Captain Boldheart and a whale — otherwise known as Initial Letter Vignette "T", first page of text for Part 3 of A Holiday Romance in Ticknor-Fields' Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV (p. 193), April 1868. Wood-engraving, 3.7 cm high by 8.9 cm wide (1 ½ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted. Left: The entire page.
Passage Introduced by the Initial Letter "T"
The subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted himself to the pirate profession at a comparatively early age. We find him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns loaded to the muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honour of his tenth birthday.
It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a Latin-grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of honour to another.— Not getting it, he privately withdrew his haughty spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket-pistol, folded up some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of Spanish liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour.
It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through the commencing stages of his story. Suffice it, that we find him bearing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner ‘The Beauty,’ in the China seas. It was a lovely evening; and, as his crew lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following melody. . . . [Part Three, "Romance. From the Pen of Lieut.-Col. Robin Redforth," 266]
Commentary: Boldheart as a Miniature Captain Ahab
Eytinge whimsically starts the "Boldheart" tale with the hero as a miniature Captain Ahab singlehandedly towing a harpooned leviathan back to his jubilant crew aboard the Beauty. The whale may indeed be a deliberate visual allusion to Melville's Moby Dick, published in 1851.
In an era which (as Herman Melville asserted Moby Dick) believed the accusation that the hunting of whales would lead to their extinction an absurdity, the picture of Boldheart as a miniature Captain Ahab was doubtless engaging . . . . The harpoon is an inoffensive stick, there is no gore, and a merry seabird accompanies the rowing figure. In short, there is little drama and certainly no conflict in the charming vignette, which captures well Dickens's narrative tone in describing 'the deafening cries of "Boldheart! Boldheart" with which he was received' (194) by his men, to whom he presented this prize worth over £2.000. [Allingham, 41]
Other Initial-letter Vignettes by Eytinge
- The Abduction: Initial-Letter Vignette 'T'
- Princess Alicia: Initial Letter 'T'
- Mrs. Orange and Mrs. Lemon: Initial-Letter Vignette 'T'
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.]
Bibliography
Allingham, Philip V. "The Original Illustrations for Dickens's A Holiday Romance by John Gilbert, Sol Eytinge, and G. G. White as these appeared in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. IV." Dickensian 92, 1 (Spring 1996): 31-47.
Cunnington, Phillis, and Anne Buck. Children's Costume in England 1300-1900. London: Adams and Charles Black, 1965.
Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV. Boston: Ticknor Fields, January-May, 1868. Rpt. All the Year Round, 1868.
Dickens, Charles. A Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. Ed. Gillian Avery. Everyman Dickens. London: J. M. Dent; Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1995.
Created 19 April 2002
Last modified 29 January 2023