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Sir Joseph Bowley's
John Leech
1844
Wood-block engraving by W. J. Linton
12.3 cm by 7.3 cm (4 ¾ by 2 ⅞ inches), vignetted.
Full-page illustration for Dickens's The Chimes: "The Second Quarter," 55.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby’s order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not Toby’s. ["The Second Quarter," 53]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed himself by coming incautiously out of his chair, without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind. When he had found his voice — which it took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of meat — he said in a fat whisper,
"Who’s it from?"
Toby told him.
"You’re to take it in, yourself," said the Porter, pointing to a room at the end of a long passage, opening from the hall. "Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You’re not a bit too soon; for the carriage is at the door now, and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a’ purpose."
Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and took the way pointed out to him; observing as he went that it was an awfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in the country. Knocking at the room-door, he was told to enter from within; and doing so found himself in a spacious library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very stately gentleman in black who wrote from her dictation; while another, and an older, and a much statelier gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and looked complacently from time to time at his own picture — a full length; a very full length — hanging over the fireplace.
"What is this?" said the last-named gentleman. "Mr. Fish, will you have the goodness to attend?"
Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, handed it, with great respect.
"From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph."
"Is this all? Have you nothing else, Porter?" inquired Sir Joseph.
Toby replied in the negative. ["The Second Quarter," pp. 53-56]
Leech's full-page picture of the Bowley hallway features the overfed footman (one of the poor who does gain from his master's provisions), the stairway decorated with what one presumes is a full-length portrait of Bowley (though only the lower limbs are showing), Trotty going down the straight passage-way to the library, and Bowley himself in the flesh, his wife, and his secretary Mr. Fish — the two separated by an overflowing wastebasket of discarded drafts of letters — and Trotty entering with the letter. Leech clearly understood Dickens's imagery, as he lines up three pairs of shoes on the left and two on the right — both Trotty's. Getting on in the world, getting anywhere, is largely dependent in this era on legs and feet, of humans and animals. By having Trotty appear at two different times in two different spaces in the same image, even Leech confers upon his legs an exceptional mobility. [Patten, 144]
Simultaneously in Leech's cartoon-like double image of Trotty's arrival at Bowley Hall, and prior to the dream vision, on New Year's Eve, during the course of his deliveries Trotty meets a number of social leaders. Having already encountered the ranting Tory, Alderman Cute and the political economist Mr. Filer, Trotty now delivers a message to the aristocratic land-owner and Member of Parliament Sir Joseph Bowley, an apoplectic, red-faced gentleman in a white waistcoat. These none-too-bright "authorities" reinforce the establishmentarian views of the poor that Trotty has imbibed from the daily newspapers, namely that the working class in general is born bad and destined to go wrong.
One further comment on a visual pun in this plate: as Robert L. Patten notes, a petite toe peeps out from under Lady Bowley's gown, and this is the sort of play on words and images that Leech's regular venue, Punch magazine, loved, "pettitoes being a pig's foot" (Patten, 144), as if Leech is casting a backward glance at the claws of Ignorance and Want peeping out from under the gown of Christmas Present in the Carol the year before.
Left: Charles Green's far more realistic version of Trotty's meeting the haughty functionary: Trotty and Sir Joseph Bowley's (1912). Right: Fred Barnard's The Poor Man's Friend, a study of the self-centred, pontificating Sir Joseph and his fashionably dressed, vacuous wife. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: Harry Furniss's study of Trotty's meeting the self-centred Sir Joseph and a rather overdressed, late Victorian, middle-aged Lady Bowley with lorgnette, Trotty before Sir Joseph. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes. Introduction by Clement Shorter. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Pears' Centenary Edition. London: A & F Pears, [?1912].
_____. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1844 [Printed title-page dated "1845."].
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVIII.
_____. The Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910, VIII, 79-157.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. Vol. V.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 7, "Ringing Out Change." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 127-168.
Created 20 February 2001 Last modified 18 May 2024