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Ornate initial capital "I"
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
13 February 1841
2.6 x 2.8 cm. vignetted
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Bradbury & Evans single-volume edition of December 1849, Chapter One, 229.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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IN the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London — measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore — a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew. [Initial-letter for the first monthly number: Chapter the First, 229]
Phiz's elegant miniature complements George Cattermole's design of The Maypole (13 February 1841) in Master Humphrey's Clock. This ornamental initial letter "I" depicts a traditional Maypole dance — interrupted, apparently, by an alien visitor of reptilian aspect (a netaphor for the "unsociable stranger," Old Rudge). The initial-letter vignette, therefore, comments upon the disconcerting arrival of an apparent outsider at The Maypole Inn's taproom, as depicted in the next regular illustration.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz and George Cattermole. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury and Evans, 1849.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XIV. Barnaby Rudge." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. 213-55.
Vann, J. Don. "Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February 1841-27 November 1841." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 65-6.
Last modified 28 November 2020