"In the name of all the angels or devils, work!" — illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities" by John McLenan in "Harper's Weekly," Book II, Chapter 21 (3 September 1859)

"In the name of all the angels or devils, work!" by John McLenan. Illustration for Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book the Second — "The Golden Thread," Chapter XXI, "Echoing Footsteps," 565. The Defarges and two other members of the Jacquerie are fighting at the Bastille, near the wine-shop in St. Antoine. 8.8 cm high by 8.5 cm wide (3 ½ by 3 ⅜ inches) in Harper's Weekly (3 September 1859): this instalment appeared in UK on Saturday, 27 August, in All the Year Round. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Text Illustrated: A Rising Sea of Humanity Dashes against the Walls of The Bastille

"Come, then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. "Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!"

With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack began.

Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke — in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier — Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.

Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! "Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils — which you prefer — work!" Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot. [Book the Second — "The Golden Thread," Chapter XXI, "Echoing Footsteps," 565]

Comment: Parallel Illustrations by Phiz and Others

A. A. Dixon's 1905 photogravure from watercolour for the same chapter in the Oxford World's Classics edition of the novel prominebntly features the Defarges: "Patriots and friends, we are ready."

Compare this woodblock illustration to Phiz's steel-engraving The Sea Rises for the same chapter (Part 5, October 1859). Whereas Phiz's treatment is panoramic, McLenan's focuses on just a few members of the mob from St. Antoine, including Defarge himself, recognizable from previous illustrations and from the musket he holds, and two members of the Jacquerie. Phiz makes it easy for readers to identify such by-now familiar figures as The Vengeance (right) and Madame Defarge (left). Fred Barnard in his 1874 composite-woodblock engraving Dragged, and struck at, and stifled, in contrast, visually conveys the vigour of Dickens's prose (derived from Carlyle's description of the Fall of the Bastille in The French Revolution, Book I) without identifying any of the figures who are stuffing Foulon's mouth with grass. The obvious difference between McLenan's treatment and those of Phiz and Barnard is that he shows Defarge's exhorting his comrades to arms before the actual storming of the prison-fortress on 14 July 1789.

Relevant Illustrations from earlier editions: 1859, 1867, 1874, 1905, and 1910.

Left: Furniss's painterly treatment of the same scene in Book 2, Chapter 21, The Fall of the Bastille (1910). Right: Phiz's celebrated "The Sea Rises" (October 1859).

Left: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the grotesque mob-leader as the virago leads Saint Antoine against the defenders of the fortress, The Vengeance (1867). Centre: Barnard's Dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands (1874); right: Dixon's closeup of the Saint Antoine mob storming the main gate, The surrender of the Bastille for Book Two, Chapter 21, "Echoing Footsteps" (1905).

Other Illustrated Editions (1859-1910)

Related Material

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates." Dickens Studies. 33 (2003): 109-158.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 21 November 1859.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 7 May through 3 December 1859.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities: A story of the French Revolution. Project Gutenberg e-text by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #98].

__________. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. VIII.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London: Collins, 1905.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 13.

__________. A Tale of Two Cities. With illustrations by John McLenan and Rowland Wheelwright. Orinda, Cal.: Sea Wolf Press, 2021.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins. The Annotated Dickens. 2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986.

Created 28 November 2007

Last modified 21 November 2025