Read Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century Online

Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (119 page)

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"The Empty Cradle," by W. Archer

"Little Nell," by George Cattermole for first edition of
The Old Curiosity Shop
.

Little Nell: Not Dead But Sleeping

The Old Curiosity Shop
was illustrated by Hablot Browne ("Phiz"), who was Dickens's main illustrator, and by George Cattermole, who did these two pictures. "The child in her gentle slumber," near the beginning of the story, lies surrounded by contrasting grotesque images, their untidy menace kept at bay by her air of innocence (and a few religious icons): Quilp is not present here, but in other, similar illustrations he lurks as a constant threat. Nell herself looks angelic enough to be thought dead rather than asleep, unless we say that her arms lying on top of her body is a sign of lifein contrast with her arms at her side, clutching a book (presumably a Bible) when she is finally dead, in Cattermole's picture for the conclusion of the storythis time surrounded only by uplifting, not at all by grotesque, images. "No sleep so beautiful and calm,'' says the text, "so free from traces of pain, so fair to look upon."

"Little Nell," another version by George Cattermole.

"Kit's First Writing Lesson," by Robert Martineau, The Tate Gallery, London.

Robert Martineau's painting (1852), based on
The Old Curiosity Shop
, does not associate Nell with death at all and has none of the pathetic images so prominent in the illustrations to the novel. His version of Nell is competent and matter-of-fact, sewing as she supervises Kit's education; and the contents of the curiosity shop are neither grotesque nor frightening. Quilp has no place in this world.

"Felix Grundy Eakin," by John Wood Dodge.
Courtesy of Cheekwood Museum, Nashville.

Felix Grundy Eakin was already dead, at the age of three, when this portrait was painted for the parents by John Wood Dodge in 1846; he is shown as if alive, only the urn possibly suggesting death.

"Paul and Mrs. Pipchin," by Hablot Browne,
from the first edition of
Dombey and Son
.

Two Versions of Paul Dombey

Paul looking up at Mrs. Pipchin in wide-eyed wonder is a more "authentic" version than C. W. Nicholls's tinted lithograph of Paul on Brighton beach, since it is one of the original illustrations by Phiz, with whom Dickens worked very closelythough it should be added that this is one of the few drawings Dickens was dissatisfied with. It does, however, capture the solemnity of the old-fashioned child, who "was not fond of Mrs. Pipchin; he was not afraid of her; but in these old, old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him."

Nicholls's very bland version of Paul shows him at the point when, having slept by the seaside, he wakes up and asks Florence, "The sea, Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?"