Concluded by standing on one leg, and repeating his favourite bellow with increased vehemence
Fred Barnard
1875
13.8 x 10.7 cm (5 ⅜ by 4 ¼ inches), framed, p. 272. For Chapter 41.
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, The Household Edition, p. 271.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Be mine, be mine," cried the old gentleman. "Gog and Magog, Gog and Magog. Be mine, be mine!"
"It will be sufficient for me to say, sir," resumed Mrs. Nickleby, with perfect seriousness — "and I’m sure you’ll see the propriety of taking an answer and going away — that I have made up my mind to remain a widow, and to devote myself to my children. You may not suppose I am the mother of two children — indeed many people have doubted it, and said that nothing on earth could ever make ‘em believe it possible — but it is the case, and they are both grown up. We shall be very glad to have you for a neighbour — very glad; delighted, I’m sure — but in any other character it’s quite impossible, quite. As to my being young enough to marry again, that perhaps may be so, or it may not be; but I couldn’t think of it for an instant, not on any account whatever. I said I never would, and I never will. It’s a very painful thing to have to reject proposals, and I would much rather that none were made; at the same time this is the answer that I determined long ago to make, and this is the answer I shall always give."
These observations were partly addressed to the old gentleman, partly to Kate, and partly delivered in soliloquy. Towards their conclusion, the suitor evinced a very irreverent degree of inattention, and Mrs. Nickleby had scarcely finished speaking, when, to the great terror both of that lady and her daughter, he suddenly flung off his coat, and springing on the top of the wall, threw himself into an attitude which displayed his small-clothes and grey worsteds to the fullest advantage, and concluded by standing on one leg, and repeating his favourite bellow with increased vehemence. [Chapter XLI, "Containing some Romantic Passages Between Mrs. Nickleby and the Gentleman in the Small-Clothes next Door," 271]
Perhaps Barnard as a comic realist was revising Phiz's idyllic conception of most of the original April 1839 illustration. Certainly the sixties realist plays down the beauty of the physical setting by replacing the leafy arbour of Phiz's delicate steel-engraving with a realistic thatch-roofed gazebo and birdhouse. But his chief innovation is presenting the gentleman in small clothes as more than a mere disembodied head. Barnard emphasizes the almost operatic performance of the agile lunatic, and impliesthrough the anxious expression ion Kate's face that she fears that he will tumble off the wall any moment. Thus, Barnard exploits the comic possibilities of the scene far more effectively than the original Phiz illustration, partly by exposing the full form of the farcical figure, and partly by applying aerial perspective to extend the rustic scene beyond the garden wall. Under Barnard's deft handling of the comic scene the madman's "bellow" becomes an operatic protestation suitable for a "soliloquy" in which he exhorts his beloved to "sip the goblet."
Left: Phiz parodies the novel's romance as Mrs. Nickleby excites the ardour of a lunatic: The Gentleman Next Door Declares His Passion for Mrs. Nickleby (April 1839). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition study of the novel's comic madman: The Gentleman in Small Clothes (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's interpretation of the farcical garden scene: Kate and Mrs. Nickleby and the Madman (1910).
Barnard, J. "Fred" (il.). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-nine illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. XV. Rpt. 1890.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. I.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. With 39 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, 1839.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 4.
__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al.. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Created 2 September 2021
