Initial letter "D" (Frank Troy's attempting to beautify Fanny's grave by lamplight) (page 1) vertically-mounted (6 cm wide by 7.6 cm high) signed "H. P." in lower-left corner. Helen Patterson Allingham, tenth thumbnail vignette illustration for Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd in The Cornhill Magazine (October 1874), Chapters 43 ("Fanny's Revenge.") through 47 ("Adventure by the Shore.") in Vol. 30: pages 490 through 512 (24 pages in instalment). The wood-engraver responsible for this illustration was Joseph Swain (1820-1909). [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Right: The title-page for Volume 30 of The Cornhill Magazine (1874).
The tenth initial-letter vignette, on page 490, complements the full-scale plate's caption "Her Tears Fell Fast Beside the Unconscious Pair," suggesting that Troy will weep at Fanny's coffin in his wife's presence and that he will afterward dig at Fanny's grave. Allingham clearly telegraphs these plot developments, and suggests that there will be an irreparable rupture in Frank's relationship with Bathsheba.
Jackson may be correct in her contention that the purpose of most of the initial-letter vignettes is to establish a dominant mood or provide psychological revelation, but she goes too far when asserting that these miniatures "do not refer to a specific plot event" (pp. 84-85). The vignette of Troy at Fanny's grave, for example, does not effectively communicate Troy's "frenzy" as Jackson asserts, but it certainly shows the depth of his feeling for the dead girl and prepares the reader for a definite moment in the print-text.
In contrast to the main illustration, the initial-letter vignette accurately describes a very specific textual moment in Chapter 45, when Troy, having brought a basket of flower roots to the hidden quarter of the Weatherbury churchyard, "set to work to plant them" (p. 505) on Fanny's grave. Here as in the letter-press we have the impressive tombstone, "snow-white and shapely in the gloom" (p. 504), Troy's spade, and the lantern hanging "on the lowest bow of the yew tree" (p. 504). Allingham has rendered the headstone more or less as Mr. Harrison, the stone and marble mason, has described it to Troy earlier in Casterbridge: "beautifully crocked, with medallions beneath of typical subjects" (p. 504), although these are seen only in outline. The term "crocketed" denotes the ornamental stonework shaped like curled leaves which run up and down the top edges of the marker. The illustrator has not, however, provided even the opening of the inscription which Troy reads prior to beginning his gardening, but which we are not given until Oak and Bathsheba visit the grave the following day, at the end of Chapter 46: "Erected by Francis Troy in memory of Fanny Robin" (p. 510). Discreetly avoiding mention of the child again, Hardy has made his reader wait some six pages for even this much of Troy's tribute, and Allingham's plate contributes to our sense of anticipation by not revealing anything of the description in the darkness.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Volume One: 1840-1892; Volume Three: 1903-1908, ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978, 1982.
Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. With illustrations by Helen Paterson Allingham. The Cornhill Magazine. Vols. XXIX and XXX. Ed. Leslie Stephen. London: Smith, Elder, January through December, 1874. Published in volume on 23 November 1874.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Created 12 December 2001 Last updated 22 October 2022