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The Tetterbys Come to Themselves
Charles Green
1895
8 x 7.6 cm, exclusive of frame
Dickens's The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time, The Pears' Centenary Edition, V, 137.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt last night!" sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes.
"Am I a brute," said Mr. Tetterby, "or is there any good in me at all? Sophia! My little woman!"
"'Dolphus dear," returned his wife.
"I — I've been in a state of mind," said Mr. Tetterby, "that I can't abear to think of, Sophy."
"Oh! It's nothing to what I've been in, Dolf," cried his wife in a great burst of grief.
"My Sophia," said Mr. Tetterby, "don't take on. I never shall forgive myself. I must have nearly broke your heart, I know."
"No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!" cried Mrs. Tetterby.
"My little woman," said her husband, "don't. You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don't know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my little woman! —"
"Oh, dear Dolf, don't! Don't!" cried his wife.
"Sophia," said Mr. Tetterby, "I must reveal it. I couldn't rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman —"
"Mrs. William's very nearly here!" screamed Johnny at the door.
"My little woman, I wondered how," gasped Mr. Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, "I wondered how I had ever admired you — I forgot the precious children you have brought about me, and thought you didn't look as slim as I could wish. I — I never gave a recollection," said Mr. Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, "to the cares you've had as my wife, and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any with another man, who got on better and was luckier than me (anybody might have found such a man easily I am sure); and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little in the rough years you have lightened for me. Can you believe it, my little woman? I hardly can myself."
Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face within her hands, and held it there. [Chapter Three: "The Gift Reversed," 134-36]
Green here offers a scene without precedent in showing the restoration of domestic harmony between the Tetterbys. The subplot in the text ends with the husband and wife forgiving one another, a sentimental ending which probably results from their proximity to Milly Swidger ("Mrs. William"), whose benevolent influence even at a distance counteracts that of the Haunted Man and his malignant double, "The Phantom." [Dickens may have borrowed the narrative strategy of announcing the imminent arrival of the timely rescuer from Charles Perrault's tale of Bluebeard, a favourite among the stories that Dickens read as a child.]
The caption immediately below the illustration points directly towards the moment realised: "Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face within her hands, and held it there" (137, quoted verbatim from the bottom of the preceding page). The bare caption does not reveal, however, the full situation, namely that Mrs. Tetterby's disgust with the baby and dissatisfaction with her marriage and life in general (stemming from her having been exposed to Redlaw's "contagion") have resulted in a family quarrel for the previously good-natured couple. Whereas in the 1848 edition cartoonist John Leech depicts the initial situation with characteristic humour in the two chief Tettterby scenes — The Tetterbys and Johnny and Moloch (see below), he does not show the restoration scene in which the husband and wife recover their good natures and mutual affection. Through the present illustration that culminates his Tetterby plates Green may have sought to fill that gap in the narrative-pictorial sequence of the first edition, a gap which continues into the Household Edition volumes of 1876 and 1878.
Through his narrative sequence of ten Tetterby illustrations reaching closure in The Tetterbys Come to Themselves, Green consistently takes a realistic (albeit, prosaic) approach to the turmoil in the Tetterby household, showing the lower-middle class family in the round against domestic interiors with near-photographic realism. Through these scenes of domestic comedy Green does not, in the Leech manner, attempt to amuse amuse the reader, nor, in the Furniss manner, inject dramatic into the sentimental plot-line. Green's treatment here suggests that Sophia Tetterby has overcome her momentary dissatisfaction with her marriage as she gently takes her (shorter) husband Adolphus's face in both hands and warmly smiles at him — the reader must construct the expression on his face. Realistically, Green has the short man grip the arms of his chair before the fireplace (where he customarily sits to read the newspaper amidst the domestic pandemonium) to support himself as he leans forward so that his wife need not bend over to touch him. Of the sudden change in disposition of the Tetterbys, in the "Introduction" editor Clement Shorter remarks,
The boon is a curse, for recollections of unhappiness and ill-will are accompanied by memories of happiness and generous kindness. Redlaw and his associates all suffer alike. The delightful Tetterby family, usually so united, quarrel when he approaches; so do the other nice people of his environment. [10]
Left: Leech's cartoon-like study of Augustus Tetterby, Johnny, and baby sister "Moloch" in the street, Johnny and Moloch (1848). Centre: Furniss's realisation of Mrs. Tetterby's harsh treatment of Johnny, The Tetterbys' Baby (1910). Right: Leech's cramped parlour scene of Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby and their eight young children, The Tetterbys (1848).
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "The Illustrators of the Christmas Books, John Leech." Charles Dickens and His original Illustrators. Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 1981. 141-151.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
_____. The Haunted Man. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1848). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, and 365-366.
_____. The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. (1895). London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. 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.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
_____. The Haunted Man. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley. The Household Edition. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861. II, 155-300.
Created 8 September 2015
Last modified 15 April 2020