"Frontispiece: 'Old Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance, was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman'" — initial illustration by Phiz for Dickens's "Pickwick Papers" (British Household Edition, 1874)

Old Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance, was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman, frontispiece by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) for the British Household Edition (1874) of Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Chapter VIII, "Strongly Illustrative of the Position, That the Course of True Love is not a Railway," facing the engraved title-page (the passage illustrated occurs on p. 51). Wood-engraving, 5 ⅛ inches high by 6 ¾ inches wide (11.2 cm high by 17.4 cm wide), framed, full-page; descriptive headline: "Injurious Effects of Salmon" (p. 51). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Anticipated: The Trouble with Salmon at Dingley Dell

They rushed into the kitchen, whither the truants had repaired, and at once obtained rather more than a glimmering of the real state of the case.

Mr. Pickwick, with his hands in his pockets and his hat cocked completely over his left eye, was leaning against the dresser, shaking his head from side to side, and producing a constant succession of the blandest and most benevolent smiles without being moved thereunto by any discernible cause or pretence whatsoever; old Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance, was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman muttering protestations of eternal friendship; Mr. Winkle, supporting himself by the eight-day clock, was feebly invoking destruction upon the head of any member of the family who should suggest the propriety of his retiring for the night; and Mr. Snodgrass had sunk into a chair, with an expression of the most abject and hopeless misery that the human mind can imagine, portrayed in every lineament of his expressive face. [Chapter VIII, "Strongly Illustrative of the Position, That the Course of True Love is not a Railway," page 51]

Commentary: Definitely not Pickwick's Finest Hour

In choosing an incident to be emphasized and telegraphed through its early appearance in the 1874 frontispiece, the illustrator is directing readers' attentions towards a significant moment in the narrative. For example, in the Household Edition volume of The Christmas Books, of 1878, Fred Barnard has chosen Bob Cratchit's carrying Tiny Tim home from church on Christmas day as the subject of his frontispiece: He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant to exemplify the seasonal aspects of the five novellas in the series. However, instead of beginning with the charming and sentimental scene of Pickwick sliding on the ice at Manor Farm (as Nast does in the American Household Edition volume of 1873 — Went slowly and gravely down the slide with his feet about a yard and a quarter apart) to anticipate the winter sports and extended family celebration of Christmas at Dingley Dell, Phiz has elected two peculiar scenes to set the keynote. In his title-page vignette of a drunken Pickwick wheeled off to Captain Boldwood's pound, the ignominious scene facing the frontispiece, Phiz suggests that his subject will be "Pickwick, warts and all," his inglorious and embarrassing moments, as well as those sentimentally moving scenes that the late Victorians associated with the protagonist of Dickens's first novel. The moment that Phiz has realised here is certainly iconic, but it is hardly designed to flatter Pickwick or support late Victorian readers' fond memories of the retired Regency businessman and amateur scientist.

The salmon dinner, served after the Muggleton-Dingley Dell cricket match, is patently not the source of the Pickwickians' inebriation. Consequently, the illustrator in his caption and choice of scene exploits the comic possibilities of the dramatic irony. The sheer audacity of the self-rationalisation is highly amusing, but also reveals Pickwick's tendency to avoid confronting his own shortcomings. In the great kitchen of the Blue Lion Inn, Muggleton, the cricketeers (represented by just two young men, upper right) and Pickwickians enjoy not merely a "Devilish good dinner" (to quote the omnivorous Jingle in Chapter VII), but numerous vociferous toasts accompanied by the consumption "old port — claret — good — very good — wine," again, citing Jingle's account of events earlier that evening.

As the young women from Manor Farm, accompanied (presumably) by a pair of Pickwickians (Tupman and Trundle), "rush into the kitchen" at eleven o'clock, Winkle (behind the door and propped up against the clock) is almost comatose; and Pickwick, hands in his pockets, is so far gone that he makes no effort to keep his hat from falling off. Jingle ("the strange gentleman") and Wardle, both well under the influence (right of centre), seem to have become boon companions; the Fat Boy has dozed off on the table (left); and Snodgrass has passed out (right). In other words, the picture realizes all elements of the passage, but also leads readers to wonder how Wardle and Pickwick suddenly come to and answer the enquiries of the newcomers.

Related Material: The Household Edition Volumes

Similar Scenes by Thomas Nast in the American Household Edition (1873) and Phiz (1837)

Left: Wardle and his Friends Under the Influence of the Salmon — the November 1837 steel-engraving which Phiz produced for Chapter VIII to replace one of Seymour's four serial illustrations. Right: Thomas Nast's contribution for Chapter VIII foregrounds Pickwick, almost comatose the drunken scene in the 1873 wood-engraving of the imbibing in the kitchen at Dingley Dell: "Hurra!" echoed Mr. Pickwick, taking off his hat and dashing it on the floor, and insanely casting his spectacles into the middle of the kitchen [Page 54] [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910

Other Household Edition Frontispieces (1871-1892)

James Mahoney's Little Dorrit (1871)
Thomas Nast's's "Went slowly and gravely down the slide, with his feet about a yard and a quarter apart" from Our Mutual Friend (1873)
Fred Barnard's The Trial of Evrémonde from A Tale of Two Cities (1874)
James Mahoney's "Lizzie, looking for her father, saw him coming, and stood upon the causeway that he might see her" from Our Mutual Friend (1875)
F. A. Fraser's "Why should I look at him?" returned Estella from Great Expectations (1876)
A. E. Abbey's "What do you want with me?" from The Christmas Books (1876)
Fred Barnard's "Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son's?" from Dombey and Son (1877)
Harry French's "Louisa, My Dear, You Are the Subject of a Proposal of Marriage That Has Been Made To Me." from Hard Times (1877)
Edward G. Dalziel's "I am only a common soldier," said he. "It signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to." from Christmas Stories (1877)
Fred Barnard's He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant from The Christmas Books (1878)
Luke Filde's In the Court from The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories (1880)
Thomas Nast's An Italian Collage from Pictures from Italy (1880)

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

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File and Checkmark Books, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert Buss, and Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, November 1837. With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837).

_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. 1.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 6.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins, eds. The Annotated Dickens.2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. I.

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

Johnannsen, Albert. "The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club." Phiz Illustrations from the Novels of Charles Dickens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1956. Pp. 1-74.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 2. "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-50.

Created 9 March 2012

Last modified 9 April 2024