The Newgate novel is a popular subgenre in the literature of crime that drew upon the lives of real criminals.7 A second-generation thief, Jack Sheppard (1702–24)8 became a lower-class hero and gained more acclaim as an escape artist (he broke out of prison four times) than for his crimes of fencing, shoplifting, pickpocketing, and burglary.9 The association of Oliver Twist with Jack Sheppard riled Dickens,10 who vented his frustration in a letter to R. H. Horne dated February 1840: “I am by some jolter-headed enemies most unjustly and untruly charged with having written a book after Mr Ainsworth’s fashion. Unto these jolter-heads and their intensely concentrated humbug, I shall take an early opportunity of temperately replying” (House and Storey 2: 20–21).
Dickens’s humbug aside, both serials were publishing sensations, quickly adapted into dramatic productions that generated performance paraphernalia—for example, play bills, posters, press releases, and cheap imitations.11 Productions of Oliver Twist began in the spring of 1838 when the serial was only half complete. Translations of Twist into numerous languages swiftly followed including Danish and Italian in 1840, French in 1841, Czech and Hungarian in 1843, and Swedish in 1844 (Hollington xxvi). George Almar’s adaptation of Oliver Twist, produced at the Surrey Theatre ten days after the serial’s completion, unmistakably evokes and animates Cruikshank’s plates, sometimes reversing the orientation of an illustration or expanding an illustrative frame by adding interior developments to an exterior scene. Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39) came out in tableaux based on Browne’s sketches when only a third of the twenty parts had appeared serially.12 This same formula of dramatization continued for Ainsworth’s popular serials. “A scant two years after the first stage versions of Pickwick,” as Martin Meisel observes in Realizations, “the pictorial novel dramatized pictorially reached an exemplary climax in the Jack Sheppard craze” (265). Jack Sheppard generated a commodity craze: its pamphlets, prints, cartoons, piracies, and plays eclipsed Pickwick mania.13
Cruikshank’s illustrations drew a mass readership to Jack Sheppard and Oliver Twist, and the sensational elements in both serials electrified theatergoers. Scenes such as “Nancy’s murder,” notes Sue Zemka, “always belonged to the art of the theater more than the art of the novel—so much so that Dickens finally performed it himself in his farewell reading tours of 1868–69” (30–31). Although Cruikshank did not illustrate this scene, the Household Edition of Oliver Twist and graphic novel adaptations of Oliver Twist, which I examine, respectively, in chapter 3 and the conclusion, depict Nancy’s graphic end.
The “dramatic versions of Jack Sheppard that survive are faithful to the pictures, and rather free with the text. They rely on the pictures for effect” (Meisel 271). Cruikshank’s scenes on the stormy Thames and Jack’s prison escapes were well suited for the theater since these illustrations were already staged for effect.14 In An Essay on the Genius of George Cruikshank, a lengthy laudatory essay first published in the Westminster Review in 1840, Thackeray proposes “that Mr Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it” (53).15 To Thackeray, the Victorian reader-viewer long remembers Jack Sheppard not because of Ainsworth’s descriptions, but for “George Cruikshank’s pictures—always George Cruikshank’s pictures” (An Essay 53).16 One memorable theatrical illustration entitled “Jack Sheppard in Company with Edgeworth Bess Escaping from Clerkenwell Prison” (see fig. 7) features Jack with Elizabeth Lyon; known as Edgeworth Bess, Lyon was the prostitute who led the real Jack Sheppard to a life of crime and was instrumental in his third prison break.17 In the serial, Ainsworth glamorizes the hurdles that Jack must surmount to escape incarceration as well as Jack’s bravado: “‘It’s almost worth while being sent to prison to have the pleasure of escaping,’” Jack declares boldly; “‘I shall now be able to test my skill’” (JS 284).18 In Cruikshank’s dramatic illustration, Lyon is escaping from New Prison along with Jack.19 Indeed, Ainsworth explains how Sheppard rips part of Bess’s gown and petticoat, forms a running noose, and descends from the high prison window. In the illustration, the night sky, streaked with dramatically rendered clouds and a pastoral landscape, provides a romantic backdrop that contrasts to the brick prison; the natural world offers freedom from the built world of legal conventions that cannot contain Jack Sheppard, escape artist extraordinaire.
In the escape scene, Cruikshank spotlights the upper half of Jack’s slender but muscular physique; his strength and small stature—Sheppard was only 5 foot 4 inches tall—were a perfect combination for slipping through prison bars. Framed by an arched window, Jack holds the makeshift rope and guides his lover/prostitute to safety. The chosen moment of illustration depicts Jack Sheppard in a gallant gesture that refined him for a middle-class audience who read Ainsworth’s work as eagerly as those of the lower reaches. There is also sensuality to this plate. Cruikshank’s drawings of women were never his strong-point, but in this plate, full-figured Bess has definite appeal. Bess is not “bulky” as Ainsworth describes her (JS 284). Partially disrobed of gown and petticoat, Bess bares her sensual curves—an ample bosom, shapely thighs, flowing hair (that is not covered as would be the custom), and delicate ankles (revealed by her now torn petticoat). These features to a Victorian viewer marked Bess a fallen woman, but Cruikshank recognized that such sensuality made the illustration soft pornography for the male viewers drawn to Newgate fiction. Note worthy, too, is Bess’s vulnerability: we see the fear in her eyes, directing our attention to the next hurdle—the high wall of Clerkenwell that surrounds New Prison with its formidable chevaux-de-frise (spikes), dramatically lit.
Figure 7. “Jack Sheppard in Company with Edgeworth Bess Escaping from Clerkenwell Prison.” Illustration by George Cruikshank for William Harrison Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard” in Bentley’s Miscellany, July 1839. From the Norman M. Fox Collection, Scribner Library, Skidmore College.
Theatricality similarly resonates in Cruikshank’s plates for Oliver Twist.20 In “Oliver Asking for More” (see fig. 8), George Cruikshank sets a dramatic stage for Dickens’s attack on the abuse of the newly amended 1834 Poor Law, exacerbated by the government’s decentralization and laissez-faire principles. Dickens, writing for a class-conscious readership, presents Oliver’s now famous request for more in perfect, polite English: “‘Please, sir, I want some more’” (OT, Oxf. 1982 10). Engaging the Romantic conception of the child of innocence, Dickens makes his parish orphan, who is unaware of his middle-class parentage, a victim of social injustice. The cruel workhouse system grants a starving child only a legally predetermined dietary allotment of “one porringer, and no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides” (OT, Oxf. 1982 9–10). Oliver is temporarily rotated downward in class affiliation as Dickens himself was as a child “in an age when social slippage was so common that societies were often formed against it”; as Mark Spilka comments, Dickens “seduced his original class-conscious readers into putting their own children, if not themselves, in Oliver’s place” (169).
Readers of Oliver Twist easily get caught up in the commotion that follows this climactic moment—the master strikes a blow at Oliver, pinions his arms, and calls for Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, who rushes into the boardroom where the gentleman in the white waistcoat proclaims Oliver will be hanged. The plate freezes the theatrical moment of Oliver asking for more—a scene that caught the attention of Queen Victoria, who in 1839 wrote in her diary about the starving workhouse children (Victoria 44). Alternately, one anonymous 1838 Spectator reviewer criticizes Dickens for combining “the severity of the new system with the individual tyranny of the old,—forgetting that responsibility amongst subordinate parish-officers and regularity of management came in with the Commissioners” (“Boz’s Oliver Twist” 1115).
Cruikshank stages “Oliver Asking for More” as a tableau vivant. The hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked, thin-ankled workhouse children form an exaggerated backdrop that strengthens Dickens’s commitme
nt to social reform. In Cruikshank’s illustration, we can actually see why
The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation, (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls,) they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. (OT, Oxf. 1982 10)
Figure 8. “Oliver Asking for More.” Illustration by George Cruikshank for Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” in Bentley’s Miscellany, February 1837. From the Norman M. Fox Collection, Scribner Library, Skidmore College.
The little bowls and large spoons serve as stage props to accentuate the theme of starvation. Oliver holds a spoon much larger than his bowl, and the spoon makes the bowl appear even smaller. Another orphan appears to be licking every stray bit of gruel from his dish. All the boys have “eager eyes”; many have the “wild with hunger” (OT, Oxf. 1982 10) look of the orphan who fears he just may eat one of the other children to sate his immense hunger.
Cruikshank’s illustrative stage also includes details not mentioned in Dickens’s text. Cruikshank allegedly directed Dickens’s attention to a pamphlet by Dr. T. J. Pettigrew, a physician friend who recommended shaving children’s heads as a measure to prevent ringworm (Vogler 149).21 In Cruikshank’s illustration, the heads of Oliver and the other boys look recently shaved, strengthening the authenticity of the plate. Dickens informs us that the master has donned his cook’s uniform. Cruikshank stretches the white apron tightly across the master’s belly to accentuate his girth in contrast to Oliver’s gaunt form that looks even thinner and leaner positioned alongside the big-bellied master. Cruikshank also shines a spotlight on Oliver to validate his middle-class origins and inherited goodness that miraculously survive as Oliver journeys into the criminal world of urban London.
Stage Effects: Lighting and Visual Cuing
Shadows, moonlight, filtered sunlight, firelight, candlelight, and torchlight are all dramatic forms of lighting that the caricaturists incorporated into their illustrations to magnify hope or despair and, often times, to foreshadow developments of the plot. We witness foreshadowing through shadow play in Cruikshank’s “Oliver Amazed at the Dodger’s Mode of ‘Going to Work’” (see fig. 23A). In the backdrop, Cruikshank positions the bookstall keeper in a shaded area where, undetected, he can observe the Artful Dodger reach into the pocket of the unsuspecting Mr. Brownlow, who has his nose in a book. An innocent bystander of the theft, Oliver stands in the foreground with his arms raised, a gesture indicating that he suddenly comprehends “the whole mystery of the handkerchief, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy’s mind” (OT, Oxf. 1982 60). The real thieves escape, leaving Oliver to be chased and captured, but not convicted of pickpocketing. Shadow play allows reader-viewers to anticipate the bookstall keeper’s arrival in court in the following chapter, just in time to provide Oliver with a reliable witness and clear his name.
In Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), John Leech skillfully uses moonlight in a part-realistic, part-theatrical illustration entitled “Ignorance and Want” to advance a humanitarian message about the consequences of unchecked industrialism during a period of rising manufacturing in England. Leech spotlights two ragged children symbolically named “Ignorance and Want” (see fig. 9). They are “a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility” (118). As Phillip Allingham notes in his description of this Leech plate:
Figure 9. “Ignorance and Want.” Illustration by John Leech for Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, 1843.
The street urchins, although symbols of the forces unleashed by the factory system and the new capitalistic applications of Malthusian population theories, are shockingly real, while the desiccated trees and smoking factory chimneys in the backdrop constitute a heightened realism amounting to visual commentary on Dickens’s scene to reveal Scrooge as the exemplar of the entire upper-middle class. (“Ignorance”)
The branches of two barren, stark trees frame Scrooge, positioned in profile. Factory chimneys billowing black smoke and the façade of the workhouse strengthen the social realism of this scene, even though these two architectural structures would not have realistically been next-door neighbors in urban London.
Leech uses moonlight to illuminate the urchins’ starved forms and tattered, ill-fitting clothes. Using a caricature technique evident in Cruikshank’s “Oliver Asking for More” (see fig. 8), Leech juxtaposes thin and ample figures. The bones of the urchins’ bodies seem even more angular and their haggard faces more dark and pinched in contrast to the looming full figure of the Spirit of Christmas Present, dressed in a flowing robe. Seeing these ragged children, Scrooge queries, “‘Have they no refuge or resource?’” (120). The Spirit replies to a now anguished Scrooge by returning the very hardened words Scrooge once speaks when asked to provide charitable relief for the poor: “‘Are there no prisons?’ … ‘Are there no workhouses?’” (120). Scrooge’s once greedy face now registers concern. Gone in “Ignorance and Want” is the outrage in Scrooge’s features previously evident in “Marley’s Ghost,” an earlier plate where Leech lights up Scrooge’s face by candlelight and firelight when his former partner’s ghost comes to warn him of his probable fate. “Ignorance and Want” projects an urgent message: Scrooge must reform, and Dickens’s readers must be charitable to those unable to ask “for more.”
In his plates for Dombey and Son (DS, 1848),22 Phiz likewise uses light and shadow play to theatrical effect. “The Shadow in the Little Parlour” and “Let Him Remember It in That Room, Years to Come” stage, respectively, a reunion between two separated lovers and a reconciliation between an erring father and a wronged daughter. Both of these plates feature Florence Dombey, a Dickensian angel in the house, who is submissive to a fault; she remains devoted to her father after he spurns her for being loyal to his unfaithful second wife, Edith Dombey. “The Shadow in the Little Parlour” (see fig. 10) features Florence, now residing in the working-class home of her kindly friend Captain Cuttle, just before she discovers that her childhood sweetheart and future husband, Walter Gay, is miraculously not drowned, but has returned from sea unharmed and is standing at their very door.
Figure 10. “The Shadow in the Little Parlour.” Illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son, 1848.
To prepare Florence for the news that Walter is alive, Cuttle tells her a yarn about a spirited lad, who, along with another seaman and the second mate, miraculously survive a shipwreck by being “‘lashed to a fragment of the wreck, and driftin’ on the stormy sea…. Days and nights they drifted on them endless waters’” (DS, Oxf. 1982 578). Riveted by the tale, Florence lays aside the book she has been reading, a prop that marks her intellect, and looks intently at Captain Cuttle, who tells Florence one of these seamen was spared. Cuttle, in turn, looks intently at the shadow on the wall, which is the silhouette of Walter Gay. Phiz illustrates the pregnant moment just before Florence “started up, looked round, and, with a piercing cry, saw Walter Gay behind her!” (581). In this illustration, we foresee this happy reunion through Walter’s silhouette in shadow, which the audience sees before Florence does. Through light and shadow, we anticipate the joy Florence will experience when she beholds her long lost lover and “held him in her pure embrace” (581).
Equally dramatic is Phiz’s use of filtered sunlight to foreshadow an imminent reconciliation in “Let Him Remember It in That Room, Years to Come” (see fig. 11) from a later chapter aptly entitled “Retribution.” Browne lights up the despondent face of old Paul Dombey, now a “ruined man” (DS, Oxf. 1982 701) but once a prominent owner of a shipping company. Dombey passes the days alone in his once lavish, but now dusty, neglected, decrepit house where he contempl
ates all of his losses—his first wife, who dies soon after giving birth to Florence’s brother; little Paul Dombey, his beloved son, now dead; his proud second wife, Edith Dombey, who betrays him; and his neglected, spurned daughter, Florence, who “had never changed to him—nor had he ever changed to her—and she was lost” (702). Browne shines a filtered light on Old Dombey, who “was proud yet” (702) even though he sits immobile in a heavy armchair. His eyes, staring blankly ahead, are partially reflected in an oval mirror. In tableau-like fashion, Dombey appears to be literally frozen in time. Dickens repeats the phrase “‘Let him remember it in that room, years to come!’” and variations of this phrase, such as “He did remember it” (701), as Old Dombey recalls “what he had done … now, when every loving blossom he had withered in his innocent daughter’s heart was snowing down, in ashes, on him” (702).
Florence’s innocent heart is not “withered,” however. Reconciliation will take place in this dusty room with haphazardly arranged books and writing implements and letters strewn across the table and on the floor. Phiz positions a decorative screen that partially blocks our view of a key stage prop—Florence’s portrait on the wall—but the portrait’s eyes remain visible and lead the viewer’s gaze to the figure of Florence stealing into the room at this very moment. A “gleam of light; a ray of sun” (DS, Oxf. 1982 705) dramatically lights up Florence just before she beseeches her father for forgiveness and insists that old Dombey come to live with her. Foreshadowing this reunion, the glimmer of sunlight catches on the ribbons of Florence’s hat and illuminates her gentle face. Angelic Florence has come to save the erring, broken old man, who, shortly after this illustrative moment, cries aloud to his dear neglected daughter: “‘Oh my God, forgive me, for I need it very much’” (706).
Serials to Graphic Novels Page 9
