The likeness of Dickens two years before his death is melancholy and
care-worn, yet intense in its inner gaze and self-assorption; unlike other
initial plates in the Our Young Folks series, it amounts to a
psychological study. The other pictures tend to depict the honoured author
full-length, either self-consciously posing (as with Hughes in Vol. I, No.
1, and Reid in Vol. III, No. 1), writing at home (as with Stowe in Vol. II,
No. 1) or at work (as with Hayes in Vol. V, No. 1). Only the last of the
series, the head-and-shoulders study of Louis Agassiz (Vol. VI, No. 1), is
comparable to the study of Dickens in pose, although one would probably
characterize the professor as merely thoughtful. Here we have the Dickens
that Edgar Johnson's biography gives us, a portrait emphasizing the
qualities of "feverish depression and growing disillusionment of the writer
in dissolution" (Kappel and Patten 3). Abstracted and brooding, the image of
the author that introduces the first episode of A Holiday Romance
seems better suited as a frontispiece to Bleak House. It is the
introduction of Hamlet with Yorrick's skull into the curtain-raising of a
pantomime. Unsigned, it is not likely the work of John Gilbert, who was
commissioned to do the four full-page plates, each a scene from one of the
novella's four parts (furthermore, Gilbert always signed his work with his
characteristic "J" through a "G"). Its head resembling very much that in R.
W. Buss's "Dickens's Dream" (c. 1870), it is probably the work of Sol
Eytinge, noted for his black-and-white sketches designed to illustrate
Child-pictures from Dickens (1867) and A Christmas Carol
(1869). Born in 1833, Eytinge through Fields met Dickens at the outset of
the second American tour, and subsequently accompanied Fields in the spring
of 1869 to Gad's Hill to discuss the illustrations for forthcoming volumes
of the Diamond Edition.
Last modified 8 December 2002