"Our Bore" — Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s sixteenth illustration for Dickens's for "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Reprinted Pieces" (1867)

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Our Bore

Sol Eytinge, Jr.

1867

Wood-engraving

9.9 x 7.4 cm (framed)

Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop & Reprinted Pieces (Diamond Edition), facing XII, 461.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Context of the Illustration: The 'Bore' buttonholes Charles Dickens

Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a good-hearted man. He may put fifty people out of temper, but he keeps his own. He preserves a sickly solid smile upon his face, when other faces are ruffled by the perfection he has attained in his art, and has an equable voice which never travels out of one key or rises above one pitch. His manner is a manner of tranquil interest. None of his opinions are startling. Among his deepest-rooted convictions, it may be mentioned that he considers the air of England damp, and holds that our lively neighbours — he always calls the French our lively neighbours — have the advantage of us in that particular. Nevertheless he is unable to forget that John Bull is John Bull all the world over, and that England with all her faults is England still. [460]

. . . . The instinct with which our bore finds out another bore, and closes with him, is amazing. We have seen him pick his man out of fifty men, in a couple of minutes. They love to go (which they do naturally) into a slow argument on a previously exhausted subject, and to contradict each other, and to wear the hearers out, without impairing their own perennial freshness as bores. It improves the good understanding between them, and they get together afterwards, and bore each other amicably. Whenever we see our bore behind a door with another bore, we know that when he comes forth, he will praise the other bore as one of the most intelligent men he ever met. And this bringing us to the close of what we had to say about our bore, we are anxious to have it understood that he never bestowed this praise on us. [464]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. "Our Bore." Household Words. Vol. 17. 20 July 1850.

_______. "Our Bore." The Old Curiosity Shop and Reprinted Pieces. 18 Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XII: 460-64.

Created 9 June 2020

Last modified 20 November 2020