[Mrs Verner enters] — an Illustration for ‘Verner’s Pride’ by Charles Keene

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[Mrs Verner enters]

Charles Keene

27 December 1862

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain.

5 x 4 inches

Fifteenth illustration for Mrs Henry Wood’s Verner’s Pride in Once a Week 8 (10 January 1863): 71.

See commentary below.

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Mrs Henry Wood (homepage)

Scanned image reproduced from DMV1, code VP001. Text by Simon Cooke.

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This proleptic illustration leads the reader/viewer from the opening of the instalment (p.71) to a domestic scene in the kitchen (p.77), the moment when Mrs Verner comes in. Keene characteristically makes his own interpretation of the scene. Mrs Verner is described by Wood as ‘like a bedecked skeleton’ with a ‘thin’ and ‘wasted’ arm and a face ‘ghastly’ and ‘wan’ (p.77). This effect is only partly re-inscribed in the image. Keene retains the servant’s surprised response, but gives no sense of her supposed ugliness: such grotesque material has no place in his inherently well-mannered art, and he focuses here more on the incongruity of the scene (with a vast showy dress intruding into a humble setting) than on the character’s physical infirmities. Far from being unpleasant to look at, she is another of Keene’s beauties, converted into an ornamental object by her costume.

Last modified 10 May 2014