"Know him!" repeated the landlord. "Ever since he was no height at all."
John McLenan
11.4 cm high by 11.5 cm wide (4 ½ by 4 ½ inches), vignetted
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V (29 June 1861): 414.
This is Plate 30 (facing p. 232) in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition (1861).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long and dreary to me, who could see little of it inside, and who could not go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put up at an inn of minor reputation down the town, and ordered some dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Satis House and inquired for Miss Havisham; she was still very ill, though considered something better.
My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and I dined in a little octagonal common-room, like a font. As I was not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining bald head did it for me. This bringing us into conversation, he was so good as to entertain me with my own story,—of course with the popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortunes.
“Do you know the young man?” said I.
“Know him!” repeated the landlord. “Ever since he was — no height at all.”
“Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?”
“Ay, he comes back,” said the landlord, “to his great friends, now and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him.”
“What man is that?”
“Him that I speak of,” said the landlord. “Mr. Pumblechook.”
“Is he ungrateful to no one else?”
“No doubt he would be, if he could,” returned the landlord, “but he can’t. And why? Because Pumblechook done everything for him.”
“Does Pumblechook say so?”
“Say so!” replied the landlord. “He han’t no call to say so.”
“But does he say so?”
“It would turn a man’s blood to white wine winegar to hear him tell of it, sir,” said the landlord.
I thought, "Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Long-suffering and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered Biddy!" [Chapter LII, 414. July 9, 32nd instalment in AtYR, but the June 29th or 31st instalment in Harper's]
Essentially a comic, caricatural illustrator, McLenan recognized an opportunity for an ironically humourous scene as the unknowing landlord retails the local perspective about Pip's lack of appreciation of Pumblechook. The dialogue presents Pip to himself as the epitome of ingratitude.
The scene again suggests Dickens's "streaky bacon" construction as it is sandwiched in between preparations for Magwitch's escape and Pip's dangerous misadventure at the lime kiln. Back once again in the marsh country, Pip puts up for the night at a local inn "of modest distinction." But he is now too sophisticated, too "classy," or at least too class-conscious to stay at The Three Jolly Bargemen, the public house where he might run into some of his erstwhile cronies who are now beneath him. And so the scene is the coffee-room of the inn that caters to upper-middle-class travellers: The Blue Boar.
Whatever is Pip doing back here anyway? Having made preparations for Provis's escape to the Continent on the Rotterdam steamer, Pip ought to be in London, making preparations and securing travel documents. In fact, with his arm in a sling from burns incurred when he tried to assist Miss Havisham when she caught fire, Pip cannot practice his rowing. And he has just received an anonymous note summoning him back to the marshes to receive some mysterious communication about Magwitch.
On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found a letter in the box, directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not ill-written. It had been delivered by hand (of course, since I left home), and its contents were these:—
“If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or to-morrow night at nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better come. If you want information regarding your uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with you.” [Chapter LII, 414]
Ominously, Pip has been instructed to come alone and to tell nobody about the actual purpose of his trip home; he is to bring the note, not leave it in his London rooms. In the note he leaves for Herbert, Pip says he is making a quick trip home by coach to check on Miss Havisham's recuperation. He is now installed in the inn after having checked on Miss Havisham.
The brilliance of the scene lies not in its red-nosed, bibulous waiter, but in the situational irony of the waiter's criticizing Pip for ingratitude, oblivious to the fact that he is in fact addressing Pip. It is therefore not just in clothing that Pip is quite different from the blacksmith's apprentice who left the village just six years earlier. He is more polished, more genteel, more of a "gentleman." As he assists the young Londoner in cutting his meat (not in evidence in McLenan's illustration) the bald-pated landlord tells Pip how Pumblechook made a young man’s fortune, not realizing that Pip is his interlocutor. The landlord states how the young man has poorly repaid Pumblechook for his "great expectations" in London by giving him the cold shoulder. When he comes down, says the landlord, he only sees his "fine friends" at Satis House. Pip reflects on how Joe has never complained, and feels guilty that he has neglected Joe and Biddy, with whom of course he could have met, but for his gentlemanly pretentions.
Above: F. A. Fraser's Household Edition illustration of the same scene: "Him that I speak of, Mr. Pumblechook," said the landlord (1876). [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.
_______. "'We Can Now See That the Days of Illustrated Novels Were Drawing to an End' — Not So." The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 3, pp. 6-7.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vol. IV-V (24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861).
______. ("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. Household Edition in 22 volumes. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Vol. XI.
Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins eds. Dickens's Great Expectations in The Annotated Dickens. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. II: 822-1115.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Watts, Alan S. "Why Wasn't Great Expectations Illustrated?" The Dickens Magazine. Haslemere, Surrey: Bishops Printers. Series 1, Issue 2, pp. 8-9.
Waugh, Arthur. "Charles Dickens and His Illustrators." Retrospectus and Prospectus: The Nonesuch Dickens. London: Bloomsbury, 1937, rpt. 2003. Pp. 6-52.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 16 November 2021
