[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Dickens's A Holiday Romance —> Sir John Gilbert —> Next]

Passage Realised: THe Obstinate Boys attend a "Small Juvenile Party"

The company began to come. The first of them was a stout boy, with a white top-knot and spectacles. The housemaid brought him in and said, "Compliments, and what time was he to be fetched?" Mrs. Alicumpaine said, "Not a moment later than ten. How do you do, sir? Go and sit down." Then a number of other children came; boys by themselves, and girls by themselves, and boys and girls together. They didn't behave at all well. Some of them looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, "Who are those? Don't know them." Some of them looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, "How do?" Some of them had cups of tea or coffee handed to them by others, and said, "Thanks! Much!" A good many boys stood about, and felt their shirt-collars. Four tiresome boys would stand stand in the door-way, and talk about the newspapers. . . .

There was a children's band, — harp, cornet, and piano, — and Mrs. Alicumpaine and Mrs. Orange bustled among the children to persuade them to take partners and dance. But they were so obstinate! [261]

Commentary: Another Role Reversal

No wonder, then, that the child-hosts, Mrs. Alicumpaine and Mrs. Orange, find that these "children are very wearing" (261). Without the clarifying illustration readers might miss the fact that the "children" are high-society adults in evening-wear. The hosts find them intransigent, "vexing," and "trying." Readers, however, find Dickens's joke wearing thin.

As is the case with the wood-engravings in the new illustrated British magazines for adults, these four full-page illustrations for the four-part A Holiday Romance in Ticknor-Fields' Our Young Folks provide caricature, costume, mood, background detail, and physical setting while remaining faithful to the spirit of the accompanying text. But whereas many British magazines proved to have longevity because large-scale circulations more than compensated publishers for the cost of illustration, Our Young Folks incurred such high costs by commissioning first-rate illustrators such as Gilbert and paying well the leading British and American authors such as Thomas Hughes of Tom Brown's Schooldays and Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame, that the children's magazine lasted only nine years, ceasing publication in 1873.

When A Holiday Romance appeared later in 1868 in Dickens's own All the Year Round, it did so without benefit of any illustration. And British readers were unlikely to have seen the fourth volume of Our Young Folks because the 1842 British copyright act forbade the importation of re-printings of works by British authors published outside the British Isles.

Other plates by Gilbert

• Redforth and The Pirate-Colonel
• Princess Alicia in the Kitchen
• The Pirate-Colonel and His Captive

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Dickens's A Holiday Romance by John Gilbert, Sol Eytinge, and G. G. White as these appeared in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. IV." Dickensian 92, 1 (Spring 1996): 31-47.

Cunnington, Phillis, and Anne Buck. Children's Costume in England 1300-1900. London: Adams and Charles Black, 1965.

Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV. Boston: Ticknor Fields, January-May, 1868. Rpt. All the Year Round, 1868.

Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. Ed. Gillian Avery. Everyman Dickens. London: J. M. Dent; Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1995.

Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.

---

Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

Holiday
Romance

Sir John
Gilbert

Next

Created 19 April 2002

Last modified 29 January 2023