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Defarge
Harry Furniss
1910
13.4 cm high x 7.6 cm wide, vignetted
Fourth illustration for A Tale of Two Cities in A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing XIII, 33.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man. [Book One, Chapter Five, "The Wine-shop," 9: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]
Apparently a number of illustrators underestimated the role and importance to the revenge plot of the phlegmatic St. Antoine publican Ernest Defarge, outwardly a modest businessman, but actually an implacable enemy of the Old Regime and an dedicated revolutionary — a "Jacque." On the other hand, in this careful study of Defarge Furniss recognizes his significance as a force to be reckoned with, underscoring Dickens's description several pages earlier with Defarge's massive forearm and critical gaze. In signalling the importance of Ernest Defarge to the story's plot by introducing him early in the narrative-pictorial sequence, Furniss is also attempting to reveal what sort of man he is: physically powerful, self-contained, stalwart, shrewd — and fully capable of keeping both his own counsel and more than a few secrets. Stoic and enigmatic, Defarge commands the respect of his comrades in the Jacquerie. Like his wife, he is a publican and community leader, one of the few petite bourgeoisie in poverty-stricken Saint Antoine, which lies within the shadow of the Bastille, where his old master has been incarcerated for two decades.
In The Shoemaker (see below) in Phiz's pair of illustrations for the June 1859 number, the reader finds it difficult to assess Defarge, whose back is turned towards the viewer as he gazes at the ruined husk of his old master, "The Doctor of Beauvais," whom he has sheltered in the garret above his wine-shop after Dr. Manette's release from the Bastille nearby. One receives more visual information about the proprietor of the wine-shop as Defarge calmly lights his pipe in the presence of the royalist spy in The Wine-shop (September 1859). A barrel-chested patriot and stolid force behind the outbreak of the Revolution, Defarge may be the basis for the male Jacobin in the lower-left corner of Phiz's wrapper (8). Fred Barnard in the Household Edition reveals very little of Defarge, standing behind the bar in The Wine-shop (see below), focussing instead on the bar's rough-and-ready clientele and the inscrutable Madame Defarge. In his own, early version of The Wine Shop, And stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair (Book Two, Chapter 16, "Still Knitting" — see below) Harper's illustrator John McLenan, who had waited until 13 August 1859, some fifteen weekly instalments, to introduce the wine-shop proprietor, communicates little about this stout, balding smoker leaning on his wife's chair. Leaning upon her for support, so to speak, this earliest Defarge seems neither alert, nor cunning, nor yet physically impressive. Among the earliest illustrations, Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s dual character study of the publicans is the most satisfactory since Monsieur and Madame Defarge (see below: Book Two, Chapter 16) reveals their essential natures as watchful, suspicious, and cunning as they eye the spy John Barsad from behind the bar, the node of all insurgents in the revolutionary hotbed of St. Antoine.
In these representations prior to the Charles Dickens Library Edition, then, the illustrators generally minimized Defarge's role in the story, rendering him as it were a mere physical extension or executive arm of Madame Defarge, who seeks vengeance for the Evremondes' annihilation of her family. As the elderly physician's former servant, however, her husband connects the revolutionary plotters, the rabble of Paris's blighted suburb, the incarcerated Dr. Manette, and through his wife, Thérèse, the slain peasant family.
Above: Phiz's revolutionary couple constantly on the lookout for royalist spies and informers in The Wine-shop. (1859).
Left: McLennan's periodical illustration of the community organizers of St. Antoine, And stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair; Right: Eytinge's dual character study, Monsieur and Madame Defarge (1867).
Above: Barnard's representation of the gathering of the Jacquerie around the bar in The Wine-shop (1874).
Barnard, Fred. A Series of Character Sketches from Charles Dickens [Series One: Alfred Jingle, Mrs. Gamp, Bill Sikes, Little Dorrit, Samuel Pickwick, and Sidney Carton]. London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1880 [portfolio].
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1988.
Bolton, H. Phili "A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987, 395-412.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. All the Year Round. 30 April through 26 November 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. 7 May through 3 December 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London: Collins, 1905.
__________. A Tale of Two Cities, American Notes, and Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 13.
Created 4 November 2013
Last modified 7 January 2020