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But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman
John McLenan
1 December 1860
11.4 cm high by 8.9 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ½ inches) framed
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly IV (1 December 1860): 765.
[Magwitch alone on the marshes, attempting to remove his manacle] Plate 4 in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
— But this man” — he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there — “did you notice anything in him?”
“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew I knew.
“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.
“Yes, there!”
“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of his gray jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him down, like a blood-hound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy.”
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going. [Chapter III Continued, 765]
On the same broadsheet page (765 in Volume IV) the reader of the periodical encountered the convict's sawing away at his fetters amidst the overgrown vegetation of the marshes near the old battery (presumably from the Napoleonic Wars) in the upper-left, and Pumblechook, respectably dressed Pip, and his crone-like older sister in "Oh, Un-cle Pum-ble-chook! This is kind!" in the lower right. The juxtaposition is telling as it contrasts the outlaw, the felon escaped from transportation and forced to sleep rough, outside and homeless, and his unwilling accomplice, fashionably dressed for a bourgeois festival indoors with his family, unpleasant though they may be. McLenan might have chosen to place Pip in the upper frame, but deliberately chose to depict Magwitch as a social isolate, a man on the run, approaching the condition of a hunted animal: like a runaway slave, in fact.
Left: Pip and the Convict (1867), frontispiece for the Diamond Edition by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Centre: In the British Household Edition illustrator F. A. Fraser introduces the action with Magwitch's asking for Pip's assistance: "And you know what wittles is?" (1876). Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithographic depiction of the initial encounter is far more violent and sensational: Pip's Struggle with the Escaped Convict, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. 14.
Left: F. W. Pailthorpe's "Terrible Stranger in the Churchyard." Right: H. M. Brock's "I made bold to say 'I am glad you enjoy 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. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV.
______. ("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.
Dillard, Leigh G., and Nancy M. West. "Miss Havisham on the Home Front: Literary Nationalism, Great Expectations, and Harper's Weekly." Nineteenth-Century Studies 26 (2012): 195-218.
Dillard, Leigh G. "A Transatlantic Vision: Drawing Great Expectations in its American Context: Paper presented at the Tenth Annual Dickens Society of America Symposium. Springfield Technical Community College. Session Three: "Sound and Sight." Springfield, MA; 15 October 2005.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 7 July 2005 Last updated 13 November 2021