In this five-in-one picture, Herbert tells Pip at a dinner the story of Miss Havisham, which is embodied in the four pictures framed by roses, overseen by the captions: "The Will, The Pact, The Courtship," and "The Wedding".
Pip met Herbert again in London, after their scuffle at Miss Havisham's place, Satis House. At Barnard's Inn, Herbert invites him to dinner, which seemed to him "a very Lord Mayor's Feast". There, Pip disclosed to him that he knew scarcely nothing about Miss Havisham's life. Herbert proceeds to tell the story, and while doing so gently corrects Pip's peculiar table manners. An occasion for such a correction is shown in the picture: Herbert points with his fork at Pip, who unconsciously stuffed his napkin into the tumbler. In the picture, he looks at it incredulously.
Now to Miss Havisham's sketchy past.
It starts on the very left with "The Will": Miss Havisham's father, who was a brewer, and is depicted dressed as a jolly Bacchus with a pint on a gigantic painting festooned with mourning ribbons, passed away, and left her daughter, and his son from another marriage an unequal amount of shares in the promising brewery. The half brother, who looks abject, and arm-crossed in the corner of the picture, got the short end of the stick, while Miss Havisham received a much bigger share of the deceased fortune. Knowing this, her hypocrite relatives ostentatiously show their affection for her, gathering around close to her, while a notary is reading from the brewer's will, one even drying a tear on the fatherless daughter, hoping to profit from Miss Havisham's wealthy status.
The half brother, however, quickly makes the best of the situation, and spends all of his inherited fortune on bawdy amusements. In "The Pact", the tipsy half brother just lost another game with a shady fellow to the right. As reparation for his debts, he proposes to the fellow to court Miss Havisham, and to move her to buy him out of his shares, in order to pay his debts. The fellow accepts the exciting adventure.
In "The Courtship", the shady man, dressed as a well-to-do gentleman with a fine wig, walks with a smiling Miss Havisham through the park adjacent to Satis House. Despite his winning looks, Herbert's father recalls him as a showy-man, never to be mistaken for a gentleman: "because... no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner." On this point, Miss Havisham and Mr Herbert clashed together, splitting the relatives for years to come.
Eventually, the shady man succeeds, and Miss Havisham buys her half brothers shares, bailing him out of his debts.
At last, in "The Wedding", the Miss Havisham we know is born: On the day of the wedding between the false gentleman and her, at twenty minutes to nine, while she is sitting in the dressing room in full bridal garments, in the middle of putting one of her shoes on, she receives a deadly blow in the form of a letter, in which the false man, without warning, and seemingly without any explanation, annulated the engagement, and bids her farewell forever. Miss Havisham quickly orders her servants to darken all windows, and to stop all clocks at twenty minutes to nine. Then, in the picture, she slumps over the letter, and a golden repeater. The picture shows the last ray of light being suffocated by a servant drawing the curtains. Miss Havisham's hypocrite relatives, Camilla, Sarah Pocket, and Georgiana, light candles, while on the left, two head servants look in confusion and concern towards Miss Havisham's slumped figure.
I wanted to draw a picture similar to Norman Rockwell's "The Land of Enchantment". There, two boys read books on the foreground, while all kind of fable characters are depicted on the background, in a lighter hue. In this illustration, Pip and Herbert take the place of Rockwell's boys, and the four stages replace the fable characters. Also, you may notice that some faces in "The Will" and "The Wedding" seem abnormally protracted. This is due to the idea that the four stages surround Pip and Herbert as if they were four paintings. As if they were sitting in a rose pavillon. Therefore, due to perspective issues the faces become long and thin near one edge, and broader near the other.
Furthermore, the image in "The Pact" is inspired by the Polish painting "Gamblers by Candlelight" by Feliks Pęczarski, especially Miss Havisham's picture becoming see-through against the candlelight.
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