Dickens's "Jenny Wren and Mr. Dolls" by Harold Copping (1924) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated: Jenny Wren admonishes "Mr. Dolls, The Old Child"

. . . a miserable old man stumbled into the room. "How's my Jenny Wren, best of children?" he mumbled, as he shuffled unsteadily towards her, but Jenny pointed her small finger towards him exclaiming — "Go along with you, you bad, wicked, old child, you troublesome, wicked, old thing, I know where you have been, I know your tricks and your manners." The wretched man began to whimper, like a scolded child. "Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night," went on Jenny, still shaking her finger at him, "and all for this; ain't you ashamed of yourself, you disgraceful boy?"

"Yes; my dear, yes," stammered the tipsy old father, tumbling into a corner. ["Jenny Wren" in Children's Stories from Dickens, 46]

Commentary: The Poor, Little Doll's Dressmaker and her Alcoholic Parent

Copping dramatizes Jenny's having to be the parent of a dysfunctional father. As Mary Angela Dickens remarks, "little Jenny Wren . . . was small and deformed, though she had . . . the longest and loveliest golden hair in the world" (45), details which Copping's plate of the girl and her shambling father conveys. The previous novel,Little Dorrit (1855-57) had furnished Mary Angela Dickens with another such role reversal with the younger girl, Amy Dorrit, serving as the parent of the older girl, Maggy, the retarded granddaughter of Amy's old nurse. The discrepancy is larger here, however, as the imbecile, drunken father uses guilt to exploit the honest labour of his crippled daughter in order to purchase alcohol. That he loses control in his inebriation Copping suggests by his crushed hat, distended, red nose, and loose, badly wrinkled clothing. His clutching the table to maintain his balance as Jenny admonishes him suggests his need for her economic support. Thus, Copping's portrait, built on Phiz's original The Person of the House and The Bad Child (October 1864), is a visual indictment of irresponsible parenting. He is indeed "a bad, drunken, disreputable old man" (45).

Illustrations by Marcus Stone, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, and Sol Eytinge, Junior

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. London: Chapman and Hall, 1867.

Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.

Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. "Jenny Wren." Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Pp. 42-48.

Created 13 October 2023