Initial letter "O" (The Casterbridge Union Workhouse) (page 257) vertically-mounted (6 cm wide by 7.6 cm high) signed "H. P." in lower-left corner. Helen Patterson Allingham, ninth thumbnail vignette illustration for Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd in The Cornhill Magazine (September 1874), Chapters 39 ("Coming Home: A Cry") through 42 ("Joseph and His Burden: Buck's Head.'") in Vol. 30: pages 257 through 280 (24.5 pages in instalment). The wood-engraver responsible for this illustration was Joseph Swain (1820-1909). [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Right: The title-page for Volume 30 of The Cornhill Magazine (1874).
The ninth initial-letter vignette, on page 257, emphasizes the architectural elements of the building, as if to suggest the aloof inhumanity of the solid-looking Victorian institution whose very prospect terrified the lower classes. As Jackson contends, the purpose of this initial-letter vignette, like most of the others in the series, is to establish a dominant mood or provide psychological revelation. The ninth vignette depicts the workhouse more cheerfully perhaps than Hardy's letter-press, omitting the dramatic moment when Fanny raises herself with a final effort to engage the bell-pull, for surely in her upright posture the erect female figure to the left of the portal can hardly be Fanny. According to Martin Ray, in The Victorian Ordnance Survey Map of Dorchester and South Dorset (began about 1800, occasionally revised up till about 1886) "The most prominent feature of Dorchester would seem to be the Union Workhouse" so that it must have been a landmark easily seen from a distance, and therefore one to which even the semi-delirious Fanny could direct her steps.
Although eight vignettes (January, March, April, May, June, August, October and November) involve individual characters active, alert, and often working, only September's architectural vignette so steeply subordinates the human figure to an external object. Indeed, one may take the subject of the September vignette as the institution of the workhouse, which seems to loom so large in the minds of both Fanny Robin and Bathsheba, who, despite their social differences, are at first objects of Frank Troy's fickle affections and ultimately victims of his obdurate pride.
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 the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Volume One: 1840-1892; Volume Three: 1903-1908, ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978, 1982.
Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. With illustrations by Helen Paterson Allingham. The Cornhill Magazine. Vols. XXIX and XXX. Ed. Leslie Stephen. London: Smith, Elder, January through December, 1874. Published in volume on 23 November 1874.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Ray, Martin. "Victorian Map of Wessex." 23 Tues., Oct., 2001. (Hyperlink "mailto:en1090@abdn.ac.uk") en1090@abdn.ac.uk
Created 12 December 2001 Last updated 27 October 2022