"The Fallen Brass" — Furniss's twenty-eighth illustration for Dickens's "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1910) (original) (raw)

Context of the Illustration: Brass turns evidence as Quilp

"If you will do me the favour," he said, holding up the green shade, and revealing an eye most horribly discoloured, "to look at this, you will naturally inquire, in your own minds, how did I get it. If you look from that, to my face, you will wonder what could have been the cause of all these scratches. And if from them to my hat, how it came into the state in which you see it. Gentlemen," said Brass, striking the hat fiercely with his clenched hand, "to all these questions I answer — Quilp!"

The three gentlemen looked at each other, but said nothing.

"I say," pursued Brass, glancing aside at his sister, as though he were talking for her information, and speaking with a snarling malignity, in violent contrast to his usual smoothness, "that I answer to all these questions, — Quilp — Quilp, who deludes me into his infernal den, and takes a delight in looking on and chuckling while I scorch, and burn, and bruise, and maim myself — Quilp, who never once, no never once, in all our communications together, has treated me otherwise than as a dog — Quilp, whom I have always hated with my whole heart, but never so much as lately. He gives me the cold shoulder on this very matter as if he had had nothing to do with it, instead of being the first to propose it. I can’t trust him. In one of his howling, raving, blazing humours, I believe he’d let it out, if it was murder, and never think of himself so long as he could terrify me. Now," said Brass, picking up his hat again and replacing the shade over his eye, and actually crouching down, in the excess of his servility, "what does all this lead to? — what should you say it led me to, gentlemen? — could you guess at all near the mark?" [Chapter LXVI, 481]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. V.

Created 8 May 2020

Last modified 28 November 2020