"That is a black shadow to be following the girl," said Steerforth, standing still; "What does it mean?" 1872. Twenty-third illustration by Fred Barnard for the Household Edition of David Copperfield (Chapter XXII, "Some Old Scenes and Some New People," p. 153). 9.5 x 13.8 mm (3 ⅝ by 5 ⅜ inches), a dark plate, framed. Headline for p. 153: "Mr. Barkis Under a Different Aspect." [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]

Passage Illustrated: Another Mysterious Figure

I thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.

She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.

Suddenly there passed us — evidently following them [Ham and Em'ly] — a young woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.

"That is a black shadow to be following the girl," said Steerforth, standing still; "what does it mean?"

He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.

"She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think," said I.

"A beggar would be no novelty," said Steerforth; "but it is a strange thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight."/p>

"Why?" I asked.

"For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking," he said, after a pause, "of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil did it come from, I wonder!"

"From the shadow of this wall, I think," said I, as we emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted.

"It’s gone!" he returned, looking over his shoulder. "And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner!" [Chapter XXII, "Some Old Scenes and Some New People," 162]

Commentary: Introducing the Figure of Martha Endell, The Fallen Woman

The original serial illustrations for this chapter in the December 1849 (eighth) instalment, I make the acquaintance of Miss Mowcher and Martha, have little to do with this ephemeral scene that Dickens introduces, when Steerforth and David are walking out to dinner along the Yarmouth sands. Barnard captures the twilight moment in his program's only dark plate in order to intensify the sense of mystery. This type of plate, as Barnard was well aware, rose to its apogee with Phiz's suspenseful heavily ruled dark plate engravings for Mervyn Clitheroe (1851-58) and Bleak House (March 1852 through September 1853), in which he employs this intense, mezzotint-like form for a quarter of his monthly illustrations. A pertinent example by Phiz in his Copperfield illustrations is the melodramatic would-be suicide in the steel-engraving associated with the novel's "fallen woman," Em'ly's fellow seamstress Martha Endell: The River (August 1850). When Em'ly gives her fellow-apprentice the travel money, Martha goes to london, where she becomes a prostitute. However, she regains the reader's respect by helping Dan'l Peggotty prosecute his search for the book's other Fallen Woman, Em'ly, and eventually emigrates to Australia with the Peggottys and Micawbers.

The effect here is highly atmospheric as Barnard has a sliver of a moon temporarily emerge from a dark bank of clouds to create a sudden chaiaroscuro on the North Sea as the wind-blown female figure passes swiftly by the silhouettes of Steerforth (in nautical cap) and the more bourgeois-attired David (in top-hat) on Great Yarmouth's celebrated sandy beach, on a spit between the sea and the River Yare.

Related Material: Dark Plates for Ainsworth, Dickens, and Lever (1851-59)

Other Illustrated Editions of this Novel (1849 through 1910)

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

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Centenary Edition. 2 vols. London and New York: Chapman & Hall, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

_______. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. V.

_______. David Copperfield. With 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. III.

_______. The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. X.


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Created 14 June 2009

Last modified 28 July 2022