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The Frontispiece for Martin Chuzzlewit: First Seen, But Last Created

"I have a notion of finishing the book, with an apostrophe to Tom Pinch, playing the organ." — "Dickens to Phiz," June 1844

The frontispiece for the monthly-issued novel poses certain problems for the analyst that its counterpart in a volume that has never gone through the process of serialisation would not. Although this frontispiece is one of the first images that the modern reader of a Penguin or Oxford World's Classics volume edition of Martin Chuzzlewit encounters, it was in fact one of the last that Phiz produced over the nineteen-month run. Although the modern reader, then, would tend to regard the figures on the frontispiece as the shades of things to come, in fact, as Valerie Lester Browne points out in Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens (2004), these images suggest what will befall the various characters several years after the story's textual conclusion, as well as (to a lesser extent) their experiences and roles during the course of the narrative. Consequently, like many a modern preface, this page is better understood once the reader has completed the novel.

Ornate and highly complicated, the frontispiece is the novel's first full-page illustration, but was published with the last "double" number. Hence, the engraving offers a highly informed "visual reading" of the entire novel and its trajectory into the near-future, unlike the thematic and often misleading wrapper with which, however, it shares certain features of design such as the cup-and-ball motif to the left and right of the organ pipes, upper centre, which features an angelic female holding Tom Pinch's head aloft on a garlanded cup and a demonic male holding aloft Pecksniff's head impaled upon an inverted cup, its vine denuded of either fruit or flower. Other characters multiply represented in the frontispiece include young Martin, Mark Tapley, Mrs. Lupin, Mary Graham, Ruth Pinch, and — suffering the torments of the damned — Jonas. Whereas Phiz created the wrapper with just an imprecise notion of the theme and no knowledge of the plot or characters, Phiz had the benefit of having read almost all of the story when he received Dickens's letter of instructions for this illustration.

Knowing how the novel ends, Phiz now invites the reader to reflect on what has passed and to speculate on the fates of the principal characters, all of whom except Old Martin (who is mentioned in the closing pages of the novel) make an appearance at least once. The central image, Tom Pinch at his organ, represents the artist contemplating his work, life, and relationships; it eventually will blend into illustrator R. W. Buss's memorial to the author, "Dickens' Dream," which makes explicit the connection between the legion of characters that flowed from his pen and the man himself. The frontispiece brings closure to the story by supplying information as images rather than letterpress about the characters after the close of the novel, showing us, for example, that Mark Tapley marries the Blue Dragon and its proprietor, Mrs. Lupin (left of centre) in one of the many joyful "dance of life" scenes that crowd the left-hand margin (the right of the original steel engravings). thus, the frontispiece continues the wrapper's program of contrasting figures and fortunes. Generally in a manner consistent with the governing principle of Nemesis or Poetic Justice, the bottom and right registers deal with scenes of punishment while the dancing figures in the left-hand register, including three married couples, enjoy the fruits of positive karma. In June 1844 Dickens outlined his vision of this final illustration for Phiz, who, as we shall see, provided most of the details and format from his own highly stimulated imagination:

And instead of saying what became of the people, as usual [in a novel], I shall suppose it to be all expressed in the sounds [of Tom Pinch's organ]; making the last swell of the Instrument a kind of expression of Tom's Heart. ("CD to Phiz," Pilgrim Letters 3: 140)

Tom's visions are at once hyperbolic, whimsical, and allegorical, providing a final complicated puzzle for the reader to solve. The reader must identify the figures from various visual clues (such as Pecksniff's hair and swelled head) and determine whether a given scene comes from within or beyond the frame of the narrative. Whether the condign punishments suffered by Pecksniff and Jonas are consistent with the gentle character and imagination of Dickens's "Abt Vogler" probably caused the Common Reader little concern.

In his extensive examination of Phiz's work on the Chuzzlewit illustration in his 1972 Dickens Studies Annual article that anticipated his chapter on the same subject in Dickens and Phiz (1978), Michael Steig explicates most of the scenes in Tom's toccata vision. Dickens has already provided us with a number of clues to decode the frontispiece. Whereas Tom, according to Dickens's letter of instruction to Phiz, has remained single, a slightly melancholy figure outside the charmed Shakespearean circle of young marrieds, John Westlock and Ruth Pinch, young Martin and Mary Graham, and Mark Tapley and the Widow Lupin are all happily married in a combined ceremony of royal rather than village proportions (upper left). in his will, old Martin has bequeathed Tom sufficient funds to fit his chamber with a magnificent organ worthy of a cathedral. Phiz has gone well beyond the scope of the "married happily ever after" ending summarized by Dickens in reiterating the narrative's chief themes and motifs, and commenting ironically on the fates of the less savoury characters. As Tom plays the two keyboards (centre), miniature figures of his sister Ruth (holding a rolling pin suggestive of her having abandoned the governess's profession for a purely domestic role) and brother-in-law John beat out the cadence for him. At the top of the organ pipes are Martin and Mary, dropping petals upon Tom's pensive head from a bridal wreath. Like Dickens with his half-closed eyes in Buss's "Dickens' Dream," Tom seems unaware of the figures that swirl about him, gazing inward.

The figures in the left-hand register move from top to bottom in the dance of life, suggested rather than articulated by Dickens in the closing pages of the novel. Immediately to the left of the miniature Ruth we see the Blue Dragon (animated as a fabulous creature rather depicted as a building) attended by two dancing flagons and joining hands with Mark and Mrs. Lupin. Below the dancing dragon is a portly female whose head is lost in a bandbox labelled "Gamp"; as she dances, she holds the hands of two dancing teapots, and is observed by three suffering patients and three crying infants. Thus, in spite of her being an exploitative deceiver, she has been accorded a spot among the blessed, perhaps because, as her collar suggests, she is blind to exterior reality and even her own condition, and is a figure of fun rather than of vice or crime. Self-deluded as well as abusing trust, she is to be ridiculed rather than subjected to more stringent punishment, a figure of Horatian satire.

Above the dancing dragon, another set of figures hardly suggestive of marital bliss--Poll Sweedlepipe and young Bailey--dance with birdcages and an animated dummy. At the lower left, Moddle is weeping and Merry teasing, contrasting the behaviours and attitudes of the three married couples to their right. in contrast to the general merriment of the dancers, at the bottom Phiz comments upon the destinies of the murderer, Jonas, and the plagiarist, Pecksniff. While smiling images of Pecksniff reminiscent of the smiling goblins in the Christmas story from The Pickwick Papers torment the hapless architect, to the right Jonas is surrounded by mirrors with moneybags tied to their frames. upbraiding him for his crime committed for the sake of money, the mirrors give back horrifying images of himself to Jonas. Appropriately, Pecksniff is suspended from the apex of a builder's tripod while a trowel scowls at him.

The most complicated exemplification of Nemesis is that of Jonas and his tormentors, upper right. Medusae, skeletons, and Fates threaten his prostrate figure with moneybags (alluding to his greed), daggers (signifying his murderous thoughts about his own father and Montague tigg), and a pair of wineglasses (alluding to his earlier scheme to poison Anthony Chuzzlewit). Presumably, this scene of allegorical punishment transpires in a metaphysical space such as a Virgillian Tartarus (rather than in a Christian Hell). Immediately to the left of this group Jonas crosses a stile as his victim pleads for mercy, one of the few scenes that can be confidently located within the text (Ch. 47). Above these images of Jonas, Phiz deploys Latin mottos to comment upon Pecksniff's architectural and pedagogical swindling, compelling the viewer to reflect on the earliest incidents and illustrations in the novel. Perhaps, as Steig (1972) suggests, "Sic vos non vobis" (you labour, but not for yourselves) comments upon "Tom's condition of virtual slavery" (p. 145) when serving his apprenticeship,

while "Si monumentum requiras [sic] circumspice" would seem to have multiple significance. First of all, the allusion to Sir Christopher Wren is surely meant as an ironic comment upon Pecksniff's architectural pretensions; and it may also echo Dickens' reference to the Latin inscription which appears upon the cornerstone of Pecksniff's plagiarized school building (xxxv, 553). But it also has a more specific meaning, related to the other Latin tag: Pecksniff is, in the picture, looking around at monuments of himself (a bust and a statue), but the real monument to Pecksniff is Tom Pinch, for whose virtues and talents Pecksniff receives the credit. (145)

Thus, the frontispiece extends the disposition of rewards and punishments in the fifty-fourth chapter of the novel, and is a complement to rather than a realisation of the final pages of the novel, a palpable demonstration of the pleasures that await the blessed (the amiable Tom) in this life and the torments that await the damned (Jonas) in the next. The mild figure seated at the organ becomes a visual analogue for the young (and need we add "deserving"?) author seated at his writing desk, puzzling how to wind up this vast, sometimes unruly comic cavalcade, and recalling perhaps Milton's companion pastorals, "L'Allegro" and "il Penseroso."

References

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85.

_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual, 2 (1972): 119-149.

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Last modified 26 April 2007