Ornamental Title Page
Charles Green
1912
14 x 11.5 cm, vignetted
Dickens's The Battle of Life, The Pears' Centenary Edition, IV.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enamelled cup fill high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate color from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses’ hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun. ["Part the First," 15-16]
Commentary: How Illustrators Indicated the Remains of Past Warfare
Several illustrations in the 1846 edition, such as Clarkson Stanfield’s War (see below), imply that the battle in question occurred during the seventeenth-century English Civil War. In contrast, Green’s title-page vignette depicts a scene from the fifteenth-century War of the Roses. This historical setting of the vignette seems strange given that Green's own fourth illustration, a thumbnail of the kind of light armour worn roundhead cavalry, An old dinted corselet, and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long on page 19, clearly indicates that he knew that the book begins with a flashback to the battles of the 1640s between Royalista and Parliamentarians and not those of the earlier period.
Unlike other illustrators, Fred Barnard’s in the 1878 Household Edition both establishes the historical setting and the relationship between the past conflict and the tranquil present. The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits of metal . . . (see below) thus shows the conflict was one in which the combatants wore full armour. It also conveys the sense of wonder that grips the present-day villagers when a plough unearths an artefact from that battle. In the original 1846 narrative-pictorial sequence, Stanfield underscores this difference through two highly effective landscape scenes, War (see below) and its complement, Peace (see below). Daniel Maclise’s allegorical title-page in the 1846 edition depicts angelic or Blakeian adversaries: a mediaeval warrior with butterfly wings brandishes a broadsword in one hand and raises a spear surmounted by a banner in the other while standing over the body of a devilish adversary — another figure has batwings. The central figure’s butterfly wings perhaps refer to the passage in which "The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings."
Relevant Illustrations from the 1846and 1878 Editions
Left: Daniel Maclise's engraved title-page, showing a psychomachia in progress: The Battle of Life: A Love Story (1846). Centre: Marine-painter Stanfield's description of the landscape near the village immediately after the 17th c. slaughter, War. Right: Stanfield's description of the same field, a century later, under cultivation, Peace)1846).
Above: Barnard's wood-engraving of the villagers' reaction to thediscovery of another relic of the battle, The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits of metal . . . (1878).
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Battle of Life: A Love Story. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846.
_____. The Battle of Life: A Love Story. Illustrated by John Leech, Richard Doyle, Daniel Maclise, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1846). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.
_____. The Battle of Life. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. 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 Co., 1910.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Created 6 May 2015