He saw them bringing from a distance something covered. — forty-seventh illustration by W. L. Sheppard for Dickens's "Dombey and Son" (American Household Edition, 1873)

He saw them bringing from a distance something covered. by W. L. Sheppard. Forty-sixth illustration for Dickens's Dombey and Son in the American Household Edition (1873), Chapter LV, "Rob the Grinder Loses His Place," page 316. Page 315's Heading: "The Journey's End." 9.3 x 13.5 mm (3 ⅝ by 5 ¼ inches) framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Carker's Lifeless Body Carried Away from the Railway Tracks

Phiz's dramatic rendering of Carker's rapid carriage ride through France: On the Dark Road (March 1848).

And their eyes met.

In the quick unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped on to the road below him. But recovering his feet immediately, he stepped back a pace or two upon that road, to interpose some wider space between them, and looked at his pursuer, breathing short and quick.

He heard a shout — another — saw the face change from its vindictive passion to a faint sickness and terror — felt the earth tremble — knew in a moment that the rush was come — uttered a shriek—looked round — saw the red eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon him — was beaten down, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that spun him round and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his stream of life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air.

When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, he saw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and still, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some dogs away that sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up, with a train of ashes. [Chapter LV, "Rob the Grinder Loses His Place," 316]

Commentary: The Climactic Death of James Carker

Fred Barnard's version of Carker's death in the British Household Edition: He saw the face change from its vindictive passion to a faint sickness and terror (1877).

Carker races through France, and returns to England after an exhausting journey by carriage. The paranoid fugitive then stops for the night at an inn in a village to plan his next steps, fully aware that Dombey's agents are still on his trail. After a meal at the inn, Carker goes for a walk along the nearby railway tracks that were rapidly becoming a feature of English towns and villages in the 1840s. Perhaps, he reasons, escape into anonymity is just a short train ride away. Early the next morning, as he waits on a train platform, Carker suddenly detects Dombey advancing towards him. Panicking, he starts to run, but trips on the tracks, and is struck by a locomotive. In the present scene Sheppard focuses not on the accident or even the corpse, but upon on the aftermath of the accident, with a sickened Dombey on the railway platform turning away from the ghastly spectacle.

Sheppard's detailing of the scene playing out on the railway tracks, opposite the station platform in He saw them bringing from a distance something covered (1873).

In the background to the left, four railway workers transport the lifeless body. And, as is consistent with Dickens's morbid description, a pair of dogs are apparently trying to lap up the dead man's blood as another worker raises his arms to shoo them away. Then Sheppard completes the scene of Carker's shocking death by inventing appropriate details. Abundant smoke marks where the locomotive passed just minutes before. Between the rails lies the dead man's hat, somewhat flattened. Standing solicitously beside the afflicted Dombey, the uniformed platform manager asks Dombey if he can be of assistance as Dombey is obviously unwell. Meanwhile, the porter in a linen smock, holding a beverage on a tray, looks disgusted. The overall effect is reflective rather than dramatic, undercutting the sensationalism of Dickens's staccato description of Carker's poetically just demise resulting from his panic and his failure to apprehend the dangerous rapidity of the new technology. Significantly, Sheppard does not depict the passage of the locomotive (rendered rather ineffectively in Barnard's 1877 realisation of the same scene), and makes Domebey's reaction the focal point.

Dickens may have based Carker's grisly death on a celebrated railway accident: the shocking accident that befell Liverpool politician William Huskisson at Bangor on 19 September 1830, at the dawn of the Railway Age.

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

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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 27 February 2022