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He looked up at me.
Fred Barnard
1879
Composite woodblock-engraving by the Dalziels
14 cm high by 10.7 cm wide (5 ⅞ by 4 ¼ inches), framed
Seventh illustration for Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens, Book III, chap. iv, p. 101.
Full caption: "He looked up at me; gave himself an odd, dogged kind of shake; and fixed his eyes on his book again."
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
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.]
"There is a prison in this same city, and indeed in the same building, where prisoners for grave offenses await their trial, and to which they are sent back when under remand. It sometimes happens that a man or woman will remain here for twelve months, waiting the result of motions for new trial, and in arrest of judgment, and what not. I went into it the other day: without any notice or preparation, otherwise I find it difficult to catch them in their work-a-day aspect. I stood in a long, high, narrow building, consisting of four galleries one above the other, with a bridge across each, on which sat a turnkey, sleeping or reading as the case might be. From the roof, a couple of wind-sails dangled and drooped, limp and useless; the sky-light being fast closed, and they only designed for summer use. In the centre of the building was the eternal stove; and along both sides of every gallery was a long row of iron doors—looking like furnace-doors, being very small, but black and cold as if the fires within had gone out.
"A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking fellow, and, in his way, civil and obliging." (I omit a dialogue of which the substance has been printed, and give only that which appears for the first time here.)
"'Suppose a man's here for twelve months. Do you mean to say he never comes out at that little iron door?'
"'He may walk some, perhaps — not much.'
"'Will you show me a few of them?'
"'Ah! All, if you like.'
"He threw open a door, and I looked in. An old man was sitting on his bed, reading. The light came in through a small chink, very high up in the wall. Across the room ran a thick iron pipe to carry off filth; this was bored for the reception of something like a big funnel in shape; and over the funnel was a watercock. This was his washing apparatus and water-closet. It was not savory, but not very offensive. He looked up at me; gave himself an odd, dogged kind of shake; and fixed his eyes on his book again. I came out, and the door was shut and locked. He had been there a month, and would have to wait another month for his trial. 'Has he ever walked out now, for instance?' 'No.' . . .
"'In England, if a man is under sentence of death even, he has a yard to walk in at certain times.'
"'Possible?' [Book the Third. — America. Chapter IV, "Philadelphia and The South. 1842," pp. 99-100]
This scene in American Notes stands out among the incredibly varied experiences of the writer on his first American reading tour, and has been the subject of a number of illustrations which underscore the solitary prisoner's despair in an institution that prided itself on its "enlightened" solitary system. Long before his initial trip to the United States in 1842 to write yet another travelogue by an Englishman abroad directed to English travellers, Dickens had expressed deep sympathies for those incarcerated without hope of release. Doubtless, his own childhood experiences in the blacking warehouse at Hungerfords Stairs, London, during his father's imprisonment in the Marshalsea for debt have contributed to his deep sympathy for the solitary system inmates at Philadelphia's Solitary Prison. Certainly, this would seem to be an unlikely spot for British tourists, even if Dickens were pursuing a sociological agenda akin to that of his predecessor, Mrs. Trollope, in her Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832).
What distinguishes this inmate from the many others that Dickens has presented in works as various as the sketch "A Visit to Newgate" (1836), "The Italian Prisoner" (1860), Little Dorrit (1855-57), Dr. Manette in the early chapters of A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Chapter 21 of The Pickwick Papers (November 1836) is the suspicious but penetrating glance of the solitary reader directed at both the turnkey, the visitor, and (by implication) Dickens's readers — and the tiny, barred window that offers so littlelight for reading. Despite the isolation that he has endured, the American prisoner here seems far more mentally composed and physically presentable than Barnard's version of the Bastille Prisoner in the eighth volume of the Household Edition (1874).
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Barnard, Fred, et al. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney [and others] printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman & Hall, 1908. Page 566.
[The copy of the book from which these pictures were scanned is in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.]
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. XIII.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872 and 1874. 3 vols.
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.
Created 10 September 2009
Last modified 30 December 2024