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Public Dinners
George Cruikshank
1839
Etching on copper
12 x 9.5 cm vignetted
"Public Dinners" — the nineteenth chapter in "Scenes," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, Second Series, facing p. 120.
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Dickens and Cruikshank (with beard) are seen behind the leading stewards, who may be intended for Chapman and Hall, Dickens's and now Cruikshank's publishers.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Up-stairs, if you please, sir; this is the committee-room." Up-stairs you go, accordingly; wondering, as you mount, what the duties of the committee can be, and whether they ever do anything beyond confusing each other, and running over the waiters.
Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange (which, as a matter of course, you lose, before you require it again), you enter the hall, down which there are three long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross table on a raised platform at the upper end for the reception of the very particular friends of the indigent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody’s card in it, you wisely seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decanters of sherry down the tables, at very respectable distances; melancholy-looking salt-cellars, and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth; and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London since the accession of George the First. The musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously — playing no notes but notes of preparation; and several gentlemen are gliding along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and more dismal as they meet with everybody's card but their own.
You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and — not being in the habit of attending public dinners — are somewhat struck by the appearance of the party on which your eyes rest. One of its principal members appears to be a little man, with a long and rather inflamed face, and gray hair brushed bolt upright in front; he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck, without any stiffener, as an apology for a neckerchief, and is addressed by his companions by the familiar appellation of 'Fitz,' or some such monosyllable. Near him is a stout man in a white neckerchief and buff waistcoat, with shining dark hair, cut very short in front, and a great, round, healthy-looking face, on which he studiously preserves a half sentimental simper. Next him, again, is a large-headed man, with black hair and bushy whiskers; and opposite them are two or three others, one of whom is a little round-faced person, in a dress-stock and blue under-waistcoat. There is something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly describe what it is; you cannot divest yourself of the idea that they have come for some other purpose than mere eating and drinking. — "Public Dinners," p. 121-122.
To survive in such a society requires skill at deception and exploitation of one's self and others. Cruikshank makes this point even more explicitly than Boz. Viewed in this light, the many portraits of author and artist throughout the Sketches (title page; S, XIX, facing p. 160; C, VI, facing p. 240; C, XI, facing p. 266) become more than manifestations of Cruikshank's legacy from earlier artists, who more usually relegated their self-portraits to the background of a scene, or even of his particular sense of equality with the author. They inadvertently call attention to the fact that the two men, like many of their characters, are exploiting others for their own amusement and profit under the guise of "art." Perhaps this is what Ruskin was getting at when he cryptically called 'Public Dinners' (S, XIX, facing p. 160) (fig. 3) — a scene in which Dickens and Cruikshank smirk at one another while marshaling a procession of indigent orphans — "glorious" yet "withering: if one understands it. But who does? or ever did?"
The artist had added 'Public Dinners' and other new designs to the collected Sketches by Boz when they were published in one large volume in 1839 after appearing in part-issues since 1837. . . . — Jane Rabb Cohen, Part 1: "Dickens and His Early Illustrators," Chapter 1, "George Cruikshank," p. 18-19.
It is easy to focus on the recognizable figures in the procession: young Dickens, forty-five-year-old Cruikshank, and the publishers Chapman and Hall. What, then, is the significance of the other figures being ushered into the literary feast? They are certainly not the celebrants whom Dickens describes, but rather the "indigent orphans" (rather better dressed and groomed than one might expect) in whose honour the feast in grand hall with its majestic Ionic pillars and crystal chandelier is being staged. As Frederic G. Kitton notes, Cruikshank had to re-engrave this illustration for the Chapman and Hall serialisation, and the subsequent 1839 anthology:
During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy," which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following [twelve] new subjects: "The Parish Engine," "The Broker's Man," "Our Next-door Neighbours" [sic], "Early Coaches," "Public Dinners," "The Gin-Shop," "Making a Night of It," "The Boarding-House," "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," "The Steam Excursion," "Mrs. Joseph Porter," and "Mr. Watkins Tottle." — "George Cruikshank, p. 4.
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of the actual dining in the Boz sketch, showing the thoroughly masculine, bourgeois, and middle-aged nature of the participants in Tureens of soup are emptied with awful rapidity. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.
Dickens, Charles. "Scenes," Chapter 19, "Public Dinners." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt. 1890. Pp. 120-125.
Dickens, Charles. "Scenes," Chapter 19, "Public Dinners." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Pp. 77-79.
Dickens, Charles. "Scenes," Chapter 19, "Public Dinners." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 1. Pp. 154-159.
Hawksley, Lucinda Dickens. Chapter 3, "Sketches by Boz." Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012: Charles Dickens. San Rafael, California: Insight, 2011. Pp. 12-15.
Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall,1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004. Pp.1-28.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Last modified 5 July 2002