A Scene in The Belvedere

A Scene in The Belvedere

James Abbott Pasquier

March 1873

11.4 x 17.6 cm

Illustration for Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes in Tinsley's Magazine, chapters 22-24; XII, 240

  • Pasquier's Eleven Plates for A Pair of Blue Eyes
  • Thomas Hardy
  • The caption condenses the following passage: "Knight's arm stole farther round the waist of Elfride" from serial chapter 24 (the last of four in the March 1873 instalment). To show all three figures clearly and to parallel the poses of Elfride's suitors, the artist avoids the lines of Hardy's description in which "Part of the scene reached Stephen's eyes through the horizontal bars of woodwork, which crossed their forms like the ribs of a skeleton." Shifting from Hardy's limited omniscient point of view to a more dramatic one, the illustrator leaves the reader to mediate between the description of the moment in Hardy's text and the plate, in which both Stephen Smith (downstage right) and Henry Knight (upstage left) have their backs to us, wear similar coats and hats. [commentary continues below]