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Sir Joseph Bowley's
John Leech
1844
Wood engraving
12.3 cm by 7.3 cm (4 ¾ by 2 ⅞ inches), vignetted.
Full-page illustration for Dickens's The Chimes: "The Second Quarter," 55.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby’s order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not Toby’s. ["The Second Quarter," 53]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed himself by coming incautiously out of his chair, without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind. When he had found his voice — which it took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of meat — he said in a fat whisper,
"Who’s it from?"
Toby told him.
"You’re to take it in, yourself," said the Porter, pointing to a room at the end of a long passage, opening from the hall. "Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You’re not a bit too soon; for the carriage is at the door now, and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a’ purpose."
Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and took the way pointed out to him; observing as he went that it was an awfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in the country. Knocking at the room-door, he was told to enter from within; and doing so found himself in a spacious library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very stately gentleman in black who wrote from her dictation; while another, and an older, and a much statelier gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and looked complacently from time to time at his own picture — a full length; a very full length — hanging over the fireplace.
"What is this?" said the last-named gentleman. "Mr. Fish, will you have the goodness to attend?"
Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, handed it, with great respect.
"From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph."
"Is this all? Have you nothing else, Porter?" inquired Sir Joseph.
Toby replied in the negative. ["The Second Quarter," pp. 53-56]
Simultaneously in Leech's cartoon-like double image of Trotty's arrival at Bowley Hall, and prior to the dream vision, on New Year's Eve, during the course of his deliveries Trotty meets a number of social leaders. Having already encountered the ranting Tory, Alderman Cute and the political economist Mr. Filer, Trotty now delivers a message to the aristocratic land-owner and Member of Parliament Sir Joseph Bowley, an apoplectic, red-faced gentleman in a white waistcoat. These none-too-bright "authorities" reinforce the establishmentarian views of the poor that Trotty has imbibed from the daily newspapers, namely that the working class in general is born bad and destined to go wrong.
Left: Charles Green's far more realistic version of Trotty's meeting the haughty functionary: Trotty and Sir Joseph Bowley's (1912). Right: Fred Barnard's The Poor Man's Friend, a study of the self-centred, pontificating Sir Joseph and his fashionably dressed, vacuous wife. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: Harry Furniss's study of Trotty's meeting the self-centred Sir Joseph and a rather overdressed, late Victorian, middle-aged Lady Bowley with lorgnette, Trotty before Sir Joseph. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. Introduction by Clement Shorter. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Pears' Centenary Edition. London: A & F Pears, [?1912].
_____. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844 [Printed title-page dated "1845."].
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVIII.
_____. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910, VIII, 79-157.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. Vol. V.
Created 20 February 2001 Last modified 21 October 2023