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"That's the way I found him, sitting by the roadside."
Charles Edmund Brock
1905
9 by 11.2 cm, vignetted
Three-quarter-page illustration for "Chirp the First" in Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, 122.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating eyes, looked round with a smile, and saluted the Carrier’s wife by gravely inclining his head.
His garb was very quaint and odd — a long, long way behind the time. Its hue was brown, all over. In his hand he held a great brown club or walking-stick; and striking this upon the floor, it fell asunder, and became a chair. On which he sat down, quite composedly.
"There!" said the Carrier, turning to his wife. "That’s the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as a milestone. And almost as deaf."
"Sitting in the open air, John!"
"In the open air," replied the Carrier, "just at dusk. "Carriage Paid," he said; and gave me eighteenpence. Then he got in. And there he is." ["Chirp the First," 121]
Brock offers a highly original flashback, disrupting the time sequence of the narrative. Although John merely recounts his meeting with the elderly Stranger at the roadside, Brock reinforces its significance by showing the scene after he has introduced illustrations of subsequent actions. Brock stations Boxer ahead of his master, in the middle of the road, staring down the Stranger, as of he detects that there is something not quite right about this white-haired traveller. Since the stranger, once unmasked, as the long-lost sailor-son, Edward Plummer, will prove instrumental in the resolution of the May Fielding/Tackleton marriage subplot as well as the putative adultery plot, Brock obviously thought it important to remind readers how Edward met John — and deceived him.
Left: Brock makes readers wait for fifty pages before he reveals what the
elderly stranger really looks like:
Clearly the omission of the figure of The Stranger and his alter ego, Edward Plummer, is worrying in the original, 1845 sequence, if only because John's misapprehension of the young man's true identity and his prior relationship with Dot causes the husband to suspect Dot of being prepared to leave him. Speculating as to why Leech and his team never depicted the long-lost sailor-son, not even in the concluding illustration, The Dance, one may conclude that early illustrators simply thought him not worthy of illustration. This omission both C. E. Brock in 1905 and Luigi Rossi in 1912 sought to remedy; at least, both addressed the omission pointedly. Brock has four images prominently featuring Edward Plummer (two in his guise as The Stranger), and Rossi has accorded equal prominence to the figure who creates the romantic triangle in no less than six illustrations. In his psychological approach to the problem posed by the handsome youth in disguise, Harry Furniss depicts him merely as an ominous shadow on the Peerybingles' hearth. He implies, as does Dickens, the possibility of adultery.
Left: Rossi's introduction of the elderly passenger just alighted from John's wagon, The Stranger (1912). Right: Rossi's placing the spirit of the youth beside the fireside: The Apparition that the Carrier did not see (1910).
Above: Fred Barnard's revellation of the old Stranger's true identity, Suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery (1878).]
Above: Rossi's foreshadowing the fact that Dot has recognised Edward Plummer beneath the disguise, Mrs. Peerybingle Receives a Shock (1912).
Bolton, H. Philip. Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_______. Christmas Books, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_______. Christmas Books, illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_______. Christmas Books, illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_______. Christmas Books, illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
_______. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth, illustrated by C. E. [Charles Edmund] Brock. London: J. M. Dent, 1905; New York: Dutton, rpt., 1963.
_______. Christmas Stories, illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_______. The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Edwin Landseer. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1845.
Orwell, George. "Charles Dickens." (1939) Critical Essays. London: Secker and Warburg, 1946 (first published in 1940 in "Inside the Whale" and Other Essays.]
Created 14 October 2015
Last modified 4 June 2020