University of Virginia Library

"Woodcuts dropped into the Text": The Illustrations in The Old Curiosity Shop And Barnaby Rudge
by
Joan Stevens

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the relevance to their exact placing of the illustrations set into the text in the first published form of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, and to examine Dickens's policy in subsequent reprints. It will be shown that the insets function significantly in narrative, characterisation and theme, that the resulting composite achievement is remarkable, and that subsequent publishing failure to honour Dickens's intentions has disastrously obliterated the pointed textual relevance which his illustrations were planned to have. Textual accuracy, that is, for these two novels, as for reprints of Thackeray's similar "pen and pencil" work, must be taken to include accuracy about the placing of inset woodcuts.

When Dickens was planning Master Humphrey's Clock early in 1840, he enlisted the services of the artist George Cattermole, well known for his illustrations of landscape and architecture in the novels of Scott. After describing to him the plan of the periodical, Dickens wrote:

Cattermole accepted the commission. His sketch of Master Humphrey's room heads the opening recto of the first edition. "I cannot tell you how admirably I think Master Humphrey's room comes out", wrote Dickens delightedly (Letters, I, 251-252), and gave Cattermole thereafter thirty-eight more of the 194 illustrations which decorated the Clock in the eighty-eight issues of its lifetime. The remainder were drawn by H.K. Browne, with the exception of the woodcut of Little Nell and the Sexton which was given to Maclise.

Master Humphrey's Clock was conceived as a weekly miscellany, "of which a certain amount of numbers should form a volume, to be published at regular intervals." It was modelled on the Tatler, the Spectator, and Goldsmith's Bee, and was to "introduce a little club or knot of characters and to carry their personal histories and proceedings through the work", Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick being among the persons included (Letters, I, 218-220). Master Humphrey, from his clockside in the chimney corner, provided readers with various tales, one of which, headed as the "Personal Adventures of Master Humphrey. The Old Curiosity Shop", opened the fourth issue, occupying ten of its twelve pages (plate I). Public response to the Clock assortment was disappointing however, and Dickens abandoned Humphrey after the eleventh issue, devoting the periodical thereafter solely to the serialisation of The Old Curiosity Shop (to issue 45), and Barnaby Rudge (issues 46-88). (The abbreviations OCS and BR will be used hereafter).

Master Humphrey appears again only when required to conclude OCS and introduce BR in issue 45, and to conclude the whole in issue 88. Dickens reveals in issue 45 that the anonymous 'single gentleman' who is the deus ex machina of OCS is Humphrey himself, thus justifying the title "Personal Adventures" announced under the abandoned plan.

Dickens did not, however, abandon his policy about the illustrations "dropped into the text". When OCS and BR were issued in separate book form in 1841, the Clock stereotypes were used, with only the few alterations made necessary by the excision of Clock material. In consequence, these two stories remained before the public for the next twenty years in two forms only: that of their first issue, illustrated with woodcuts set into the text, and that without illustrations at all except frontispieces, in the Cheap Edition (OCS 1848, BR 1849) and the Library Edition (OCS 1858, BR 1859). No illustrated edition appeared to change their physical image until the illustrated reissue of the Library Edition in 1861, for which each novel was allotted thirty-two

full page plates, re-engraved from the original woodcuts and inserted with captions at their appropriate pages. This brought OCS and BR into the same style as the Number novels. The Illustrated Library Edition of 1873-76 reverted to insets for these two novels, not however reproducing them all, nor adhering scrupulously to the original placings. Later editions resumed the use of selected plates, with occasional concessions only, as in the Gadshill Edition, to the original layout. The current New Oxford Illustrated Dickens offers all the original illustrations except the decorated initials, but reproduces them upon inserted leaves, not within the text itself, and adds its own explanatory captions.

This change from textually integrated woodcuts to separately inserted plates has hidden from later readers certain of the functions and qualities of the illustrations in OCS and BR as they were planned in 1840-41.

Dickens thought of his inset illustrations as an "improvement" upon "separate plates". What did he have in mind? Plates would of course have required to be printed separately, and issued as a supplement to each weekly part, as was the custom with novels appearing in Numbers. Woodcuts on the other hand could be printed along with the text at little extra cost, and without distribution problems. Though, however, financial considerations may have weighed initially with Dickens, it is clear that his inset illustrations soon came to serve much more sophisticated purposes.

Apart from convenience and economy, an obvious intention at the outset of the enterprise was to exploit the double sales appeal of pictures and words. Phiz was already famous as a Dickensian, Cattermole was an established illustrator of romantic fiction; Dickens therefore announced the Clock as "with illustrations by G. Cattermole and H.K. Browne", and set out to make it visually attractive. Issues 1-5, 7, 9, and 10 begin with half-page headpieces and decorated initials, issues 2, 5, and 8 have tailpieces, while 1 and 3 have insets on the final verso. There are twelve insets on inner pages, making a total of thirty-three woodcuts in the first eleven issues. After issue 12, when OCS took over the whole periodical, the number of illustrations was modified. This embellishment of the early issues follows a pattern.

Humphrey is stressed in the headpieces to issues 1, 3, 5 and 7. A headpiece is allotted to the opening of a new feature, such as "Mr. Weller's Watch" (issue 9) and OCS (issue 4). There is no headpiece in issue 11, which is rather obviously marking time. Issue 12, however, asserts the primary of the serial with a headpiece of Nell, her grandfather

and Quilp, pictured in the interior of the Shop, which has been pictorially established for readers by earlier woodcuts, two in issue 4 and one in issue 7. This headpiece is the last appearance of the Shop, for Nell and her grandfather leave it "at the beginning of a day in June" at the end of issue 13, that for Saturday June 27th, 1840.

The Clock was published not only as a weekly, but in monthly Numbers every fourth or fifth week, at 1/- or 1/3 according to size.[2]

A second consideration, then, was the structure of the monthly unit. In the first five Numbers no pattern of illustration relevant to it can be discerned. With the sixth Number, issues 22-26, however, Dickens seems to have settled upon a standard procedure by which the woodcuts mark off the physical identity of the monthly set. This Number, which concludes Volume I of the Clock, opens with a headpiece and initial and ends with a tailpiece, no other headpieces appearing. After this, with two exceptions only, each Number carries a headpiece with initial on its opening recto but nowhere else, while most have a tailpiece or inset on the final verso. The exceptions are Number 10 (issues 40-44), which has an initial but no headpiece, and Number 11 (issues 45-48), which has a central tailpiece for the end of OCS and a central headpiece with initial for the opening of BR. The final Number, 20, in November 1841, carries an opening headpiece with initial for chapter lxxv of BR, and a tailpiece which, in Dickens's description of it to Cattermole, represents "Master Humphrey's Clock as stopped — his chair by the fireside empty . . . Master Humphrey being supposed to be no more" (Letters, I, 349-350).

The third consideration which Dickens had in mind in his reference to the 'improvement' which inset illustrations would offer is that of their closer relationship to the matter of his stories. Owing to the fortuitous development of the first of the Clock serials, OCS, its illustrative pattern is somewhat haphazard until the story is well under way. In its latter half, and in the following BR, the woodcuts are planned and placed with great care to supplement the text. Though Dickens never lost sight of the advantage of exploiting his artists to the full, and of the necessity therefore of providing them with a good "subject", he came gradually in his use of illustration to combine this purpose with several others. As the two novels proceeded, there are fewer digressions into merely pictorial detail.

Among the narrative purposes for which Dickens increasingly came to organize his insets, first perhaps is that of helping the reader to keep

his hold on the story as it jerked along in its weekly sections. This was especially necessary in OCS, which was Dickens's first attempt in this mode and has only an elementary plot line. Nell and her grandfather leave London at the end of the eighth instalment of the story, chapters xi and xii in issue 13, after which Dickens maintains a triple zig-zag between their doings and those of the two London groups in the Kit-Garland and Quilp-Brass plots. He devotes four or five issues to the Londoners, followed by the same number to the wanderers; after issue 35 (chapters liv and lv), Nell goes into her slow decline unvisited by the reader for eight weeks while Dickens develops the plot involving Kit, Quilp, Swiveller, the Marchioness, and the single gentleman. Finally, in issues 43 and 44 the Londoners and the wanderers are drawn together in the denouement.

The narrative transitions at these changes of direction in OCS are usually self-conscious and clumsy; an example is the opening of issue 24 (chapter xxxiii), which switches us from Mrs. Jarley's waxworks to London: ". . . the historian takes the friendly reader by the hand, and springing with him into the air . . . alights with him upon the pavement of Bevis Marks. The intrepid aeronauts alight before a small dark house, once the residence of Mr. Sampson Brass." The openings of Chapters xxxviii, xlii and xlvii are equally maladroit.[3] With a narrative zig-zag like this, Dickens needed every device he could muster to impress on his readers' memory the important actors, incidents, and themes. He had of course a wide variety of verbal methods for this, but in OCS and BR he exploited also the emphasis which illustrations could provide.

One obvious use of the woodcuts is to mark the first entry of characters and of themes, which are then recalled to mind after intervening weeks with a second illustration. This strategy may be observed in the cuts of the Shop itself, which in the twelve chapters of its existence is given two headpieces and three insets. Two of these first illustrations are echoed thematically both in the centre of the story and in the finale. That in the centre, in chapter liii of issue 34, the cut of Nell sitting in the church aisle gazing sadly at the "broken and dilapidated" antiquities that encumber it, recalls to the reader's mind the first images of her amid the discordant oddities of the Shop (plates I, II B). That of her deathbed in chapter lxxi in issue 44 recalls the inset at

the end of chapter 1 in issue 4, in which she lies on her bed "in her gentle slumber, smiling through her light and sunny dreams."[4]

Similar devices of emphasis and recall can be observed in the Quilp illustrations. Dickens makes Quilp memorable in various ways in the text, by his physique, his dress, his hideous gaiety, his tricks of speech, his ingenious malice; the impression is deepened by the visual image offered at his first introduction, and repeated at the moments of his horrifying re-entries. When he first appears in issue 8, he is pictured twice. In 9/5, we see his wharf, while his den there heads 10/6. He broods gleefully over the distress of Nell and the old man in the Shop headpiece to 12/9, and appears subsequently in issues 13, 14, 18 and 19. There is then an interlude while we follow Nell's fortunes, but Dickens reminds us of Quilp's remorseless pursuit of her in the brief glimpse she has of him in an old gateway in 21/27.[5] When the story swerves again to London in 24/33, Quilp's re-entry is marked by a woodcut and he appears further in 32/48 and 49, and 33/50 and 51. On Kit's arrest in 38/60, Quilp is given a particularly dramatic inset, leering triumphantly from the tavern window (plate IV); in 39/62 he is seen battering the old figurehead that is "like Kit". Finally, set centrally into issue 42, he is allotted the tailpiece for chapter lxvii, which shows his corpse washed ashore downriver. Thus eighteen major woodcuts, nearly a quarter of the total in OCS, are devoted to Quilp.

There are many other examples of pictorial emphasis for important matters. Among them may be noted these: Kit holds the Garland pony in 14/14, a plot item leading to his later fortunes; Nell meets the Punch puppeteers in 15/16, as readers remember three months later in 26/37 when the single gentleman is so mysteriously interested in Punch and Judy shows; the old man's gambling mania is vividly suggested in the parallel cuts of 22/29 and 29/42, the pair of illustrations in this instance serving to bridge the seven issues in which we have been following, not his affairs, but those of the Londoners. The Swiveller-Marchioness connection is brought suddenly and strongly forward in issues 36 to 41 (chapters lvi to lxvi), with the aid of five woodcuts by Phiz.[6]

The initial designs, too, though sometimes merely decorative in the fashion of the time, often have a specific function. That for 4/1,

of a night watchman in Pump Court, matches the opening sentence (plate I). Several serve to link together successive issues. For example, the last page of 30/45 tells of "a traveller on foot, who, with a portmanteau strapped to his back, leant upon a stout stick, as he walked, and read from a book which he held in his other hand." This is resumed in the opening of 31/46, "It was the poor schoolmaster," with an initial design portraying him as described the week before. Similarly, the headpiece and initial of 17/19 both feature events at the Jolly Sandboys inn in 16/18 where Nell and her grandfather have supper with the show people and the performing dogs. The headpiece shows the chaotic meal table, the initial design is of clowns and tumblers.

Another detail to which Dickens paid attention is the physical image presented by the final verso of an issue, and its usefulness for concluding a theme, or confirming a mood, with the display of a memorable illustration. In the forty issues which carry OCS, seventeen final versos offer illustrations; seven are issue tailpieces, the rest half page insets. Both types mark moments of significance in narrative or theme.

Examples of half-page insets are those of 14/14 (Kit holds the pony), 28/41 (the single gentleman sets out in search of Nell), 35/55 (Little Nell and the Sexton,)[7] 36/57 (Swiveller and the Marchioness at cribbage). The best examples of the functional value of the final verso inset are however those at 13/12 and 44/72. At 13/12 Dickens deliberately plans a climax (plate V). The issue is that for June 27th, 1840. Nell and her grandfather are leaving the old Shop forever. Five lines of text head the page, ending with the words "The child . . . putting her hand in his, led him gently away." Then comes the woodcut, showing the two moving over the cobblestones, and the words run on, "It was the beginning of a day in June; . . ." Two paragraphs follow emphasizing the light, physical and emotional, of that morning escape from evil, and Dickens ends the issue rhetorically with "Forth from the city, while it yet slumbered, went the two poor adventures, wandering they knew not whither."[8] Even more notable is the final

verso inset of 44/72, picturing the end of the wanderers' journey. Dickens instructed Cattermole about it as follows:

Cattermole's drawing of this is set near the top of the page, after "When it grew quite dark, he rose and returned home, and went to bed, murmuring to himself, "She will come tomorrow!" The old man sits in the church aisle, as Nell had done in the woodcut for 34/53, among memorial and monumental bric-a-brac which inevitably recalls the Shop lumber. The text reads on below, "Upon the morrow he was there again . . . 'She will come tomorrow!"

Tailpieces for issues are equally striking. That at 43/70 will do as an example. The episode is one in which Dickens is deeply involved emotionally (cf. Letters, I, 292-293). He describes the scene in a letter:

In the weekly unfolding of the story, Nell's fate will be still unknown to readers of issue 43 for which this cut is designed; like "her visitors", they are to be "full of hope".[10] Dickens's outline to Cattermole of what he wants makes it plain that he is deliberately maintaining the suspense. That he wished for secrecy about his final decision is clear from another letter, that to Miss Coutts a month later accompanying a gift of advance copies of the issues for January 23rd and January 30th. These are 43/69-70, with the tailpiece under discussion,

and 44/71-72, in which it is revealed that Kit is too late, for Nell is already dead. Dickens writes as follows:

The "mighty revelation" that Nell is dead, in spite of the "imploring letters", is made at the beginning of 44/71, and marked with yet a third elaborately planned Cattermole drawing, that of her death bed (Letters, I, 283-284). That Dickens was right in asking Miss Coutts not to give away the finale, and the extent, moreover, of supporting pathos which his woodcuts provided, may be seen in Macready's reaction to the news. He noted in his diary, "Found at home an onward number of Master Humphrey's Clock. I saw one print in it of the dear dead child that gave a dead chill through my blood. I dread to read it, but I must get it over."[11]

Another obvious function of the "woodcuts dropped into the text", one shared of course with the plate illustrations in Dickens's Number novels, is to mark the introduction of a new character. In OCS, insets are given on their first entry not only to all the main personages, but to lesser ones such as Mrs Quilp, Swiveller, Brass, the Garlands, all the show-people, Barbara, the schoolmaster, Mrs. Jarley, and the Marchioness. The close connection between words and picture makes it easier for the reader to keep his hold on these folk in spite of the zigzag of the weekly units. Sally Brass, for instance, enters first in 24/33, and is given an inset showing her with her brother at the moment of Quilp's intrusion. She is pictured again in 25/35, eavesdropping at the single gentleman's door, and in 25/36, offering the Marchioness "two square inches of cold mutton" on a fork.[12] On our return to London topics after following Nell's fortunes, we see Sally Brass in 33/51 taking tea at Quilp's and remember her at once, in spite of the two months gap in continuity.

Finally, and most importantly, the woodcuts do much to illuminate the thematic contrast which is the real basis of OCS. This may be demonstrated from Forster's words in the Life.

In this passage, Forster uses the words "scene", "image" and "picture" in their general sense, but it is to be noted that the "pictures" which he recalls are without exception those which are compounded of both words and illustration. To specify, in Forster's order; Nell "asleep amid the quaint grotesque figures of the old curiosity warehouse" is the inset at the end of 4/1; the "other final sleep" is the inset already mentioned in 44/71; the "hideous lumber and rottenness that surround the child in her grandfather's home" are in the headpieces for 4/1 and 12/9. "Quilp and his filthy gang" occupy nearly a quarter of the woodcuts; "the show-people . . . waxworks, dwarfs, giants and performing dogs" are pictured in twelve illustrations of which two, at 17/19 and 22/29, are of headpiece prominence; the "scenes by the cottage door, the furnace fire, and the burial-place of the old church" are at 19/24, 30/44 and 15/16. The "quiet old church" is pictured at 31/46 when the wanderers reach its refuge, and at 34/52 and 53 when we resume their story after a London interlude; at 35/54 we have its graveyard, and at 35/55 Maclise's picture of Nell and the Sexton. Finally, after an interlude of two months, we have the old church again in the tailpiece to 43/70, in the inset in 44/71, and in the final verso inset for 44/72 of the old man's vigil (plates I, IIB, IV).

This is a remarkable list; Forster's easy references to Hogarth, moreover, made in his discussion of both OCS and BR, provide further support for the view that no small part of the emotional power of these two novels lay in the visual impact which they made on their first readers. Forster, of course, would have known OCS for its first twenty years in its original Clock form, because no reprint with illustrations beyond token frontispieces appeared until 1861. For that edition, thirteen of the woodcuts noted above were among those chosen as plates by Dickens.

Several letters of this time likewise testify to Dickens's appreciation of the tonal effectiveness of his artists' contribution; in January 1841 he speaks of Cattermole's "most invaluable co-operation in the beautiful illustrations", adding, "Believe me that this is the very first time any designs for what I have written have touched and moved me, and caused me to feel that they expressed the idea that I had in my mind." (Letters, I, 298).

Another element which Forster might have remarked in OCS is the exploration of unreality which Dickens makes in the visual opposition between Nell and the artificial images of Mrs Jarley's Waxworks. Like the puppets dangling over the tombstone in 15/16, these figures ape life, though they are of the dead. The grotesquerie of the Shop is thus echoed in other forms, keeping alive through the centre of the novel what the more serious effigies of the knights of old will suggest at the end. The Waxworks are featured in several woodcuts, at 20/26, 21/28, 23/32, 26/37, and in the headpiece for 22/29, described in detail by Dickens for Cattermole.[14]

Two final instances may be given of the emotional reinforcement which these "woodcuts dropped into the text" provide. The first is that of 15/15; Nell and her grandfather left London at the end of 13/12, and Dickens resumed their narrative two weeks later. He was pleased with his work here, writing to Forster on June 17, 1840:

Dickens traces their way on that June morning up through Camden Town to the rise of Highgate Hill and Hampstead, where the travellers "looking back at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke" might feel they had escaped from Inferno. Here the pair rest, and Nell remembers "an old copy of the Pilgrim's Progress, with strange plates, upon a shelf at home." The theme thus touched on, the mood is embodied in a fine woodcut of the scene.

The second instance is the death of Quilp, already referred to, in 42/67. Dickens writes this up as a justly terrible end.[15] The river "toyed and sported with its ghastly freight, now bruising it against the slimy piles, now hiding it in mud or long rank grass" until it tossed up "the deserted carcass" on a "dismal place" to bleach away unmourned. This is how villains should die. Nell's very different departure is soon to follow. To mark the significance of his rhetorical evocation, Dickens puts a woodcut as a tailpiece to the chapter, though it is central in the issue. This is the only instance of the strategy in OCS. Phiz was acknowledged to have excelled himself in what Kitton called a "weird waterscape", which rounds off the horrors and heightens the contrast with the "lighted rooms, bright fires, cheerful faces" that await the liberated Kit in the opening sentence of the next chapter.

OCS concludes with a tailpiece in issue 45; Master Humphrey then produces the MS of BR, which opens in issue 46 with a Cattermole headpiece of the Maypole Inn, and an initial design of a Maypole. For sales appeal this junction of the two novels is contrived not only in the middle of the weekly issue, but within the monthly Number (issues 45-48 for February 1841). After BR is launched, Dickens resumes the illustrative pattern established in the latter half of OCS: there are two woodcuts to an issue, headpieces and initials being allotted to the openings of the monthly units (at 49/6, 53/13, 58/23, 62/31, 66/39, 71/49, 75/57, 79/65, and 84/75). There are tailpieces or final verso insets for five of the monthly Numbers, and an extra headpiece and initial central in the Number at 63/33.

In keeping with its tighter construction, the illustrations for BR are more closely integrated into the narrative movement than those of the earlier novel. Few are of the merely incidental type such as that of Swiveller at the Wackles's ball in OCS 11/8, or Kit at the opera in OCS 27/39. Moreover, Dickens seems now to have become very conscious of the weekly issue and "both the illustrations" as a composite unit.[16]

His headpieces, as before, mark key settings or incidents to be dealt with in the text to follow. The Maypole Inn and The Warren preface the issue of their introduction. When the sinister association of Sir John Chester and Hugh is to be revealed in 58/23, the headpiece pictures them drinking together, while the initial design is of a corkscrew. Other headpieces include Joe's parting from Dolly at 62/31, Solomon Daisy's vision of the "ghost" at 63/33, Lord Gordon with the mob at the Commons at 71/49, and the capture of Barnaby at 75/57.

At the centre of the novel, there is a striking linkage of issues by means of a tailpiece, headpiece, and initial design. 65/38 ends with a riotous scene at The Boot tavern where Hugh and Dennis drink Lord Gordon's health, and dance "an Extemporaneous No-Popery Dance" pictured in a lively tailpiece. The headpiece for 66/39 pictures Tappertit greeting Hugh while the other rioters continue their caperings, 'No Popery' being scrawled on the wall beside them. The initial depicts tavern gaiety.

Obviously, too, in BR, Dickens planned a fuller exploitation of his artists, providing good "subjects" expecially for Phiz, whose talent for violent scenes had already been revealed in the cut in OCS 30/45 depicting a procession of the unemployed, "maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand." Some of these set pieces are comedy, for example the cut of Tappertit and the Prentice Knights in 50/8, but as the drama speeds up the big scenes are crowded and angry. Dickens wrote to Forster early in July 1841, ". . . the story is progressing (I hope you will think) to good strong interest. I have left it, I think, at an exciting point, with a good dawning of the riots" (Letters, I, 335). The reference is to issues 69/45-46 and 70/47-48, due to appear on July 24th and 31st. Again, on August 6th, he remarks, "the best opportunities of illustration are all coming off now, and we are in the thick of the story," and on the 11th, "I think you'll find that it comes out strong to the last word."[17]

His letters pour out a torrent of detail for Cattermole and Browne, whose excited response may be seen in the fine sequence of woodcuts from 71/49 onwards. The Moorfields bonfires at 72/52, the looted Maypole bar at 73/54, the mob storming Newgate at 78/64, the rioters looting a house at 79/66, the rabble's orgy at 80/68 are all superb

"subjects", as well as being emotionally keyed to the high pitch of the narrative (plate IIIB). (Letters, I, 342, 346-347, 349).

As in OCS, characters are given visual status at their first introduction. The second inset of the book brings in Old John, Joe, the Stranger, and the rustic chorus listening to Solomon Daisy's tale of Rudge in the bar of the Maypole. The Raven merits a headpiece entry at 49/6, where we also first see Ned Chester.[18] The Vardens appear in the comedy cut of 48/4, and constantly thereafter; Tappertit and Miggs make comic solo entrances at 48/4 and 50/9. That smooth villain Sir John Chester is pictured eight times, always with characteristic detail. One example of this will do, the cut at 62/32 which shows him telling his son Ned destructive lies about Emma Haredale. He lounges at ease, a volume of Lord Chesterfield's Letters open beside him, while on the wall behind him, facing the viewer, is a picture of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. This scene is given visual emphasis because it marks an important stage in Dickens's narrative, the end of his preliminary plotting. Joe has gone off to the wars in the preceding chapter, and now Ned is to be parted from Emma, after which, says Dickens, "the world went on turning round, as usual, for five years, concerning which this narrative is silent." Sir John Chester may be only a theatrical villain, but he has a key role, and has to be kept in view right up to the moment of his exit in the tailpiece duel of 87/81.

Hugh, Dennis and Barnaby of course are given many illustrations. Hugh has a solo entry at 51/11, and appears frequently after this, his most striking illustration being that at 85/77, in which he curses the Tyburn gallows, "that black tree," of which he is "the ripened fruit."

Lord George Gordon is another personage whom Dickens wished to make memorable. "As to the riot, I am going to try if I can't make a better one than he did" he wrote in June 1841 (Letters, I, 324). Gordon enters the story at the opening of its historical second half, in 64/35, where he is depicted with Gashford in that best room at the Maypole which readers have already met in several insets. Next we see him, still with Gashford, on Westminister Bridge in 70/48, urging Barnaby to join his assembly. Dickens has been preparing carefully for this moment, where the confrontation of his two "madmen" conflates his plot lines and sets up ironic echoes. Barnaby has been told that riches are to be found in crowds.[19] Meeting therefore with the hurrying

throng on their way to St. George's Fields, he is only too eager to go with them. It needs only the words from Gordon "and you desire to make one of this great body?" for him to break away from his mother's control. Dickens marks the moment with one of Phiz's best cuts, inset after Mrs Rudge's words, "In mercy's name, my lord, go your way alone, and do not tempt him into danger!" (plate VI). Gordon then appears again in the headpiece at 71/49, and finally "alone and very solitary, in his prison in the Tower" in 83/73 (Letters, I, 349-350).

In addition to the functions so far noted, the BR illustrations are employed to mark dramatic incident, promote tension, climax surprise, or set up a contrast. The melodrama of the Rudge-Haredale plot is highlighted visually throughout the novel, from the moment we see the mysterious Stranger striking down Joe Willet at 47/2, to the conventional Recognition Scene between father and son given the prominence of a final verso inset at 77/62.

The combined effect of these elements in the BR woodcuts is remarkable. For one thing, the drawings themselves are stronger than most of those in OCS. For another, Dickens was thinking to some extent pictorially, and deliberately providing fine opportunities for his artists. Finally, these BR woodcuts are set into the text with precision; again and again they strengthen the impact of the words, or mark a moment of structural significance. Clearly Dickens had developed a very satisfactory technique for that special partnership of print and picture for which the weekly periodical of those times offered a great opportunity. It is a pity he was never again to use the mode.

So far my investigation has assumed that the woodcuts "dropped into the text" in the Clock were, in fact, placed in their exact positions by Dickens himself, not casually manipulated by the printer. The evidence supporting this view is partly in the Letters with their detailed instructions,[20] and partly in the surviving proofs and MSS. In addition to letters already noted, this further one illuminates Dickens's methods. Writing to Hall on September 14, 1841, he notes "Gate of Newgate in 78; not in 79. I don't want Barnaby in the subject. I feared he might be there . . . . When you get the riot block will you send me a proof of it?" (Letters, I, 352). The 'Gate of Newgate' is inset in 78/64 following the words 'both caught the locksmith roughly in their grasp.'

The proof sheets and MSS in the Forster collection reveal that Dickens gave specific instructions to his printers as well as to his artists, and that they did what they were told whenever typographically possible.

The evidence here is of two kinds: the MS of BR carries a number of specific instructions to the printer in Dickens's writing, while the proof sheets of OCS carry similar instructions in Forster's writing. Since we know that Forster was Dickens's helper and consultant throughout the Clock's run, it may be assumed that the placings which he marked in for the woodcuts were those which Dickens himself had indicated in discussion or in correspondence now lost.

To take the proof sheets of OCS first, then, on the assumption that Forster was Dickens's practical agent in the matter. His method is to draw a line indicating the place for the break, and write in the words "cut", or "cut here", in the margin.

The instructions for the placing of cuts in 24/33 (Quilp thrusts in his head), 31/46 (Nell admires the church), 34/53 (Nell sitting in the church aisle, plates II A & B), 39/62 (Quilp beats the figurehead), and 39/63 (Swiveller bears off Kit's mother) have been followed exactly.

In several instances in OCS and BR, however, the printed text offers a different placing from that which was indicated. Textual alterations apart, the reason may be seen in the marginal note to the inset in 34/53. The page is reproduced in Plate II A; the first idea, represented by the short cancelled line, was to insert the cut after "their" in the sentence "Broken and dilapidated as they were, they yet retained their ancient form. . . ." But Forster was not sure whether in this position the cut would lie well on the page. Three times in the early issues of OCS a cut (other than a tailpiece) had been allowed to fall to the very bottom of the page, in 4/1, 9/5, and 18/21; the visual effect was markedly unsatisfactory, and there are no later instances. Reconsidering, then, his note for the inset in 34/53, Forster draws another line, not very conclusively, under the earlier words "of warriors stretched upon their bed of stone with folded hands, crosslegged", and pens in the margin the instruction "Cut here but place it so as to leave 2 or 3 lines at the bottom of the 11th page or more if it will allow of it." The printer, however, was able to follow the first suggestion, inserting the cut after "their", and leaving three and a half lines below it to the bottom of the page, which is the eleventh, the final recto. In this position, the illustration dominates the page, giving visual strength to the verbal impression (plate II B).

Practical considerations of this kind have governed the changes of position of the final verso inset in 36/57, in which Swiveller and the Marchioness play cards, and the final recto inset of the Marchioness and Mr. Abel in 40/65. Sometimes a cut indicated as an inset has been used as a headpiece, sometimes a headpiece is noted in as such.

The MS of BR, however, offers firmer ground for argument, since in addition to all the other evidence we have of Dickens's deliberate planning of his illustrations, we have here his own directions to the printer. Specific instructions in the form "Printer, put the cut here" or "Printer cut here" occur at 79/66, 80/67, 80/68, 81/69, and 81/70. The words that precede the inset of Gordon's meeting with Barnaby in 70/48 have been underlined in red ink, possibly for the artist, possibly for the printer (plate VI).

Of the cuts for which direct instructions are given, the first three are inset in the Clock exactly where Dickens indicated; they are the final verso inset of the mob looting a house (plates III A & B), Joe's rescue of Haredale, and the final verso inset of the rabble's orgy. At 81/69 the cut of Hugh as prisoner has been advanced, at 81/70 that of Dennis and Miggs has been delayed, in order to balance the Clock page, as in the OCS examples.

This evidence, fragmentary though it is, supports the thesis that Dickens not only planned which aspects of his story should be given visual emphasis, often writing with pictorial possibilities in mind, but selected also the positions in which the "woodcuts dropped into the text" would be most effective. In several instances he negotiated for "a block of a peculiar shape", or "a block of a long shape", in order to give some special effect, such as that of having the locksmith's house "come upright as it were" in the illustrations he outlined to Cattermole (Letters, I, 299, 344).

It is clearly this adaptability which Dickens had in mind when he referred to his method as an "improvement" upon "separate plates". Any reader lucky enough to know OCS and BR, as Forster did, in the original Clock format, will be delighted with its happy and illuminating marriage of word and image.

Thus OCS and BR stand alone in Dickens's works, exhibiting a closer relationship between text and illustration then he ever attempted elsewhere.

For twenty years, the only illustrated edition before the public was the original one. Its composite unity was not destroyed until the Illustrated Library Edition of the Works in 1861, which as was noted at the beginning of this paper abandoned the inset woodcuts and offered instead a selection of plates. Thirty-two cuts from each novel were

chosen, given captions, engraved as separate plates, and inserted at the relevant pages which were listed at the beginning of each volume. Since their relevance to the weekly or monthly units was over, some of the headpieces and tailpieces chosen were inserted instead as plates facing the text of their exact reference. All the sixty-four plates in the two novels were as accurately placed in context as the new procedure allowed. All but three were engraved sideways, an awkward method which had begun with the Dombey plates.

From 1867 onwards Dickens issued a revised edition of his Works, the Charles Dickens Edition, with eight plates only to each novel; these are placed in context as before. It is clear then that Dickens recognized the need for flexibility in the republication of these two novels, and was prepared to adapt his methods to new circumstances. For the Cheap Edition of 1848-49 and the Library Edition of 1858, he provided frontispieces (only) for both novels. For the Cheap Edition he also authorized the separate issue of extra plates, four to each novel, and took advantage of the opportunity offered of modifying the original conceptions where it seemed advisable. Thus the Marchioness is romanticised, in keeping with the person she became by the end of the run of OCS, rather than with the grotesque little slavey whom Phiz was asked to visualize in 25/36 in September 1840. Similarly, Dolly Varden is given a more romantic and attractive image. Phiz also elaborated upon Nell's deathbed scene, picturing her this time with upraised finger hearkening to the angelic choir.

Nevertheless, for all illustrations which in his lifetime Dickens chose for issue in close association with the text, he preserved the strictest textual relevancy compatible with the changed requirements. After his death, Chapman and Hall attempted in the 1873-76 Illustrated Library Edition to give OCS and BR something of their original style by using insets. Subsequent editions have reverted to plates.

As time has passed, illustrated reprints of OCS and BR have moved progressively further from the originals. To demonstrate the lamentable condition of affairs today it will be sufficient to examine the current New Oxford Illustrated Dickens. This edition, according to the statement on the jacket of each novel, offers "the original drawings which appeared in the first edition." These words would suggest that the copy was that of 1841. This is not so. Where the illustrations are those appearing only in 1841, the 1841 settings are mostly disregarded. Where the illustrations were chosen and placed in 1861 or 1868 by Dickens, those settings, too, are disregarded, as well as those of 1841. With a fine independence, the New Oxford illustrations have seldom any relevance whatever to the context in which they are placed. The

most that can be said is that the original sequence of 1841 is preserved. There is no explanation of the policy adopted, no recognition that any editorial or textual problem exists.

To take OCS first. All its woodcuts except the initial designs are included, a total of seventy-five. Only one is upright. Of these seventy-five, thirty-six have been set out of context, while eleven more, though inserted at the correct page opening, are turned with their blank backs to the words to which they refer. In eight instances, cuts have been moved so far away from their words that they are not even in the issue for which Dickens designed them.

One cut was moved by Dickens himself in 1861, that of Nell in her bed at the end of 4/1. He put it into 12/9 as "The Child's Bedchamber", facing the scene where she sobs herself to sleep. The New Oxford editor captions it "The Child in her Gentle Slumber", and puts it in 7/2 irrelevantly opposite the scene between the old man and Swiveller.

Four of the misplacements occur at critical points. The cut of Nell and her grandfather leaving the Shop at the end of 13/12 is set in 14/13, in an episode concerned with Quilp and Kit (plate V). Nell sitting "within the quiet old church where all her wanderings end" as Forster put it, at the end of 34/53 (plate II A & B), is an illustration which Dickens chose in 1861 and 1868, placing it accurately with the original words. The New Oxford puts it a chapter and an issue later in 35/54. Kit's arrival at the old church, "full of hope", in the tailpiece to 43/70 is ruinously delayed in the New Oxford to 44/71. Finally, Quilp's death, which Dickens used in 1861 in its original place at the end of 42/67 and in 1868 set opposite the same passage, is advanced eight pages to the beginning of the chapter.

Among the illustrations which are spoilt because they are backed to their text may be mentioned the puppet menders in 15/16, and the two major pictures of Nell's deathbed and the old man's vigil in 44/71 and 44/72. These were also chosen as plates in 1861, and there correctly set facing their context. Indeed, among many more, all the illustrations so vividly impressed upon Forster's mind in the extract quoted from the Life have been subjected to misplacements sufficient to blur or destroy their tonal or narrative effect.

Matters are worse in BR. The New Oxford edition offers us seventy-six illustrations, the initial designs being as before excluded. Of these seventy-six, thirteen are correctly faced to their text, while three more are, as it might be put, correctly backed to it. The remaining sixty illustrations are misplaced, in most cases very damagingly indeed. Forty have been transferred to different chapters, twenty of

these being in different issues from those planned for them.

Unhappily, perhaps, for the argument here, the "Gate of Newgate" has been put "in 78; not in 79", as Dickens insisted to Hall. But it is in 78/63, a chapter before the gate is attacked, not in its Clock place of 78/64.

Dickens himself moved three illustrations for his 1861 edition of BR, as well as making the normal movement of headpieces already discussed.[21] Of the insets, he advanced the picture of Hugh asleep from chapter xi, the moment of his physical entry into the tale, to chapter x, where he is first mentioned, sleeping "so desperate hard." He moved Cattermole's drawing of the Boot tavern from 72/52 forward to illustrate the first mention of it in 65/38, a place he retained for it in 1868. He moved the drawing of the Maypole State Bed from its original position as tailpiece to 57/22, where it is relevant to a simile, forward to the end of chapter xii, where it illustrates the concluding sentence. For these three alterations of placing, then, Dickens had excellent reasons. The New Oxford edition also moves these three drawings, but follows neither the 1841 nor the 1861 settings.

The confusion resulting from these changes may be appreciated from the following examples. It is no defence to say that a page reference is usually given, because readers are human, and take their pictures as they come to them. If a picture is earlier than its context, they do not refrain from looking at it; if it is later than its context, they can have no prevision that it is to come. Comedy appears in tragedy, surprises dribble away, characterisation is left visually unsupported, climaxes misfire.

The following examples are representative of the sixty misplacements in BR. Haredale's intervention between Emma and Ned in 53/14 is a chapter too soon in 53/13; Joe's goodbye to Dolly in 62/31 is two chapters and an issue late in 63/33; Gordon and his associates enter not in 64/35 but two chapters and an issue late in 65/37; the No Popery dance tailpiece to 65/38 is moved to 66/39 while its partnered headpiece is moved to 66/40; the cut of Gordon meeting Barnaby in 70/48 is a chapter and an issue late in 71/49; the cut of the mob looting a house in 79/66 is set a chapter too soon in 79/65; the cut of the rabble's drunken orgy in 80/68 is set a chapter too soon in 80/67 at the spot where Joe rescues Haredale, while that cut is set eight pages earlier, before its episode begins.

One crucial scene in BR is the clash in Westminster Hall between Haredale, Chester and Gashford. Here Dickens brings together his melodrama and his history, and he allotted to it in the Clock both the illustrations for the issue, in the one chapter, 68/43. The New Oxford edition splits the pair up, putting the cut of the confrontation of the three enemies several pages too late to illustrate it, while the cut of the meleé that results is delayed for an issue and two chapters to 69/45, where it irrelevantly adorns the description of widow Rudge's cottage.

This is not an attack on the New Oxford Illustrated Dickens in particular, but on the whole attitude of our time to the texts of nineteenth-century fiction; "New Oxford" stands for many, many editions since Dickens's death. The reader of today using even a prestige text such as this can have no idea what Dickens's illustrations really did accomplish. Perhaps something of the original impression may be recovered for him by an examination of some New Oxford pages where the setting is correct. Such are: OCS pages 116, 196, 280, 447, 514, and BR 132, 192, and 409. The last is a particularly good example of the original effect, since the plate is engraved upright, as well as facing its context.

Whatever the publishing pressures which have led editors to disregard so flagrantly the plan on which OCS and BR were built, the result is deplorable. Doubtless we can not hope now for pages with "woodcuts dropped into the text", but if we must make do with "separate plates", is it too much to ask that they be engraved upright as in the first edition, and inserted facing the exact words they were originally designed to illustrate?

Could Dickens see today's texts, he might well burst forth as he did about one of the Dombey cuts, "I can't say what pain and vexation it is to be so utterly misrepresented."[22]

TABLE OF OCS AND BR IN THE ISSUES AND NUMBERS OF MHC

                                           

MHC	issues 1,2,3,4 (OCS Chapter 1)	= No. 1, April 1840.
MHC	issues 5,6,7 (OCS Chapter 2), 8 (OCS 3-4)	= No. 2, May 1840.
MHC	issues 9 (OCS 5), 10 (OCS 6-7), 11 (OCS 8), 12 (OCS 9-10), 13 (OCS 11-12)	= No. 3, June 1840.
	(From issue 12, OCS occupies the whole issue).
MHC	14(13-14),15(15-16),16(17-18),17(19-20)	= No. 4, July 1840.
MHC	18(21-22),19(23-24),20(25-26),21(27-28)	= No. 5, August 1840.
MHC	22(29-30),23(31-32),24(33-34),25(35-36),26(37)	= No. 6, Sept. 1840.
MHC	27(38-39),28(40-41),29(42-43),30(44-45)	= No. 7, Oct. 1840.
MHC	31(46-47),32(48-49),33(50-51),34(52-53),35(54-55)	= No. 8, Nov. 1840.
MHC	36(56-57),37(58-59),38(60-61),39(62-63)	= No. 9, Dec. 1840.
MHC	40(64-65),41(66),42(67-68),43(69-70),44(71-72)	= No. 10, Jan. 1841.
MHC	45(OCS Chapter the Last), 46(BR Chapter 1), 47(BR 2-3), 48(BR 4-5)	= No. 11, Feb. 1841.
	(From issue 46, BR occupies the whole issue)
MHC	49(6-7),50(8-9),51(10-11),52(12)	= No. 12, March 1841.
MHC	53(13-14),54(15-16),55(17-18),56(19-20),57(21-22)	= No. 13, April 1841.
MHC	58(23-24),59(25-26),60(27-28),61(29-30)	= No. 14, May 1841.
MHC	62(31-32),63(33-34),64(35-36),65(37-38)	= No. 15, June 1841.
MHC	66(39-40),67(41-42),68(43-44),69(45-46),70(47-48)	= No. 16, July 1841.
MHC	71(49-50),72(51-52),73(53-54),74(55-56)	= No. 17, August 1841.
MHC	75(57-58),76(59-60),77(61-62),78(63-64)	= No. 18, Sept. 1841.
MHC	79(65-66),80(67-68),81(69-70),82(71-72),83(73-74)	= No. 19, Oct. 1841.
MHC	84(75-76),85(77-78),86(79-80),87(BR 81),88(end of MHC)	= No. 20, Nov. 1841.

Notes