‘Showing your picture to his mother and sisters,’ for Jane Austen's "Emma" (1905) by Hugh Thomson (P. 47, Chapter VII)

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‘Showing your picture to his mother and sisters’

Hugh Thomson

1905

Photomechanical reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing

11.2 by 8.5 cm (4 ⅛ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted

Jane Austen, Emma, facing page 46.

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 in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Mr. Elton imagined showing Harriet's picture to his family.

“Now he has got my letter,” said she softly. “I wonder what they are all doing — whether his sisters know — if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.”

“Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully employed,” cried Emma. “At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is shewing your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times, allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.”

“My picture! — But he has left my picture in Bond-street.”

“Has he so! — Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest Harriet, depend upon it the picture will not be in Bond-street till just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family, it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy their imaginations all are!” [Chapter 7, pp. 46-47]

Commentary: Emma imagines Elton's extolling Harriet’s beauty

Emma insists that Harriet was right to reject Mr. Martin, and should seriously consider Mr. Elton as a prospective suitor. As part of Emma's continuing efforts at match-making, she envisages Elton's showing the portrait to his mother and sisters, even though it is now in London. Ironically, Thomson has made the portrait a mere miniature, matching the proportions of the sketch in ‘Ready to jump up and see the progress’. Emma insists that the picture is currently Elton's solace and delight, fuelling Harriet's fantasy about marrying the eligible bachelor after Emma has dashed her hopes of marrying Mr. Martin, whose proposal Emma had encouraged her to reject.

Related Material

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Austin Dobson. With forty pen-and-ink illustrations by Hugh Thomson. The Novels of Jane Austen. London: Macmillan, 1896, rpt. 1905.

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. Brock. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. 2 vols. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906.

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. George Justice. 4th edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

Austen, Jane. Emma: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard U. P, 2012.

Created 25 April 2026