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Dolly is the Bearer of a Love Letter
As Emma hastily broke the seal and became absorbed in its contents, Dolly’s eyes, by one of those strange accidents for which there is no accounting, wandered to the glass again.
Harry Furniss
1910
14.5 cm x 9.2 cm (5 ¾ by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing VI, 152.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
As Emma hastily broke the seal and became absorbed in its contents, Dolly’s eyes, by one of those strange accidents for which there is no accounting, wandered to the glass again. She could not help wondering whether the coach-maker suffered very much, and quite pitied the poor man. [Chapter XX, 156]
To circumvent Mr. Haredale's banishing him from The Warren and all communication with his niece, Emma, Edward Chester has enlisted the aid of Dolly Varden. Phiz has described Dolly's fashionable travelling dress according to Dickens's verbal portrait in the previous chapter, where, in fact, the illustration of Emma and Dolly has been situated:
As to Dolly, there she was again, the very pink and pattern of good looks, in a smart little cherry-coloured mantle, with a hood of the same drawn over her head, and upon the top of that hood, a little straw hat trimmed with cherry-coloured ribbons, and worn the merest trifle on one side — just enough in short to make it the wickedest and most provoking head-dress that ever malicious milliner devised. And not to speak of the manner in which these cherry-coloured decorations brightened her eyes, or vied with her lips, or shed a new bloom on her face, she wore such a cruel little muff, and such a heart-rending pair of shoes, and was so surrounded and hemmed in, as it were, by aggravations of all kinds. [Chapter XIX, 151]
Again, Furniss seems to be alluding as much to the 1874 Household Edition volume as to the original serial illustrations. Furniss, however, minimizes the background detail and does not emphasize eighteenth-century fashion as Barnard did in Emma Haredale and Dolly Varden (1874). Furniss's focus is the sharp contrast in the characters of the two young women as he makes Emma a more intellectual type compared to the vain, self-absorbed Dolly, whose preneeing is explained by the text, for Furniss has not included a mirror.
Above: Phiz's version of the same scene, showing the mirror into which Dolly looks admiringly: Reading the Love-Letter (24 April 1841).
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz and George Cattermole. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury and Evans, 1849.
_______. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. VI.
Created 24 May 2020
Last modified 16 December 2020