"Shadow" by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne) — thirty-second illustration, another Dark Plate for "Bleak House" (June 1853) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated: Detective Bucket pursues a Murderer

"Mr. Bucket, my Lady."

Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over the region of his mouth.

"Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"

"No, my Lady, I've seen him!"

"Have you anything to say to me?"

"Not just at present, my Lady."

"Have you made any new discoveries?"

"A few, my Lady."

This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going by, out of view. [Chapter LIII, "The Track," 511-512; Project Gutenberg etext (see bibliography below)]

Michael Steig's Commentary on the Paired June 1853 Plates

The immediate consequence of the murder, Lady Dedlock's increasing sense of guilt, as though she had committed that crime, and her preparation for flight, are depicted and summed up emblematically in Shadow, which is paired with another plate whose caption, Light (ch. 51), seems intended to suggest a link. although Richard Carstone's decline in the toils of Chancery, the subject of Light and Lady Dedlock's impending flight do belong to separate strands of the plot, within Dickens' scheme they are in fact thematically related. Both individuals are seen as victims of their society's inhumane codes and institutions, yet both share some of the responsibility for their plight. The irony of the seemingly antithetical captions is that the plates are not really in contrast: Light refers only to Esther's sudden realization that Ada and Richard are married, and that Ada is devoting herself to him wholly in his decline; and the halo of light surrounding the couple sets off more starkly the hopelessness of Richard's condition. Visually, the illustration is linked to its companion through the figure of Esther, nearly central in the composition and with a hidden face, like Lady Dedlock in Shadow. The latter caption refers back to the symbolic shadow encroaching upon her portrait, and here the shadows are closing in, so that only a portion of Lady Dedlock's figure remains in light.

The primary subject of Shadow is, ostensibly, Lady Dedlock's impression that she is sought for the murder of Tulkinghorn, for she is looking at the reward poster. But three emblematic details broaden the range of reference. Thorwaldsen's Night, repeated from the stairway plate of Dombey, shows a motherly angel carrying aloft an infant, recalling Lady Dedlock's failure to be a mother to Esther and her consequent guilt and self-torment. The "murderous statuary" of the text is specified by Phiz as a sculpture of what appears to be Abraham and Isaac at the point when Abraham is about to sacrifice his son but is stayed by the voice of the Angel of the Lord. Such a detail appears in the form of a print on the wall in A Harlot's Progress, III, where, Ronald Paulson suggests, it may allude to the contrast between God's and man's justice (p. 36.). This contrast is certainly relevant here, and the possible allusion as well to Hogarth's fallen Moll is not entirely beside the point. But in addition, the idea of death being prevented by God relates to the fact that Lady Dedlock's child, whom she had thought dead, also has been spared. The third emblem is a clock above Lady Dedlock's head, in its particular position perhaps indicating that her time has run out; it is decorated below with an ominous mermaid, a detail which has some connection with the possible reference to Hogarth's "lost" woman. We may recall Thackeray's use of the mermaid as a simile for Becky Sharp — the creature's slimy tail submerged in the murky depths having to substitute for any detailed discussion of what Becky was actually doing in those disreputable days on the Continent after Rawdon had left her. (The relevant passage is in chapter 64 of Vanity Fair.) The implication for Lady Dedlock would be that her hidden, sexually sinful past is about to be revealed. (The similarity to the mermaid clock in Sketches of Young Couples in the plate, The old Couple is not very strong — the latter clock has no threatening aspect, and is primarily a Cupid and Psyche design.). [153-154]

Commentary: Dickens Employs Bucket's Red Herrings to Maintain Suspense

Although he has George Rouncewell safely behind bars for the murder of the Dedlock's attorney, Tulkinghorn, Bucket realizes that, despite his having both means, motive, and opportunity, Mr. George is not the most likely suspect. He simply is not the sort of person to shoot down an unarmed adversary, no matter how vexatious he may have found the lawyer's professional conduct. The chapter title "The Track" seems to point initially towards Bucket's charging Lady Dedlock with the murder advertised in Sir Leicester's poster conspicuously posted at the top of the stairs in his townhouse. But, again, appearances are deceptive. Although like George she has no proper alibi to account for her wherabouts on the evening of the murder (indeed, she like George was present at Tulkinbghorn's Lincoln's Inn chambers that night), she is far too self-controlled to allow her anger to run away with her. No, reasons Bucket, the perpetrator of the crime is a person with both a hot temper and a deep-seated grievance against the attorney: his lodger, the discharged French maid, is certainly the most likely candidate. Mrs. Bucket has had her under surveillance.

Other Series' Illustrations leading up to the Revelation of the Killer's Identity

Left: Harry Furniss's study of the Lady Dedlock shortly before Bucket's revelations: Lady Deadlock on the Staircase (1910). Centre: Fred Barnard's Household Edition composite woodblock wood-engraving features Bucket's clapping the cuffs on Hortense: "Can you make a haughty gentleman of Him? . . . . The poor infant!" (1873). Right: F. O. C. Darley's frontispiece depicting Bucket's interrogation of the French maid in Sir Leicester's library: Springing a Mine (1863).

Working methods

Bibliography

"Bleak House — Sixty-one Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Brown, John Buchanan. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1978.

Burton, Anthony. "Vision and Designs. Review of John Harvey, Victorian Novelists and heir Illustrators. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970. Pounds 3.50." Dickensian, 67.2 (1971): 105-109.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Bradbury & Evans. Bouverie Street, 1853.

_______. Bleak House. Project Gutenberg etext prepared by Donald Lainson, Toronto, Canada (charlie@idirect.com), with revision and corrections by Thomas Berger and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. Seen 9 November 2007.

_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vols. 1-4.

_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. XI.

Harvey, John R. "Conditions of Illustration in Serial Fiction." Victorian Novelists and Their Illustrators. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970. Pp. 182-198.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 6. "Bleak House and Little Dorrit: Iconography of Darkness." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 131-172.

Vann, J. Don. "Bleak House, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, October 1846—April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 69-70.

Created 16 November 2007

Last modified 24 March 2021