"Jiddy! Jiddy!" by Thomas Nast, in Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy and American Notes (1877), Chapter IX, "A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. — Virginia Road and a Black Driver. — Richmond. — Baltimore. — The Harrisburg Mail, and a Glimpse of the City. — A Canal-Boat," 338. Wood-engraving, 4 ⅛ by 5 ¼ inches (10.4 cm high by 13.4 cm wide), vignetted. Descriptive headline: "Delightful Situation of Richmond, Virginia" (339).
Context of the Illustration: A topsy-turvey traffic accident
The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them; and in the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can’t be found again for some time.
But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, "We have done this often before, but now I think we shall have a crash." He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise: but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur.
Black Driver (to the horses). "Hi!"
Nothing happens. Insides scream again.
Black Driver (to the horses). "Ho!"
Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.
Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer.
Black Driver (still to the horses). "Jiddy! Jiddy!"
Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a bank; so steep, that the black driver’s legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses),
"Pill!"
No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind.
Black Driver (louder than before). "Pill!"
Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach rolls backward.
Black Driver (louder than before). "Pe-e-e-ill!"
Horses make a desperate struggle.
Black Driver (recovering spirits). "Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!"
Horses make another effort.
Black Driver (with great vigour). "Ally Loo! Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!"
Horses almost do it. [Chapter IX, "A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. — Virginia Road and a Black Driver. — Richmond. — Baltimore. — The Harrisburg Mail, and a Glimpse of the City. —; A Canal-Boat," 338]
Illustrations for this chapter in other editions (1867, 1868, and 1880)
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s cartoon-like treatment of a Negro wagon-driver as a species of Black minstrel, The Black Driver (1867). Eytinge offers no interpretation of slavery or the American Negro in the novel, and renders him a purely comic character. Centre: Marcus Stone's indignation a America's race relations is evident in Black and White (1868). Right: Stone appeals to Victorian sentimentality in The Little Wife (1868). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: A. B. Frost's less humorous and more documentary approach as suggested in In the Cabin of the Canal Boat (British Household Edition, 1880). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Related Materials
- Charles Dickens, the traveler — places he visited
- Charles Dickens, 1843 daguerrotype by Unbek in America; the earliest known photographic portrait of the author
Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary 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 in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.] Click on the image to enlarge it.
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Chapter IX, "A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. — Virginia Road and a Black Driver. — Richmond. — Baltimore. — The Harrisburg Mail, and a Glimpse of the City. — A Canal-Boat." Pictures from Italy, Sketches by Boz and American Notes. Illustrated by Thomas Nast and Arthur B. Frost. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877 (copyrighted in 1876). 336-42.
_______. Chapter IX, "A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia Road and a Black Driver. Richmond. Baltimore. The Harrisburg Mail, and a Glimpse of the City. A Canal-Boat." American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by J. Gordon Thomson and A. B. Frost. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. 313-29.
Created 24 May 2019
Last modified 12 June 2020