“Mr. Wrayburn's Method of Ejection” — Harry Furniss's eighteenth illustration for “Our Mutual Friend” (1910)

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Mr. Wrayburn's Method of Ejection

Harry Furniss

1910

13.8 cm x 9.1 cm, or 5 ½ by 3 ½ inches, vignetted

The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, Book 3, “A Long Lane,” Chapter X, “Scouts Out,” facing 545.

The fact that Mr. Dolls exhibited a tendency to fall asleep, thereby threatening a prolonged stay on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. So Eugene picked up his worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head, and conducted him downstairs. — Our Mutual Friend, p. 562.

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Passage Illustrated: A Comic Interlude in the Attorneys' Rooms off Fleet Street

Making a dignified attempt to gather himself together, but, as it were, dropping half a dozen pieces of himself while he tried in vain to pick up one, Mr. Dolls, swaying his head from side to side, regarded his questioner with what he supposed to be a haughty smile and a scornful glance.

‘She looks upon me as mere child, sir. I am NOT mere child, sir. Man. Man talent. Lerrers pass betwixt ’em. Postman lerrers. Easy for man talent er get drection, as get his own drection.’

‘Get it then,’ said Eugene; adding very heartily under his breath, ‘— You Brute! Get it, and bring it here to me, and earn the money for sixty threepenn’orths of rum, and drink them all, one a top of another, and drink yourself dead with all possible expedition.’ The latter clauses of these special instructions he addressed to the fire, as he gave it back the ashes he had taken from it, and replaced the shovel.

Mr. Dolls now struck out the highly unexpected discovery that he had been insulted by Lightwood, and stated his desire to ‘have it out with him’ on the spot, and defied him to come on, upon the liberal terms of a sovereign to a halfpenny. Mr. Dolls then fell a crying, and then exhibited a tendency to fall asleep. This last manifestation as by far the most alarming, by reason of its threatening his prolonged stay on the premises, necessitated vigorous measures. Eugene picked up his worn-out hat with the tongs, clapped it on his head, and, taking him by the collar — all this at arm’s length — conducted him down stairs and out of the precincts into Fleet Street. There, he turned his face westward, and left him. [Book Three, Chapter X, "Scouts Out," 562]

Commentary: “Streaky Bacon” Scene Construction and a Farcical Interlude

Despite the fact that Marcus Stone had offered him a visual antecedent, Mahoney in the Household Edition (1875) had rejected the original edition's second May 1865 picture of "Mr. Dolls," Jenny Wren's father, disgustingly drunk and cadging three pennyworths of rum from the attorneys' in Three-Penn'orth Rum. However, Furniss seems to have reverted to Stone's scene construction and subject. The 1865 wood engraving offered Furniss useful interpretations of Mortimer Lightwood (left) and Eugene Wrayburn (right) in their rooms in The Inner Temple, already depicted in Forming the Domestic Virtues (November 1864). Operating on the conventional Victorian notion of "streaky bacon" plot construction, and having highlighted Nicodemus Boffin's psychological development in his previous illustration, Mr. Boffin among the Mounds, Furniss elected to realise the comic scene of Eugene's forcible ejection of the disreputable Mr. Dolls instead. His attempt to cadge a drink in exchange for information about Lizzie Hexam's whereabouts (a subject that from his daughter he knows is of keen interest to Eugene) has failed.

Relevant Illustrations in the Original (Serial) and Household Editions (1865, 1875)

Left: Marcus Stone's second serial plate for the May 1865 (thirteenth) number: Three-Penn'orth Rum (Book III, Chapter 10). Centre: Mahoney's 1875 Household Edition illustration for the same chapter focusses on the accidental meeting of the attorneys and Headstone in the street afterwards: They almost ran against Bradley Headstone (p. 231). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

Illustrations by Marcus Stone (40 plates from the Chapman and Hall edition of May 1864 through November 1865)
Frontispieces by Octavius Carr Darley (4 photogravures from the Hurd and Houghton Household Edition of 1872)
Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
James Mahoney (58 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1875)
Harry Furniss (28 lithographs from the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, 1910)
Clayton J. Clarke (two studies from his designs for the Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910)

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].

Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. The Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. 21 vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865]. Vol. XIV.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1872. 4 vols.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VIII.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. 441-442.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. London: George Redway, 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2004.

Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 74.

Created 10 August 2025