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Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewit Entertains his Cousins
Phiz
May 1843
Steel-engraving
12.9 cm high by 11.4 cm wide, vignetted
Ninth regular monthly illustration for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing page 138 (1844 edition) in the eleventh chapter: running head, "A Sour Grape?"
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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"There's another thing that's not easily overdone, father," remarked Jonas, after a short silence.
"What's that?" asked the father; grinning already in anticipation.
"A bargain," said the son. "Here's the rule for bargains — "Do other men, for they would do you." That's the true business precept. All others are counterfeits."
The delighted father applauded this sentiment to the echo; and was so much tickled by it, that he was at the pains of imparting the same to his ancient clerk, who rubbed his hands, nodded his palsied head, winked his watery eyes, and cried in his whistling tones, "Good! good! Your own son, Mr Chuzzlewit" with every feeble demonstration of delight that he was capable of making. But this old man’s enthusiasm had the redeeming quality of being felt in sympathy with the only creature to whom he was linked by ties of long association, and by his present helplessness. And if there had been anybody there, who cared to think about it, some dregs of a better nature unawakened, might perhaps have been descried through that very medium, melancholy though it was, yet lingering at the bottom of the worn-out cask called Chuffey.
As matters stood, nobody thought or said anything upon the subject; so Chuffey fell back into a dark corner on one side of the fireplace, where he always spent his evenings, and was neither seen nor heard again that night; save once, when a cup of tea was given him, in which he was seen to soak his bread mechanically. There was no reason to suppose that he went to sleep at these seasons, or that he heard, or saw, or felt, or thought. He remained, as it were, frozen up—if any term expressive of such a vigorous process can be applied to him — until he was again thawed for the moment by a word or touch from Anthony.
Miss Charity made tea by desire of Mr Jonas, and felt and looked so like the lady of the house that she was in the prettiest confusion imaginable; the more so from Mr Jonas sitting close beside her, and whispering a variety of admiring expressions in her ear. Miss Mercy, for her part, felt the entertainment of the evening to be so distinctly and exclusively theirs, that she silently deplored the commercial gentlemen — at that moment, no doubt, wearying for her return — and yawned over yesterday’s newspaper. As to Anthony, he went to sleep outright, so Jonas and Cherry had a clear stage to themselves as long as they chose to keep possession of it.
When the tea-tray was taken away, as it was at last, Mr Jonas produced a dirty pack of cards, and entertained the sisters with divers small feats of dexterity: whereof the main purpose of every one was, that you were to decoy somebody into laying a wager with you that you couldn’t do it; and were then immediately to win and pocket his money. Mr. Jonas informed them that these accomplishments were in high vogue in the most intellectual circles, and that large amounts were constantly changing hands on such hazards. And it may be remarked that he fully believed this; for there is a simplicity of cunning no less than a simplicity of innocence; and in all matters where a lively faith in knavery and meanness was required as the ground-work of belief, Mr Jonas was one of the most credulous of men. His ignorance, which was stupendous, may be taken into account, if the reader pleases, separately. [Chapter XI, "Wherein a Certain Gentleman becomes particular n his Attentions to a Certain Lady; And more coming events than one, cast their Shadows before," pp. 137-38 in the 1844 edition; descriptive headline in the 1844 edition, "Hopeful Principles"; in the 1897 edition: "A Sour Grape?"]
During the time that Martin's progress develops apart from the other major characters, the story of Martin's cousin Jonas proceeds both in text and illustrations, and emerges visually as the most important secondary progress in the first half of the novel. "Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewit entertains his cousins" (ch. 11) is a visual embodiment of duplicity; it depicts no single incident from the text but rather conflates the reference to Jonas doing card tricks for his guests, the Pecksniff girls, with those paragraphs which make it clear that although he is pretending to woo the elder sister he is in fact aiming at the younger. If we follow a left-to-right "reading" of the plate, we first see Anthony Chuzzlewit in a sleep from which his son wishes he would never awake; next to him is the self-effacing Chuffey, sitting far from the fire. From the dark corner of the room behind Chuffey our eye moves to the strongboxes and ledgers and into the candlelight illuminating the three young persons. Jonas displays an ace of hearts to Charity, who looks at him intently, while behind his back he covertly shows an open hand of cards to Merry, who regards them out of the comer of her eye. We could not have a clearer summary of the situation: Jonas displays the emblem of love, a single heart, to the unsuspecting Cherry, while showing his hand — literally — to Merry. How much of the iconographic invention is Dickens' and how much Browne's is impossible to say, but the plate is typical of the special role illustrations play in Dickens novels: the presentation of meanings which, if made explicit in the text, might seem like clumsy moralizing, premature revelation, or both. [pp. 69-70]
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Last modified 1 March 2019