International studio (27.1905/1906(1906))

5&V-.

George Alfred IVilliams


Copyright, 1905, by Fox, Duffield & Co.
LITTLE NELL AND ILER GRANDFATHER
BY G. A. WILLIAMS, EROM “TEN GIRLS EROM DICKENS”
(EOX, DUEFIELD & CO.)
and hordes of other people, prize Dickens in his
dress of Cruikshank, Phiz and Leech. The simon -
pure collector, of course, will be particularly fond
of such rarities as the third number of Pickwick
Papers with the original plates by Buss. Other
avowed lovers of the novelist will rail at the early
illustrators and set up an indignant cry of “Carica-
ture!” A middle position accords an outspoken
delight in the old drawings, but reserves apart a
conception of what Dickens really intended. These
people would have enjoyed seeing Betterton play
Hamlet, but would hold the part better understood
to-day, when Ophelia’s madness no longer has the
smack of buffoonery and there is nothing blood-
thirsty about the son of Denmark. And their de-
fense is certainly more than plausible, that we are
refining the performance rather than the play.
The refining of the illustration of Dickens began
in his lifetime and is still going on. Green, Bar-
nard, Darby, Eytinge, to name only earlier new
men, sought to avoid caricature. This season,
again, we find George Alfred Williams, a young
artist who has already tried his hand at a score of
cletached characters, setting to work on the Christ-

mas stories, and, in the name of all that is astonish-
ing, refining Scrooge—Ebenezer Scrooge, skinflint,
curmudgeon, bitter old pepperbox, nagging nim-
ble-witted animated nugget, dry chill slippery
icicle! At first flush, Scrooge’s “Bah!” and “Hum-
bug!” would almost seem in Order. For though
Scrooge would not exactly trample a child under
his feet in the Street after the extraordinary fashion
of Stevenson’s uncanny creature, Mr. Hyde, he cer-
tainly clid take the ruler to the frost-bitten youngster
who dared to try the song, “God rest you merry,
gentlemen,” at the keyhole and recommended the
prison treadmill as a Christmas present to the poor.
If a man is even to carry such a forbidding name as
Scrooge, surely his face must be set like a flint.
And yet, as Mr. Williams points out, we see Scrooge
in this snapping-turtle frame of mind a very short
time only. Presently his chief emotion is fear, fol-
lowed in his excursions with the spirits of Christmas
Past, Present and Future by a decreasing obtuse-
ness and a growingwarmth of heart. This old man,
whose inner cold on Christmas Eve froze his own
features, nipped his nose and spoke out shrewdly
in his grating voice, was to greet his solitary Christ-
mas morning with whoops and peals of jolly
laughter, Order a prize turkey delivered in a cab to
his impecunious clerk, pat children indiscriminately
on the head in the Street and rejoice the beggars,
become a very Santa Claus that day and a second
father to Tiny Tim ever after. Such a transforma-
tion argues the means for it, ready thoughwithheld,
in his nature. Scrooge’s heart must be thought of


Copyright, 1901, by R. FI. Russell
OLIVER TWIST
BY G. A. WILLIAMS, FROM “TEN BOYS
FROM DICKENS” (HARPER & BROS.)

XXVI