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Dr. Manette Appeals for Justice
Harry Furniss
1910
13.7 cm high x 9.5 cm wide, vignetted
Twenty-ninth illustration for A Tale of Two Cities in A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing XIII, 289.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.
To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.
The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?
"Openly, President."
"By whom?"
"Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine."
"Good. "Therese Defarge, his wife."
"Good."
"Alexandre Manette, physician."
A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst of it, Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated.
"President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter. My daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband of my child!" [Book Three, "The Track of a Storm," Chapter Nine, "The Game Made," 301: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]
With a program of thirty-two illustrations to complete and apparently no concern about repeating himself, Furniss offers his third study of Lucie and her father, the other two being The Shoemaker of the Bastille and Lucie and her Father under the Plane-tree. Furthermore, he has run the risk of failing to provide sufficient variety by offering yet another courtroom scene involving Charles Darnay's fate, the others being The Likeness in Court, Darnay Arrested, and Darnay Arraigned before the Judges. In each case, we have a repetition — but with some significant differences. Whereas Furniss's initial study of Lucie and her father emphasizes her caring demeanour and his utter helplessness, as in Phiz's The Shoemaker and Eytinge's Doctor Manette and His Daughter, this latter study shows Darnay's father-in-law as a man of action, an animated advocate for natural justice and the release of his daughter's husband, whereas Lucie is clearly in a supporting role here, concerned as always about her father's mental and physical well-being, but hardly a dynamic participant in the action. As opposed to the circumstances of the other courtroom scenes, Darnay himself is not sown in the frame. With a panel of animalistic jurors behind him, the Doctor rises in shock, surprise, and indignation, while his daughter clings to him, concerned for his health, and perhaps feeling that his intervention may do more harm than good at this point. The reader absorbs the illustration proleptically, and must wait a dozen pages to resolve the issue it raises: is the denunciation, as Manette asserts, a "fraud" executed by the Defarges?
Whereas in the scene of his son-in-law's rearrest, A Knock at the Door, Furniss's Doctor Manette is barely visible, as if powerless to prevent his son-in-law's being found guilty of an (as yet) unspecified charge, here Doctor Manette dominates the scene by his active, alert mind, eloquent demeanour, and vigorous gesture, all features which Furniss contrasts with the Darwinian throwbacks in the jury-box behind the elderly physician. The most obvious difference between this and previous courtroom scenes is that the noble Darnay, typically the victim of institutionalised injustice, is nowhere to be seen, a deliberate omission through which Furniss creates the impression that it is now Darnay who is marginalised and powerless to affect the course of historical events in which he has been caught u In this courtroom scene, moreover, even though Dickens has again provide a possible saviour and a possible solution (Doctor Manette here enacting the role previously taken by Sydney Carton in the Old Bailey trial, and the resolution involving the Doctor's accusation being an ingenious forgery), the posture of court, as epitomised by the ten savage, dull-witted, jurors and the curious but by no means sympathetic guard (left), is not tending towards acquittal. Thus, these subtleties in the illustration support the passage some twelve pages later in which the President of the court pronounces the accused "absolutely Dead in Law" at the very outset of the trial.
As foreshadowing Manette's crucial testimony against the Evrémondes in the letter hidden all those years in cell 105, North Tower, the Bastille, the illustration rightly shifts attention from the accused to the victims of his family's oppression. Written in the eleventh year of Manette's imprison, the letter found by Defarge is exhibited in court, as in John MacLenan's serial illustration in Harper's Weekly, 29 October 1859, This is that written paper!" as documentary evidence of the sins of the fathers. The contents of the recently discovered manuscript, read before the court, unleash a tidal wave of antipathy against Darnay that the Doctor, despite his status as a survivor of nearly two decades' incarceration in the Bastille, is powerless to stem. Although his intervention and eloquence at the previous trial had been sufficient to secure Darnay's acquittal, as the "heretofore" Marquis St. Evrémonde Darnay is by birth a marked enemy of the Revolution. Thus, although the illustration seems to offer the reader hope that Darnay will again escape the clutches of the Defarges, the slightly crazed expression of the Doctor's face reminds the reader of his ordeal as a victim of the injustice of the ancien régime and its lettres de cachet, an injustice that prompted him to curse all members of the family who had oppressed him, murdered, and raped — and through their position of privilege had never been called to account for their vicious crimes. Furniss thereby introduces a secondary source of suspense as the reader, studying the illustration before encountering the trial scene in the text, wonders whether Doctor Manette will be able to endure the emotional strain of a second trial in as many days. Furniss alerts the careful viewer to the kind of reception that Manette's plea for mercy will receive through the Neanderthal-like visages of the jury.
Whereas Barnard in his 1874 frontispiece, The Trial of Evremonde, had rightly pointed towards this scene as crucial to the final action of the novel, the Household Edition illustrator had in fact not telegraphed the outcome of the trial, let alone (as in Eytinge's frontispiece Sydney Carton and the Seamstress) that Carton would somehow substitute himself for Darnay at the eleventh hour — a deus-ex-machina known throughout the English-speaking world within months of the novel's final serial instalments on both sides of the Atlantic.
Above: Phiz's After the Sentence in the seventh monthly number (December 1859).
Left: McLenan's 29 October 1859 depiction of the revelation of the hidden letter of denunciation, "This is that written paper!". Centre: Eytinge's Doctor Manette and His Daughter (Diamond Edition, 1867). Right: Dixon's version of Darnay's re-arrest following the Defarges' denunciation, "I know you, Evrémonde!" (1905).
Above: Barnard's Household Edition illustration depicting Darnay's being led away after being found guilty at his second trial in Book Three, Chapter Nine, "As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer (1874).
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Tillotson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. IX (1859-61).
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. All the Year Round. 30 April through 26 November 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. 7 May through 3 December 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London: Collins, 1905.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 13.
Sanders, Andrew. A Companion to "A Tale of Two Cities." London: Unwin Hyman, 1988.
Created 30 December 2013
Last modified 12 January 2020