[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Charles Edmund Brock —> Jane Austen —> Next]
Frontispiece: "How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Very well I thank you." (p. 7)
Charles Edmund Brock
1898, 1906
12.9 by 8.3 cm (5 by 3 ¼ inches), framed, facing title-page.
Austens's Emma, Part II.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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 it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Shortly afterwards Miss Bates, passing near the window, descried Mr. Knightley on horse-back not far off.
“Mr. Knightley I declare! — I must speak to him if possible, just to thank him. I will not open the window here; it would give you all cold; but I can go into my mother’s room you know. I dare say he will come in when he knows who is here. Quite delightful to have you all meet so! Our little room so honoured!”
She was in the adjoining chamber while she still spoke, and opening the casement there, immediately called Mr. Knightley’s attention, and every syllable of their conversation was as distinctly heard by the others, as if it had passed within the same apartment.
“How d’ ye do? — how d’ye do? — Very well, I thank you. So obliged to you for the carriage last night. We were just in time; my mother just ready for us. Pray come in; do come in. You will find some friends here.”
So began Miss Bates; and Mr. Knightley seemed determined to be heard in his turn, for most resolutely and commandingly did he say,
“How is your niece, Miss Bates? — I want to inquire after you all, but particularly your niece. How is Miss Fairfax? — I hope she caught no cold last night. How is she to-day? Tell me how Miss Fairfax is.” [Chapter 28, pp. 6-7]
The reader, unfamiliar with the opening of the second volume, could well mistake Mr. Knightley here for the dashing and much younger Frank Churchill, especially since the younger man is romantically interested in Jane Fairfax, Mrs. Bates's niece. The passage realised only a few pages into the volume reinforces the social disparity between Knightley, a great landowner, and the elderly women who have a rented flat above the village bakery on the high street.
The chapter soon makes it clear that the scene occurs the morning after the dance at the Coles’, and that the setting involves the Bates’s rooms and the new piano that Colonel Campbell, away in Ireland, has apparently arranged to have delivered to Jane Fairfax. Frank is already present upstairs, engaged in both repairing Mrs. Bates’s spectacles and supporting one of the piano legs to compensate for the unevenness of the floor. Thus, the context of the second volume's opening chapter makes it clear that Frank Churchill is not the rider depicted in the frontispiece. How then may we explain Knightley's acting so out of character?
The caption is misleading since this is not what the rider says to the elderly woman at the casement. Rather, Miss Bates calls out to Knightley: “How d’ ye do? — how d’ye do? — Very well, I thank you. So obliged to you for the carriage last night. We were just in time; my mother just ready for us. Pray come in; do come in. You will find some friends here” (7). We now learn that Knightley is making a quick trip to Kingston, and is prepared to pick up anything there that Miss Bates might wish.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. and H. M. Brock. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. 2 vols. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906.
Austen, Jane. Emma: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2012.
Created 6 April 2026