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Oliver is taken to the Workhouse
Frederic W. Pailthorpe
1886
8 cm by 6.5 cm wide (3 by 2 ½ inches), vignetted
Title-page vignette for Oliver Twist in the Robson & Kerslake Edition (1886), keyed to the Richard Bentley triple-decker of November 1838: vol. 1, facing p. 20.
[Click on image to enlarge it. See below for passage illustrated, commentary and comparisons with other illustrators' work; mouse over the text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world, sank into the child’s heart for the first time.
Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver, firmly grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end of every quarter of a mile whether they were “nearly there.” To these interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish replies; for the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens in some bosoms had by this time evaporated; and he was once again a beadle. [Chapter II, "Treats of Oliver Twist’s Growth, Education, and Board," p. 7 in the 1846 edition]
From Cruikshank's illustrations of Dickens's novel about the need for poor law reform through to the satirical illustrations of Harold Copping, Clayton J. Clarke, and Harry Furniss in the early twentieth century, Bumble has been the easy target of visual satire. He reminds us of other such figures throughout Dickens: a fat man whose obesity is the outward and visible sign of his exploition of children. Pailthorpe's parish beadle is a pompous, self-serving, self-important functionary who for the parliamentary reporter, the twenty-five-year-old Charles Dickens, in 1837 epitomized everything that was wrong with the system designed for relief of the poor. In Pailthorpe's late Victorian title-page vignette, the odious but gorgeously uniformed Bumble, utterly lacking in sympathy or compassion, drags Oliver away from the only home he has ever known. Through exaggerating the diminutive size of the orphan and the corpulence of his guide Pailthorpe enlists our sympathies from the opening page onward for the quintessential victim of the Poor Law, the baby farm, and the workhouse. In his ill-fitting clothes, already too small for him, the child looks to Bumble for answers about his future, but receives hauteur rather than reassurance.
Left to right of centre: Kyd's studies of Mr. Bumble Dickens's characters for the Player's Cigarette Collection: Mr. Bumble (1910). Right: Harry Furniss's study of Bumble and the workhouse matron who becomes Mrs. Bumble: Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910).
Left: In the Diamond Edition, Sol Eytinge, Jr., pairs the pompous parish functionary with the Matron of the Workhouse: Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble (1867). Centre: James Mahoney's Household Edition illustration of Grimwig's reaction to the officious visitor: "A beadle! A parish beadle, or I'll eat my head." (1871). Right: Harold Copping's masterful lithograph of Bumble's dragging Oliver away from Mrs. Mann's: Mr. Bumble and Oliver Twist from Character Sketches from Dickens (1924).
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.
Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1838; Chapman and Hall, 1846.
_______. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. 1 (1820-1839).
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.
_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.
Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1774; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmetts Insurrection in 1803]. London: A & C Black, 1903. OT = pp. 1-106]. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.
Pailthorpe, Frederic W. (Illustrator). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. London: Robson & Kerslake, 1886. Set No. 118 (coloured) of 200 sets of proof impressions.
Created 10 February 2015 Last updated 20 November 2021