The Garden on the Roof — Marcus Stone's illustration for "Our Mutual Friend"

The Garden on the Roof

Marcus Stone

Wood engraving by Dalziel

14.2 cm high x 9.4 cm wide

Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, Book Two ("Birds of a Feather"), Chapter Five, "Mercury Prompting" [This part of the novel originally appeared in periodical form in Part 7, November 1864.]

Quite another side of Fascination Fledgeby is revealed in the November, 1864, part (Chapter 5 of the second book) when the youth visits his money-lending business, Pubsey & Co., at St. Mary Axe. In the scene by Stone, the dignified Jew, Riah, Fledgeby's front-man, conducts his employer onto the roof of the building, where Jenny Wren and Lizzie Hexam are reading.

[Continued below.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]

Passage illustrated:

Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low pent-house roof, to the house-top. Riah stood still, and, turning to his master, pointed out his guests.

Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some humble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble flowers and evergreens completed the garden; and the encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys twirled their cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were bridling, and fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy surprise.

Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises: 'Whoever you are, I can't get up, because my back's bad and my legs are queer.' [242]

The illustration brings out that familiar Dickens theme, the romantic side of everyday things. In the midst of a wilderness of blackened, smoke-spewing chimneys we encounter the contemplative oasis of Riah's roof-garden, appropriately occupied by the two young, lower-class women who make "book-learning" their holiday from workaday drudgery. The picture underscores the mutual affection of Lizzie and Jenny, and connects these characters to Riah and thence to Fledgeby, whose connection to Georgiana Podsnap and the Lammles bridges the gulf between the working and the upper classes. Stone has foiled the dozen chimneys and the sooty building behind Riah with the overgrown chimney-pots and greenery behind the picnicking young women. In the foreground is Jenny Wren's oversized bonnet, implying that, for the moment at least, she has been able to shed her role as pseudo-adult wage-earner and head of family to enjoy the liberation of an engrossing book.

References

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Volume 14 of the Authentic Edition. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901.

Last modified 9 February 2011