"Oliver at Barnet" frontispiece by J. Clayton Clarke (Kyd) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated

He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at the great number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they passed through, and thinking how strange it seemed that they could do, with ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole week of courage and determination beyond his years to accomplish: when he was roused by observing that a boy, who had passed him carelessly some minutes before, had returned, and was now surveying him most earnestly from the opposite side of the way. He took little heed of this at first; but the boy remained in the same attitude of close observation so long, that Oliver raised his head, and returned his steady look. [Chapter 8, "Oliver Walks to London. He Encounters on the Road a Strange Sort of Young Gentleman," p. 39 in the 1846 edition]

Commentary

The model for Kyd's interpretation of Oliver in a doorway at Barnet may be, in part, the boy with his staff and sack in the James Mahoney's He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at the great number of public-houses in the 1871 Household Edition volume. Since the style of Kyd's picture suggests a period closer to his creation of the John Player cigarette card illustrations in 1910, Kyd may have had access toHarry Furniss's 1910 Charles Dickens Library illustration Oliver falls in with the Artful Dodger.

Created 14 February 2015