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Kit — A shock-headed, shambling, awkward lad with an uncommonly wide mouth, very red cheeks, a turned-up nose, and certainly the most comical expression of face.
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 x 9.2 cm, vignetted
Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing V, facing 8.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Kit was a shock-headed, shambling, awkward lad with an uncommonly wide mouth, very red cheeks, a turned-up nose, and certainly the most comical expression of face I ever saw. He stopped short at the door on seeing a stranger, twirled in his hand a perfectly round old hat without any vestige of a brim, and resting himself now on one leg and now on the other and changing them constantly, stood in the doorway, looking into the parlour with the most extraordinary leer I ever beheld. I entertained a grateful feeling towards the boy from that minute, for I felt that he was the comedy of the child’s life.
"A long way, wasn’t it, Kit?" said the little old man.
"Why, then, it was a goodish stretch, master," returned Kit.
"Of course you have come back hungry?"
"Why, then, I do consider myself rather so, master," was the answer.
The lad had a remarkable manner of standing sideways as he spoke, and thrusting his head forward over his shoulder, as if he could not get at his voice without that accompanying action. I think he would have amused one anywhere, but the child’s exquisite enjoyment of his oddity, and the relief it was to find that there was something she associated with merriment in a place that appeared so unsuited to her, were quite irresistible. It was a great point too that Kit himself was flattered by the sensation he created, and after several efforts to preserve his gravity, burst into a loud roar, and so stood with his mouth wide open and his eyes nearly shut, laughing violently. [Chapter I, 7-8]
Furniss had read the story of The Old Curiosity Shop long before he received the massive commission to illustrate all the volumes in the Charles Dickens Library Edition of 1910. Indeed, his acquaintance with the novel may well go all the way back to his boyhood in Ireland, for he was just twelve when Chapman and Hall issued the novel as the fourth volume in the Household Edition (1876). Because he fully realised from the outset the relative importance of each of the main characters in the rambling, picaresque narrative before he composed any of the thirty-two lithographs, Furniss knew the part that the good-natured Kit Nubbles would play as a secondary protagonist, behind Little Nell, but roughly on a parr with the plucky Dick Swiveller, as opposition to the menacing dwarf Daniel Quilp. Furniss signals his appreciation of Kit's significance by introducing him as early as possible to the narrative-pictorial sequence, which will include only two further illustrations featuring the well-meaning male ingenue of working-class origins and middle-class aspirations. Whereas Grandfather Trent looks for a shortcut to riches for Little Nell through gambling (with disastrous results), Kit cheerfully applies himself to a course of self-improvement and loyal service. Whereas Furniss in the 1910 series introduces Kit as an embarrassed booby, Green in the 1876 Household Edition treats him with serious appreciation.
Left: Hablot Knight Browne's amusing caricatures of the comical Kit in Master Humphrey's Clock: Kit at Home (Chapter 10); centre: Kit and Whisker/span> (initial-letter vignette); right: Mr. Garland and Kit (Chapter 40).
Left: Hablot Knight Browne's amusing caricatures of the comical Kit continues well into the story in Kit brings a Letter (Chapter 54); centre: Kit in Jail (Chapter 61); right: Kit's Visit to the Stable (Chapter 68).
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz, George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury and Evans, 1849.
_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. V.
Created 8 May 2020
Last modified 27 November 2020