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Slushy Visits Winks
1914
Wood-engraving
12.9 cm high by 10.2 cm wide, or 5 ⅛ by 4 inches, framed, p. 425
Zoffany Oldfield
Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood (completed by W. E. C.)
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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. . . the cracked and dust-begrimed window, admits enough light to make everything within fairly visible.
At one side of the loft, well away from the door, a quantity of much trampled hay and bits of straw has been laid down to form a rough couch on which a healthy man might easily have slept without discomfort if it were only fresh and sweet. But so mouldy and stale has it become, both through long and sand constant use and through the action of the rain which percolates through the gaps in the roof, that it is now utterly unfit for the use of any human being.
Over this miserable foundation, Deputy has spread some old and ragged sacking, and his only top-covering is a flithy, moth-eaten blanket. By the side of the bed are two old boxes, one of which certainly serves as a seat, while the other has been turned bottom uppermost in order to form a table, and bears a cracked mug and spotless jug filled with fresh water. There stands upon it also a little oblong box, from which the lid has been removed, exposing to view some brown, oval-shaped lozenges, an offering procured by the scanty pence of the only human being who had so far succoured the sick lad.
Add top these items a rusty nail driven into one of the tyebeams, from which hangs the boy's ragged coat, and the available wealth of the loft and its tenant is fully enumerated.
Upon the bed lies poor Deputy, and Mr. Datchery notices that he is dressed in a torn and grimy flannel shirt and still wears his trousers, the frayed ends of which protrude from under one end of his scanty blanket. [Chapter XXXVIII, “The Death of Winks,” 422]
The illustration involves a caption with the very “Dickensey” name of “Slushy,” yet this name does not appear in the original serialisation of Dickens's last novel. Dickens had used “Winks” as an alternative nickname for the street urchin whom he otherwise calls “Deputy,” who works occasionally at The Traveller's Twopenny in Cloisterham, adjacent to this hay-loft in which the waif is apparently dying from pneumonia.
The illustration is misleading in several key respects. Most significantly, the female waif “Slushy” has remained on the ground, near the foot of the ladder by which Datchery has climbed into the hayloft. The girl is, however, exactly as the narrator has described her:
The child is arrayed in tattered rags of what at some remote period, was a woman's striped petticoat, while her thin, flat-chested body is covered by a nondescript garment mof many hues, manded and patched with any coloured rag she has been able to beg, borrow or steal. Her tangled red hair is knotted behind her head with a piece of string. [420]
Although Oldfield has followed Crisp's description, Slushy is holding out a cup of water rather than a jug of water, and Deputy (Winks) is looking far healthier and more mature in body than the dying urchin of the text. The scene delays our discovering whether Durdles is correct about something hidden on the other side of the wall of the cathedral crypt that he has just tapped for Mr. Datchery in the previous chapter. Dick Datchery (whom we shall finally see in the next illustration) is convinced that Jasper is a murderer, and has discovered the choirmaster's opium addiction.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 193, Piccadilly. 1870.
_______. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Reprinted Pieces. Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by S. Luke Fildes, R. A., E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879, Vol. XX.
Dickens, Charles, and W. E. C[risp]. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ed. Mary L. C. Grant. New text drawings by Zoffany Oldfield. London: J. M. Ouseley, 9 John Street, Adelphi, 1914.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.
Walters, J. Cuming. The Complete Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens: The History, Continuations, and Solutions (1870-1912). Illustrated by Luke Fildes and Frederic G. Kitton. London: Chapman and Hall, 1912.
Created 22 August 2025