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Passage Illustrated: The Would-be Murderer Observes His Victim Carefully

Sometimes I would steal up-stairs and watch him as he slept; but usually I hovered in the garden near the window of the room in which he learnt his little tasks; and there, as he sat upon a low seat beside my wife, I would peer at him for hours together from behind a tree; starting, like the guilty wretch I was, at every rustling of a leaf, and still gliding back to look and start again.

Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, and (if there were any wind astir) of hearing too, was a deep sheet of water. I spent days in shaping with my pocket-knife a rough model of a boat, which I finished at last and dropped in the child’s way. Then I withdrew to a secret place, which he must pass if he stole away alone to swim this bauble, and lurked there for his coming. He came neither that day nor the next, though I waited from noon till nightfall. I was sure that I had him in my net, for I had heard him prattling of the toy, and knew that in his infant pleasure he kept it by his side in bed. I felt no weariness or fatigue, but waited patiently, and on the third day he passed me, running joyously along, with his silken hair streaming in the wind, and he singing — God have mercy upon me! — singing a merry ballad, — who could hardly lisp the words.

I stole down after him, creeping under certain shrubs which grow in that place, and none but devils know with what terror I, a strong, full-grown man, tracked the footsteps of that baby as he approached the water’s brink. I was close upon him, had sunk upon my knee and raised my hand to thrust him in, when he saw my shadow in the stream and turned him round.

His mother’s ghost was looking from his eyes. [Ch. V, "A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second," 39]

Commentary: Anticipating the Heinous Crime

As the demented narrator of the manuscript "A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second" describes his meticulous observations of his victim in anticipation of the crime, Furniss like Barnard in the parallel Household Edition builds up suspense rather than, like Cattermole, telegraphs the story's dénouement. However, since the unnamed narrator has in all likelihood long since met his death in a seventeenth-century prison, we are aware from the first lines that the narrator will commit a serious crime and will likely face the King's justice for it. Although the caption captures the Poesque narrator's obsession with his victim and his crime, Furniss gives the protagonist a handsome costume and features, almost as a caution against deceptive appearances. Whereas the picture shows us an attractive, fashionably-dressed seventeenth-century cavalier, the story gives us a wholly unreliable narrator akin the rationalizing or self-justifying narrators of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (November 1846), "Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), and "The Black Cat" (19 August 1843). Dickens in 1840 would not have known these short stories, but might have modelled his unreliable narrator on that of Poe in "Ligeia" (18 September 1838).

Relevant Illustrations from Other Editions (1872-1910)

Left: W. H. Groome's full-page illustration for this story in the Collins Pocket Edition: "I’ll never leave this place!". (1907), showing the madman in his garden, sitting on top of the concealed grave. Right: Fred Barnard in the Household Edition depicts the madman, spying on his victim from hiding: "As he sat upon a low seat bside my wife, I would peer at him for hours together from behind a tree" (1872).

Left: The goggle-eyed madman stares away from the arresting officers and directly at the reader in Hunted Down (18 April 1840).

Other Illustrated Editions of Master Humphrey's Clock

• George Cattermole's Original Serial Illustrations for Master Humphrey's Clock (April 1840)
• W. H. C. Groome's Illustrations for Master Humphrey's Clock (1907)
• Fred Barnard's Four Illustrations for Master Humphrey's Clock (1872) in the Household Edition (Vol. XX)

Related Materials

• Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (homepage)
• The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works"
• Illustrated Editions of The Old Curiosity Shop

Bibliography

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

Davis, Paul. "Master Humphrey's Clock." Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to his Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998, 238.

Dickens, Charles. Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by George Cattermole and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman and Hall, 4 April 1840 — 4 December 1841.

_______. Master Humphrey's Clock. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Reprinted Pieces, and Other Stories. With thirty illustrations by L. Fildes, E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. XX. Pp. 253-306.

_______. Master Humphrey's Clock and Pictures from Italy. Collins Pocket Editions. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907. Pp. 1-168.

_______. Barnaby Rudge and Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. Charles Dickens Library Edition. Volume VI. London: Educational Book, 1910.

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrators. Ch. XIV. "Master Humphrey's Clock." The Charles Dickens Library. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Pp. 259-265.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 3, "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 51-85.

Stevens, Joan. "'Woodcuts Dropped into the Text': The Illustrations in The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge." Studies in Bibliography. 20 (1967): 113-34.

Vann, J. Don. "The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock, 25 April 1840-6 February 1841." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 64-65.

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Created 24 August 2022