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Little Nell
Harold Copping
1893
Colour lithography
Approximately 7 by 5 inches (17.9 x 12.6 cm) framed.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
This image from the Gilded Age depicts a philosophical, melancholy young adolescent in place of the conventional child-heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop, illustrated by the "Clock Works Team" of George Cattermole and Hablot Knight Brown (1840-41). [Commentary continued below.]
Scanned image, caption, and commentary below by Philip V. Allingham
Full of these meditations, she reached the church. It was easy to find the key belonging to the outer door, for each was labelled on a scrap of yellow parchment. Its very turning in the lock awoke a hollow sound, and when she entered with a faltering step, the echoes that it raised in closing, made her start. [Chapter LIII in the novel]
It was a secluded village, lying among the quiet country scenes Nell loved. And here, her grandfather being tranquil and at rest, a great power fell upon the spirit of the child. Often she would steal into the church, and sitting down among the quiet figures carved upon the tombs, would think of the summer days and the bright spring time that would come; of the rays of sun that would fall in, aslant those sleeping forms; of the songs of birds, and the sweet air that would steal in. What if the spot awakened thoughts of death? It would be no pain to sleep amid such sights and sounds as these. [Mary Angela Dickens, pp. 142-143]
Harold Copping in 1893 offers a golden retrospective of the hallowed figure of Little Nell. He gives her the attire of a respectable, middle-class young woman of the late Victorian period. Despite her having travelled hundreds of miles from London through the Black Country on foot and by barge, a contemplative Nell appears fashionably dressed in an immaculate gown. There is no vestige in her clear skin, well-groomed appearance, and spotless bonnet of the Hungry Forties that were the original context for the serial illustrations of Phiz and Cattermole. Instead, Copping provides a paean to chaste Victorian maidenhood, again appealing to a readership yearning for the good, old days before the Industrial Revolution. The light from the stained-glass window plays upon her hair and face, as if Copping is creating a subtle halo, and the tombs in the background are just slightly out of focus, forcing the eye forward to the slender figure of the pensive adolescent.
Left: Charles Green's parallel Household Edition illustration: The child sat down in the old,silent place (1876). Centre: Thomas Worth's American Household Edition illustration of Little Nell surveying the tombs in the old church: He showed her how the warrior had worn those rotting scraps of armor (1872). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Left: Harry Furniss's final illustration focuses on Grandfather Trent's grief instead of Nell's beautiful corpse: The Death of Little Nell (1910). Centre: Thomas Worth's emotional scene of parting between the grandfather and the dying Nell: She turned to the old man with a lovely smile upon her face (Chapter LXXII). Right: George Cattermole's celebrated image of the heroine finally at peace: At Rest (Nell dead). Part 39. 30 January 1841 in serial publication (seventy-third plate in the series) in Master Humphrey's Clock.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman and Hall, 1841. Rpt., 1849 by Bradbury and Evans (3 vols. in 2).
_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Thomas Worth. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Bros., 1872. I.
_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.
Created 25 January 2022