"Meg and Richard" — Green's twentieth illustration for "The Chimes" (c. 1912) (original) (raw)
Passage Illustrated
He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she put her hands before her face and turned away, lest he should see how much it moved her. ["Third Quarter," 108, 1912 edition]
Commentary
The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In (1844) has no precise equivalent for this scene, when Richard, dissolute and dispirited, visits Meg, who supports herself with her needle, in Richard and Margaret (see below). However, John Leech has separated the two figures, so that the Richard is approaching Meg's door (bottom), while Meg is engaged in her needlework (above) — two continents of experience. Green extends this notion of apartness even as he shows them together in a scene reminiscent of George Gissing's short fiction, for Richard seems lost in himself, and a stern Meg extends him no sympathy.
Whereas one reads the static illustration nine pages after encountering the passage that it realizes (analeptically) in Harry Furniss's 1910 lithograph, in Green's interpretation as in the original 1844 volume, the illustration is positioned close the passage. In each case, then, the artist has us "read" the plate and text simultaneously. Moreover, there is not the air of utter hopelessness about Furniss's or Green's Richard that one detects by Richrd's posture, neglected beard, and careless hair style in the Leech original. Meg still has her youthful beauty and elegant figure in Furniss's version, whereas Leech depicts her as careworn and engaged in sheer drudgery, sewing by the light of a single candle in a scantily furnished garret, and Green shows her past her youth.
Fred Barnard and Sol Eytinge, Junior, offer no comparable scene in the Household Edition (1878) or the Diamond Edition (1867). Details from illustrations realising other moments in the British and American Household Editions reveal very different conceptions of the working-class couple (effectively suggested in E. A. Abbey's illustration by Richard's cloth cap and Meg's shawl) after Trotty's death and a steep decline in the fortunes of his daughter and her fiancé. In Green's turn-of-the-century interpretation, Meg appraises Richard without emotion, perhaps even judgmentally, and Richard seems quite withdrawn. Drawn without Leech's or Furniss's sympathy, Green's couple might well be a pair of Gissing characters from one of his failed romances, making Meg's upper-floor garret, with the roofline intruding, a symbol of her limited lifestyle and opportunities: no wonder she looks reprovingly at Richard.
Illustrations from the first edition (1844), the British Household Edition (1878), and the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
Left: Leech's scene that reveals to Trotty what became of his daughter and her fiancé nine years after his death, Richard and Margaret. Right: Furniss's study of Trotty's seeing the same scene, Margaret and Richard
Above: Barnard's 1878 wood-engraving of Lilian's return to Meg to ask her foregiveness, and melodramatically to die in her arms, "Never more, Meg; never more! Here! Here!"
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. Introduction by Clement Shorter. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Pears' Centenary Edition. London: A & F Pears, [?1912].
_____. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844.
_____. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. (1844). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. 137-252.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
Created 13 April 2015
Last modified 24 February 2020