"Joe Indites a Note to Biddy" by Harry Furniss — twenty-sixth regular illustration for "Great Expectations"

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Joe Indites a Note to Biddy

Harry Furniss

1910

13.7 cm by 8.9 cm (5 ⅜ by 3 ½ inches), framed

Pip lay in bed watching Joe set about his letter. At the writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles, he sat down to his great work, tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crowbar or a sledge-hammer — p. 461.

Dickens's Great Expectations, Illustrated Library Edition, facing p. 440.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Realised: Joe's Literacy Skills Prove Useful

There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in it.

Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crow-bar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin; and when he did begin he made every downstroke so slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every upstroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block; but on the whole he got on very well indeed; and when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various points of view, as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction. [Chapter LVII, pp. 441-442]

Commentary: A Shift in Perspective

necessarily most of Furniss's twenty-eight illustrations have required a shift in perspective because he has attempted as much as possible to include Pip in the frame; indeed, he is the most frequently occurring figure in the series. But here the caption, a much condensed form of the text in Chapter 57, underscores how Furniss has shifted the narrative point-of-view from first- to third-person.Pip in the background, recovering from his fever and his arm still in a sling from Orlick's assault, studies Joe. Furniss thuis draws our attention to Joe's having acquired the literacy skills necessary to write Biddy an account of his trip to London to tend to Pip.

In what was the penultimate instalment of the serialised novel Pip regains consciousness, and discovers that Joe has been nursing him through long weeks of recuperation. This is Furniss's way of closing the story of Pip, Joe, and Biddy, as Furniss devotes the ultimate illustration to the resolution of the romantic plot, Estella and Pip, in what was the final serial instalment of the novel. The illustrator depicts Joe as much shaggier and older, but still vigorous and physically fit as he contorts himself into a writing posture at a desk that is somewhat too small for him. All the elements of Pip's sophisticated London lifestyle (paitings, books, and elegant furnishing) surround Joe, whose ungainly figure seems strangeky out of place, despite his respectable, middle-class clothing.

Relevant Illustration from the Harper's Weekly Series

Above: John McLenan's version of Joe writing to Biddy back at the forge: Joe now sat down to his great work — (27 July 1861): 479.

Other Artists’ Illustrations for Dickens's Great Expectations

Edward Ardizzone (2 plates selected)
H. M. Brock (8 lithographs)
J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (2 lithographs from watercolours)
Felix O. C. Darley (2 plates)
Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood engravings)
Marcus Stone (8 wood engravings)
John McLenan (40 wood engravings)
F. A. Fraser in the Household Edition (1876) (30 wood-engravings)
Frederic W. Pailthorpe (21 lithographs)
Charles Green (10 lithographs)

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by John McLenan. [The First American Edition]. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vols. IV: 740 through V: 495 (24 November 1860-3 August 1861).

______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.

______. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1862. Rpt. in The Nonesuch Dickens, Great Expectations and Hard Times. London: Nonesuch, 1937; Overlook and Worth Presses, 2005.

_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XIII.

______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.

_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Frederic W. Pailthorpe with 17 hand-tinted water-colour lithographs. The Franklin Library. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: 1979. Based on the Robson and Kerslake (London) edition, 1885.

______. Great Expectations. The Gadshill Edition. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: Chapman and Hall, 1898.

______. Great Expectations. The Grande Luxe Edition, ed. Richard Garnett. Illustrated by Clayton J. Clarke ('Kyd'). London: Merrill and Baker, 1900.

______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.

Created 16 February 2007

Last updated 25 October 2021