On the Original Illustrations of Trollope's Fiction

He Knew He Was Right

Written 1867 (13 November) - 1868 (12 June)
Serialized 1868 (17 October) - 1869 (22 May), Weekly Sixpenny Parts
Illustrated Marcus Stone
Published as a book 1869 (May), Strahan

Marcus Stone provided 32 vignettes or rubrics for the opening chapters and 32 full-page illustrations for each instalment of He Knew He Was Right. I have reproduced 22 of full-page illustrations with their accompanying captions and 12 rubrics (all-labelled rubrics with descriptive captions supplied by me). I follow the reproductions with an excerpt from Chapter 6 of my book (on Stone's style).

  1. Chapter 1: Showing how Wrath began

    Marcus Stone, "Shewing how wrath began" , He Knew He Was Right

  2. Chapter 6: Showing how the Quarrel progressed

    Marcus Stone, "Shewing How Reconciliation Was Made" , He Knew He Was Right

  3. Chapter 7: Miss Jemima Stanbury, of Exeter [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Aunt Jemima Stanburgy], He Knew He Was Right

  4. Chapter 10: Hard Words [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Louis Trevelyan seeing a letter to Emily] , He Knew He Was Right

  5. Chapter 12: Miss Stanbury's Generosity

    Marcus Stone, "Aunt Stanbury at dinner will not speak" , He Knew He Was Right

  6. Chapter 13: The Honourable Mr. Glascock [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [The Clock House at Nuncombe Priory] , He Knew He Was Right

  7. Chapter 16: Dartmoor

    Marcus Stone, "Nora tries to make herself believe" , He Knew He Was Right

  8. Chapter 19: Bozzle, the Ex-Policeman [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Mr Bozzle] , He Knew He Was Right

  9. Chapter 21: Showing how Colonel Osborne went to Nuncombe Putney

    Marcus Stone, "The wooden-legged postman of Nuncombe Putney" , He Knew He Was Right

  10. Chapter 22: Shewing how Miss Stanbury behaved to her two nieces [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Aunt and Nora Stanbury daily at table] , He Knew He Was Right

  11. Chapter 26: A Third Party is so objectionable

    Marcus Stone, "The third person was Mr Bozzle" , He Knew He Was Right

  12. Chapter 26: Great Tribulation [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, "Emily Trevelyan and Nora Rowley with the child] , He Knew He Was Right

  13. Chapter 30: Dorothy makes up her Mind

    Marcus Stone, "Dorothy makes up her mind" , He Knew He Was Right

  14. Chapter 32: The 'Full Moon' at St. Diddulph's

    Marcus Stone, "The "Full Moon' at St. Diddulph's" , He Knew He Was Right

  15. Chapter 34: Priscilla's Wisdom [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Priscilla Stanbury?] , He Knew He Was Right

  16. Chapter 35: Mr. Gibson's Good Fortune

    Marcus Stone, "'I wonder why people make these reports" , He Knew He Was Right

  17. Chapter 39: Miss Nora Rowley is maltreated

    Marcus Stone, "'Am I to go?" , He Knew He Was Right

  18. Chapter 41: Showing what took place at St. Diddulph's

    Marcus Stone, "At St Diddulph's" , He Knew He Was Right

  19. Chapter 44: Brooke Burgess takes leave of Exeter

    Marcus Stone, "Brooke Burgess takes his leave" , He Knew He Was Right

  20. Chapter 47: About Fishing, and Navigation, and Head-dresses [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Mr Gibson and Arabella French] , He Knew He Was Right

  21. Chapter 53: Hugh Stanbury is shown to be no Conjuror [rubric and full-page illustration]

    Marcus Stone, [Nora Rowley and Emily Trevelyan at Mr Outhouse's], He Knew He Was Right


    Marcus Stone, "Nora's letter" , He Knew He Was Right

  22. Chapter 57: Dorothy's Fate

    Marcus Stone, "'Brooke wants me to be his wife'" , He Knew He Was Right

  23. Chapter 59: Mr. Bozzle at Home

    Marcus Stone, "'Put it on the fire-back, Bozzle'" , He Knew He Was Right

  24. Chapter 67: River's Cottage

    Marcus Stone, "'You haven't forgotten Mamma?'" , He Knew He Was Right

  25. Chapter 72: The Delivery of the Lamb [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Pathos of Aunt Stanbury, Martha with basket] , He Knew He Was Right

  26. Chapter 73: Dorothy returns to Exeter

    Marcus Stone, "Only the vagaries of an old woman" , He Knew He Was Right

  27. Chapter 75: The Rowleys go over the Alps [rubric]

    Marcus Stone, [Overpacked carriage] , He Knew He Was Right

  28. Chapter 79: "I can sleep on the boards"

    Marcus Stone, "'It is hard to speak sometimes.'" , He Knew He Was Right

  29. Chapter 84: Self-sacrifice [rubric and full-page illustration]

    Marcus Stone, [detail from Trevelyan in the house gazing at his son], He Knew He Was Right


    Marcus Stone, "Trevelyan at Casalunga", He Knew He Was Right

  30. Chapter 90: Lady Rowley conquered

    Marcus Stone, "'I must always remember that I met you there.'", He Knew He Was Right

  31. Chapter 96: Monkhams [rubric and full-page illustration]

    Marcus Stone, [Nora Rowley and Hugh Stanbury at train station], He Knew He Was Right


    Marcus Stone, Monkhams, He Knew He Was Right

[Although many of Stone's illustrations show the influence of the popular idyllic style, g]rotesquerie, exaggeration and allegory figure importantly in the comic illustrations Marcus Stone drew for He Knew He Was Right. For example, in those illustrations which depict Aunt Jemima Stanbury's struggle to control her niece, Dorothy Stanbury, Stone conveys the inner life of Aunt Stanbury's alert watchfulness as she attempts to control Dorothy by the addition of a quietly droll white cat whom we see from the back, its tail stretched out by its side. Stone's tense small lines suggest the cat has patiently folded its paws one over the other while assuming a sentry-like posture near Dorothy steathily to survey her ('Aunt Stanbury at dinner will not speak', facing p. 99). Many of Stone's vignettes are caricatures: we see a domestic Bozzle, an ugly sleepy Hugh, and a determined Martha, Aunt Stanbury's servant, seen marching, basket prominently in hand (presumably holding Aunt Stanbury's peace-offering of the lamb). Numbers of the small pictures by Stone (and several by Mary Ellen Edwards for The Claverings) function like Thackeray's unobtrusive pictorial capitals in his books; they offer emphatic yet unobtrusive visual reinforcements of casual moments of Trollope's texts which live apart from the novel's story, moments which capture the oddities of life, its idiosyncratic comedy and ennui and laconic melancholy.

Stone's depiction of 'the wooden-legged postman of Nuncombe Putney' blends the techniques and mood of the 1840s with that of the 1860s. Stone has drawn an old man with a withered face and a crumpled top hat. The picture combines sympathy with detachment. The one- legged postman sits awkwardly yet patiently on an equally aged and tired donkey who seems too small for his rider, of whom Trollope writes:

There is a general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting service of the government (He Knew He Was Right, p. 149, and illustration facing p. 179).

Stone's depiction of the Mr and Mrs Bozzle together tending the fire with the man holding the baby also mixes modes ('Put it on the fire- back, Bozzle', facing p. 494) to capture a tonic moment in the novel, one casual and prosaic, which by contrast underlines the misery of the Trevelyans and their baby, depicted by Stone in moments of charged emotional wrenching ('You haven't forgotten Mamma?' and 'It is hard to speak sometimes', facing pp. 562 and 683).

The earlier style is particularly effective in conveying paradoxical moods of sinister comedy. In Stone's aptly-entitled 'That third person was Mr Bozzle', we see Bozzle's half-apologetic face alive with suspicion and wariness as for the first time Bozzle intrudes himself on Hugh Stanbury and Louis Trevelyan. Stone has shown us what Trollope means when Trollope writes: As no name was given, Stanbury did not at first know Mr Bozzle, but he had not had his eye on Mr Bozzle for half a minute before he recognised the ex-policeman by the outward attributes and signs of his profession . . . (p. 221 and facing illustration).

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