"O, my child, o my child!"
Fred Barnard
1873
17.4 x 13.3 cm (7 by 5 ¼ inches), framed. For Chapter 29.
Dickens's Bleak House, The Household Edition, facing p. 206.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated: The Waif who stirred the Conscience of a Nation
"You may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if you — please."
"It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day."
On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her and unlocks it.
"Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that sort," says Mr. Guppy, "and I couldn't accept anything of the kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the same."
So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper, is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?
No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.
"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!" [Chapter XXIX, "The Young Man," 206]
Commentary: Lady Dedlock's Moment of Recognition and Remorse
Guppy, believing that he has solved the mystery of Esther Summerson's (in fact, "Hawdon's] birth, now dares to visit Lady Dedlock at the couple's London townhouse. Like Jo, the crossing-sweeper, Guppy has seen the similarity between Lady Dedlock's face and Esther's, but Guppy has made his guess from studying a portrait of Sir Leicester's wife that he had seen when visiting Chesney Wold. Inferring that Lady Dedlock is in fact Esther's mother, and that her father was the recently deceased law-writer "Nemo," Guppy has pieced together such clues as Miss Barbary's being Lady Dedlock's sister (who raised Esther) and that the real identity of the impoverished, drug-addicted scrivener of Cook's Court is Captain Hawdon. He reveals that he knows that Lady Dedlock visited Hawdon's grave in disguise at Tom-all-Alone's recently, and that she gave Jo the sovereigns. In support of his contention, he proposes to bring Jo in to her identify her as the mysterious visitor. Guppy now offers to obtain the correspondence between Hawdon and his lover for Lady Dedlock to enable her to keep her liaison secret. Lady Dedlock maintains her haughty composure throughout the interview in the library, but once Guppy has gone she collapses under the weight of remorse, crying, "Oh, my child!" She had apparently not known that her sister had brought up the child she thought had died in infancy.
Other Illustrations of Lady Dedlock and Guppy (1852-1910)
Left:
Left: Phiz's November 1853 engraving of Guppy's visit to the Dedlocks in their London mansion: Young Man of the Name of Guppy. Right: Harry Furniss's realisation of Guppy's entrance emphasizes the Mercury: Young Man by the Name of Guppy (1910) in the Charles Dickens Library Edition.
Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators for Bleak House (1852-1910)
- Bleak House (homepage)
- Phiz's monthly illustrations for the novel, March 1852 through September 1853.
- Cover for monthly parts
- Sol Eytinge, Junior: 18 illustrations for Bleak House, vol. 4 of the Diamond Edition (1867)
- Harry Furniss's illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Kyd's four Player's Cigarette Cards (1910)
- Metropolitan mud, filthy streets, and “A Thaw in the Streets of London (1865)”
- Sanitation and Its absence
- Ideas of Childhood in Victorian Children's Fiction: Orphans, Outcasts and Rebels
- Metropolitan mud, filthy streets, and “A Thaw in the Streets of London (1865)”
- Sanitation and Its absence
- Ideas of Childhood in Victorian Children's Fiction: Orphans, Outcasts and Rebels
Bibliography
"Bleak House — Sixty-one Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vols. 1-4.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. VI.
_______. Bleak House, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873. IV.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Harry Furniss [28 original lithographs]. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Vol. 11. London: Educational Book, 1910.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 18: Bleak House." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. XVII, 366-97.
Vann, J. Don. "Bleak House, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, October 1846—April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 69-70.
Created 10 March 2021