"Silas Wegg on his way to the Bower" by Harry Furniss — fifth illustration for "Our Mutual Friend" (1910)

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Silas Wegg on his way to the Bower

Harry Furniss

1910

13.7 cm x 8.9 cm, or 5 ¼ by 2 ½ inches, vignetted

Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, for Book 1, Chapter VII, "Mr. Wegg Looks after Himself," facing XV, 80.

Every morning at eight o’clock, he stumped to the corner, carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the board and trestles became a counter, the basket supplied the few small lots of fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a foot-warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed a choice collection of halfpenny ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within it became his post for the rest of the day. — Book One, Chapter V, “Boffin's Bower,” 45.

[Click on this image, and those below, for larger versions.]

Passage Illustrated: Wegg now hopes to buy his leg back from Mr. Venus.

Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the weather moist and raw. Mr. Wegg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he folds his screen early, now that he combines another source of income with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously expected at the Bower. ‘Boffin will get all the eagerer for waiting a bit,’ says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along, first his right eye, and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him, for Nature has already screwed both pretty tight.

‘If I get on with him as I expect to get on,’ Silas pursues, stumping and meditating, ‘it wouldn’t become me to leave it here. It wouldn’t be respectable.’ Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance often will do. [Book One, "The Cup and the Lip"; Ch. VII, "Mr. Wegg Looks after Himself," 79: the wording of the picture's original caption has been emphasized]

Commentary

Confident in his ability to convince the affluent but illiterate Boffin of his value as a "learned" reader of Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Wegg makes a quick stop at Mr. Venus's taxidermy shop on his way to Boffin's "bower." Pursuing his obsession with his missing leg, Wegg hopes to purchase the bone of that very leg from the bone articulator.

Comparable Chapter Illustrations in the original & Household Editions, 1865-1910

Left: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study in contrasts, the somewhat dreamy taxidermist and his piratical partner, in Venus's shop, Mr. Wegg and Mr. Venus in Consultation (1867). Centre: Marcus Stone's second June 1865 serial illustration of the plotters' meeting in Mr. Venus curiously stocked taxidermy shop, Mr. Wegg prepares a grindstone for Mr. Boffin's Nose. (Part 14). Right: Clayton J. Clarke's ("Kyd's") depiction of Wegg as the keeper of a portable street stall, Silas Wegg, Player's Cigarette Card No. 45. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

Illustrations by Marcus Stone (40 plates from the Chapman and Hall edition of May 1864 through November 1865)
Frontispieces by Octavius Carr Darley (4 photogravures from the Hurd and Houghton Household Edition of 1866)
Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
James Mahoney (58 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1875)
Harry Furniss (28 lithographs from the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, 1910)
Clayton J. Clarke (two studies from his designs for the Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910)

Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 17. Silas Wegg." The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.

The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].

Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. Volume 14 of the Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865].

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. 14 vols.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. 441-442.

Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 74.

Created 24 July 2025