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"Joe B. is sly, Sir, devilish sly"
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
Etching, facing p. 452
12.4 cm high by 10.9 cm wide (4 ⅞ by 4 ¼ inches)
June 1847
Dickens's Dombey and Son, ch. 26, facing p. 452
Click on image to enlarge it.
Image scan and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
When the Major was too hoarse with meat and drink, and the display of his social powers, to render himself intelligible any longer, they adjourned to coffee. After which, the Major inquired of Mr Carker the Manager, with little apparent hope of an answer in the affirmative, if he played picquet.
"Yes, I play picquet a little," said Mr. Carker.
"Backgammon, perhaps?" observed the Major, hesitating.
"Yes, I play backgammon a little too," replied the man of teeth.
"Carker plays at all games, I believe," said Mr. Dombey, laying himself on a sofa like a man of wood, without a hinge or a joint in him; ‘and plays them well."
In sooth, he played the two in question, to such perfection, that the Major was astonished, and asked him, at random, if he played chess. [Chapter 26, "Shadows of the Past and Future," Vol. I: 453]
Major Bagstock, standard bearer and beneficiary of Empire, has his unnamed "Native" servant kitted out in the fashionable style of a gentleman's gentleman, in a tailcoat with epaulettes. But Phiz reminds readers of the Native's colonial origins with his exaggerated nose, dusky complexion, and oily, black ringlets. The illustrator, therefore, casts the Native as a stereotypical South Asian, although the text implies (based on the far-flung corners of Empire where his employer has served) that he is an African.
Even though the Native is a secondary and essentially one-dimensional character, Dickens uses him as a comic foil to the self-important, blustering Major Bagstock. The Native, Bagstock's general factotum (indeed, as far as the text reveals, his only servant), is presumably a "native" whom Bagstock has trained as a domestic servant and imported from an unspecified British colony. Unlike all the other characters portrayed, The Native in an elaborate uniform (consistently depicted in the various illustrations in which he appears in editions ranging from 1847 through 1900) has no proper name, but answers to any "vituperative epithet" that the imperious Major may choose to hurl at him. Thus, Eytinge shows an elaborately uniformed servant who seems terrified of his employer, and in a perpetual state of comedic confusion.
Left: Clayton J. Clarke's Player's Cigarette Card No. 7 watercolour study: Major Bagstock (1910). Left of centre: W. H. C. Groome's concluding illustration is much more critical of the Major's brutal treatment of his colonial servant and much less sympathetic to his employer, The unfortunate Native suffered terribly (1900). Right of centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of the Major and his much chivvied valet: "Major Bagstock and the Native (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's initial Household Edition depiction of the Major and his heavily-laden valet: "Take Advice from Plain, Old Joe" (1877).
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.
_________. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. IX.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 16: Dombey and Son."The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition.Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 294-337.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London (1899) edition.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Ch. 12, "Work, Work, Work." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004, pp. 128-160.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 86-112.
Vann, J. Don. Chapter 4."Dombey and Son, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, October 1846-April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 67-68.
Last modified 25 January 2021