Frank Stone's "Milly and the Old Man" — Plate 5 from "The Haunted Man" (1848)

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Milly and the Old Man

Frank Stone; engraver, Martin & Corbold.

1848

11.5 cm by 6 cm (4 ½ by 2 ½ inches), vignetted.

Fourth illustration for Dickens's The Haunted Man, "Chapter I, The Gift Bestowed," page 19.

Text immediately beside the plate: Mrs. William took small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with her scissors, and decorated the room with, while her aged father-in-law looked on much interested in the ceremony.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Decorating the House with Greenery for Christmas

“What is that the old man has in his arms?” asked Mr. Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal.

“Holly, sir,” replied the quiet voice of Milly.

“That’s what I say myself, sir,” interposed Mr. William, striking in with the butter-boat. “Berries is so seasonable to the time of year! — Brown gravy!”

“Another Christmas come, another year gone!” murmured the Chemist, with a gloomy sigh. “More figures in the lengthening sum of recollection that we work and work at to our torment, till Death idly jumbles all together, and rubs all out. So, Philip!” breaking off, and raising his voice as he addressed the old man, standing apart, with his glistening burden in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs. William took small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with her scissors, and decorated the room with, while her aged father-in-law looked on much interested in the ceremony. ["Chapter I, The Gift Bestowed," pp. 18-19].

Commentary

We have moved from superstition, allegory, and psychomachia through reverie and tempestuous waves to a tranquil Pre-Raphaelite domestic scene. The antique chair and small oil-painting admirably suggest the interior of the Old College's Jerusalem Buildings. We note that considerably more text shares the page with this plate, balancing the textual and pictorial narratives. Although she is a young woman still, Milly, having lost a child already, wear's a matronly cap. Stone reminds of the venerable setting, partly through the antique chair upon which Milly stands, and partly through the Elizabethan portrait upon which she is hanging a spring of holly.

The text makes Redlaw's gloomy presence perfectly clear, but Stone has elected to omit him from the seasonal decoration of the house with holly and berries. "Milly has a way of bringing light and life into the dead environs, assisted by her father-in-law and husband, though they are caretakers of the decaying mausoleum of the past" (Patten, 245). The Swidgers are another of those Christmastide families whose wealth lies in their close relationships, not their incomes; we are immediately reminded of the Cratchits, and in particular of Mrs. Cratchit's seasonal observances connected with food. And, as Patten notes, the Swidgers' strengths are in part material, too: "dinner, a blazing hearth, the cheerful holly. But also psychic: histories of the past, respect and celebration for the eighty-seven years of Philip's life, memories of past times, good — before Philip's son George turned bad — as well as sad, but accepted as part of what knits family close together" (246). Milly is clearly in charge, a dynamic force in the running household, the living embodiment of the Victorian principle of "The Angel in the House" that poet Coventry Patmore would enunciate in 1854.

Other Studies of Milly Swidger from Later Editions (1876, 1910, and 1912)

Left: Green's highly realistic lithograph of the same scene: Philip and Mrs. William putting up Holly (1912); centre, Harry Furniss's attentive Milly Swidger attending the sick student: Milly; and, right, A. E. Abbey's American Household Edition illustration showing Milly hanging holly: "I'm eighty-seven!" (1876).

Illustrations for The Haunted Man (1848-1912)

Bibliography

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. 2 vols. 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.

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 updated 4 June 2024