Milly Puts Everything to Rights once more by Charles Green. 1895. 7.6 x 10 cm, exclusive of frame. Dickens's The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time, Pears Centenary Edition (1912), in which the plates often have captions that are different from the short titles given in the "List of Illustrations" (15-16). For example, the series editor, Clement Shorter, has used a direct quotation that illustrates how Milly is welcomed by her husband and father-in-law after she corrected the problems created by Redlaw's Phantom for the poor student, Swidgers, and Tetterbys, "Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran into her husband's arms, thrown wide open to receive her" (143, quoted from the bottom of the next page). The illustration and its caption, however, fail to communicate how Milly represents "the wisdom of the heart," which the story, like the novel Hard Times (1854), shows is stronger than the wisdom of the head.
The Passage Illustrated
When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his chair in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his son was leaning against the opposite side of the fire-place, looking at him. As she came in at the door, both started, and turned round towards her, and a radiant change came upon their faces.
"Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me like the rest!" cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstasy, and stopping short. "Here are two more!"
Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran into her husband's arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and he would have been glad to have her there, with her head lying on his shoulder, through the short winter's day. But the old man couldn't spare her. He had arms for her, too, and he locked her in them. ["Chapter Three: The Gift Reversed," Pears Centenary Edition, 143-44]
Commentary
With his thirty illustrations, Green filled the gaps in the series of original illustrations by depicting Milly as both a spirit of love, in contrast to the baleful Phantom, and an actual young woman married to William Swidger, the butler of the old college. The seventies illustrators of the British and American Household Editions of The Christmas Books, Fred Barnard and E. A. Abbey, offered fresh ideas and realised situations that their predecessors had not, and Green often responds directly to the text rather than to earlier illustrations of for the Pears Centenary Edition of The Haunted Man .
Previous illustrators depicted Milly Swidger, the heroine of the last stage of the story, as the "Angel in the House" whose beneficent influence ultimately counteracts the dreadful "gift" of Redlaw's Phantom or baneful double, in juxtaposition with such figures as the poor student, "Denham," in Frank Stone's Milly and the Student and Milly and the Children (see below) of the Tetterby family. Milly as the embodiment of kindness and compassion counteracts the contagion which Redlaw's Phantom has spread to almost any whom his mortal double has encountered.
In the penultimate illustration in his extended sequence for the novella, Green refines the original artists' conceptions of Milly's character. Green has depicted her as kind but very human, then as the spirit restoring the benevolent effects of memory, and finally, once again, as a tender-hearted young wife. Barnard had dealt with this scene in his Household Edition illustrations with a sentimental scene between William and his aged father, Philip that totally excluded the benign spirit who has corrected all the problems caused by the Phantom. In his somewhat staged scene, Green restores Milly to a central place in the action as she and her jocular husband William, butler of the Old College, now hold centre stage. In contrast to Barnard, Green marginalizes old Philip in his armchair (left), and keeps the black-caped figure of Professor Redlaw, right, well in the background. The theatrical composition may have been inspired by a stage production; however, the only production that this London artist could possibly have seen occurred over thirty years earlier, at The Old Adelphi in August, 1873. This production is plausible as an influence, however, as Green, born in 1840, would have been only thirty-three at the time; that he died in May 1898 suggests that he had prepared the entire sequence of illustrations for The Christmas Books earlier in the decade, even though Pears issued only his Carol illustrations in its Christmas annual during his lifetime (1892).
Relevant illustrations from the 1848 and 1910 Editions
Left: Stone's elegant realisation of Milly's saintly nature, Milly and the Children. Centre: Barnard's sentimental-comedic interpretation of the scene that ensues when Milly returns, "What a wonderful man you are, Father! — And how are you, Father? Are you really pretty hearty, though?" said William, shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, and rubbing him gently down again. Right: Harry Furniss's angular beauty ministering to the sick student in Milly (1910) is not a particularly spiritual type. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Illustrations for the Other Volumes of the Pears' Centenary Christmas Books of Charles Dickens (1912)
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter [1912]
- A Christmas Carol (28 plates) Vol. I (1892)
- The Chimes (31 plates) Vol. II (1894)
- L. Rossi's The Cricket on the Hearth (22 plates) Vol. III (1912)
- The Battle of Life (28 plates) Vol. IV (1893)
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bolton, Philip H. "The Haunted Man (1848)." Dickens Dramatized. London and Boston: Mansell and G. K. Hall, 1987. 302-5.
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 9 September 2015
Last modified 13 April 2020