DICKENS CANCELLED PLATES: “OLIVER TWIST,” “MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT,” “THE
STRANGE GENTLEMAN,” “PICTURES FROM ITALY,” AND “SKETCHES BY BOZ.”
In dealing with the episode of the suppressed plate in _Oliver
Twist_ we must be careful to bear in mind the fact that between the
publication of _Pickwick_ and the later novel there was an essential
difference. The former was first published in self-contained parts,
whereas the latter was published _serially_ in _Bentley’s Miscellany_.
Hence, the first editions of _Pickwick_ in book form are to be met
with bound from the parts, whereas the first editions in book-form
of _Oliver Twist_ are only to be found as issued by the publishers
complete in three volumes. And unless we grasp this distinction at the
outset we shall find it impossible to understand the apparently erratic
appearance and disappearance {44} of the suppressed plate of “Rose
Maylie and Oliver: the Fireside Scene” and its substitute.
The first instalment of the novel was published in the second number
of _Bentley’s Miscellany_, February 1837, and it continued to run for
nearly two years and a quarter. From this it will be seen that the last
instalment of the novel was not published until three months of the
year 1839 had elapsed.
In the meantime, however, the novel and the illustrations had been
completed, and the whole story was printed in book form and published
in three volumes in the second year of its serial issue, the exact date
being November 9, 1838.
As a consequence we shall find the following curious result—namely,
that the owners of the very earliest issue of _Oliver Twist_ find
themselves not in the happy possession of the suppressed plate, as
would be naturally expected, but in the melancholy possession of its
exceedingly ugly substitute.
This, to the uninitiated, would prove as great a puzzle as to
Macaulay’s New Zealander would appear the fact that in Truro Cathedral
the older {45} structure is of a later style than the new. But this
is comparing small things with great. For we are fain to confess that,
unlike the law, _de minimis curat helluo librorum_.
Thus, then, we have to face this apparent anomaly, that, to possess
a copy of _Oliver Twist_ with brightest impressions of the etchings
throughout, we are under the necessity of combining the early plates
from _Bentley’s Miscellany_ with the later plates from the first
edition published in volume form. This not uninteresting fact I may, I
believe, claim to be the first to point out, and it goes far to explain
a very misleading note on p. 151 of Reid’s monumental _Catalogue of
George Cruikshank’s Works_, which shows clearly that the late Keeper of
the Prints was greatly at sea in the matter.
Referring to the “Fireside Scene,” he says: “The plate was used in
1838, when the work reappeared in three volumes, in lieu of the
preceding (‘Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb’), which was thought
by the publisher to be of too melancholy a nature for the conclusion
of the story.” From which any casual reader would be {46} led to the
conclusion that “Rose Maylie and Oliver at the Tomb” was the suppressed
plate, and that the “Fireside Scene” was substituted for it, whereas
exactly the opposite was the case.
The novel was ready for publication complete in three volumes in
the autumn of 1838. The illustrations for the last volume had been
somewhat hastily executed “in a lump.” And Dickens, who always was most
solicitous about the work of his collaborating artists, did not set
eyes upon them until the eve of publication. One of them, “The Fireside
Scene,” he so strongly objected to that it had to be cancelled, and he
wrote to the artist asking him to design “the plate afresh and to do so
_at once_, in order that as few impressions as possible of the present
one may go forth.”[13] The publication of the book, however, could not
be delayed, and thus we have it that the earliest issue of the first
edition of _Oliver Twist_ in book-form contains the “Fireside Scene”
opposite p. 313, vol. iii., which it is the desire of every Dickens
collector to possess, while the later issue of the latter part of the
novel in _Bentley’s Miscellany_ {47} contains that which Cruikshank
substituted for it at the novelist’s request.
[13] _Vide_ Forster, _Life of Charles Dickens_, vol. i. p. 101.
(Library Edition.)
Both the plates are here reproduced for the convenience of the owner of
this or that edition.
But this is not all that has to be said upon the subject of the “Rose
and Oliver” plates, and again I claim to be the purveyor of a little
exclusive information.[14]
It has generally been supposed that Cruikshank, although naturally put
about by Dickens’s disapproval, did immediately proceed to carry out
his author’s suggestion. For example, we find Mr. Francis Phillimore,
in his introduction to the _Dickens Memento_, published by Messrs.
Field and Tuer, saying: “The author was so disgusted with the last
plate that he politely but forcibly asked Cruikshank to etch another.
This was done at once.” I am, however, in a position to prove that
this was emphatically not the case. And it is what one would naturally
expect, for George was the last person in the world to acquiesce calmly
and unhesitatingly in the condemnation of work which he had himself
deemed sufficiently good. {48}
[14] I first alluded to this in _Temple Bar_ for September 1892.
In the year 1892 I had the privilege of examining the splendid
collection of Mr. H. W. Bruton, of Gloucester, which has since been
dispersed. On that occasion he drew my attention to a unique impression
of the “Fireside” plate in his possession, from which we (he was the
first to see the point) drew the necessary conclusion which follows.
The importance of the impression lies in the fact that it shows that
a large amount of added work had been put into the plate, principally
of a stipply nature, after all the impressions which had so displeased
Dickens had been struck off. By which it is evident that George tried
hard to improve the original plate instead of at once falling in
with the suggestion that the subject should be designed afresh. This
proof was probably submitted to Dickens and again rejected, for no
impressions of the plate with stippled additions are known to have
been published.[15] And plainly it was only after considerable effort
to make the plate do, that the artist designed the {49} far worse
picture of “Rose Maylie and Oliver before the Tomb of Agnes,” which is
a questionable adornment to the later issues of the story. And had it
not been for the delay so caused, it is more than probable that the
suppressed plate would have been even a greater rarity than it actually
is.
[15] It need hardly be said that if any of my readers finds that his
copy contains “The Fireside Scene” differing from the first of those
here produced, he may congratulate himself on the possession of a great
rarity.
[Illustration: The suppressed plate from “Oliver Twist”: “The Fireside
Scene”]
[Illustration: The suppressed plate from “Oliver Twist”: “The Fireside
Scene,” as worked upon by Cruikshank]
As I have said above, Mr. Bruton’s collection was dispersed in 1897 at
Sotheby’s. No. 145 in that sale was an unrivalled run of the _Oliver
Twist_ illustrations, seeing that it consisted of a complete set of
proofs of the etchings, and included, with other rarities, the unique
proof just mentioned. The lot sold for £32:10s. By the kindness of its
late owner, I am enabled to present to my readers a reproduction of
this unique impression of the plate in its second state.
So much then for the story of the suppressed plate. There is, however,
something more to be said of its substitute.
If we turn to our edition of _Oliver Twist_, so long as it does not
happen to be one published subsequently to 1845, or one containing the
suppressed plate, we shall find Rose standing with her {50} arm on
Oliver’s shoulder before a tablet put up to his mother’s memory, and
we shall find that Rose’s dress is light in colour save for a dark
shawl or lace fichu, which is thrown across her shoulders and bosom.
In the 1846 edition of the book, the plate has been largely touched up
and shaded, and Rose’s dress turned into a black one.[16] Now, it is
perfectly evident that it is the old plate altered and used over again
and not a new plate copied from the old, for every line and every dot
in the illustration to the earlier editions reappears in this. The
perplexing matter that I have to draw your attention to, however, is
that, in the same lot (145) at the Bruton sale mentioned above, there
was sold a proof of this plate with Rose Maylie in the black dress, and
this _a proof before letters_, an impossible nut for the amateur to
crack who does not know that the lettering of plates may be stopped-out
or burnished away or covered up for the striking off of misleading
impressions; from which the moral may be drawn that it is better to
believe in proof impressions after letters where they are well {52}
authenticated, than to presume that a proof is before letters merely
because those letters do not appear. _Verb. sat sap._ The plate in this
state is here reproduced for the sake of comparison.
[Illustration: Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb. (_The
substituted plate in two states_)]
[16] The dress is also black in a reprint of the first edition
published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1892, and in the large edition with
the illustrations coloured, published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall in
1895.
Before passing from _Oliver Twist_, it should be pointed out that the
first issue of 1838, which contains the suppressed plate, is also
differentiated from the second issue of the same year by what is
sometimes alluded to as the “suppressed title-page,” which runs as
follows:—“Oliver Twist; / or, the / ‘Parish Boy’s Progress;’ / by
‘Boz,’ / in three volumes, / Vol. I (II. or III.) / London: / Richard
Bentley, New Burlington Street. / — — / 1838.”
The second issue, with the substituted plate, has:—“Oliver Twist / By
/ Charles Dickens, / Author of ‘The Pickwick Papers,’” the rest of the
title being as in the first. It is curious to notice, further, that in
a later edition the original title is resumed.
So much for _Oliver Twist_. We must not, however, quit Dickens without
mentioning one or two other items, which more or less of right find
their place in a treatise on “Suppressed Plates.” {53}
There is, for example, the etched title-page to the first issue of the
first edition of _Martin Chuzzlewit_, where the reward on the direction
post appears as “100£” instead of “£100,” which is often wrongly
labelled “suppressed.” As a matter of fact it was not suppressed
at all. It is nothing more than the _first state_ of a plate which
was afterwards altered. However, the bait is so valuable a one with
which to entice the bibliomaniac, that there is no prospect of the
description being lightly relinquished, and as it is one object of this
treatise to protect the unwary, allusion to it is not out of place.
The fact that it is the title-page issued after the book had appeared
serially with its forty illustrations, disposes of any lingering
idea that in acquiring it we are assured of the possession of early
impressions of the other plates. But the undiscriminating bibliomaniac
requires no logical justification, and the plate will still retain its
market value.
A like variation is to be found in a well-known etching by George
Cruikshank, entitled “The Worship of Wealth.” The head of Mammon is
represented by a small money-bag, and the {54} features of the face
by the letters GOLD. Of this plate only one state was known until in a
happy moment one of our best-known collectors discovered and secured a
unique proof with all the letters printed in reverse, thus:—
[Illustration]
—a triumph which only the true _dilettante_ will appreciate at its
proper value.
Another variation of the same kind is to be found in the first and
second issues of Pine’s beautiful edition of Horace (1733), in which
the text is engraved throughout. In the first there is the misprint
“Post est” on the medal of Cæsar. In the second “Potest” has been
substituted. Copies containing the mistake fetch twice as much in
the market as those containing the correction! This is, however,
justifiable, as the mistake connotes an early set of impressions.
[Illustration: The Strange Gentleman]
Another Dickens plate demanding mention is the exceedingly rare etched
frontispiece by “Phiz,” to be found in only a few copies of _The
Strange {55} Gentleman_, published in 1837 by Messrs. Chapman and
Hall. This “Comic Burletta” was founded upon “The Great Winglebury
Duel,” in _Sketches by Boz_, and was first performed at the St. James’s
Theatre in September 1836. A second edition was {56} published in 1860
with a coloured etching by Mr. F. W. Pailthorpe, the last illustrator
to carry on the tradition of Cruikshank and H. K. Browne. The “Phiz”
etching is here reproduced. Even the second edition is extremely rare,
and readily sells for between two and three pounds. The reason for
the disappearance of the “Phiz” plate is not known, and I only give
particulars of it here because of its excessive rarity, and because
it is constantly referred to as “suppressed,” though with no strict
justification. The British Museum copy of the book only contains Mr.
Pailthorpe’s frontispiece, but a copy with the “Phiz” plate is to be
found in the Forster Library, South Kensington.
Then, again, we have Dickens’s _Pictures from Italy_, published by
Messrs. Bradbury and Evans in 1846, with the beautiful “vignette
illustrations on the wood,” by that master engraver, Samuel Palmer.
For some reason or other that representing “The Street of the Tombs,
Pompeii,” on the title-page, disappears after the exhaustion of
the first and second editions, both published in the same year. It
reappears, however, in the late {57} reprint of 1888, and is also
only here alluded to because sometimes referred to as “suppressed.”
[Illustration: The suppressed plate from “Sketches by Boz”]
The last of the Dickens illustrations germane to our subject is that
much-desired etching of “The Free and Easy,” which should be found
opposite page 29 of the “second series” of _Sketches by Boz_. Both the
first and second series were originally published in 1836. In 1839
another edition appeared with all the etchings to the original edition
enlarged (except “The Free and Easy,” which was cancelled), and with
thirteen additional plates. An edition on the lines of the first issue
of the second series, only with the illustrations in lithography, was
published in Calcutta in 1837.
It is important, in collating the first editions of the _Sketches_, to
bear in mind the fact that the first series was in two volumes and the
second in one. Otherwise it is impossible to understand why “Vol. III.”
is engraved on each of the plates in the second series. As showing how
eagerly these volumes in fine condition, and of course uncut and in
the original cloth binding, are sought after, it may be mentioned that
thirty pounds is by no means an unheard-of price. {58}
Unfortunately the plates will in most cases be found to be badly foxed.
The tissue of the paper itself has in many cases been attacked by damp
and rotted right through.
In such cases any remedy except the drastic one of punching is of
course out of the question. Hence the rarity of a really “desirable”
set of the plates,—a rarity which is largely due to the hoarding away
of books in glass cases; for books require fresh, dry air, with the
rest of God’s creatures.
It may not be out of place here, whilst on the subject of foxing, to
warn the collector that every plate in a book should be carefully
examined before any extravagant price is given for what is called a
fine copy. No doubt we are much indebted to the clever “doctors” of
prints who punch the fatal spots out and pulp them in, who fill up the
worm-holes and vamp up the cleaned prints with green-wood smoke and
coffee infusions to a respectable appearance of age. At the same time
we must never allow ourselves to forget that there are such occupations
as vamping and “improving,” and that it is not for vamped and improved
copies that we should pay excessive prices.
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