"I can bear much, but not too much." — twenty-seventh illustration by W. L. Sheppard for Dickens's "Dombey and Son" (American Household Edition, 1873)

"I can bear much, but not too much." by W. L. Sheppard. Twenty-seventh illustration for Dickens's Dombey and Son in the American Household Edition (1873), Chapter XXIX, "The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs. Chick," p. 173. Page heading: "Mrs. Chick finds her confidence has been abused." 9.3 x 13.7 cm (3 ¾ by 5 ⅜ inches) framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Mrs. Chick sees Lucretia Tox in her true colours

Phiz's July 1847 illustration covers the same theme, Mrs. Chick's "unmasking" of her erstwhile friend: The eyes of Mrs. Chick are opened to Lucretia Tox.

“I don’t wish to exchange reproaches, dear Louisa,” sobbed Miss Tox. “Nor do I wish to complain. But, in my own defence —”

“Yes,” cried Mrs. Chick, looking round the room with a prophetic smile, “that’s what she’s going to say. I knew it. You had better say it. Say it openly! Be open, Lucretia Tox,” said Mrs. Chick, with desperate sternness, “whatever you are.”

“In my own defence,” faltered Miss Tox, “and only in my own defence against your unkind words, my dear Louisa, I would merely ask you if you haven’t often favoured such a fancy, and even said it might happen, for anything we could tell?”

“There is a point,” said Mrs. Chick, rising, not as if she were going to stop at the floor, but as if she were about to soar up, high, into her native skies, “beyond which endurance becomes ridiculous, if not culpable. I can bear much; but not too much. What spell was on me when I came into this house this day, I don’t know; but I had a presentiment — a dark presentiment,” said Mrs. Chick, with a shiver, “that something was going to happen. Well may I have had that foreboding, Lucretia, when my confidence of many years is destroyed in an instant, when my eyes are opened all at once, and when I find you revealed in your true colors. [Chapter XXIX, "The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs. Chick," 173]

Commentary: Fast Friends have a Falling Out

Fred Barnard's 1877 Household Edition illustration Lucretia Tox's Reverie.

The friendship between Mrs. Chick, Paul Dombey's sister, and the old maid, Miss Lucretia Tox, comes to an abrupt end in this scene. Having installed Miss Tox in her brother's London mansion while he has been on vacation, Mrs. Chick now has to find a pretext for dismissing her:

“My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough,” remarked Miss Tox.

“It’s nothing,” returned Mrs. Chick. “It’s merely change of weather. We must expect change.”

“Of weather?” asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity.

“Of everything,” returned Mrs Chick. [170]

Louisa Chick's visit to Miss Tox early one morning, then, is far from a friendly, incidental call. Louisa announces to Louisa that her brother has returned home from his holiday, feeling not merely much better. Miss Tox is glad to hear that he is feeling much better. But now Mrs. Chick confronts the issue of her brother's remarrying:

I should have said, ‘Paul! You to marry a second time without family! You to marry without beauty! You to marry without dignity! You to marry without connexion! There is nobody in the world, not mad, who could dream of daring to entertain such a preposterous idea!’” [172]

When he returns to his London home to make arrangements to marry the beautiful, artistically accomplished Edith Granger, Lucretia Tox must have cleared out. No more comfortable sinecure for her — and certainly no prospect of her becoming the second Mrs. Dombey. Sheppard has depicted the very moment when Lucretia Tox, engaged in the stitchery that becomes a gentlewoman, hears the bad news from her haughty friend, still wearing mourning as a result of the deaths of her brother's wife and son. Her face betrays her intention to sever her connection with this inconvenient, "old" friend.

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son (1846-1910)

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 it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. L. Sheppard. The Household Edition. 18 vols. New York: Harper & Co., 1873.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1862. Vols. 1-4.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [62 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. II.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow, 1900, rpt. 1934. 2 vols. in one.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. IX.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.

Created 12 February 2022