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Lacking ready money, Martin has to visit his "uncle," the local pawnshop in London; thus, his meeting the perpetually indigent cadger Montague Tigg, confidant of Chuzzlewit scion Chevy Slyme, is not mere coincidence. The moment realized occurs in Chapter Thirteen: "I have removed my town establishment from thirty-eight Mayfair, to number fifteen-hundred-and-forty-two Park Lane," said Mr. Tigg; desiring to see how the occupant of the next box received his pleasantry, he glanced round the partition and recognized Martin." As Michael Steig noted in his Dickens Studies Annual article of 1972, the plate is closely based on George Cruikshank's "The Pawnshop" from Sketches by Boz (1838): the same door, the symbol of the three balls; the division of counter and private boxes, and the two clerks, a young woman with her elbows planted on the counter, concentrating on the transaction, and a workman in his cap leaning against the outer partition. Phiz's treatment of the subject, however, is freer and my dynamic, in part as the result of the injection of the ever-lively Montague Tigg. — Chapter 13

Last modified 26 April 2007