Captain Cuttle by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 25: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
CAPT. CUTTLE (Dombey and Son.)
A retired seafarer and “a very salt-looking man indeed,” Cap'n Edward Cuttle, mariner, is a truly delightful character. To a child-like simplicity and ignorance of the “ways of the wicked” is allied a quaint aptitude for the fragmentary quotation of more or less moral tit-bits, for source of which the hearer thereof is advised to “over haul the book. And when found, make a note of.” [Verso of Card No. 25]
Passage Realised: Dickens's Portrait of Captain Edward Cuttle, Retired
Left: Captain Cuttle, Sol Gillis, and Walter Gay in the marine-store shop's parlour: Fred Barnard's "So, here's to Dombey — and Son — and Daughter." (1877).
Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers’ shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou’wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle’s lodgings — at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig Place — were close before you.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird and those had been his feathers. [Chapter IX, "In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble," Household Edition, 61]
Commentary
Right: Captain Cuttle and Walter Gay on the streets of London: Fred Barnard's Before they had gone very far, they encountered a woman selling flowers (1877).
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers, whereas the series includes a total of just four character cards from the cast of Dombey and Son, serialised in nineteen monthly parts from October 1846 through April 1848, and subsequently issued with illustrations in the Diamond Edition (1867), the Household Edition (1872), and the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). The four character cards from the cast, amounting to 6% of the total Player's series, comprise: the blustering Major Bagstock, no. 7; the kind-hearted Captain Cuttle, no. 25; the rigid and aloof Mr. Dombey, no. 42; and the brawny Mrs. Mac Stinger, Captain Cuttle's termagant landlady, no. 43 — characterisations based largely on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's regular visual interpreter in the 1840s, Phiz, who produced forty steel-engravings and the wrapper design for the Bradbury and Evans nineteen-month serial, as well as a frontispiece for the first cheap edition (1858) and two vignettes for the two-volume Library Edition: Mr. Dombey and Miss Edith Dombey and Paul and Florence.
Kyd's model for the kindly old salt was likely Phiz's Profound Cogitation of Captain Cuttle (Chapter 5), from the December 1846 or third serial number. Moreover, the delightful figure borrowed from transpontine melodrama also appears in Chapter 60's Another Wedding. In his third series of "extra illustrations," Character Sketches from Dickens the principal illustrator of Chapman and Hall's 1870s Household Edition, Fred Barnard, provided a more cerebral model for Kyd in Captain Cuttle: "Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?" inquired the Captain. All illustrators give the basic features of the child-like, retired seafarer: the hook where his right hand should be and his glazed hat.
Images of the Jolly Tar from Other Editions (1846 to 1910)
Left: Phiz's initial portrait of one of Dickens's most loveable characters:
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s character study of the sanguine old salt: Captain Cuttle (1867). Left of centre: Barnard's Household Edition illustration: The Captain's voice was so tremendous, and came out of his corner with such way on him, that Rob retreated before him into another corner: holding out the keys and packet, to prevent himself from being run down. Centre: Harry Furniss's version of the confrontation of the honest, old sailor and the highly suspicious Manager: Captain Cuttle and Mr. Carker (1910). Right: W. H. C. Groome's version of the confrontation at the offices of Dombey & Co. of Carker and Cuttle: "Let us have no turning out" (1900).
Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son
- Dombey and Son (homepage)
- Phiz's Illustrations for Dombey and Son, Wholesale Retail & for Exportation (Oct. 1846 - April 1848)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1872)
- William H. C. Groome's Eight Illustrations for Dombey and Son (1900)
- Kyd's five 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: Dombey and Son
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
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[?].
Dickens, Charles. The Dickens Souvenir Book. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871-1880. The copy of The Dickens Souvenir Book from which these pictures were scanned is in the collection of the Main Library of The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B. C.
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1848.
_______. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. III.
_______. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. Vol. XV.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. IX.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XVI. Dombey and Son." The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., [1910]. 294-338.
Vann, J. Don. "Dombey and Son, . . . October 1846 — April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 67-68.
Created 12 January 2015
Last modified 20 July 2025