"The Wedding-Day" — frontispiece by W. L. Sheppard for Dickens's "Dombey and Son" (American Household Edition, 1873)

The Wedding-Day by W. L. Sheppard. Initial illustration for Dickens's Dombey and Son in the American Household Edition (1873), facing the title-page. 13.2 x 19.6 cm (5 ¾ by 7 ¾ inches) framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Context of the Illustration

The pastry-cook has done his duty like a man, though, and a rich breakfast is set forth. Mr. and Mrs. Chick have joined the party, among others. Mrs Chick admires that Edith should be, by nature, such a perfect Dombey; and is affable and confidential to Mrs. Skewton, whose mind is relieved of a great load, and who takes her share of the champagne. The very tall young man who suffered from excitement early, is better; but a vague sentiment of repentance has seized upon him, and he hates the other very tall young man, and wrests dishes from him by violence, and takes a grim delight in disobliging the company. The company are cool and calm, and do not outrage the black hatchments of pictures looking down upon them, by any excess of mirth. Cousin Feenix and the Major are the gayest there; but Mr Carker has a smile for the whole table. He has an especial smile for the Bride, who very, very seldom meets it.Cousin Feenix rises, when the company have breakfasted, and the servants have left the room; and wonderfully young he looks, with his white wristbands almost covering his hands (otherwise rather bony), and the bloom of the champagne in his cheeks.

“Upon my honour,” says Cousin Feenix, “although it’s an unusual sort of thing in a private gentleman’s house, I must beg leave to call upon you to drink what is usually called a — in fact a toast.

The Major very hoarsely indicates his approval. [Chapter XXXI, "The Wedding," pp. 184-185]

Commentary

The frontispiece looks ahead to the mid-point of the novel, Chapter XXXI. Even though the opening chapter introduces readers to Fanny Dombey on what proves to be her deathbed, Sheppard underscores for readers the scene in which Mr. Dombey celebrates a second marriage to a very different sort of bride. All in white, Edith Granger (far right) in this initial illustration may seem as compliant as her predecessor, but she proves a challenge for the widower, a resistant wife who utterly changes the trajectory of what was originally a nineteen-part novel. Although Dombey (centre) and Miss Lucretia Tox to the left of Dombey will shortkly become familiar figures to the reader, the others appear much later: the fatuous Major Joseph ("Joey") Bagstock and the rhetorical Regency beau Cousin Feenix, for example.

This large-scale wood-engraving complements, as if were, Phiz's depiction of the arrival of the bride at her residence immediately after the wedding. The gathering for the wedding breakfast is a group of unremarkable members of the middle-class. The expensive and fashionable clothing of the guests, the lavish table setting, the enormous mirror, and the ornate wedding cake (left rear) all imply the conspicuous consumption of the extremely wealthy bourgeois groom. By the time that the Household Edition readers encountered the scene 185 pages into the novel, they would probably have taken a moment to go back to the frontispiece to identify the various guests, creating an analeptic reading, that is, one that depends upon the reader's reverting to an illustration after encountering its textual equivalent. We can be certain that Sheppard was thoroughly familiar with both the plot and the characters before he even started work on the Harper and Brothers' commission.

As Dickens states, the wedding company are 'cool and calm,' and no out-of-place mirth, ribaldry, or even enthusiasm intrudes. Mr. and Mrs, Chick (Dombey's sister) are the demure couple seated opposite the toastmaster. Other elderly women in wedding-party finery are Miss Skewton (whom Sheppard has identified by the Champagne bottle in front of her) and Miss Tox, seated prominently in the left foreground. The smiling, well-tonsured guest looking down (right) is almost certainly the ever-smiling John Carker, the novel's villain: "Mr. Carker has a smile for the whole table" (pp. 184-185). The text implies that Carker is seated next to the bride, Edith, who occupies the prominent position at the head of the table, right. Although Sheppard cannot show the glow of the Champagne on Cousin Feenix's cheeks, he comments upon him by giving him a fashionably slender form and a nutcracker face: mutton got up as lamb. As in the text, in the picture he is the only one standing as the former Member of Parliament proposes the toast to the bride. Since Cousin Feenix bows to Dombey halfway through the toast, the groom is likely the man with the receding hairline seated beside Major Bagstock at the opposite end of the table from his bride.

Relevant Illustrations from Other Editions (1846-1912)

Left: Phiz's iconic scene of the recently married Dombeys: Coming home from Church (July 1847). Right: Eytinge's description of the astute bride and her scheming mother, Edith and Mrs. Skewton (1867).

Left: Fred Barnard's British Household Edition version of the Dombeys' wedding day, In a firm, free hand the bride subscribes her name in the register (1877). Right: Harry Furniss's version of the original scene by Phiz, The Departure of Mr. Dombey and his bride (1906).

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son (1846-1924)

Scanned image and text 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 it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. L. Sheppard. The Household Edition. 18 vols. New York: Harper & Co., 1873.

_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1862. Vols. 1-4.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.

_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [62 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. Vol. II.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son> Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow, 1900, rpt. 1934. 2 vols. in one.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 9.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.

"Dombey and Son — Sixty-two Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.

Created 22 December 2021