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Our Johnnny is ailing
Harry Furniss
1910
13.7 cm x 9 cm, or 5 ½ by 3 ½ inches, vignetted
Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, for Book Two, “Birds of a Feather,” Chapter IX, “In Which an Orphan Makes His Will,” facing XV, 336.
Mrs. Higden's days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon Sloppy. — Our Mutual Friend, p. 337.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham.
John Rokesmith hoped the child had had medical attendance? Oh yes, said Sloppy, he had been took to the doctor’s shop once. And what did the doctor call it? Rokesmith asked him. After some perplexed reflection, Sloppy answered, brightening, ‘He called it something as wos wery long for spots.’ Rokesmith suggested measles. ‘No,’ said Sloppy with confidence, ‘ever so much longer than them, sir!’ (Mr. Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seemed to consider that it reflected credit on the poor little patient.)
‘Mrs. Boffin will be sorry to hear this,’ said Rokesmith.
‘Mrs. Higden said so, sir, when she kep it from her, hoping as Our Johnny would work round.’
‘But I hope he will?’ said Rokesmith, with a quick turn upon the messenger.
‘I hope so,’ answered Sloppy. ‘It all depends on their striking in’ards.’ He then went on to say that whether Johnny had ‘took ’em’ from the Minders, or whether the Minders had ‘took ’em’ from Johnny, the Minders had been sent home and had ‘got ’em.’ Furthermore, that Mrs. Higden’s days and nights being devoted to Our Johnny, who was never out of her lap, the whole of the mangling arrangements had devolved upon himself, and he had had ‘rayther a tight time’. The ungainly piece of honesty beamed and blushed as he said it, quite enraptured with the remembrance of having been serviceable. [Book Two, “Birds of a Feather”; Chapter IX, “In which an Orphan Makes His Will,” pp. 336-337]
Here, Furniss seems to be responding to Marcus Stone's original serial illustration of the smoky interior of Betty's cottage and her tending the sick toddler in Our Johnny in Book Two, Chapter IX (Part 8: December 1864). Furniss's approach, however, is radically different from Stone's as he foregrounds Sloppy, who is joyfully working the mangle and seems oblivious to Betty's tending the ailing child in the background. Indeed, Furniss has the foreground dominated by the humorous figure of Sloppy, thereby minimizing the plight of the very ill child.
If readers are merely scanning the illustrations without encountering these pictures in relation to the textual passages they realise, then they might well wonder how the poverty-stricken, elderly “child-minder” is connected to the novel's main plot (the ramifications of Harmon's assuming the identity of John Rokesmith) and the various subplots involving the Lammles, the Hexams, and the Wilfers. As the illustrators have all demonstrated, eighty-year-old Mrs. Betty Higden runs a laundry and child-minding operation out of her cottage (the backdrop for Furniss's lithograph) with the assistance of one of the children whom she has taken in, Sloppy. She had hoped that the eccentric Golden Dustman, Noddy Boffin, would be adopting her great-grandson, but the sickly Johnny dies in this chapter before the adoption has been legally finalized. Thus, John Rokesmith appears in a significant role in this chapter (although not in the illustration) as Boffin's agent in the adoption process. Proudly refusing Boffin's aid, but terrified at the prospect of being sent to the workhouse, Betty becomes an itinerant peddler of her own needlework. When Betty dies at the side of the highroad, still heartbroken over the Johnny's death, she does so in the arms of Lizzie Hexam (Book Three, Chapter VIII).
Above: Marcus Stone's second November 1864 plate, realising the scene in the young lawyers' chambers: Forming the Domestic Virtues. (Part 7).
Left: James Mahoney shows the consequence of Rokesmith's visit rather than the visit to Betty Higden: "A kiss for the Boofer Lady." (p. 143, Household Edition, 1875). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of Sloppy, winding the mangle happily as a thoughtful Betty tends the sick child: Mrs. Higden, Sloppy, and the Innocents for Book Two, Chapter 16, "Minders and Reminders," in the Diamond Edition (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Created 4 August 2025