"Copperfield's Domestic Troubles" — Furniss's twenty-fifth illustration for Dickens's "David Copperfield" (Charles Dickens Library Edition, vol. X, 1910)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Henry Furniss —> David Copperfield —> Next]

Copperfield's Domestic Troubles

Harry Furniss

1910

13.4 x 9.3 cm (5 ¼ by 3 ¾ inches).

When we had been married about a year and a half, e gave up the housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page. — Copperfield, p. 692.

Dickens's The Personal History and Experience of David Copperfield, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing X, 688.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image 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: David's Servant Problemss

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page. The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook; in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper occasions,—as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in the evening,—and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very much attached to us, and wouldn’t go. He was a tearful boy, and broke into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother — no anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands; and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum, was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew—and he grew like scarlet beans — with painful apprehensions of the time when he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey. I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he was an old man. [Chapter XLVIII, "Domestic," pp. 692-693]

Commentary: Showcasing Dora's Domestic Incompetence

The nominal subject, if we may judge from Furniss's caption, is David's relationship with his page. However, Furniss's principal figures are Dora and Jip. Thus, the illustration is really an extension of Dora Lamentable Shortcomings in Housekeeping in Chapter 44. The insertion of a comic scene after unravelling the mystery of Aunt Betsey's failed marriage in My Aunt and Her Secret in Chapter 47 once again demonstrates that Furniss is emulating Dickens's "streaky bacon" plot construction, alternating serious and lighter scenes. The picture in the tenth volume of the Charles Dickens Library Edition occurs immediately ahead of Aunt Betsey's encounter in the letterpress with her estranged husband in the garden of her cottage in Chapter 47.

The lithograph shows that, despite the page's incapacity, the house seems a bit tidier, undoubtedly thanks to David rather than his indolent wife. She would rather spend her time playing with her spaniel than engaged in such standard domestic activities as sewing, as Furniss admirably suggests by the deplorable disorganisation of her sewing box in the foreground. At this point in his life, eighteen months into his first marriage, David is becoming a novelist, so that he is achieving self-actualization outside his chaotic domestic circumstances, just as young Charles Dickens must have done in 1838, after his marriage to Catherine Hogarth on the 2nd of April in St. Luke's Church, Chelsea. The opening of this chapter in the novel, like Furniss's illustration, certainly smacks of the autobiographical. In the background, we may reasonably assume that David, clad in his dressing-gown, is discussing giving notice, and that the small servant is breaking into "deplorable lamentations," rubbing his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket and preparing to blow his nose into his handkerchief. David gesticulates and bends forward, as if to emphasize his grounds for complaint. Dora, meanwhile, remains engaged in training Jip (rather than managing the servants!), and utterly oblivious to the domestic melodrama playing out behind her.

Relevant Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)

Hablot Knight Browne's Forty steel engravings for the Chapman and Hall Edition (May 1849 through November 1850)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York Sheldon & Co. edition (Vol. 1, 1863)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York Sheldon & Co. edition (Vol. 2, 1863)
Sir John Gilbert's Frontispiece in the New York Sheldon & Co. edition (Vol. 3, 1863)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York Sheldon & Co. edition (Vol. 4, 1863)
Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 wood engravings for the fourteen-volume Ticknor & Fields Diamond Edition, Vol. V (1867)
Fred Barnard's 62 Composite Woodblock Engravings for the Household Edition (1872)
Clayton J. Clarke's (Kyd's) Watercolours and Player's Cigarette Card Designs (1889)

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Cordery, Gareth. "Remaking Miss Mowcher's Acquaintance." Dickens Quarterly 29, 1 (March 2012): 11-31.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield, illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. London & New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911. 2 vols.

_______. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. V.

_______. David Copperfield, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. III.

_______. The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. X.

Hammerton, J. A., ed. The Dickens Picture-Book: A Record of the the Dickens Illustrations. London: Educational Book, 1910.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978.

Created 19 March 2022