"Don't go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen — very kind, good people — who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me." 1872. Ninth illustration by Fred Barnard (engraved by the Dalziels) for the Household Edition of David Copperfield (Chapter VII, "My 'First Half' at Salem House," p. 49). 10.5 cm high by 13.7 cm wide (4 ⅛ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Headline for page 49: "Mr. Creakle Comes Home." Headline on p. 49: "An Appeal to the Fountainhead." [Click on image to enlarge it. Mouse over text for links.]
Passage Illustrated: David introduces Steerforth to the Yarmouth fishermen
I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly — Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time afterwards —!
"Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen—very kind, good people — who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me."
"Aye, aye?" said Steerforth, returning. "I am glad to see them. How are you both?"
There was an ease in his manner — a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering — which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him in a moment. [Chapter VII, "My 'First Half' at Salem House," 52]
Commentary
Although David still idolizes James Steerforth, he is aware of the head boy's less benign nature from the classroom altercation with Mr. Mell, whom Creakle discharged as a result of Steerforth's charges against the hapless master. However, David throws caution to one side when Ham and Dan'l Peggotty arrive at Salem House for a visit. When he enters the parlour to meet his "visitors," he is astonished and delighted to see the Yarmouth fishermen rather than his mother accompanied by the Murdstones, and happily receives their unusual gifts of enormous lobsters, a gigantic crab, and numerous shrimp. They have brought their boat to Gravesend, and decided that they were within an easy walk to the school. At this point, Steerforth arrives, and David is proud to introduce his school friend to his jovial surrogate family. In the ensuing conversation Steerforth makes himself agreeable, and receives an invitation from Mr. Peggotty, who will put his home at the service of the aristocratic visitor should he come north with David. Thus, Dickens sets the plot involving Em'ly and Steerforth in motion. As David gestures towards Ham and Dan'l Peggotty, Steerforth scrupulously studies them as they are so much out of their element in the upper-middle-class parlour of the school.
Related Material
- David Copperfield (homepage)
- Phiz's 40 serial illustrations for David Copperfield (May 1849 - November 1850)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- W. H. C. Groome's 7 illustrations for the Collins Clear-type Pocket Edition, Vol. I (1907)
- Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
- Harry Furniss's 29 Illustrations for Dickens's The Personal Experience and History of David Copperfield in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
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
Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911 [rpt. from 1850]. 2 vols.
_______. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 3.
_______. David Copperfield. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-type Press, 1907. No. 1.
The copy of the Household Edition from which this picture was scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, Editor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2010, is this novel.
Created 17 August 2016 Last modified 12 July 2022