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Initial-Letter Vignette 'T'
Sol Eytinge
Wood engraving
1.5" x 3.5"
Illustration for Dickens's A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks, An Illustrated Magazine For Boys and Girls, Vol. IV
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Commentary
Initial vignettes appropriate to the subject-matter of the various stories were a specialty of Our Young Folks--for example, to introduce Mayne Reid's Among The Ice-Cutters (Vol. III, No. 1, page 1) the artist has depicted an icicle-like initial "T" surmounting five implements used for boring through lake-ice and cutting it into blocks. Sometimes, however, the initial letter is not so cunningly worked into the vignette--for example, the W in the miniature for instalment seven of Cast Away in the Cold (Vol. IV, No. 2, page 65) merely sits in the upper-right corner and has no real connection with the storm raging in the Arctic Sea below.
The first such vignette for A Holiday Romance shows the sort of detail and energy that one seldom finds even on postage stamps. The initial T has been cleverly integrated as part of the tree's branch; it has been playfully en-graved with a bark-like texture, so that the viewer is compelled to study the plate before moving to the text. The branch on which the T has been placed, like the fence, the file of school-children, and the movements of the boys, then forces the viewer's eye to the right of the page to begin reading the story.The corner lamp-post behind which the Colonel has stationed the story's narrator (William Tinkling) is nowhere to be seen. Rather, Tinkling peers from behind a wooden fence (not mentioned by Dickens as a feature of the lane in which the action occurs), ready to sally forth to claim his bride when the Colonel (rushing forward in the middle ground) has felled Miss Drowvey. All this is more or less in accord with the Colonel's plan as out-lined in the middle of the second page. What the vignette artist has subtracted is an urban, British lamp-post; what he has added is an American fence and appropriate clothing for the figures. The teacher wears the poke bonnet and dress of a middle-class woman of the 1860s, the boys short, collarless jackets and knickerbocker trousers (Cunnington and Buck 181). As with the other vignettes in this series, the outcome of the action here is not given away, so that the reader must wait until the bottom of the second page to learn how the gallant rescue turned into a debacle.
Last modified 2 May 2002