"Estella, you know I love you" by A. A. Dixon for "Great Expectations"
Passage Illustrated
Waiting until she was quiet again — for this, too, flashed out of her in a wild and sudden way — I went on.
"I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you, whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing or mean."
"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham.
"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they supposed me to have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think."
This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little while, and then said quietly —
"What do you want for them?"
"Only," said I, "that you would not confound them with the others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same nature."
Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated —
"What do you want for them?"
"I am not so cunning, you see," I said, in answer, conscious that I reddened a little, "as that I could hide from you, even if I desired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which from the nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I could show you how."
"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, settling her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more attentively.
"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two years ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of the secret which is another person's and not mine."
She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the light of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards me again — at first, vacantly &mdadsh; then, with a gradually concentrating attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as if there had been no lapse in our dialogue —
"What else?"
"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly."
She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and from her to me.
"I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I must say it now."
Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still going, Estella shook her head. [Chapter Forty-four, pp. 426-428]
Commentary
By David Paroissien's calculation, Miss Havisham would have been fifty-seven in the year 1821, when the action of chapter forty-four occurs. Accordingly, illustrators are in error when they make her look more elderly, although of course in this scene in Satis House she should look older than her adopted daughter Estella, who is probably twenty-four-years-old at this time — the same age as Pip. The illustrator who has dealt most justly with regard to the ages of the three characters in this highly charged scene, in which Estella announces her intention to be married to Bentley Drummle, is F. A. Fraser in the Household Edition illustration "What!' said Estella, 'do you reproach me for being cold? You." (1876). And just as Fraser freezes the image of Miss Havisham in time so that she does not seem to have aged between Pip's initial visit to Satis House in "Well, Pip, you know, . . . . you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at" and this occasion, some ten years later, so Dixon implies no moral and emotional development in the vindictive woman jilted at the altar, for Miss Havisham in the present scene is indistinguishable from her image in "It's a bride cake. Mine!". Some thirty years have elapsed since Compeyson failed to marry her, but the twenty-four-year-old dress still looks crisp and fresh rather than withered and yellowed in Dixon's illustrations.
Between 1804, when Pip and Estella are about seven — and Miss Havisham about forty, and this scene in Satis House in 1821, when Pip and Estella are twenty-three, the children have dramatically aged, but Miss Havisham, now about fifty-seven, looks to be about the same age as when she showed Pip her bridal-cake. Dixon clothes Pip in Regency fashion, with the tailored great-coat with velvet collar emphasizing his slender form and height, for in the former scene he came to just above Miss Havisham's waist, but now he dominates the room by virtue of his height and the fact that the other two are sitting, as in the text. Dixon uses such background details as the fireplace mantel and candles to imply that this is the same room where Pip first encountered Miss Havisham in her wedding dress, which is also unchanged. However, Dixon shows Miss Havisham open-mouthed rather than indignant, although her face is indeed as "haggard" (425) as Dickens describes it. And, as in the text, Estella, sitting at Miss Havisham's feet as her protegé and steadily knits during the whole discussion, "Preserving her unmoved countenance" (428), although in Dixon's illustration her fixed gaze suggests that she is intently following what Pip is saying as he gestures toward her.
To emphasize their comparative modernity, Dixon has given both Pip and Estella an "Edwardian" look. In particular, instead of a Regency or early Victorian hairstyle, Estella has a short style of coiffure known as a pompadour, popular just after the turn of the century for fashionable young adult females, high, rounded and curved away from the head, the better to display the face and the curve of the neck. However, the style of Estella's hair is somewhat reminiscent of Regency fashion, with tight, vertical curls at her temples, although her hair is comparatively short, and not bound up, as in the manner of the 1820s.
Pertinent Illustrations in Other Editions: 1860, 1864, 1867, 1876, and 1910
Left: John Mclenan's "All done, all gone!"Centre: Marcus Stone's "A Rubber at Miss Havisham's."Right: Sol Eytinge's "Miss Havisham and Estella." [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Left: F. A. Fraser's "'What!' said Estella, 'do you reproach me for being cold? You." (1876). Right: Harry Furniss's "Estella Tells Pip of Her Engagement to Mr. Drummle" (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
References
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. V. (1 June 1861): 350.
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. Charles Green. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. H. M. Brock. Imperial Edition. 16 vols. London: Gresham Publishing Company [34 Southampton Street, The Strand, London], 1902.
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 24 March 2014