Decorative Initial "Y" and vignette — initial wood-engraving by George du Maurier for The Cornhill Magazine edition of Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta, Volume XXXII (July 1875), page 1. 5.8 cm wide by 7.6 cm high (3 ½ by 2 ½ inches), vignetted. Engraver Joseph Swain. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Passage Realised: Ethelberta studies a pond on the heath near Anglebury
The lady whose appearance had asserted a difference between herself and the Anglebury people, without too clearly showing what that difference was, passed out of the town in a few moments and, following the highway across meadows fed by the Froom, she crossed the railway and soon got into a lonely heath. She had been watching the base of a cloud as it closed down upon the line of a distant ridge, like an upper upon a lower eyelid, shutting in the gaze of the evening sun. She was about to return before dusk came on, when she heard a commotion in the air immediately behind and above her head. The saunterer looked up and saw a wild-duck flying along with the greatest violence, just in its rear being another large bird, which a countryman would have pronounced to be one of the biggest duck-hawks that he had ever beheld. The hawk neared its intended victim, and the duck screamed and redoubled its efforts. [Chapter 1, "A Street in Anglebury — A Heath near — Inside The ‘Old Fox Inn,’" page 6]
Commentary
The vignette underscores the significance of both the rural, Wessex setting and the fashionably dressed young woman who will be the novel's protagonist. Although the text focusses the reader's attention on "Young Mrs. Petherwin" (1), the vignette clearly presents a situation as Ethelberta studies the birds above the lake — a situation that occurs much later in the first chapter. Thus, du Maurier shows both the figure whom Hardy initially describes and then (proleptically, so to speak) anticipates the scene outside Anglebury, on the heath, where shortly Ethelberta will become disoriented as dusk comes on.
In the program of eleven full-page illustrations and eleven initial-letter vignettes, Ethelberta Petherwin dominates, appearing in exactly half of the twenty-two illustrations — and in ten of the eleven full-page plates.
Related Material
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "The Only Artist to Illustrate Two of Thomas Hardy's Full-length Novels, The Hand of Ethelberta and A Laodicean: George du Maurier, Illustrator and Novelist." The Thomas Hardy Year Book, No. 40" Hardy's Artists. 2012. 54-128.
Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. The Cornhill Magazine. Vol. XXXII (1875).
Hardy, Thomas. The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters. Intro. Robert Gittings. London: Macmillan, 1975.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Page, Norman. "Thomas Hardy's Forgotten Illustrators." Bulletin of the New York Public Library 77, 4 (Summer, 1974): 454-463.
Sutherland, John. "The Cornhill Magazine." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989. 150.
Vann, J. Don. "Thomas Hardy (1840-1928. The Hand of Ethelberta in the Cornhill Magazine, July 1875-May 1876." in Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 83.
Created 16 January 2008
Last updated 18 December 2024