Initial letter "G" (Gabriel Oak, shearing a sheep) ((5.9 cm wide by 7.6 cm high) signed "H. P." in lower-left corner) signed "H. P" in lower-right corner (page 513) vertically-mounted. Helen Patterson Allingham, fifth thumbnail vignette illustration for Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd in The Cornhill Magazine (May 1874), Chapters 21 ("Troubles in the Fold: A Message.") through 24 ("The Same Night: The Fir Plantation.") in Vol. 29: pages 513 through 534 (23 pages in instalment). Plates: initial "G" and She stood up in the window-opening, facing the men. The wood-engraver was Joseph Swain (1820-1909). [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Passage Illustrated
The initial vignette is probably based on the sheep-shearing passage in Ch. 22: "He lopped off the tresses about its head, and opened up the neck and collar . . ." (p. 520).
Commentary: A Seasonal Activity — The May Sheep-shearing
Right: The title-page for Volume 29 of The Cornhill Magazine (1874).
In the vignette, Gabriel, back towards us, deftly shears away the sheep's woollen coat while we, from Bathsheba's perspective, watch him separate "the tresses about its head, . . . neck and collar" (p. 520) from its body. This vignette offers more than mere local colour or minor incident, for it demonstrates Gabriel's absolute knowledge of all aspects of sheep-raising that has kept him at Upper Weatherbury Farm when Bathsheba's pride would have compelled him to leave. In the vignette, we have the illusion that we are looking at a single action and a single moment, but, as Bathsheba remarks, the whole procedure takes the shearer 23 minutes. The month in which this instalment is set is specifically "May" (p. 522), the date of the issue of The Cornhill Magazine containing the incidents described, so that the reader seems to be invited to conceive of the action as occurring in the present (as he is again, momentarily, at Boldwood's tragic Christmas party in the December instalment). The interview between Boldwood and Bathsheba near the barn, in Chapter 22, suggests a repetition of that depicted in the April plate, especially since in the same frame of mind she again rebuffs his advances, and afterward changes into the very same riding-habit.
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.
Created 23 October 2022