He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant
Fred Barnard
1870s
6.7 x 4.8 inches
Illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Stave iii.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
Barnard has created a markedly urban scene, which he imbues with a strong sense of community as well-wishers greet Bob and Timothy Cratchit on their way home from church on Christmas morning. Despite his troublesome employer, Bob is cheerful and carefree, transformed into a large child himself through the medium of play. Aside from Sol Eytinge, Junior's vignette for the Ticknor & Fields A Christmas Carol (Boston, 1868), this is the first depiction of Bob and Tiny Tim sailing through the streets of Camden Town together. This illustration is unusual in that it does not realise a moment in the dramatised action, but rather one which is merely reported.
Barnard's markedly realistic style is very different from that of Dickens's original illustrator, the Punch cartoonist John Leech, and the effect of modelling — of using real bodies to produce a three-dimensional effect — is evident, although certainly the realistic public and private buildings in the background provide a suitable social context for the action, and Bob's period costume adds verisimilitude.
"No, no. There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
"So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day?"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." [Stave Three, "The Second of the Three Spirits"]
Thus, Scrooge witnesses the joyful family reunion and overhears the above dialogue in which the narrator interprets Bob's behaviour as being like that of a race-horse; but all Scrooge actually sees is Bob and Tim as they arrive at the Cratchit family door. The illustration, therefore, extends the text of the novella in a way that the original Leech illustrations, faithful realisations of textual passages, did not.
References
Dickens, Charles. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman and Hall, 1912. P. 152.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Il. Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Last modified 9 August 2011