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.

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}

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.