"Left Alone With Her Mother, Louisa Saw Her Lying With An Awful Lull Upon Her Face" by Harry French

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Left Alone With Her Mother, Louisa Saw Her Lying With An Awful Lull Upon Her Face

Harry French

Wood engraving

1870s

10.7 cm wide x 13.8 cm high

Illustration for Dickens's Hard Times for These Times in the British Household Edition, p. 89

Scan and text by Philip V. Allingham

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This plate depicts Louisa and Mrs. Gradgrind in the latter's bedroom at Stone Lodge (Book II, Ch. 10). Louisa becomes emotionally vulnerable after her mother's death, the moments before which are realised in Plate 13. Although French has labelled the plate "Left Alone With Her Mother, Louisa Saw Her Lying With An Awful Lull Upon Her Face" (p. 89), the moment realised seems to be a little later in the conversation, when Mrs. Gradgrind demands a pen so that she can write the name of something important that her husband has forgotten — "not an Ology at all" (II: 9) — but presumably "sympathy" or "affection." While Dickens's Mrs. Gradgrind is confused and weak, French's version, with the left hand raised in admonition, seems focussed and alert. In French's plate it is implied that she will become one not with "the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs" but rather with the comforting shades of night outside her window: the trees and grass of the small cemetery, marked by a single, white headstone. The physical situation of Stone Lodge on a moor a mile or two outside Coketown and possessing "a lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book" (I: 3) does not quite accord with the tranquil vista that serves as a memento mori.

References

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times with twenty illustrations by H. French. London: Chapman and Hall [1875?].

Created 17 April 2002

Last modified 25 December 2019