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Illustrated Page to "Chap. III, The Gift Reversed."
John Tenniel
1848
12.6 by 7 cm (4 ⅞ by 2 ¼ inches), vignetted.
Full-page illustration for Dickens's The Haunted Man, 135.
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Text enclosed: Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops, and from the decks of solitary ships at . . .
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops, and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, that promised by-and-by to change to light, was visible in the dim horizon; but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with the night-clouds busily.
The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast to one another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds hovered between the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled in darkness. Fitful and uncertain as the shadows which the night-clouds cast, were their concealments from him, and imperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still, if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only that they might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper than before. [Chapter III, "The Gift Reversed," 135]
In Tenniel's sixth and last contribution to the narrative-pictorial sequence, the feminine forces of light (which have been identified with Milly in the printed text) sweep upward from the horizon (left), gathering in numbers and intensity as the vaguely apprehended forces of the night (identified by the stars, upper right) retreat. Below, on a headland a lighthouse stands upon a rock (recalling Stanfield's The Lighthouse (7), which Tenniel may have seen in the early proofs) above a small cove where the waves, such billowing breakers earlier, gently break.
The plate promises an end to the storm, and implies that the Phantom's "gift" will be reversed, just as Redlaw prays it will at the close of Chapter Two. The enclosed text asserts that night is still in the ascendant, and the result of the contest between light and darkness is still "remote and doubtful" (136). This moment will not be realised in the print for a number of pages — "Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness faded" (Penguin 328) — as we move in the text to the exterior of the Tetterbys' shop, with its leafless, potted plant suggestive of anything but the optimistic mood that Plate 13 has established.
Although "Night is still heavy in the sky" to the upper left, "at the top spirits associated with sunbeams [are] pushing away starry, Arabic-looking night" (Patten 266), surging from the centre of the horizon at the bottom, framing the descriptive text. "Below the lighthouse figuring in Stanfield's depiction of the harsh nighttime of Christmas Eve is revisited with the light off, the sun rising, and the little bay calm as full tide nears" (Patten, 266). The implication, then, is that in "Chapter III. The Gift Reversed," those forces inimical to society and exemplified in the figure of the Phantom will be forced into retreat by compassion, tenderness, and fellow feeling, those very qualities which Dickens and Stone have invested in Milly.
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations in Dickens's The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain: Public and Private Spheres and Spaces."Dickens Studies Annual 36 (2005), 75-123.
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. Engraved by Martin & Corbould, T. Williams, Smith & Chellnam, and Dalziel. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
_____. The Haunted Man. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1848). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, 365-366.
Glancy, Ruth. "Dickens at Work on The Haunted Man." Dickens Studies Annual 15 (1986): 65-85.
Guida, Fred. "A Christmas Carol" and Its Adaptations: Dickens's Story on Screen and Television. London & Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 10, "Bargain Haunters." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 234-275. [Review]
Solberg, Sarah. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens's Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-118.
Created 19 October 2004
Last modified 8 June 2024