David Copperfield and Uriah Heep
Harold Copping
1924
Colour lithography
Approximately 7 x 5 inches (17.9 x 12.3 cm)
From Character Sketches from Dickens, facing p. 106.
This scene in Mr. Whitfield's counting-house occurs in instalment six (chapter 16, "I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One"), October 1849.
Scanned image, caption, and commentary below by Philip V. Allingham
The actual childhood of Charles Dickens and the imagined childhood of his protagonist now part company somewhat as David lodges with the Whitfields while attending Doctor Strong's academy. Having been transported by Aunt Betsy to Canterbury, David meets the diabolical, 'writhing' Uriah Heep, "the umblest person going," who, although the son of a sexton and a mere scrivener, aspires in secret to be a lawyer. The picture seems to combine the boy's initially meeting Heep in chapter 15 with the more extensive interview of the following chapter, since Copping has drawn the background details from the former chapter:
Uriah . . . was at work at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top to hang papers upon, and on which the writing he was making a copy of was then hanging. . . . every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as cleverly as ever" (ch. 15). As the desk-lamp highlights Uriah's angular head, pale face, and shock of red hair, Copping's chiaroscuro throws the remainder of the room into shadow, so that the map on the wall is not in evidence.
References
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.
Last modified 16 February 2009