"The Tetterbys" by John Leech for Dickens's "The Haunted Man" (1848)

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The Tetterbys

John Leech; engravers, Smith and Cheltnam.

1848

10.1 x 7.3 cm (4 by 3 inches), framed.

Dickens's The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain, "Chapter II. The Gift Diffused," 68.

Although the scale of the illustration is significantly smaller than that of the later illustrations in the various editions of The Christmas Books, as the anthologized version was known from 1852 onwards, John Leech has successfully compressed the visual information that Dickens provides about the small newsagent's family into a single, highly detailed scene in the 1848 Bradbury and Evans edition. [Commentary continued below.]

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary

Like all the plates that follow, except the concluding one, The Tetterbys occupies somewhat less than a full page, sharing page 68 with the text. Since Leech had wanted a subject more congenial to his abilities as a graphic humorist, Dickens had proposed that the Punch illustrator realise this hectic scene of an extended family of the type he himself endured as a child: two adults, the infant Sally ("Moloch"), and the seven male children. As we turn the page, we come upon the scene with Mrs. Tetterby grudgingly setting the table and the children gathered about in anticipation.

Leech conveys an impression of congested space and close living conditions with the small fireplace, insufficient table, inadequate floor space, and room full of small children. This is not the cheery yuletide repast of the Cratchits — the only food visible here is a small loaf. The placement of this plate is masterful since it occurs at precisely the moment that one finds Mrs. Tetterby setting the table in the accompanying text. Despite the confined living conditions and constrained financial circumstances, the mantelpiece's ornaments have a humanizing influence on the chaotic scene.

Deborah A. Thomas in Dickens and the Short Story (1982) notes that reading and remembering are recurring motifs in the novella that anticipate the conflicting wisdoms of the head and the heart in Hard Times (1854). Figures especially associated with reading, Redlaw and Tetterby, are both members of the Information Age as the former spreads scientific thinking beyond the restricted communities of the privileged and politically connected universities of Oxford and Cambridge, while Adolphus Tetterby earns his living by selling journals and newspapers to those unable to afford purchasing books and even paying a lending library subscription. But reading and study can also be retreats from emotional engagement, as Leech suggests in this scene:

The motif of reading is also echoed in the subplot, dealing with the impoverished Tetterby family whose attitudes directly reflect the baneful influence of Redlaw, while he is afflicted with the Phantom's gift, and the healing counter-influence of Milly. When they are first introduced, despite their large numbers and cramped living quarters, the Tetterbys are cheerful. Mr. Tetterby, a newsvender by occupation, is attempting to read a newspaper. . . . The "small scraps of newspapers" covering Mr. Tetterby's screen prove to be clippings which he is in the habit of reading to his eight children for instructively emotional effect. [Thomas 54]

Related scenes in other editions: 1867, 1876, 1878, and 1910

Left: Sol Eytinge's "The Tetterbys" (1867); centre, Abbey's "'You bad boy!' said Mr. Tetterby" (1876). Barnard's "It roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tumblers" (1878); and (right) Furniss's "The Tetterby Temper" (1910).

The later illustrators have taken a much more realistic approach to the figures, modelling them and showing them in action — in this regard, Barnard's Household Edition plate of Johnny and Moloch is noteworthy for its baroque complexity. However, Leech's illustration of the congested Tetterby parlour exudes a charm and convivial humour that the later artists have failed to realise.

Illustrations for The Haunted Man (1848-1912)

Bibliography

Butt, John. "Dickens's Christmas Books." Pope, Dickens and Others: Essays and Addresses Edinburgh: Edinburgh U. P., 1969, pp. 127-148.

Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. 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.

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 29 December 2004

Last modified 7 June 2024