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Bob Cratchit, grieving his son's death
Harold Copping
1924
Lithographic reproduction of line drawing
5 by 2 ⅞ inches (12.9 x 7.5 cm)
From Children's Stories from Dickens, p. 51.
The illustration anticipates the death of the pretty child by three pages, occurring ironically in the midst of the family's welcoming Tim and Bob home from church. [Commentary continued below.]
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Upstairs, the father, with his face hidden in his hands, sat beside a little bed, on which lay a tiny figure, white and still. "My little child, my pretty child," he sobbed, as the tears fell through his fingers on to the floor. "Tiny Tim died because his father was too poor to give him what was necessary to make him well; you kept him poor," said the dream-spirit to Mr. Scrooge. The father kissed the cold, little face on the bed, and went down-stairs, where the sprays of holly still remained about the humble room; and taking his hat, went out, with a wistful glance at the little crutch in the corner as he shut the door. Mr. Scrooge saw all this, but, wonderful to relate, he woke the next morning feeling as he had never felt in his life before. ["Tim Tim," in Children's Stories from Dickens, 53]
This is one of those rare instances in which the illustrator has isolated the figure of Bob Cratchit, and the only instance of his lamenting the death of his little boy. In Children's Stories from Dickens the illustrator thus injects a pathetic scene in the middle of the text's description of the homecoming and the start of the Cratchits' Christmas dinner, moments that other illustrators have favoured. This alternation of sad and happy scenes conforms to what Dickens himself termed "streaky bacon" scene construction so common in British authors' capitalising on Victorian sentimentality.
Although Dickens's stories did much to invest Christmas with its popular emotional content, they were part of a general resurgence of nostalgia for traditional observance of the holidays. . . . [Hewett & Axton, 31]
Left: Fred Barnard's cheerful composite woodblock engraving for the British Household Edition, He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant (1878). Centre: Eytinge's interpretation of the scene in which the family welcomes Bob home, Bob Cratchit at Home. Right: The same artist's interpretation of the Cratchit family Christmas dinner, with Bob in the centre: The Wonderful Pudding (1868).
Left: Barnard's photogravure version of Bob and Tim's return from church, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Right: E. A. Abbey's American Household Edition woodblock engraving: "Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the feast!" (1876).
Left: Charles Brock's 1905 engraving of the Cratchit family's enthusiastically welcoming the arrival of the dessert course, "Oh, a wonderful pudding!". Right: Charles Green's rather less exuberant realisation of the Camden Town festivities suggestive of the Dickenses' own in Charles's youth: Christmas Day at Bob Cratchit's (1912).
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story for Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London, Paris, New, York: Raphael Tuck, 1911.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.
Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris, New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
5 October 2023