Mr. Boffin Undertakes to See Bella “Righted” by Harry Furniss. 9 cm by 13.8 cm, or 3 ½ by 5 ½ inches, vignetted. Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, facing XV, 625, in Book III, “A Turning,” Chapter XV, “The Golden Dustman at His Worst,” in The Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
“Look at this young lady on my arm,” said Mr. Boffin. “I do so,” returned Mr. Rokesmith. “How dare you, sir,” said Mr. Boffin, “come out of your station, and your place in my house, to pester this young lady with your impudent addresses?” — Our Mutual Friend, p. 613.
Passage Illustrated: The “Righting,” or Moral Correction of Bella Wilfer
Bella involuntarily raising her eyes, when this sudden reference was made to herself, met those of Mr. Rokesmith. He was pale and seemed agitated. Then her eyes passed on to Mrs. Boffin’s, and she met the look again. In a flash it enlightened her, and she began to understand what she had done.
‘I say to you, sir,’ Mr. Boffin repeated, ‘look at this young lady on my arm.’
‘I do so,’ returned the Secretary.
As his glance rested again on Bella for a moment, she thought there was reproach in it. But it is possible that the reproach was within herself.
‘How dare you, sir,’ said Mr. Boffin, ‘tamper, unknown to me, with this young lady? How dare you come out of your station, and your place in my house, to pester this young lady with your impudent addresses?’
‘I must decline to answer questions,’ said the Secretary, ‘that are so offensively asked.’
‘You decline to answer?’ retorted Mr. Boffin. ‘You decline to answer, do you? Then I’ll tell you what it is, Rokesmith; I’ll answer for you. There are two sides to this matter, and I’ll take ’em separately. The first side is, sheer Insolence. That’s the first side.’
The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would have said, ‘So I see and hear.’
‘It was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you,’ said Mr. Boffin, ‘even to think of this young lady. This young lady was far above you. This young lady was no match for you. This young lady was lying in wait (as she was qualified to do) for money, and you had no money.’
Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr. Boffin’s protecting arm. [Book IV, “A Turning,” Chapter XV, “The Golden Dustman at His Worst,” pp. 612-613]
Commentary: Confrontation in the Drawing Room — Rokesmith keeps his temper
In "The Golden Dustman at His Worst," the chapter which led off serial instalment 15 (July 1865) Marcus Stone had already realised the confrontation between the Secretary and his employer. The thick-set, balding, middle-aged Boffin in the Stone composite woodblock engraving, as in the Furniss lithograph, is wearing the older style of respectable male fashion of the older generation (a frock coat and double-breasted waist-coat), a style which contrasts the thin, elegant line of Rokesmith in his modern business suit. In this contest of wills, Boffin — and therefore Lammles (for Mrs. Lammle has the previous evening privately denounced Rokesmith to Boffin) — appears to have won, as shortly John Rokesmith (the alias for John Harmon, heir to a vast estate) will pick his severance cheque up off the floor and, to Bella’s sorrow, quit the mansion of the Golden Dustman.
Although the style of both illustrations, the Stone original and the Furniss revision, is markedly realistic as Rokesmith stands erect despite Boffin’s shaking his fist in his face and Bella, embarrassed, looks down, Furniss has made the Dustman's posture far more dramatic, has made Bella draw back, and has emphasized the heavily furnished drawing-room that serves as the backdrop in both instances. Strategically Furniss has protected the Secretary from Boffin's onslaught by placing a large, stuffed arm chair between the two. The few books just behind Rokesmith on the table in the Stone wood engraving have moved to the table behind Bella in Furniss’s lithograph, and are now echoed in the veritable library behind her (upper right in Furniss), as if suggesting the considerable collection of “Misers’ Lives” that Boffin has amassed as part of his scheme to “right” Bella.
Relevant Illustrations in the Original (Serial) and Household Editions (1865 and 1875)
Left: Marcus Stone's initial serial plate for the July 1865 (fifteenth) number: Mr. Boffin Undertakes to See Bella 'Righted' (Book III, Chapter 15). Right: James Mahoney's Household Edition (1875) illustration takes us to the upshot of that confrontation, as Bella bids farewell to her elegant room in the Boffin mansion: “You have been a pleasant room to me, dear room. Adieu! We shall never see each other again” in the same chapter, showing the immediate effects of Boffin's project to effect Bella's moral education. [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)
Scanned images, captions, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
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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., 1863. 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.
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 11 August 2025