"It's a bride cake. Mine!" by A. A. Dixon for "Great Expectations" (1905) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air, — like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber; or it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me!" [Chapter Eleven, pp. 101-103]

Commentary

The image of a withered bride in her yellowed wedding dress must have etched itself indelibly on the minds of nineteenth-century readers, whether they first encountered that image verbally, in the unillustrated pages of All the Year Round, the illustrated folio sheets of Harper's Weekly in serialization, or in the illustration by Marcus Stone in the 1864 and 1868 single-volume editions issued by Chapman and Hall as the Illustrated Library Edition of the novel.

Like Dickens's Marcus Stone, but unlike the book's first illustrator, John McLenan, Dixon had likely read the entire novel well in advance of illustrating it, and therefore realised the critical role that the jilted heiress would play in the lives of Pip and Estella. Appreciating, for example, the importance of establishing Pip's relationship with Miss Havisham in the lightless halls of Satis House, a psychological as much as a physical environment, Collins's house-illustrator, A. A. Dixon depicts both the details of the interior setting, and the particulars of the contrasting figures with almost photographic precision — in contrast to the impressionist verve and dynamism of the contemporary character study by Harry Furnissin The Charles Dickens Edition (1910).

Eschewing the fairytale romanticism of Marcus Stone's 1864 wood-engravingPip Waits on Miss Havisham and the caricature of McLenan's "It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!" (5 January 1861), as well as the bold lines of F. A. Fraser's wood-engraving (depicting a much later meeting in Satis House between Miss Havisham, her grown-up protegeacute;, Estella, and Pip when her daughter breaks the news that she intends to marry Bentley Drummle), 'What!' said Estella, 'do you reproach me for being cold? You', A. A. Dixon in his turn-of-the-century lithograph for popular consumption implies the reality of the scene, partly through the photographic style, and partly through the realization of so many details drawn directlty from the text: above the mantelpiece (upper left) is clock stopped at 8:50 A. M., weith lit candles on either side to imply both a shutting out of daylight and a stoppage of time within. As in the text, her left hand twitches Pip's shoulder as with her right she points directly to the cake, covered in cobwebs. Elements of the abandoned "feast" (102) include champagne glasses and silverware. To further the scene's verisimilitude (and thereby reinforce the reader's suspension of disbelief in the eccentric heiress) Dixon includes an iron grate and firescreen (upper left), bracelets on Miss Havisham's arm, and rosettes holding up the drapery of the wedding dress — drapery in shape not unlike that which one might find adorning a window of a great house of the period. Completing the scene is sharp contrast in costume and form of the working-class boy (in dark clothing a bit small for him) and the upper-class, desiccated "bride." Pip's gesture is contained, betokening fear and fascination, while the self-confident, elderly woman (dressed as if she is still young) focuses intently upon the table's centrepiece.As in the real Restoration House, in Dixon's lithograph the walls are panelled, "and a large fireplace with an Adam-style carved mantelpiece add to the room's elegance and handsome proportions" (Paroissien, 118).

Curiously, Dixon's caption is not a precise transcription of Dickens's text, since Pip remarks that Miss Havisham, in pointing to her ruined wedding-cake, had announced in an almost defiant manner,

"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!" [103]

However, in captioning the full-page illustration facing the opening section of chapter fourteen (when Pip feels ashamed of his vocation as Joe's apprentice and disgusted by the forge), Dixon eliminates the second independent clauses, substituting "bride" for "great," perhaps to clarify how Miss Havisham perceives the cake, formerly a beautiful creation in white icing and tiered like a wedding-dress, as a projection of herself.

Pertinent Illustrations in Other Editions: 1860, 1864, 1867, 1876, 1885, 1903, and 1910

Left: John McLenan's "It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!" and Marcus Stone's "Pip Waits on Miss Havisham". Centre: Sol Eytinge's "Miss Havisham and Estella". Right: F. A. Fraser's "'What!' said Estella, 'do you reproach me for being cold? You'". [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Left: F. W. Pailthorpe's "I present Joe to Miss Havisham". Centre: H. M. Brock's "Well? You can break his heart". Right: Harry Furniss's "Miss Havisham"(1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

References

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV. (5 January 1861): 5.

Dickens, Charles. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. F. O. C. Darley. 2 vols. The Household Edition. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. Marcus Stone. The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1864.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. F. A. Fraser. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. F. W. Pailthorpe. London: Robson & Kerslake, 23 Coventry Street, Haymarket, 1885.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. H. M. Brock. Imperial Edition. 16 vols. London: Gresham Publishing Company [34 Southampton Street, The Strand, London], 1901-3.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. A. A. Dixon. Collins Pocket Edition. London and Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1905.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol 14.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. Edward Ardizzone. Heritage Edition. New York: Heritage Press, 1939.

Paroissien, David. The Companion to Great Expectations. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.

Last modified 17 March 2014