"The Wanderer" for "David Copperfield" — illustration for Dickens's "David Copperfield" by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne): May 1850 (original) (raw)

The Broader Context of the Moment Realised

In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the Golden Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his misfortune, nearly opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the gateway, put my arm through his, and we went across. Two or three public-rooms opened out of the stable-yard; and looking into one of them, and finding it empty, and a good fire burning, I took him in there.

When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was long and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun. He was greyer, the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he had every appearance of having toiled and wandered through all varieties of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man upheld by steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. He shook the snow from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away from his face, while I was inwardly making these remarks. As he sat down opposite to me at a table, with his back to the door by which we had entered, he put out his rough hand again, and grasped mine warmly.

"I’ll tell you, Mas’r Davy," he said, — "wheer all I’ve been, and what-all we’ve heerd. I’ve been fur, and we’ve heerd little; but I’ll tell you!"

I rang the bell for something hot to drink. He would have nothing stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed at the fire, he sat thinking. There was a fine, massive gravity in his face, I did not venture to disturb.

"When she was a child," he said, lifting up his head soon after we were left alone, "she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and a-shining in the sun. I thowt, odd times, as her father being drownded made her think on it so much. I doen’t know, you see, but maybe she believed — or hoped — he had drifted out to them parts, where the flowers is always a-blowing, and the country bright."

"It is likely to have been a childish fancy," I replied.

"When she was — lost," said Mr. Peggotty, "I know’d in my mind, as he would take her to them countries. I know’d in my mind, as he’d have told her wonders of ‘em, and how she was to be a lady theer, and how he got her to listen to him fust, along o’ sech like. When we see his mother, I know’d quite well as I was right. I went across-channel to France, and landed theer, as if I’d fell down from the sky."

I saw the door move, and the snow drift in. I saw it move a little more, and a hand softly interpose to keep it open. [Chapter XL, "The Wanderer," pp. 177-178]

Commentary: Dan'l Peggotty updates David on his Quest for Em'ly

In The Wanderer, the second illustration for the thirteenth monthly number (Chapters 38, 39, and 40), Phiz reverts to the plot involving Little Em'ly's abduction by Steerforth, keeping readers in suspense about the outcome of both David's courting the recently orphaned Dora Spenlow, and Uriah Heep's growing influence over Mr. Wickfield as he intimates that he intends marry Agnes. The melodramatic moment realized in the second illustration for May 1850, according to J. A. Hammerton (1910), is this as Dan'l Peggotty recounts to David his determined pursuit of the couple overseas: "It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly. My dread was lest he [Mr. Peggotty] should turn his head, and see her too" (Vol. 2, 179).

The second illustration for May 1850 contains a smaller number of those visual symbols such as portraits, biblical scenes, and landscapes that habitually serve as Phiz's commentaries on the characters and their circumstances in the narrative-pictorial sequence for David Copperfield, but it successfully communicates the air of suspense created by Martha's attempting to overhear Mr. Peggotty's reading to David the letters from Em'ly on the Continent. As the text explains before the reader arrives at this illustration, the scene takes place in one of the public-rooms adjacent to the stable yard of the Golden Cross, the coaching inn where David by sheer Dickensian coincidence encountered Steerforth after leaving school in Canterbury on his way to visit the Peggottys in Yarmouth (November 1849, the seventh monthly number).

Now chance once again brings David together with another esteemed figure from his past. On his way home from Doctors' Commons one snowy evening, David catches sight of Martha Endell before meeting an outwardly changed Dan'l Peggotty in Saint Martin's Lane. David judges from his weather-beaten visage and long, greying hair that Mr. Peggotty has pursued his niece and her dissolute paramour "through all varieties of weather" (177); although thus changed and as yet unsuccessful in catching up with the couple, the uncle has maintained his positive outlook and "stedfastness of purpose" (178). To retain a focus appropriate to Peggotty's position in the text, Phiz has situated the traveller in centre of the vertical illustration, in a pool of light amidst the shadowy furnishings of the public-room late in the evening, with Martha up right and David left of centre. Mr. Peggotty is not, as we might reasonably expect, tanned, and he seems much thinner than in the last scene in Mr.Peggotty and Mrs. Steerforth in the eleventh (March) number. The wanderer's bag, staff, and hat, which Dickens mentions in Chapter 40, are consistent with those in that previous illustration, and so provide visual continuity. The bag, however, is much bigger, and seems darker, while the owner, despite the similarity in his trousers and shoes, wears a middle-class coat rather than a worker's linen smock. His hair has grown longer, and is now white, and he no longer wears a beard. Indeed, despite his continuing "stedfastness of purpose" the wanderer seems almost another man, whereas David is still the same young gentleman of middle stature, his middle-class respectability proclaimed by his hat, hanging on a peg beside him.

To remain consistent with Dickens's description, Phiz has depicted the wanderer with his back to the partially opened door after a server has brought his hot ale. Dan'l Peggotty briefly recounts how his pursuit of Em'ly and Steerforth has taken him to what Dickens probably intends to be a description of the coast of southern France and northern Italy, "where the sea got to be dark blue, . . . a- shining in the sun" (178), the locale being described by Mr. Peggotty as "where the flowers is always a blowing, and the country bright" (178). Dickens himself had become familiar with that same region in 1844-45 when he took his family on an extended sabbatical to Genoa.

The precise moment captured in the etching is suggested by the door's blowing open to admit the snowy breeze as Martha curiously peers in, apparently attempting to overhear Mr. Peggotty's account of his fruitless search on the Mediterranean coast and in the Swiss mountains. Although Phiz has made her bonnet look a little wind-blown, he has failed to make her face "haggard" (179). Phiz illuminates her face by a gas lantern in the stable yard that Dickens does not mention. Dan'l Peggotty has not yet broken down under the force of emotion and covered his face. Thus, Phiz's Peggotty seems more stoic and composed than the text's.

Since this coaching inn is not in the general vicinity of the docks, the poster advertising "steamers for all parts of the world" with the profile of a paddle-wheeler of the type introduced in the 1820s (screw-propeller-driven vessels did not come into general use for either cross-channel and trans-Atlantic shipping until 1870), like the map of the hemispheres in the background, above Mr. Peggotty's head, seems intended to comment on the extent to which the devoted uncle is prepared to prosecute his search. Although he has met David in the early evening, the clock's being set at ten minutes to eleven implies that hours have transpired in conversation. The empty chair to the right implies both his absent niece and Martha's silent presence, not detected by Dan'l Peggotty, but noted by his interlocutor.

David encounters Mr. Peggotty in the snow at The Golden Cross (1872 & 1910 Editions)

Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition scene of David's encountering Em'ly's saviour in the snowstorm near St. Martin's-in=the-Fields: I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty! (1872). Right: Harry Furnss's atmospheric treatment of the meeting focuses far more on the snow-chilled figure of the "Lost Woman," Martha: Martha, the Wanderer (1910).

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio U. P., 1980.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts-on-File and Checkmark, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. 2 vols. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. "Notes to Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. The Annotated Dickens, vol. 2. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

Hammerton, J. A., ed. The Dickens Picture-Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrations. London: Educational Book, 1910.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Created 2 February 2010

Last modified 15 March 2022