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Passage Illustrated: A Second Body Washed Ashore at Yarmouth

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.

"Sir," said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, ‘will you come over yonder?"

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me:

"Has a body come ashore?"

He said, "Yes."

"Do I know it?’ I asked then.

He answered nothing.

But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children — on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind—among the ruins of the home he had wronged — I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school. [Chapter LV, "Tempest," 799]

Commentary: Furniss foregrounds David as Observer of Steerforth's End

Once again, David finds himself in Yarmouth, his mission to deliver a letter to Ham from Em’ly, who is emigrating to Australia to escape her shameful past and make a new start, leaving her former fiancé, Ham, behind. As David approaches the port, he encounters high winds, and, by the time he arrives, a veritable tempest has struck the coast. Putting up at the inn, David goes down to the shore to see the storm for himself, but learns that Ham has gone to a nearby village. Overnight the sea rises, and David awakens to learn that a wreck has come ashore. The ship in distress is not a coaster, but a schooner from Spain or Portugal. Since the Yarmouth lifeboat can make no progress in the high surf, Ham, who has just returned from Lowestoft, agrees to wade through the surf with a rope wrapped around him to connect him to the shore. Before he can reach the vessel in distress, it suddenly breaks up, killing him. Shortly afterward a body is washed ashore, and David recognizes Ham, whose body is transported to a nearby cottage. The picture captures the climactic moment when the locals have led David, the Londoner clad in bourgeois fashion, to see a second corpse on the rocks. David takes off his hat in deference, recognizing in the face and posture his old school friend, James Steerforth, who had been the determined figure in the red Wollen toque clinging to the mast of the floundering schooner.

Whereas in Phiz's original October 1850 engraving I am the bearer of evil tidings David announces the death of Steerforth to his mother and Rosa Dartle at Highgate very much after the fact, in the Furniss sequence we see David's initial response to a second significant death in as many hours. In order to connect the scene with the idyllic childhood scenes of David and Em'ly on this part of the beach at Yarmouth Furniss has inserted the Peggotty houseboat to the right. So vicious has the storm been that only the ribs of the Iberian schooner are intact, as if to reflect David's earlier description: "The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up" (798). The illustrator has also added a detail not in the text: the scavengers from the town are already sorting through what the storm has washed up.

Realisations of News of the Deaths of Ham and Steerforth (1850 and 1872)

Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition realizes the death of Ham, not of Steerforth: They drew him to my very feet — insensible — dead. (1872). Right: Phiz's original version of the scene in which David's announces Steerforth's death to his mother and Rosa Dartle: I am the bearer of evil tidings (October 1850).

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.

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Created 23 March 2022