Curiosities,

Now we are starting with Dickens’s second historical novel, according to some readers the one with the best story but at the same time the most un-Dickensian (for want of humour), and I must say that my attitude towards this novel has changed with every reading I gave it – for the better. I really came to Dickens through Pickwick and some other of the earlier novels and when I first read the Tale I sorely missed the many side characters Dickens usually devotes a lot of time to. But the more carefully I read this book, the more I enjoyed Dickens’s way of introducing us into certain scenes and settings that became just memorable – just consider the beginning of Chapter 5 of the First Book. Apart from that, the story itself is deep and apt to make us think and wonder a lot.

This week’s reading covers the whole of the First Book, which is only six chapters long – in the original publication rhythm, the First Book was published in the course of four weeks – and which bears the title “Recalled to Life”. Why this is the case, becomes pretty obvious as the plot develops.

The first chapter starts with a very famous quotation, probably one of the best-known by Dickens, namely:

”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

I always thought that this enumeration of paradoxes was meant to highlight the ambiguity of the French Revolution, namely that it was an event to end old grievances but that it also did not tarry long before new, and maybe even worse, grievances and terrors were introduced. Then I noticed two things about this: Firstly, that this famous quotation ends with an anti-climax that states that probably every epoch is basically alike to any other. And secondly, that the narrator is not really referring to the French Revolution but to the time of the Ancien régime, because the date is 1775. This actually did surprise me since I always took those mighty famous words as a clever comment on the atrocities and the enlightenment brought about by the Revolution. Be that as it may, this more philosophical beginning of the novel prepares us for anything in terms of good an evil.

What was your reaction to the opening words of A Tale of Two Cities?

The second chapter jumps right into the action by giving us the scene of the Dover mail coach stopped by a rider in the middle of the night. The rider has a written message for one of the passengers, a Mr. Jarvis Lorry, who works for Tellson’s Bank in London. Mr. Lorry peruses this message and then tells the rider to deliver to Tellson’s Bank the mysterious words, “Recalled to Life”. These words puzzle the messenger a lot, and we readers are allowed to accompany him a bit on his way to London, but soon the narrator brings us back to Mr. Lorry, who is half-asleep, half-awake, and whose mind muses on somebody who has been buried for eighteen years and is now brought back to life. This person does not seem too happy, though, because to the question whether he cares to live, he evasively replies, “I can’t say.” – The narrator makes sure that the reader is fascinated by the atmosphere because after all, it is “a dark and stormy night” – only Dickens is too good a writer to simply say so, he lets us feel the inconvenience of the weather – and he underlines the feeling of distrust and threat that was so typical at that age whenever people were on the road. The mail guard suspects the messenger of being a highwayman and the passengers seem to think that Mr. Lorry is in cahoots with the alleged highwayman. It’s almost like in a wild west movie when the coach is stopped outside town – everyone is on their guard, and everything is possible.

Chapter 3 also starts with a memorable quotation, which reminded me of my favourite Joseph Conrad motto, “We live as we dream, alone”:

”A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?“

From here, it is probably not very far to “L’enfer, c’est les autres”, but be that as it may, it is probably no coincidence that Dickens puts in these reflections on the unfathomable individual in a novel that deals with the French Revolution. At the same time, we are prepared for a mystery motif and we are about to learn that sometimes a mother may have secrets from her child – secrets the child would never suspect but which arise out of a spirit of compassion and care.

What does this quotation mean to you?

I actually also have a more down-to-earth question: I cannot make head or tail of Mr. Lorry’s going down to Dover when he receives, on his way, a message from his employers and answers them with the above-quoted words. Obviously, the letter contained an inquiry as to what he found out with regard to Dr. Manette. But if he is leaving London, why did he not first of all see his employers and tell them what he had found out? That does not make a whole lot of sense to me, but maybe you can give me one or two hints.

In Chapter 4, “Preparations”, Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover, where he meets Miss Manette, to whom he divulges to secret of her father’s being alive. Some background information: Apparently, Dr. Manette was in somebody’s way 18 years ago, and so this person used his influence to have Manette locked up with a lettre de cachet, i.e. one of the infamous arbitrary warrants that practically hung over everyone’s head in pre-revolutionary France. Mrs. Manette was now alone with her little daughter, and they soon went to England when it became obvious that they had no chance of ever obtaining the doctor’s freedom. In order not to have a daughter waste her life away in unnecessary grief and hope, Mrs. Manette made her believe that her father had died, and soon after, the mother, grief-stricken, also died.

I think that Mr. Lorry has some potential for bringing a bit of humour into the story because although he seems to pride himself on his business-like manner, it is quite obvious that he is a very sensitive man, and he does everything to break the news very gently to Miss Manette, even though he begs to be regarded as a mere “speaking machine”. At the end of the chapter, a very whirlwindish woman, obviously Miss Manette’s servant, storms into the room and upbraids Mr. Lorry for having caused her mistress so much anxiety that she fainted. Obviously, Mr. Lorry wants the two ladies to accompany him to France, but the brawny servant gruffly tells him that God placed her on an island, which she takes as a hint that He did not mean her for travel.

The fifth and sixth chapters tell us more about Dr. Manette’s whereabouts and about his first meeting with his daughter after 18 years. When the doctor was released from prison, his old servant, Monsieur Defarge, volunteered to look after him and to put him up. This Monsieur Defarge is a very interesting character indeed in that he seems to be a man of contradictions. Just read the following two quotations:

”This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man.”

”In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.”

His wife, Mme Defarge, is no less unsettling than he what with her continuous knitting, her stony face and her capacity of seeing nothing, whereas at the same time, she seems all too keen an observer of her environment.

What is your impression of the Defarges? Can they be trusted? Why did they give shelter to Dr. Manette?

Apparently, M. Defarge is aware of the social ills which abound in the Ancien régime and he is indulging in seditious activities because he seems to let like-minded men take a good look at the doctor, who is a good example of the arbitrary power the King exercises over his subjects. And yet, the assistance he gives to his former master also seems to be motivated by real kindness.

The passage in which Miss Manette and her father meet after more than 18 years is both moving and, to my mind, also a bit too stagey. Whereas Miss Manette’s monologue “If when I tell you, dearest dear …” is definitely too pathetic to be a likeable thing to say for a daughter who meets her own father after such a long time, a father that has been locked away in prison and that she has been taught to think of a long deceased, everything that is connected with Manette himself – his feebleness, his lack of decision, his having forgotten his proper name, the shoemaking, and then the hair of his daughter that he kept in a little bag around his neck, and the words with which he asked his former guards to be allowed that little favour – looks genuine to me and touched me to the quick. That was some marvelous writing.

Nevertheless, I don’t know whether the following is not an inconsistency: In Chapter 5, it is said that Defarge is about thirty years of age, which would make him a 12-year old boy when Dr. Manette was put into prison. Maybe there might have been a feeling of loyalty in Defarge with regard to his old master, but how can he and Lorry expect Manette to recognize Defarge after his term of imprisonment? After all, when Manette last saw Defarge, the wine-merchant was still a boy …

Let’s not forget to mention the beginning of Chapter 5 as an example of Dickens’s excellent writing! Not only does the scene of the spilled wine give us some insight into the misery of the working class’s life under the Ancien régime but it also foreshadows the terrors of the French Revolution -when the wine inundating the streets will be turned into blood. Unluckily, the narrator does not seem to trust much in his reader’s ability to get hidden messages and so he spoils the effect to a certain degree by spelling out its meaning in the following sentence:

”Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—Blood.

The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.”

What is your response to the narrator’s tendency to over-explaining?

Tristram wrote: "Dear Curiosities,

Now we are starting with Dickens’s second historical novel, according to some readers the one with the best story but at the same time the most un-Dickensian (for want of humour)..."

Yes. Chapter One is wonderful. Can there be many, or any novel beginning that rivals “It was the best of times… “ the use of parallel structure gives us two contrary states of being. These contrary states span time, society, religious belief, hope and despair. I noted how the tone seemed to drift darker as we read into the chapter. What is going on? I’m not sure I would want to live during these times.

The general tone of unease expands exponentially in Chapter 2. First we have the weather. Dickens signals much with his references to weather. Within the mud and fog we have a stagecoach lumbering up a hill. We also have fear, nervous stagecoach drivers, guns and distrust. It seems that in spite of all the awareness and preparation for trouble nothing will be enough. We are told that the sound of a horse “came fast and furiously.” At the end of the chapter we are introduced to the phrase ‘Recalled to life.”

The novel A Tale of Two Cities is compact. Since it was written in weekly instalments, there will be fewer characters, a more rapidly development of the plot with a tighter hold on such literary devices as suspense, foreshadowing, and symbolism. Dickens will also repeat phrases in order to propel the story forward.

Let’s buckle up. We are in for a great read.

I remember that when I previously read 'A Tale of Two Cities', I did not enjoy it that much. In hindsight it also kind of muddled up with Little Dorrit in my mind, somehow I combined the wine story with Cavaletto's cart accident. I already enjoyed those first six chapters much better, so here's to giving novels second chances!

I did notice that Miss Manette went quite quickly from being afraid of her father to helping him. I took away from her speech the hair he had might have been her mother's though, not hers, but perhaps I read that wrong?

Jantine wrote: "I remember that when I previously read 'A Tale of Two Cities', I did not enjoy it that much. In hindsight it also kind of muddled up with Little Dorrit in my mind, somehow I combined the wine story..."

Hi Jantine

I think you are right. My take on the initial scene between Lucie and her father is that when Dr. Manette first sees Lucie he believes he is seeing his wife. A nice touch, perhaps a bit melodramatic, but it serves to link Dr. Manette’s still unknown past to the present.

I don’t think it a spoiler to say that this novel will move back and forward chronologically quite frequently. This constant time shifting is one of the reasons Dickens is so particular about constantly establishing where the novel is in terms of time.

Tristram wrote: "when I first read the Tale I sorely missed the many side characters Dickens usually devotes a lot of time to. But the more carefully I read this book, the more I enjoyed Dickens’s way of introducing us into certain scenes and settings that became just memorable – just consider the beginning of Chapter 5 of the First Book. ..."

It's really interesting that you say this, Tristram. I felt the exact same way, but haven't done multiple readings yet, so haven't had the opportunity to change my opinion. But you mentioned chapter 5 and, surprisingly, one of the few things that I remembered clearly from my first outing was the spilled wine scene in chapter five. It was so very vivid. Perhaps that bodes well for me enjoying the book as a whole more this time around...

...but for now, I'm frustrated. :-( I've found much of the first book incomprehensible. I get the overall gist of things, but sentence to sentence? Rough going.

It's all very atmospheric and dark, isn't it? That's okay, but I'm one who craves balance (and maybe puts a finger on the happy side of the scale), and so far (despite the opening paragraph: ...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...) we've just seen a LOT of darkness. Perhaps Manette's being alive is meant to be a ray of sunshine, but it's not yet.

And then there's Lucie, the next Mary Hogarth in a long succession of them. So soon after Amy, I'm not sure I can manage Lucie. She's already swooning, for heaven's sake. Will she show some of Dolly Varden's backbone? Mr. Lorry is careful not to shock the poor delicate flower, and her servant (a woman seemingly with some gumption, thank the Lord!) is overly protective of her, as well.

Now that the Dickens has plunged into the plot, I'm hoping that I'll both understand the prose more easily (dialogue always helps), and that I'll become more connected.

Mary Lou wrote: "...but for now, I'm frustrated. :-( I've found much of the first book incomprehensible. I get the overall gist of things, but sentence to sentence? Rough going.

It's all very atmospheric and dark..."

Mary Lou

Oh my. Not a great start for you. It should get rolling soon. As for Lucie, well, Dickens will be Dickens. Enjoy Miss Pross. :-)

Jantine wrote: "I took away from her speech the hair he had might have been her mother's though, not hers, but perhaps I read that wrong?"

Hmm, as far as I was able to make out, Manette was called away from home when he had his child resting on his lap, and when he found out that they were going to lock him away, he noticed that he had two long fair hairs on his coat sleeve - and I took them to be his daughter's, who had put her head on his arm shortly before he was summoned from his home. But I may be wrong there.

Mary Lou wrote: "It's all very atmospheric and dark, isn't it? "

There is indeed a lot of darkness in those first few chapters: What struck me as a little bit overdone was how the narrator focussed on the characters' distrust of each other when they were travelling along the King's highway. Of course, it must have been a dangerous situation but still I found that our narrator was harping on and on about how they all suspected each other. It was quite like in a western movie but probably the country at that time was really infested with highwaymen.

This atmosphere of distrust remained with me and made me doubt the motives of the Defarges, especially of the wife, who seems to see everything without looking at anything in particular, which is quite eerie. Mme Defarge's knitting reminded me, by the way, of Heart of Darkness, where we have two spinning women at the beginning of the novel - women who clearly stand in for the old Goddesses of Fate, the Moirai. Maybe, Mme Defarge is also one of them???

Jantine wrote: "so here's to giving novels second chances!"

It can sometimes go the other way, though. For example, my recent rereading of Little Dorrit was not half as enjoyable as the one before that, as I happened to notice the novel's flaws more clearly.

Peter wrote: "Yes. Chapter One is wonderful. Can there be many, or any novel beginning that rivals “It was the best of times… “ the use of parallel structure gives us two contrary states of being. These contrary states span time, society, religious belief, hope and despair."

When reading the first book, I realized that Miss Manette's unexpected encounter with the father she had thought to be dead was a bit like "the best of times and the worst of times". She must clearly have been delighted to find her father alive but at the same time felt depressed at finding him reduced to the state he was in through the tribulations of his prison term. Maybe, there will be further instances of such ambivalence?

Peter, with regard to your question about the opening words, it does strike me as so prescient for the world of today. I did not fully understand the historical significance of it, but it sure rings true when I spend about two minutes reading the daily news digest.

John wrote: "Peter, with regard to your question about the opening words, it does strike me as so prescient for the world of today. I did not fully understand the historical significance of it, but it sure ring..."

John

How true. Great novels span time they don’t get forgotten because of time.

I can never forget "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Poetry. I have used this quote many times - but in remembering some of those times, I often quote it when things are bad. Get fired - it was the best of times, it was the worse of times. Final exam time - it was the best; it was the worst. I have used it in sympathy but I never have used it when a baby is born into a household or someone gets a new job. I think I only use it for the bad times. But the quote stays with me. I read this book 60+ years ago in high school. Loved it then; love it today. I fell in love with Dickens with the beginning of the chapter. And, oh the fear, the first time I read chapter 2 - someone is fast coming up on the coach in the dark. If you never read the book before, that is a fearful moment. Dickens used so many literary tools for us in this book. And don't forget the very last line - those of you who know this book. Hooray for Dickens - proof that good literature and art and music can last for a long time. What do we read OFTEN that is older than Dickens? Well, the Bible and philosophy. Any fiction? peace, janz

I was a bit puzzled by the three Jacques peering in on Dr. Manette. Why were they all called Jacques, and why were they spying on him ?

Apart from that, I'm loving the first section. I do enjoy the darker side of Dickens, and the vivid descriptions of the dark coach ride and even the poverty and despair in Paris were wonderful to read.

David wrote: "I was a bit puzzled by the three Jacques peering in on Dr. Manette. Why were they all called Jacques, and why were they spying on him ?..."

I read it as just a general term for a French man/boy. Like Tom, Dick, and Harry.

I am enjoying the compact as opposed to the abstract nature of Dicken's writing of this novel.

David wrote: "I was a bit puzzled by the three Jacques peering in on Dr. Manette. Why were they all called Jacques, and why were they spying on him ?

Apart from that, I'm loving the first section. I do enjoy th..."

Hi David

You ask a great question about all the people with the name Jacques. There is a specific reason that will be given later. My bet is when the reason is revealed you will say “well, of course …”

Stay tuned. :-)

David wrote: "I was a bit puzzled by the three Jacques peering in on Dr. Manette. Why were they all called Jacques, and why were they spying on him ?

Apart from that, I'm loving the first section. I do enjoy th..."

The three guys were not spying on him. He was a general attraction as in a zoo. The barkeep was taking money from them to look in in on a prisoner who had lost his mind. A sign of the times but we do keep monkeys and birds and lions caged up even now. peace, janz

An alternative interpretation to the three Jacques looking at Dr Manette would be that Defarge wants to show/remind as many people as possible what the aristocracy is capable of inflicting upon those who oppose their authority.

Dr Manette would be a rallying point for the poor. If enough of the population in France can get angry at the King and the aristocracy then the population may rise up in anger.

You are so right, Peter, except he was charging them money to see Dr. Manette. They all give him coin before he tells them to go up. And Defarge is certainly dishonest enough to do anything. The only thing that redeems him is that he took care of Dr. Manette. I still think he was showing them off. Certainly Defarge would use anything to rally the folk against the crown. peace, janz

I don't know if I ought to put this in spoiler brackets, and so I will do it. It is about why those three men in the wineshop were all called Jacques:

(view spoiler)[There was a peasant revolt in the north of France in 1358, which was soon put down by the so-called "nobles", and this is commonly referred to as la Jacquerie or even la Grande Jacquerie because of a derisive name given by the nobility to the peasants, which was Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow). Maybe, the customers in Defarge's wineshop deliberately applied this name to themselves and each other because they were hoping for a renewal of popular upheaval against the nobility? (hide spoiler)]

I'd also like to take up cudgels for M. Defarge since I think it legitimate to take measures against oppressors at a certain point.: I do not think that he charges the three Jacqueses for seeing Dr Manette. Before they go up to that room, they do give him some coins but I'd say it is for the wine they had and not for taking a look at the former prisoner.

Peacejanz wrote: "You are so right, Peter, except he was charging them money to see Dr. Manette. They all give him coin before he tells them to go up. And Defarge is certainly dishonest enough to do anything. The on..."

Is it Mr. Defarge charging the money or him doing at the direction of the Mrs?

I give up. The phone wins the battle. I thought I could post illustrations from my phone, I thought I did it before, if I did it before I now have no idea how I managed it. I can post the artist's names, the text that is illustrated, even the commentaries, just not the illustrations. So I have them all ready to go and you will see them when I get home on Friday. I hope.

Since I can't post the illustrations I did a little searching on something else I was wondering about from the first chapter. Dickens says:


It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster.

I wanted to know who Mrs. Southcott was so I looked her up. She must have been a very interesting person to have known.

Joanna Southcott (or Southcote) (April 1750 – 27 December 1814), was a self-described religious prophetess. She was born at Taleford, baptized at Ottery St. Mary, and raised in the village of Gittisham in Devon, England. Her father was a farmer and she herself was for a considerable time a domestic servant in Exeter. She was originally of the Church of England, but about 1792, becoming persuaded that she possessed supernatural gifts, she wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme, and then announced herself as the Woman of the Apocalypse spoken of in Revelation – in the King James Version, Revelation 12:1–6:

1.And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

2.And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

3.And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

4.And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

5.And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

6.And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

Coming to London at the request of William Sharp (1749–1824), the engraver, Southcott began selling paper "seals of the Lord" at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. The seals were purported to ensure the holder's place among the 144,000 people who would be elected to eternal life.

At the age of 64 Southcott affirmed that she was pregnant and would be delivered of the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis 49:10. The date of 19 October 1814 was that fixed for the birth, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance.

She died not long after. The official date of death is given as 27 December 1814; however, it is likely that she died the previous day, as her followers retained her body for some time, in the belief that she would be raised from the dead. They agreed to its burial only after it began to decay.

Southcott left a sealed wooden box of prophecies, usually known as Joanna Southcott's Box, with the instruction that it be opened only at a time of national crisis, and then only in the presence of all 24 bishops of the Church of England (there were only 24 at the time), who were to spend a fixed period of time beforehand studying Southcott's prophecies. Attempts were made to persuade the episcopate to open it during the Crimean War and again during the First World War. In 1927, the psychic researcher Harry Price claimed that he had come into possession of the box and arranged to have it opened in the presence of one reluctant prelate (the Bishop of Grantham, not a diocesan bishop but a suffrage of the diocese of Lincoln): it was found to contain only a few oddments and unimportant papers, among them a lottery ticket and a horse-pistol. Price's claims to have had the true box have been disputed by historians and by followers of Southcott."

What a world. What interesting people in it. I find it endlessly fascinating to read about eccentrics of the past and the present.

The cliche “truth is stranger than fiction is true.” If we just look around the corner there is bound to be someone who surpasses most characters in a novel because of their quirks, silliness, beliefs or activities. Then again, I wonder what others think of me sometimes. ;-)

Peter wrote: "Then again, I wonder what others think of me sometimes. ;-) "

Peter,

I think you are perfectly normal and sensible. Now, that should get you worried ;-)

Tristram wrote: "Peter wrote: "Then again, I wonder what others think of me sometimes. ;-) "

Peter,

I think you are perfectly normal and sensible. Now, that should get you worried ;-)"

Tristram

My doors are locked. ;-)

I'm known at my dentist's office as the Reader, and told that I'm the only person the people there know who still reads actual books. So, all of us here are "unusual" together. And I don't think we hold a candle to Mrs. Southcott.

Tristram wrote: "Peter wrote: "Then again, I wonder what others think of me sometimes. ;-) "

Peter,

I think you are perfectly normal and sensible. Now, that should get you worried ;-)"

It does me.

The Last Dickens Novel Phiz Illustrated

Aware that his friend Browne's essentially comedic and theatrical style of illustration was beginning to look somewhat dated to his serious-minded Victorian readership, Dickens severed an artistic relationship that had resulted in some five hundred initial vignettes, wrapper designs, and full-page illustrations of ten novels.

For twenty-three years Browne continued as illustrator-in-chief of Dickens's writings, ten of the novels being illustrated by him in etching or in wood-engraving, besides various "extra illustrations," and numerous duplicate etchings. A Tale of Two Cities was the last of the novels upon which he was engaged.

One criticism of Browne's style in the monthly pairs of illustrations is the general absence of the dark plates (except for The Mail) so characteristic of his work in Bleak House and Little Dorrit, a type of plate using subtle gradations of light and shade to create the impression of a mezzotint. Solberg (whoever that is) relates the absence of such atmospheric illustrations after Little Dorrit to the inability of the new lithographic mode of to reproduce Browne's dark plates: "For duplicating a 'dark plate', he was given an additional seventeen guineas, raising his earnings to over £40 a month". However, by issuing A Tale of Two Cities in weekly instalments to inaugurate All the Year Round and establish its circulation, Dickens thereby reduced the reading public's demand for monthly parts, so that, as Solberg explains, a single engraved plate was sufficient to print both illustrations required for the monthly part. "Once this happened, Browne, for whom the business motive appears to have operated throughout, lost the economic incentive for using 'dark plates' and returned to simple line drawings".

"There is little or nothing in Browne's final work for Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), that comes near to matching his own best work in either Little Dorrit or Paved With Gold [by Augustus Mayhew, monthly serialization, 1857-1858]. The cover design is inferior to many Phiz did for Dickens and other novelists, there are no dark plates or emblematic details among the sixteen etchings, and only a few scenes of revolution in their energetic depiction of the mob add very much to this last collaboration with Dickens. [Steig, 3]

To maintain as wide a readership as possible, Dickens issued the weekly numbers of All the Year Round without illustration, the price of that small pulp magazine being only 2 d. per issue. Dickens also issued it independently in the usual green-covered [sic] monthly parts, with two illustrations by Hablot K. Browne. The two issues ran concurrently, the monthly part in the blue-green wrapper costing a shilling. When assembled as a monthly part, the pictures were tipped into the episode ahead of the text. Such a juxtaposing of two plates would easily set up a train of reverberations in the reader's mind. In the closing double number, the reader would find two more illustrations, the frontispiece and the title-page. Placed here they allow him to reflect upon what he has read. Later, placed at the front of a bound copy of the novel, they also announce the main themes and concerns of the book. This could be applied equally to any of the nine previous Dickens novels that Browne had illustrated, from the fourth monthly part of The Pickwick Papers, when Browne (alias "Nemo" and subsequently "Phiz") was only twenty, until the closing number of Little Dorrit, in June, 1859. One naturally wonders what Dickens felt had gone so wrong with the illustrations for A Tale of Two Cities that he determined to severe a collaborative relationship which had lasted twenty-three years, and which had resulted (by Albert Johannsen's calculation) in "724 drawings . . . , of which 567 were etched [i. e., "steels"] and 157 engraved on wood".

". . . the artist was much upset at Dickens's strangely silent manner of breaking the connection. Writing to his friend and assistant, Robert Young, shortly before the publication of Great Expectations, the artist said,

"Marcus [Stone] is no doubt to do Dickens. I have been a 'good boy' I believe. The plates in hand are all in good time, so that I do not know what's up any more than you. Dickens probably thinks a new hand would give his old puppets a fresh look, or perhaps he does not like my illustrating Trollope neck-and-neck with him (though, by Jingo, he need have no rivalry there! Confound all authors and publishers, I say. There is no pleasing one or t'other. I wish I had never had anything to do with the lot." (cited in Hammerton, 429).

Ironically, although subsequent editions of A Tale of Two Cities were illustrated by "new hands" (Marcus Stone and Fred Barnard in Great Britain, John McLenan for the Harper's Weekly serial in America), it is still Phiz's plates that are most commonly chosen to accompany the text (the most notable examples being the Oxford Illustrated edition of 1948, re-issussed many times, and the Penguin English Library edition of 1970), "remarkably tame and lacking in dramatic spirit" as some, including paratextual Dickensian Michael Steig, may find them. The note of bitterness about all publishers and novelists in the closing of his letter to Young suggests that Browne sensed he was near the end of his career as an illustrator; in fact, he was already nearing the end of his working life, for in 1867 Phiz suffered a stroke which reduced his artistic output considerably, although he did not die until long after "Boz" (Dickens), on 12 July 1882. Steig notes that the actual duration of their active collaboration would have been somewhat less: "during the twenty-four years from 1836 through 1859 Browne had thirteen years of employment on Dickens' novels".

Although several possible explanations may account the "falling-off" in quality which Steig among others detects in the sequence for the 1859 novel, he speculates that, owing to the novelist's growing lack of interest in illustration, Dickens provided "Browne less interesting subjects and relatively little guidance. Perhaps another factor was that A Tale of Two Cities was written for weekly part publication (in All the Year Round), and it is thus unusually compressed in its bulk and schematic in its plan and development" (Steig, 32). Much of Browne's work involves contemporary settings and characters in nineteenth-century costume, so that, as Percy Muir uncharitably remarks of his work for A Tale of Two Cities, "The figures look like characters in a masquerade and not very convincing ones at that". Muir and Steig seem to concur in their explanation for this inferior narrative series: "The sad fact is that the poor man's powers were declining". Like Alan S. Watts in "Why Wasn't Great Expectations Illustrated?" Steig attributes Dickens's abandonment of Phiz as symptomatic of Dickens' attitudes towards pictorial accompaniment by the end of the 1850s: "The fact is that Dickens no longer felt the need for illustrations" because "the days of illustrated novels were drawing to an end, and possibly Dickens foresaw this."

Finally, in "To Edward Chapman, 6 Oct. 1859" Dickens complains to his publisher:

"I have not yet seen any sketches from Mr. Browne for No. 6 [to be published 31 Oct.]. Will you see to this, without loss of time".

The Pilgrim editors note that Dickens may have felt that Browne was dilatory and have resented the fact that he was simultaneously providing numerous illustrations for Once a Week. When the book was published as a volume, CD had his own copy bound without the plates.

The rival weekly was one of the new, illustrated sort, and the other serialized novel on which Phiz had been working was Charles Lever's Davenport Dunn, the plates for which Steig pronounces "more interesting than those for Dickens' novel" because of their incisive lines "greater attention to detail, and a depiction of human figures which is charged with life and energy". Thus, Dickens may well have felt that Phiz's superior work for Once a Week was preventing the illustrator from adhering to Chapman and Hall's publishing deadlines for the monthly numbers of Tale, and that Phiz was failing to clear his conceptions at the draft stage with the novelist, who valued the opportunity to suggest alterations.

Dickens had eliminated his usual detail in descriptions of characters and settings to accommodate weekly instalments, his style in A Tale of Two Cities is "declarative" rather than "evocative," and therefore failed to provide Browne with sufficient visual inspiration. Furthermore, Dickens utilized his knowledge of France in the Tale to a far greater extent than he had in Little Dorrit. But the artist, who had never visited the country, clearly did not bother with architectural or sartorial details of place and period. Finally, the author's fascination with the French Revolution (especially as portrayed by Carlyle), which also capitalised on contemporary anti-French sentiment, was not shared by the apolitical artist [whose father, we should remember, was in fact a French officer]. To judge from his plates, he remained unmoved even by the rush of the narrative, which reflected Dickens's own tumultuous emotions at the time.

Bearing in mind the swirling action and ferocity of the mob in Phiz's "The Sea Rises," we might well disagree with the above points, but we must acknowledge the justice of Cohen's point that Dickens's cast of characters (much more limited than one finds in his usual monthly serializations), are "easily recalled without graphic reminders," and therefore illustrations for this novel are "superfluous." She asserts that the artist's renditions of Darnay and Dr. Manette are "too conventional to be memorable" and that his visual realizations of the villains "look too benign to be credible." Browne's interiors and architectural backgrounds, she continues, lack interest, atmosphere, and authenticity:

"When they are suggested at all, backgrounds and interiors, previously a Browne strength, lack interest and atmosphere, as well as authenticity". She even finds fault with the program’s being composed almost entirely of oblong plates: "Since they contain neither draftsmanship to be admired nor detail to be studied, it is hardly worth interrupting the gripping narrative to turn the page around to view them. They are merely representations, not genuine illustrations" .

And with that the illustrations begin.

The Mail

Book I - Chapter 2

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.

"So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!"

The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist, "Is that the Dover mail?"

"Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?"

"Is that the Dover mail?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want a passenger, if it is."

"What passenger?"

"Mr. Jarvis Lorry."

Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.

"Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist, "because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight."

"What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. "Who wants me? Is it Jerry?"

("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.")

"Yes, Mr. Lorry."

"What is the matter?"

"A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co."

"I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong."

"I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!"

"Well! And hallo you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

"Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you."

The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.

"Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, "Sir."

"There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?"

"If so be as you're quick, sir."

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: "'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, Recalled to life."

The Shoemaker

Book I Chapter 6

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.

Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.

It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.

He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

"What is this?"

With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.

"You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

She sighed "No."

"Who are you?"

Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking."


Commentary:

In the June 1859 installment of A Tale of Two Cities, Phiz provides contrasting and complementary scenes in the narrative: in the first, Tellson's confidential messenger, Jerry Cruncher, has just stopped the Dover mail to deliver the famous watchword "Recalled to life"; in the second, wine-seller Ernest Defarge takes Mr. Lorry and Lucie Manette up to his loft to see the latest Saint Antoine curiosity, the old Shoemaker, recently released from the Bastille. Discounting the horses in plate one, each illustration contains four figures and elaborates the message that Jerry has delivered. The polarities of the two plates are obvious: outside versus inside, England versus France, figures muffled versus figures clearly seen. In both, background details are minimized to focus on the poses of the figures, although in what is almost a dark plate Phiz is careful to delineate the guard's blunderbuss, trained on the horseman still. The artist merely hints at the highroad setting of Shooter's Hill by broadly outlined bushes in the rear. The twin focal points are the coach lantern and the reader (Mr. Jarvis Lorry) beneath (center) and the guard with Jerry Cruncher beneath him (left), leaving us to ponder what lies ahead (right). The identities of these figures, of course, depend upon the viewer's becoming a reader who must then mediate between text and picture. Significantly, we have not yet seen enough of either Jerry Cruncher or Mr. Lorry to identify them in subsequent illustrations — pictorially, we remain in the dark until the plate entitled "The Shoemaker" reveals the artist's conception of Mr. Lorry. The darkness of plate one, like the presence of Mr. Lorry, makes a visual connection to the wrapper's two dark scenes, mercantile London (above) and revolutionary Paris (below).

In contrast to the panoramic scene of coach, horses, driver, guard, passenger, and messenger in the first plate, "The Shoemaker" perhaps a realization of a tableau called "Roman Charity" (Martin Meisel asserts: "Doubtless Dickens encountered the image of Roman Charity in more than one obscure gallery; in the private palaces of Rome, for example, where he thought 'pictures are seen to the best advantage'[Pictures from Italy, London , 1846)

Earlier, in A Tour in Italy and Sicily, Louis Simard had expressed his admiration of Guido's Roman Charity in Genoa's Durazzo Palace, a visit to which Dickens alludes in a letter to Lady Blessington. Meisel argues that, although there is a Shakespearean parallel in Cordelia's tending Lear, Amy's comforting her father in Little Dorrit and Lucie's rocking her father on her heart "like a child" (I, vi) in A Tale of Two Cities are manifestations of Dickens's fascination with such paintings of Roman Charity as Andrea Sirani's.

The image of Roman Charity recurs in A Tale of Two Cities, in a section entitled "Recalled to Life." It takes form (like a tableau vivant) in a prepared fictive setting, designed to accommodate the actual world to the mental world of the prisoner. Dr. Manette, recently released from the Bastille but unable to accept his condition, is brought together with his daughter, Lucie, in a garret room that has been darkened and made into a pseudo-cell. The wine-shop keeper, Defarge, ostentatiously wielding a key, stands for the jailor. Lucie is required by her father's fragile mental state to restrain her "eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it both to life and hope." [Meisel 35]

This close-up focuses on the reunion of father and daughter. In their grotto-like space, they are surrounded by an aura that visually connects this scene to the lantern of the first, and that hints of the forthcoming Manichaean conflict between the forces of darkness and of light. Here, however, there is no apparent source of illumination; rather, the light seems to emanate from the central figures themselves. Only reading the text will enable the viewer to unmask the characters in "The Mail" and to connect that scene to "The Shoemaker." The two horizontal plates are complementary, too, in that the first involves a scene towards the middle of the second chapter while the second describes a scene right at the close of the first installment, so that, while the reader can quickly resolve the riddles of the first, he or she must peruse almost the entire number to decode the implications of the second.

Finally, the opening scene of his visual program for A Tale of Two Cities reveals once again Browne's capacity for conveying a sinister or mysterious atmosphere, and for depicting nocturnal scenarios and horses, a feature of his style ever since he was awarded a medal by the Society of Arts for "John Gilpin's Ride" in 1833, which in turn led to his being commissioned to provide the plates for Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities (1838). Apparently, Christmas Book illustrator John Leech envied Phiz for his ability to draw life-like horses. The heads of the rearing steeds of the Marquis' carriage in "The Stoppage at the Fountain" (August) contribute a sense of high drama, and suggest that the horses of the state, the proletariat, once out of their old masters' control, will destroy the innocent as well as the guilty, and will not be easily righted. although the pair of horses' heads in "The Spy's Funeral" (September) do not make similar contributions to the comic vignette, they do provide a visual connection to the complementary carriage scene in France, "The Stoppage at the Fountain." The English horses, in contrast, are as placid as (despite the rollicking nature of the scene) the London mob is relatively benign. In contrast to those set in England, there is little comedy in the French scenes, but plenty of melodrama.

Title Page

John McLenan

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book I, ch. 1

Harper's Weekly ( May 7, 1859)

[This page begins the first installment of the novel, which All the Year Round published in the U.K. on April 30, 1859 — exactly a week earlier than Harper's.]

John McLenan - A Tale Of Two Cities

"A Tale of Two Cities appeared between April 30 through November 26, 1859 in thirty-one weekly parts in All the Year Round and eight monthly instalments, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"); it also appeared between May 7 and December 3, 1859 in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, the editors of the New York weekly illustrated magazine having purportedly paid the British author "five thousand dollars" (as the bannerhead of each week's installment announces) for the "early Proof-sheets" from the offices of All the Year Round. Throughout its serial run in Harper's, A Tale of Two Cities lagged behind its British counterpart by one week, a fact that would suggest that the Harper's house illustrator, John McLenan, had very little time to read and digest each installment after it arrived in New York. There is no significant difference between the two serials in terms of the contents of each installment, other than the sixty-four American illustrations, and the fact that British spellings such as "honoured" ("honored,") have been altered to conform to American usage.

A NEW TALE BY DICKENS. In addition to Mr. Curtis's beautiful [Trumps, which began its serial run on 16 April 1859], now in course of publication in this paper, we have great pleasure in announcing that we have made arrangements with Mr. CHARLES DICKENS for the early sheets of his new Serial, entitled A Tale of Two Cities, Which will be commenced in the next Number of HARPER'S WEEKLY, and continued from week to week until completed. [First page of Vol. III, No. 122, 30 April 1859]

"The figures of a hose and rider came slowly through the mist"

Book I Chapter 2

John McLenan

Harper's Weekly May 7, 1859 John McLenan. Illustration for Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities

Text Illustrated:

"The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.

"Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, "Sir."

"There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?"

"If so be as you're quick, sir."

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: "'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, Recalled to life."

Jerry started in his saddle. "That's a Blazing strange answer, too," said he, at his hoarsest.

"Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night."

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book I, Chapter V

John McLenan

Harper's Weekly ( May 1859)

Text Illustrated:

"The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes."

"He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it."

John McLenan

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book I, Chapter VI, "The Shoemaker"

Harper's Weekly (May 1859)

Text Illustrated:

"He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"

As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.

"She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out — she had a fear of my going, though I had none — and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well."

He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.

"How was this? — Was it you?" . . .

"No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was — and He was — before the slow years of the North Tower — ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?"

"She curtsied to him . . ."

Book I Chapter 4

Fred Barnard

Dicken's A Tale Of Two Cities Household Edition 1870s

Fred Barnard's illustrations for A Tale of Two Cities. The 176-page Household Edition of A Tale of Two Cities, first published in volume form in 1859 and reissued as one of twenty green-bound volumes by Dickens's own publishers, Chapman and Hall, shortly after the novelist's death in the larger, double-columned, format (reminiscent of the 1850s journal Household Words).

Commentary:

Lucie Manette meets Mr. Jarvis Lorry of Tellson's Bank in her room at the old coaching inn ("The Royal George Hotel") at the port of Dover in the fourth chapter ("The Preparation") in Book the First, "Recalled to Life". Through the curtseying and bowing of the figures, as well as through their costuming, Barnard reinforces the story's eighteenth-century setting, a period, as the text below the picture announces, of Light and Darkness, of hope and despair, a period, despite its quaint customs and antiquated fashions then thought current, "so far like the present". This is the passage illustrated:

"The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him, by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding cloak, and still holding her straw travelling hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an enquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was) of lifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions — as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. . . . .

"Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and pleasant young voice: a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.

"I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat. . .

She curtsied to him (young ladies made curtsies in those days) with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow."

Thus, Barnard has chosen to focus on this connection between two of the tale's principal characters, rather than on Jerry Cruncher's highly dramatic stopping of the coach on the Dover Road in the second chapter, the subject that his friend Hablot Knight Browne had chosen as his first subject in the first monthly number (June, 1859), "Recalled to Life.

"The Wine Shop"

Book I Chapter 5

Fred Barnard

The Household Edition 1870s

Text Illustrated:

"What the devil do you do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you."

But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.

"How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?"

"Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge.

When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

"It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?"

"It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned.

At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.

The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.

"Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?"

"You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge.

This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat.

"Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen—my wife!"

The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it."


Commentary:

Saint Antoine's Wineshop — A Breeding Ground for Revolution.

In Barnard's sequence, the illustrator presents the Household Edition's reader with a contrast between the solid, middle-class — albeit old-fashioned — comfort of Dover's Royal George Hotel in the fourth chapter and this den of poverty and discontent in the fifth. The specific passage in "The Wine-Shop" that the illustration realizes is this:

....Madame Defarge, being sensitive to the cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large ear-rings. Her knitting was before her, but she laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly-defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way.....

Thus, Barnard has chosen to re-examine a subject that his friend Hablot Knight Browne had chosen as his first subject in the fourth monthly number (September, 1859), "The Wine-Shop". However, Phiz had focused on the garret above the shop in which the Defarges were housing the former prisoner of the Bastille, Dr. Manette, at this point in the story, "The Wine-Shop" by Phiz referring to events in the sixth chapter of the second book. Barnard conveys a stronger sense of the patrons of the establishment, seen left rear, and thus of the wine-shop as a center of the St. Antoine community. With surer modeling, Barnard brings to life the meeting of the Jacquerie across the Defarges' bar, including even such details as Madame Defarge's fur collar and tooth-pick. The rough-and-tumble atmosphere of the place is immediately apparent through the male-dominated discourse and card-playing: Barnard shows nine men, but only two women. The large cask in the foreground recalls the scene at the opening of the chapter in which animalistic violence erupts in the street outside when a cask being delivered comes tumbling out of a cart and shatters.

John McLenan in the series for the American serialization published in Harper's Weekly chose a rather more sensational moment for realization as the headnote vignette for May 21, 1859. Instead of the casual gossip among the Jacquerie inside Saint Antoine's community center, McLenan depicts the riotous scene outside in the cobble stoned street when the wine cask is smashed as it falls off a cart. An impressionistic jumble of figures surrounds the gigantic cask, "on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like walnut shell", enabling the reader of the weekly illustrated magazine to encounter the same moment simultaneously in two media.

"What is this?" ("The Shoemaker")

Fred Barnard

The Household Edition 1870s

Text Illustrated:

"She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.

Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.

It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.

He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

"What is this?"

With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.

"You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

She sighed "No."

"Who are you?"

Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking."

Commentary:

The mental deterioration of the bearded figure on the shoe mender's bench is admirably conveyed by his ragged clothing and riveted gaze upon the fashionable young woman whose presence illuminates his garret. The scene of gradual recognition and returning self-awareness occurs in the text on the self-same page as Barnard's illustration:

"What is this?"

With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.

Thus, Barnard captures the precise moment when Lucie attempts to engage her father's attention as her father clasps the beautiful young woman's skirt, and then (presumably) drops the hem. The artist captures well the old man's amazement, but fails to suggest the strong emotions welling up in Lucie. The picture is nevertheless effective because of its internal tensions, between youth and age, smooth cheek and bearded, ill-kempt visage, standing versus sitting, fashionable versus rotten apparel. The gaze between the two figures, so very different and yet intimately connected, speaks volumes.

In anticipation of Dickens's long-awaited 1867-68 reading tour, which had been postponed by the American Civil War, the Boston publisher James T. Fields had commissioned from Eytinge ninety-six designs for wood-engravings to grace the pages of the exhaustive Diamond Edition of Dickens's works, each volume being of compact dimensions with very fine but sharp type. This volume, moreover, coincided that momentous visit to American shores.

On the verso of the title-page is the statement that James T. Fields, the author's friend and confidant, so valued since it authorized his firm as Dickens's sole representatives in the United States:

Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,
Second April, 1867.

By a special arrangement made with me and my English Publishers (partners with me in the copyright of my works), MESSRS. TICKNOR AND FIELDS, of Boston, have become the only authorized representatives in America of the whole series of my books.

CHARLES DICKENS.

William Winter in his autobiography recalls that Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s illustrations for Dickens's works "gained the emphatic approval of the novelist", although of course the pair did not actively collaborate on this series, as did Hablot Knight Browne and Dickens for the 1859 twenty serial illustrations for Chapman and Hall. Nevertheless, as one regards this series of eight individual and group character studies for A Tale of Two Cities (1867) and appreciates them as exemplars of the new realism of the sixties' manner of book and magazine illustration, one is tempted to agree with Winter that:

The most appropriate pictures that have been made for illustration of the novels of Dickens, — pictures that are truly representative and free from the element of caricature, — are those made by Eytinge. . . ."

"Dr. Manette and his Daughter"

Book I Chapter 6

Sol Eytinge Jr.

Diamond Edition of Dickens Works 1867

Commentary:

It is entirely possible that Eytinge, working on the illustrations of the Diamond Edition volumes in 1866 and early 1867 had access to the original serial illustrations by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), steel engravings why month by month (at least, until the latter part of the serial) Dickens had sanctioned and which therefore reflected his narrative intentions. One of these, "The Shoemaker" resembles Eytinge's Illustration in its locale and subject, but is markedly different in its composition. Aside from the two principal figures, present in Phiz's full-page engraving are the publican, Ernest Defarge, the Doctor's servant formerly (back towards the viewer, left), and facing him a somber Jarvis Lorry, standing beside the shoemaker's bench. Lucie, having left her hat on the floor (right), caresses her father, who as yet has not apprehended who his fair-haired young visitor is. Although the stark garret is dark, light from a window (off-left) illuminates the scene, implying that the light of sanity will gradually return the prisoner of 105, North Tower, in the Bastille, his address having displaced his identity after some eighteen years of incarceration.

Now, contrast the original 1859 illustration with that of Eytinge, which focuses more narrowly on the emotional impact of the reunion of father and daughter. Despite his mental vacuity and white beard, Eytinge's former Bastille prisoner, is better dressed and has the tools of his prison trade immediately about him. Although he is now resident in a room above the Defarges' wine-shop in Saint Antonine as in Phiz's plate, the viewer has little sense of the backdrop, other than the sloping roof of the garret. An interesting aspect of this early illustration is that Eytinge has deliberately made young Lucie resemble the little seamstress of the frontispiece, as if suggesting how Carton could so easily bond with a young woman whom he has only just met — note in particular, her rounded face and her streaming hair, which is both longer and lighter in Eytinge's illustration than in Phiz's original. The 1867 picture reflects the artist's intention to depict the depth of Lucie's attachment to her long-lost father. The juxtaposition and postures of the solid, realistically modeled figures suggests that Eytinge has chosen to realize the moment at which Dr. Manette, recalled to life, is now recalled to the present after an absence of almost two decades by the "golden thread" of his daughter's hair, so like that of his deceased wife:

He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

"What is this?"

With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.

"You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

She sighed "No."

"Who are you?"

Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.

But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"

As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.

"She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out — she had a fear of my going, though I had none — and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well."

He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.

"How was this? — Was it you?"

Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!"

"Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?"

His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.

"No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was — and He was — before the slow years of the North Tower — ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?"

Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast."

Book I Chapter 4 - A. A. Dixon



Pray control your agitation

Book I Chapter 4

A. A. Dixon

Illustration for Collins Edition 1905

Text Illustrated:

"So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did—Don't be frightened! How you start!"

She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.

"Pray," said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: "pray control your agitation—a matter of business. As I was saying—"

Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:

"As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais."

Commentary:

The Collins Pocket Edition of Dickens's works was issued in 1905 to serve the burgeoning market for cheap, portable reprints of the great novelist's works. Indeed, although he had been dead some three decades, a Dickens "boom" was well underway, as signaled not only by the publication of such cheap editions but also by the founding of the Dickens Fellowship in London, and, as a harbinger of the early Dickens Revival, the numerous productions of Wills and Langbridge's The Only Way, a theatrical adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities which ran for 168 performances at the Royal Lyceum, London, starring Sir John Martin-Harvey, in 1899 before touring the provinces.

The twelve plates by A. A. Dixon for the Collins Pocket Edition of the 1859 novel have qualities of both a new medium, the photograph, and a traditional medium, the oil painting. Though Dixon's painterly style is effective, overall his dozen illustrations are not equal to Phiz's steel etchings in narrative power and wealth of historical detail.

Dixon's Edwardian illustrations, reveal, despite their small dimensions (10.8 cm high by 8.0 cm wide, on pages measuring 15 cm by 10 cm), a sure sense of composition, tending towards scenes between a limited number of characters, such as "Pray control your agitation" (Ch. 4: Mr. Lorry breaking the news to Lucy of her father's having survived years of incarceration in the Bastille), utilizing juxtaposition and contrast, and often merely sketching in the background, as if the characters are in focus, and the backdrop out of focus, photographically speaking.

Occurring in a "pocket" edition, Dixon's plates were widely accessible in early twentieth-century Britain, and therefore conditioned many readers' responses to Dickens's text at a time of renewed interest in one of the previous century's greatest novelists.

Kim wrote: "The Last Dickens Novel Phiz Illustrated

Aware that his friend Browne's essentially comedic and theatrical style of illustration was beginning to look somewhat dated to his serious-minded Victorian..."

Kim

So sad to read about the decline of Phiz. I agree with the varied assessments (as painful as that is to admit). Still, Hablot Browne is my favourite illustrator. To me, Phiz was the greatest of all the 19C illustrators. As was mentioned in the article, Phiz had many other commissions and authors and journals who wanted his work. This other work kept him busy.

Browne’s mini stroke in 1867 was a severe blow to his output since he had to learn to hold his pen differently. As noted, Phiz did outlive Dickens. One other reason that may have been responsible for Dickens severing his relationship with Browne is the fact that Browne apparently objected to Dickens leaving his wife Catherine, publishing his defence of why he ended their marriage and then taking up with Ellen Ternan. Dickens was never a man who accepted criticism well.

"Recalled to Life"

Book I Chapter 2

Harry Furniss

Charles Dickens Library Edition 1910

Commentary:

The opening book, "Recalled to Life," begins with Dickens's satirical commentary on the abuses of power in pre-Revolutionary France (Chapter One, "The Period"), which is heavily dependent upon Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution. It then moves to a highly dramatic confrontation between a lone rider and the driver of the Dover mail-coach as it approaches Shooter's Hill, a prime spot for highway robbery.

Despite the suspicions of the guard and driver, the messenger is a legitimate — if rough-voiced and non-too-reputable in appearance — representative of Tellson's Bank, Temple Bar, London. The enigmatic message he bears, as in Phiz's celebrated steel engraving The Mail (June 1859), contains but three words: "Recalled to Life."

Although the original 1859 full-page engraving, a "dark" plate by Hablot Knight Browne (reminiscent of his work for Bleak House some six years earlier) intended to convey the intensity and menacing nature of the darkness on the lonely highroad, is certainly atmospheric — illuminated as it is by a single coach lamp (center), immediately above the head of the muffled passenger — the horses, the carriage, and the four figures stand out distinctly, despite the darkness of the hour (established by the text as precisely 11:10 P. M.) and the deserted nature of the meeting place. Furniss, then, replaces specific detail with an impression of apprehension. However, the choice of subject is highly informative in that Furniss invites the reader of 1910 to compare his painterly interpretation of the chapter to that of Dickens's first great visual interpreter, rather than the chief Household Edition illustrator or A. A. Dixon.

Even though A Tale of Two Cities initially appeared in weekly installments in Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round without the benefit of illustration, Furniss nevertheless had two sets of competent illustrations available as references, even if he had not seen the work of American illustrators Sol Eytinge, Junior and John McLenan dating from the 1860s: the sixteen steel engravings in the monthly parts illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and the twenty-five 1874 wood-engravings by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition. And issued just five years earlier than Furniss's edition, the Collins Pocket Edition offered Furniss a limited number of realistic lithographs as reference points, there being an illustration that represents Mr. Lorry's meeting Miss Manette at The Royal George Hotel, Dover (a somewhat less effective version of Fred Barnard's initial illustration, in fact, for Chapter Four, "The Preparation"). Another influence at work in Furniss's illustration for Chapter Two would undoubtedly be the equivalent, opening scene in Sir John Martin-Harvey's stage adaptation at the Lyceum, The Only Way (which debuted on 16 February 1899, ran until 25 March 1899 with 168 performances, and was revived some ten times in London up to 1909).

In dramatic fashion, Furniss introduces two of the story's chief supporting characters, Tellson's confidential head clerk, Jarvis Lorry, and "The Honest Tradesman," the "resurrection man" Jerry Cruncher. More subtly than McLenan, Furniss emphasizes the guard's blunderbuss, trained on the nocturnal rider who might well be a highwayman, given the lateness of the hour and the geographical location of Shooter's Hill, the highest point on the London to Dover road, isolated in the eighteenth century, though not far from the Borough of Greenwich. Apprehending that this scene sets the keynote of watchful vigilance and impending danger (constituents that run throughout the narrative), Furniss seems determined to convey an impression rather than introduce characters. The coach has virtually disappeared in the fog, the guard a mere silhouette with his firearm trained on the horseman, whose gesture expresses his puzzlement over the meaning of the message which Lorry reads by the light of the coach lamp, diffused by the fog to provide extreme chiaroscuro appropriate to the high drama and sense of mystery with which Dickens imbues the scene textually.

"Miss Manette and Mr. Lorry interrupted"

Book I Chapter 4

Harry Furniss

Charles Dickens Library Edition 1910

Text Illustrated:

"Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving.

A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.

("I really think this must be a man!" was Mr. Lorry's breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)

"Why, look at you all!" bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. "Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch things? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold water, and quick, I will."

Commentary:

Following the suspenseful scene on the Dover road in Chapter 2, Miss Pross's sudden entry at the Royal George Hotel, Dover, constitutes a particularly Dickensian form of comic relief, accentuated by her Stilton millinery. It is surprising that no previous illustrator over the half-century between the appearance of the original monthly parts and the Charles Dickens Library Edition of 1910 had characterized her as anything more than a plain, rather angular bourgeois in old-fashioned dress. But issued just five years earlier than Furniss's edition, the Collins Pocket Edition did not even offer Furniss a possible model for this intimidating yet loveable English virago with a heart of gold. Then, too, the other illustrators waited some chapters to introduce Miss Pross into the narrative-pictorial sequence — not so Harry Furniss.

Having read and re-read this historical novel since early adolescence, Furniss decided to introduce Miss Pross early as a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, immediately after the moment realized, the British lioness without much effort hurls the unfortunate Jarvis Lorry against the wall. In dramatic fashion, Furniss introduces her as a force of nature who bursts in upon the intimate scene between the gallant old bank clerk and the young Anglo-French woman who has mistakenly thought of herself for many years as an orphan, and is now shocked into temporary insensibility by the news that her father has been "recalled to life." Furniss introduces as early as possible in his pictorial sequence two of the story's chief supporting characters, Tellson's confidential head clerk, Jarvis Lorry, and the determined nurse and protector of "Ladybird," the delicate and beautiful young woman whom Miss Pross has raised to young adulthood. More accurately than such early illustrators as Phiz and McLenan, Furniss emphasizes the nurse's force of character and physical power, Dickens's comparison of her hat to a grenadier's implying an unfeminine, aggressive, domineering nature Furniss reflects in her considerable bulk lowering over Mr. Lorry, looking fiercely at him as she grabs him by the cravat. To complement Dickens's suggestion of her martial presence Furniss gives her a dress with the flavor of a military uniform.

The Shoemaker of the Bastille

Book I Chapter 6 - Harry Furniss

Charles Dickens Library Edition 1910

Commentary:

In The Shoemaker, Phiz has visualized with great sensitivity the reunion of father and daughter which Dickens describes in the June 1859 monthly and May 2 All the Year Round weekly installment. However, whereas in the original serial illustration and subsequent illustrations the dutiful daughter kneels before her long-lost father, in Furniss's more emotional rendering of the scene Doctor Manette is prostrate, and his daughter acts as his nurse rather than as a child. Although Furniss uses the caption "The Shoemaker of the Bastille" to underscore Dr. Manette's loss of identity as a political prisoner in solitary confinement, he does not — like McLenan in A white-haired man sat on a bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes — actually depict the quondam-physician as a shoemaker, for the bench (left rear) is barely recognizable as such in the vigorous pen-and-ink sketch. Furniss accentuates the differences between the tender young woman with luxuriant hair and the exhausted, bald old man, creating a sense of the sacred by rendering the garret (in the manner of Phiz in the original) as a sort of hermit's grotto, and by eliminating the onlookers whom Phiz included in the 1859 steel engraving, Jarvis Lorry and Ernest Defarge.

Martin Meisel in Chapter 15 of Realizations, "Dickens' Roman Daughter," notes that the daughter's tending the prisoner-father is something of a pattern in Dickens's works, the locus classicus being Little Dorrit tending "The Father of the Marshalsea," which (Meisel notes) was Dickens's updated prose account of "the much-painted scene of 'Roman Charity'", a painterly commonplace known in the Renaissance as Caritas Romana, the ultimate source being the classical writer Valerius Maximus. An example of the concept's realization in the visual arts is Andrea Sirani's Roman Charity (1630-1642). Furniss's image, then, is more consistent than most of the other illustrators' realizations with the "maternal daughter" concept in Dickens's text. Meisel describes the effects of the Roman Charity paintings that Dickens saw when visiting the various Italian city-states in the mid-1840s:

...."From the womb or grave of the Marshalsea he (William Dorrit) is resurrected, and his infancy and childhood are given him, by the child-woman who reverses time and Nature to redeem them".....

Dickens did not purge himself of the prison theme, or outgrow the countervailing image of Roman Charity, with the conclusion of Little Dorrit. He came back to them in A Tale of Two Cities, whose imagination belongs to the period of renewed creativity immediately after his first Italian visit, and is hardly distinguishable from the germ of Little Dorrit.

The image of Roman Charity recurs in A Tale of Two Cities, in a section entitled "Recalled to Life." It takes form (like a tableau vivant) in a prepared fictive setting, designed to accommodate the actual world to the mental world of the prisoner. Dr. Manette, recently released from the Bastille but unable to accept his condition, is brought together with his daughter, Lucie, in a garret room that has been darkened and made into a pseudo-cell The wine-shop keeper, Defarge, ostentatiously wielding a key, stands in for the jailor. Lucie is required by her father's fragile mental state to restrain her "eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it both to life and hope." But eventually she succeeds in taking him to her, and rocks him on her heart "like a child." The release comes, and the tableau configuration (including spectators) is completed, when she evokes Manette's tears for both the irremediable and irrecoverable past and the living present:

...."He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.".....

Much else in A Tale of Two Cities recalls the imagery and concerns of Little Dorrit, but they are shifted, as here, to a bolder, broader key, appropriate to a drama played within the heroic framework of a historical action.

Dickens mentioned to Forster in a letter the convoluted "idea of a man imprisoned for ten or fifteen years, emphasizing his imprisonment being the gap between the people and circumstances of the first part and the altered people and circumstances of the second, and his own changed mind." Dickens then explored the psychology of the long-term prisoner, newly released, in old Dorrit, in Arthur Clennam returning from exile, and most sensationally in Mrs. Clennam making her nightmare journey through the unaccustomed streets. He pursues the theme in Dr. Manette. [Meisel, 315]

Whereas the Phiz illustration involves a sort of "play-within-the-play," with both actors (Lucie and the shoemaker, center) and audience (Defarge and Lorry, left), as if Dickens is reconstituting King Lear's reunion with the faithful Cordelia, Furniss in Baroque fashion emphasizes the emotional aspect of this fateful meeting for Lucie, supporting her long-lost father's head in her lap as his legs sprawl out of the constricted space of his new "cell." Although the text makes plain the presence of The witnesses Defarge and Lorry, Furniss has elected to remove them from the scene in order to focus on Lucie's responses to this novel and life-changing situation."

Kim wrote: "

The Shoemaker

Book I Chapter 6

Phiz

Text Illustrated:

"She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of ..."

A very interesting commentary. The light in the shoemaker illustration is rather celestial. As the commentary states one can see the influence of Italian religious paintings. Lucie and her father are not so much in the light as the light is radiating from them - well from Lucie.

A big thank you to those of you who have put drawings on this site. My edition of TOTC does not have illustrations. But --- I think all of these are gruesome. Not a one is attractive to me but, of course, I am living 150 years later. Wonder why they are so awful, because of the time of the novel, French people feeling so abused? These pictures are awful. Please explain some of these horrid drawings. peace, janz