"I used to be handsome once." — thirtieth illustration by W. L. Sheppard for Dickens's "Dombey and Son" (American Household Edition, 1873)

"I used to be handsome once" by W. L. Sheppard. Thirtieth illustration for Dickens's Dombey and Son in the American Household Edition (1873), Chapter XXXIII, "Contrasts," p. 198. Page 199's heading: "A Very Different Visitor." 10.6 x 13.7 cm (4 ⅛ by 5 ⅜ inches) framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Introducing Alice Marwood and Harriet Carker as "Contrasts"

She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in gratitude than in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and when she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before resuming her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her clothes before the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of concern in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding the handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall down below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the blaze.

“I daresay you are thinking,” she said, lifting her head suddenly, “that I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was — I know I was — Look here!”

She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though it were a heap of serpents. [Chapter XXXIII, "Contrasts," 199]

Commentary: Quite by chance Harriet Carker and Alice Marwood meet outside London

Knowing that Dickens will develop the former Australian transportee, Alice Marwood, in the following chapters, Sheppard places her at the centre of the composition. The respectable housekeeper of clerk John Carker, his sister Harriet, is here very much a social "contrast" but also a middle-class woman with a deep sympathy for women of the underclass. Harriet, looking out her window, sees Alice shivering in the rain, and has invited the trampwoman to take shelter on her porch, but then ushers her to dry herself before the fire and eat something. The tonal contrast is as sharp as Sheppard's visual contrast, for Alice is rebellious, uncompromising, and unrepentant. After this highly coincidental meeting with Harriet Carker, the sister of the rake (the villainous James) who seduced, exploited, and abandoned Alice, the fallen woman, returned from Australia, goes to meet her mother in London. This reunion Fred Barnard realises in the 1877 British Household Edition as "She's come back harder than she went!" cried the mother (1877).

And there is no doubt that Sheppard is presenting Alice, pathetic and wide-eyed, as a reiteration of the well-known nineteenth-century type, the fallen woman, whereas Phiz, for example, had introduced the defiant Alice in Chapter 34 rejecting alms in the August 1847 illustration as something of malignant force and a social rebel. Her illegitimacy as the daughter of Mrs. Brown and Edith Granger's uncle renders her an outsider, whereas her resemblance to Edith Granger makes her a kind of doppelganger, although her very existence is unknown to the cousin whom she so much resembles. Alice will later prove instrumental in James Carker's receiving his comeuppance.

The Other Editions' Illustrations of Good Mother Brown and her wayward daughter

Left and right: Phiz introduced Alice Marwood as a social revel, and emphasized the similarity between her appearance and that of Edith Granger in The Rejected Alms (August 1847). Centre: Fred Barnard introduces Alice as a tall, stately, impressive young woman, in sharp contrast to her crone-like mother in the British Household Edition: "She's come back harder than she went!" cried the mother (1877)

Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 1867 contrasting studies of Good Mrs. Brown and her daughter, Mrs. Brown and Alice. Centre: John Gilbert's engraved frontispiece depicting the daughter's return, "It's my handsome daughter, living and come back," she screamed again. . .. Right: Harry Furniss's introduction of Good Mrs. Brown and her daughter on a blasted heath, Alice Brown and Her Mother (1910).

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son (1846-1910)

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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.

__________. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. 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. IX.

__________. 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.

Created 13 February 2022