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Bella's Baby
Harry Furniss
1910
13.8 cm x 8.9 cm, or 5 ½ by 3 ⅝ inches, framed
Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, for Book 4, Chapter XIII, “Showing how the Golden Dustman Helped to Scatter Dust,” facing XV, 801.
There was nothing to see but Bella in a musing state of happiness, with her child in her fair young arms. — Our Mutual Friend, p. 811.
[Click on all the images on this page to enlarge them.]
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Then, said John Harmon, would Mrs. John Harmon come and see her house? And a dainty house it was, and a tastefully beautiful; and they went through it in procession; the Inexhaustible on Mrs Boffin’s bosom (still staring) occupying the middle station, and Mr. Boffin bringing up the rear. And on Bella’s exquisite toilette table was an ivory casket, and in the casket were jewels the like of which she had never dreamed of, and aloft on an upper floor was a nursery garnished as with rainbows; ‘though we were hard put to it,’ said John Harmon, ‘to get it done in so short a time.’
The house inspected, emissaries removed the Inexhaustible, who was shortly afterwards heard screaming among the rainbows; whereupon Bella withdrew herself from the presence and knowledge of gemplemorums, and the screaming ceased, and smiling Peace associated herself with that young olive branch.
‘Come and look in, Noddy!’ said Mrs. Boffin to Mr. Boffin.
Mr. Boffin, submitting to be led on tiptoe to the nursery door, looked in with immense satisfaction, although there was nothing to see but Bella in a musing state of happiness, seated in a little low chair upon the hearth, with her child in her fair young arms, and her soft eyelashes shading her eyes from the fire. [Book Four, “A Turning”; Chapter XIII, “Showing how the Golden Dustman Helped to Scatter Dust,” pp. 810-811]
In the sentimental portrait, Bella’s Baby, the penultimate illustration that signals the happy marriage of John and Bella, Harry Furniss has again drawn upon the work of one of the two earlier British illustrators of the novel, Marcus Stone in the ultimate number of the 1864-65 nineteen-month serialisation. The particular illustration he has revised for the 1910 volume features Bella holding her baby as Noddy Boffin, delighted, observes her from the doorway of the nursery in her new home: Mr. Boffin does the Honours the Nursery Door (the initial illustration for the concluding double number, November, 1865). Significantly, Furniss has eliminated all background details, including the observer, to focus the reader's attention on Bella's conventional happy ending: wealth, social position, respectable husband, and healthy child.
In this chapter, Mrs. Boffin reveals the true identity of John Rokesmith, formerly Secretary to Nicodemus Boffin, “The Golden Dustman,” as none other than John Harmon. The elderly couple now admit how they had conspired with John to keep Bella in the dark about his identity as they attempted to effect her moral reclamation. Their having Noddy pose as a thorough miser was so effective that she has only now returned to London.
This illustration concludes the chapter which reunites the Boffins and Bella Wilfer, and effectively ends the narrative-pictorial sequence for the novel's principal plot, the sometimes fraught romance of John “Rokesmith” and the fate of John Harmon. It also marks the last of Bella's seven appearances in Furniss's series, so that by her very frequency Furniss has underscored her centrality to the main plot. Ironically, the novel's protagonist, John “Julius Handford/Rokesmith/Harmon” makes a total of only two appearances in Furniss's 1910 series, and among the title-page vignettes on the title-page border, the young man of multiple identities is just once in the series of thirty-six.
Left: Stone's sentimental interpretation of the scene in the nursery: Mr. Boffin does the Honours the Nursery Door (Nov., 1865), to complement the final paragraph of Chapter 13. Right: Mahoney's Household Edition version of the sentimental scene: "It makes a pretty and promising picter; don't it?" (1875)
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Created 17 August 2025