"I did love him!" cried Rosa, with a flash of anger.
Harold Hume Piffard
circa 1900
12 cm high by 7.7 cm wide (4 ⅝ by 3 inches)
Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, facing p. 257.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"I did love him!" cried Rosa, with a flash of anger. — Harold Hume Piffard's fourth lithograph for Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the Collins Pocket Edition, referencing page 262. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Illustrated: Rosa receives an unwanted visitor in the gardens of The Nuns' House
After several times forming her lips, which she knows [John Jasper] is closely watching, into the shape of some other hesitating reply, and then into none, she answers: “Duty, sir?”
“The duty of teaching you, serving you as your faithful music-master.”
“I have left off that study.”
“Not left off, I think. Discontinued. I was told by your guardian that you discontinued it under the shock that we have all felt so acutely. When will you resume?”
“Never, sir.”
“Never? You could have done no more if you had loved my dear boy.”
“I did love him!” cried Rosa, with a flash of anger.
“Yes; but not quite — not quite in the right way, shall I say? Not in the intended and expected way. Much as my dear boy was, unhappily, too self-conscious and self-satisfied (I’ll draw no parallel between him and you in that respect) to love as he should have loved, or as any one in his place would have loved — must have loved!”
She sits in the same still attitude, but shrinking a little more. [Chapter XIX, "Shadow on the Sun-dial," 262]
Commentary: Rosa Bud fends off John Jasper's unwanted advances
Again Piffard uses the small-scale lithograph to describe the meeting of two characters, indeed, two of the book's principal characters, the Cloisterham school-girl Rosa Bud, beloved by a number of young men including (hopelessly) Neville Landless, and the slightly sinister cathedral music-master, John Jasper, uncle of Edwin Drood. Six months have passed since Edwin's disappearance, and the ensuing scene makes it clear that John Jasper may have had a motive for wishing his nephew out of the way: the choir-master is desperately in love with Rosa.
Always apprehensive of Jasper, Rosa elects to receive him in the garden of the Nuns' House rather than in a private room. They can be easily seen from the windows of the Jacobean building, but still, when Jasper tries to touch her hand, Dickens tells us that she immediately recoils. Her discomfort is evident in Luke Fildes' version of this scene, Jasper's Sacrifices. Here, on the other hand, she appears relaxed and self-confident. Nor is she shown reacting with "fire and animation" (263) to Jasper's proposal to resume her musical instruction with him. For his part, Jasper seems neither wicked nor menacing. He is, however, shown importuning her in front of the sun-dial, suggestive of the passing of youth and beauty appropriate to the sudden disappearance of his beloved nephew. Both characters are, as the text stipulates, in mourning attire, except for Rosa's straw garden-hat. Her "still attitude" in this illustration also fails to indicate any response to Jasper's implication that she did not really love Edwin — although it is true that the couple had agreed that they did not love one another enough to marry.
Relevant Illustration of this meeting from the First Edition (originally, Sept. 1870)
Above: Luke Fildes's earlier illustration emphasizes the importunate nature of the gentleman-caller and the melodramatic aversion of Rosa in Jasper's Sacrifices (Chapter XIX).
Bibliography
Cohen, Jane R. "Chapter 18: Luke Fildes." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 221-234.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories. Illustrated by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A. London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 193, Piccadilly. 1880.
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories, illustrated by Harold Hume Piffard. LOndon & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, circa 1904.
Created 1 July 2022