[13] Vide Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, vol. i. p. 101. (Library Edition.)

[14] I first alluded to this in Temple Bar for September 1892.

[15] It need hardly be said that if any of my readers finds that his copy contains “The Fireside Scene” differing from the first of those here produced, he may congratulate himself on the possession of a great rarity.

The suppressed plate from “Oliver Twist”: “The Fireside Scene”The suppressed plate from “Oliver Twist”: “The Fireside Scene,” as worked upon by Cruikshank

As I have said above, Mr. Bruton’s collection was dispersed in 1897 at Sotheby’s. No. 145 in that sale was an unrivalled run of the Oliver Twist illus­tra­tions, seeing that it consisted of a complete set of proofs of the etchings, and included, with other rarities, the unique proof just mentioned. The lot sold for £32:10s. By the kindness of its late owner, I am enabled to present to my readers a re­pro­duc­tion of this unique impression of the plate in its second state.

So much then for the story of the suppressed plate. There is, however, something more to be said of its substitute.

If we turn to our edition of Oliver Twist, so long as it does not happen to be one published subsequently to 1845, or one containing the suppressed plate, we shall find Rose standing with her {50} arm on Oliver’s shoulder before a tablet put up to his mother’s memory, and we shall find that Rose’s dress is light in colour save for a dark shawl or lace fichu, which is thrown across her shoulders and bosom. In the 1846 edition of the book, the plate has been largely touched up and shaded, and Rose’s dress turned into a black one.[16] Now, it is perfectly evident that it is the old plate altered and used over again and not a new plate copied from the old, for every line and every dot in the illus­tra­tion to the earlier editions reappears in this. The perplexing matter that I have to draw your attention to, however, is that, in the same lot (145) at the Bruton sale mentioned above, there was sold a proof of this plate with Rose Maylie in the black dress, and this a proof before letters, an impossible nut for the amateur to crack who does not know that the lettering of plates may be stopped-out or burnished away or covered up for the striking off of misleading impressions; from which the moral may be drawn that it is better to believe in proof impressions after letters where they are well {52} authenticated, than to presume that a proof is before letters merely because those letters do not appear. Verb. sat sap. The plate in this state is here reproduced for the sake of comparison.

The plate in its first state.

The plate in its second state.

Rose Maylie and Oliver at Agnes’s Tomb. (The substituted plate in two states)