Uncaptioned Tailpiece
Charles Edmund Brock
1905
5.3 x 4.4cm. vignetted
Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, final page.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Context of the Tailpiece
There was a dance in the evening. With which general mention of that recreation, I should have left it alone, if I had not some reason to suppose that it was quite an original dance, and one of a most uncommon figure. It was formed in an odd way; in this way.
Edward, that sailor-fellow — a good free dashing sort of a fellow he was — had been telling them various marvels concerning parrots, and mines, and Mexicans, and gold dust, when all at once he took it in his head to jump up from his seat and propose a dance; for Bertha's harp was there, and she had such a hand upon it as you seldom hear. Dot (sly little piece of affectation when she chose) said her dancing days were over; I think because the Carrier was smoking his pipe, and she liked sitting by him, best. Mrs. Fielding had no choice, of course, but to say herdancing days were over, after that; and everybody said the same, except May; May was ready.
So, May and Edward get up, amid great applause, to dance alone; and Bertha plays her liveliest tune.
Well! if you'll believe me, they have not been dancing five minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe away, takes Dot round the waist, dashes out into the room, and starts off with her, toe and heel, quite wonderfully. Tackleton no sooner sees this, than he skims across to Mrs. Fielding, takes her round the waist, and follows suit. Old Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot in the middle of the dance, and is the foremost there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the other couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it. ["Chirp the Third," 211-212]
Commentary: A Much reduced Communal Dance
Brock reduces the spectacular choreographic community dance of the first edition, John Leech's exuberant woodblock engraving The Dance (see below) to a mere tailpiece in which he creates an unlikely dancing couple, Caleb Plummer, the middle-aged toymaker, and Tilly Slowboy, the adolescent nurse. Working in 1905, Brock actually had just this one possible model from which to conclude his extensive program of illustration for The Cricket on the Hearth. The 1845 novella lacks the illustration history which the first of The Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol (1843), has enjoyed. Although Dickens's American illustrator, Sol Eytinge, Junior had provided a study of the carrier and his family in The Peerybingles, Brock's chief source for visual antecedents for The Cricket on the Hearth was, in addition the original 1845 edition, illustrated by John Leech, Clarkson Stanfield, Richard Doyle, and Edwin Landseer, R. A. (1802-73), the the Household Edition volume which Chapman and Hall published in 1878. Barnard, the illustrator of that anthology entitled Christmass Books, did not, in fact, represent the dance at the Peerybingles'.
Left: Leech's interpretation of the dance scene in the Peerybingles' parlour after the wedding, The Dance (1845). Centre: Fred Barnard's interpretation of the concluding scene, After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling Bowl, in the 1878 illustration in the Household Edition. Right: Luigi Rossi's frontispiece to the Pears Centenary Edition anticipates the novella's finalé with Merry Christmas, in which the artist features the returned sailor, Edward Plummer, prominently among the dancers, making him almost a co-protagonist with the Carrier.
One may draw parallels between Brock's concluding tailpiece and Leech's uncaptioned thumbnail for the 1843 edition of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge and Bob Cratchit; or, The Christmas Bowl. Brock here may also be alluding to Leech's final illustration for the 1845 edition ofA Christmas Carol, The Dance (see above), in which in the lower-right register Caleb in patched breeches and tailcoat is dancing with Tilly Slowboy, awkward as ever (integrated with the text on page 173).
Brock has clothed the prancing Caleb in his threadbare suit (that is, trousers, rather breeches, matching the tailcoat), and describes Tilly as wearing a full-length pinafore rather than an apron, skirt, and blouse. The style of the composition is consistent with that of Brock's opening line-drawing, Engraved Title-page: John, Dot, the Baby, domestic realia — the cricket, with the animated dancers replacing the domestic trio (a "Holy Family" for The Hungry Forties) in the centre of the page. Despite a plot that uncomfortably approaches an adultery gambit before retreating from it, Brock tries to end on a harmonious, seasonal note as he had done for the first story in the volume, A Christmas Carol, with "I am about to raise your salary!".
As with many of the plates in Brock's thirteen-part program, he has neither informing context nor backdrop; rather, the reader must again consult the text to determine what is happening in the illustration. Although the two are holding hands as in Leech's 1845 illustration, Brock has the dancing couple advancing towards the viewer, and Tilly seems much more light of foot. Moreover, rather than looking at each other, they seem to be looking towards the blank space at the bottom of the page and therefore signalling the end of the story, with its closing line "and nothing else remains" (212). As is consistent with the Leech illustration, the figures are mere caricatures, rather than, as in Rossi's much more elaborate rendition of the scene, Merry Christmas (see above), a fully dressed theatrical set and the entire cast present for their curtain call.
Above: Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 pen-and-ink drawing transferred to lithograph, Tackleton's Wedding Day! (1910).
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. X.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.
_____. A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth, illustrated by C. E. [Charles Edmund] Brock. London: J. M. Dent, 1905; New York: Dutton, rpt., 1963.
_____. Christmas Stories, illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_____. The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, and Edwin Landseer. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1845.
_____. The Cricket on the Hearth. Illustrated by L. Rossi. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
Created 15 October 2015
Last modified 12 June 2020