[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> John McLenan —> Illustrations of Great Expectations —> Next]
"Pip, how are you, Pip?"
John McLenan
23 March 1861
11.5 cm by 11.3 cm wide (4 ½ inches square)
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly V (Instalment 17): 181.
Plate 19 (facing p. 131) in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition (1861).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming upstairs, — his state boots being always too big for him, — and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors in the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper — such was the compromising name of the avenging boy—announced “Mr. Gargery!” I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.
“Joe, how are you, Joe?”
“Pip, how AIR you, Pip?”
With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them straight up and down, as if I had been the last-patented Pump.
“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”
But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way. [Instalment 17, Chapter XXVII, 181]
What David Paroissien terms a violation of "hat etiquette" occurs when Pip attempts to take Joe's hat as he enters the apartment. "To well-bred men, mastery of hat etiquette was almost as important as knowing how to use a knife properly" (237). Joe's awkwardness in insisting upon retaining his hat "with both hands," his obvious clumsiness, and his repeated use of dialectal expressions which betray his "uncouth," rural origins embarrass Pip. However, the true gentleman, Herbert Pocket, affects not to notice these faux pas. McLenan emphasizes the difference in the social standing of the country blacksmith and the young-man-about-town by attiring Pip in an expensive silk dressing-gown. The presence behind the door of Pip's impertinent and inconvenient servant further underscores Pip's gentlemanly status. His nickname for the boy, "The Avenging Phantom," despite in elegant servant's livery (top boots, a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, and creamy breeches) may seem decidedly odd, but in fact probably reflects Pip's recently reading Mary Shelley's fashionable Romantic novella Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). The servant, as Paroissien notes, is an ostentatious creation on Pip's part, just as Pip transformed into a society gentleman is Magwitch's.
Above: F. A. Fraser's "tea-time for Joe with Pip and Herbert": "Do you take tea or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" (Household Edition). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. IV and V (1860-61).
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
______. Great Expectations. "With 28 Original Plates by Harry Furniss." Volume 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (18 vols). London: Educational Book Co., 1910.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 24 November 2021