"The Penitent's Return" — Furniss's third lithograph for Dickens's "Master Humphrey's Clock" (1910)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Henry Furniss —> Barnaby Rudge & Master Humphrey's Clock —> Next]

The Penitent's Return

Harry Furniss

1910

13.9 x 9 cm, framed

Dickens's Master Humphrey's Clock, completes Vol. 6 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition; facing page 21.

Yes, there she was, — there, in the chamber he had quitted, — there in her old innocent, happy home, so changed that none but he could trace one gleam of what she had been,—there upon her knees, — with her hands clasped in agony and shame before her burning face.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images 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.]

Passage Illustrated from an occasional short story

He hastened down, and opening it saw by the light of a lamp which he had seized upon the way, a female figure crouching in the portal. It hurried swiftly past him and glided up the stairs. He looked for pursuers. There were none in sight. No, not one.

He was inclined to think it a vision of his own brain, when suddenly a vague suspicion of the truth flashed upon his mind. He barred the door, and hastened wildly back. Yes, there she was, — there, in the chamber he had quitted, — there in her old innocent, happy home, so changed that none but he could trace one gleam of what she had been, — there upon her knees, — with her hands clasped in agony and shame before her burning face.

"My God, my God!" she cried, "now strike me dead! Though I have brought death and shame and sorrow on this roof, O, let me die at home in mercy!" ["The Clock Case: The First Night of the Giant Chronicles" — "The Penitent's Return," 21]

Commentary

Although series editor J. A. Hammerton has selected for reprinting fourteen from among the various articles, stories, and essays that appeared in Master Humphrey's Clock but were in no way associated with either of the weekly periodical's serial novels, Furniss illustrates only four. In contrast to his highly specific treatment of the narrator in the ink-and-wash frontispiece, Furniss shows Dickens's narrator, the elderly cripple, Master Humphrey, in only one of the four illustrations in the 1910 edition, entitled Mr. Pickwick examining the Clock as a visual preface to "Mr. Pickwick's Tale," which has absolutely nothing to do with either of the Clock's two novels, but harkens back to Dickens's initial picaresque novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Dickens apparently envisaged publishing such short stories as contributions by Pickwick and Sam Weller.

In Furniss's first illustration for the uncollected pieces from the Clock, Master Humphrey contributes a story supposedly told as the first of the Giant Chronicles by one the giants in the London Guild Hall, Magog, to his junior, Gog, a period piece set in London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This was to be the first of a series of stories set in London's storied past and narrated by the Guildhall giants (reproduced in 1708 after their destruction in the Great Fire of 1660). The present figures in the Guildhall date from only 1953, since the early eighteenth-century facsimiles were destroyed in the Blitz in 1940. Dickens abandoned the Giant Chronicles after this first outing.

Related Material: Dickens and the Short Story

Bibliography

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 Clock Case: The First Night of the Giant Chronicles." Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. VI, 14-26.

Created 24 December 2019