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"Then it's somebody wanting to see us both."
Robert Barnes
6 February 1886 (Serial Part Six)
Composite Woodblock Engraving
17.6 cm high by 22.8 cm wide — 6 ¾ by 8 ¾ inches
Dickens's The Mayor of Casterbridge, Chapter XIII, p. 161.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
See below for passage illustrated and commentary.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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This situation began to be very awkward, and the longer she waited the more awkward it became. To emerge from a door just above his head and descend the ladder, and show she had been in hiding there, would look so very foolish that she still waited on. A winnowing machine stood close beside her, and to relieve her suspense she gently moved the handle; whereupon a cloud of wheat husks flew out into her face, and covered her clothes and bonnet, and stuck into the fur of her victorine. He must have heard the slight movement for he looked up, and then ascended the steps.
“Ah — it’s Miss Newson,” he said as soon as he could see into the granary. “I didn’t know you were there. I have kept the appointment, and am at your service.”
“O Mr. Farfrae,” she faltered, “so have I. But I didn’t know it was you who wished to see me, otherwise I —”
“I wished to see you? O no — at least, that is, I am afraid there may be a mistake.”
“Didn’t you ask me to come here? Didn’t you write this?” Elizabeth held out her note.
“No. Indeed, at no hand would I have thought of it! And for you — didn’t you ask me? This is not your writing?” And he held up his.
“By no means.”
“And is that really so! Then it’s somebody wanting to see us both. Perhaps we would do well to wait a little longer.” [Chapter XIV, in serial 162; in volume, 111]
Elizabeth-Jane receives a note asking her to meet the writer at a granary; she assumes the note is from [her stepfather] Henchard and goes there. Farfrae approaches and she climbs in the granary so as not to meet him alone. Farfrae hass received a duplicate of her note. Neither can imagine who has summoned them, but they fall into conversation. [Wright, 209]
The notes to Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane whose origins prove spurious are but another aspect of the popular fiction of the 1870s known as the Sensation Novel, whose chief practitioners were Wilkie Collins, M. E. Braddon (Hardy's editor, in this case), and Mrs. Henry Wood. Hardy's first venture into commercial fiction had been in fact a Sensation Novel, Desperate Remedies (Tinsely, 1870). Moreover, in its serial form, The Mayor of Casterbridge was a Sensation variant, the Bigamy Novel. One of the chief features of such a novel was misdirected or bogus correspondence. Hardy later solves the mystery he has posed here and which Barnes's illustration underscores when he indicates that the sender was Susan Henchard, who had hoped such a meeting would advance her daughter's relationship with the highly eligible bachelor. She is anxious about Elizabeth's continued position under Henchard's roof should she die, for her recent conversation about the colour of her daughter's hair as an infant has alerted her to the fact that, after her death, she ought to have left a note explaining to Henchard that the present Elizabeth-Jane is in fact Newson's daughter, not his. This plot secret, if brought untimely to light, could entirely disrupt "The Mayor's New Household" (Chapters XIII through XVII) and blight Elizabeth-Jane's prospects.
Barnes's job, then, is to make the moment realised as credible as possible. He manages his task through significant background details about the rendezvous as well as by the puzzled and serious expressions on the faces of Elizabeth-Jane, with bonnet and umbrella suitable for an outdoor excursion, and Farfrae, holding up a small piece of paper. The large burlap bag in the left foreground suggests the site of the arranged meeting, the granary on Durnover Hill, whose other outbuildings appear in the background, a farmyard. The gloomy sky supports the prognostication that rain is imminent, and that, if the pair have come out without their umbrellas, they may have to wait in the shed until the squall passes over. One may certainly quibble about Barnes's giving Elizabeth-Jane an umbrella since Farfrae's offer in the chapter's last paragraph indicates she has come out without one: ". . . Farfrae, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in no manner of hurry to be gone. 'Ah — now I'll go and get ye an umbrella,' he said."
Allingham, Philip V. "A Consideration of Robert Barnes' Illustrations for Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as Serialised in the London Graphic: 2 January-15 May, 1886." Victorian Periodicals Review 28, 1 (Spring 1995): pp. 27-39
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Graphic 33 (2 January-15 May 1886).
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge: A Story of a Man of Character. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1895.
Jackson, Arlene. "The Mayor of Casterbridge: Realism and Metaphor."Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Pp. 96-104.
Wright, Sarah Bird. "The Mayor of Casterbridge. Thomas Hardy A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 2002. Pp. 207-216.
Created 28 July 2001
Last modified 23 February 2025