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Captain Cuttle: "Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?" inquired the Captain
Fred Barnard
1912?
Photogravure from an 1885 chromlithograph
12 cm high by 9 cm wide
Frontispeice illustrating Volume XIII, 134, in Dickens's Dombey and Son in the Co-operative Publication Society Edition
Terry-Lynn Johnson Collection
Image scan and text by Philip V. Allingham
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.
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," 61 in the Household Edition]
Barnard's realistic manner of presenting the nautical veteran is not entirely consistent with his hyperbolic sea-faring demeanour and comic repartee. Dickens probably did not intend him to be anything but a kind of paste-board sailor, full of transpontine observations and quaint turns of phrase. Here, however, Barnard sees Captain Cuttle as an individual rather than a type; and we study him, he appears to be studying us. And yet every detail of the old salt at the India Docks (in the background), near his rented rooms, is present: the hard, glazed hat; the blue suit; the oversized short collar; and of course the hook. What Barnard imbues him with is a mature, contemplative face, in contradiction to his somewhat childlike nature in the novel. Appraising the 1885 realistic reworking of the 1840s image, the reader wonders whether this thoughtful, and obviously experienced mariner could plausibly utter such Dickensian dialogue as Ned strings together from biblical quotations, phrases from The Book of Common Prayer, snatches from sea shanties, and numerous nautical terms.
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.
Dickens, Charles. Works. Photogravure-Illustrated Edition. New York and London: Co-operative Publication Society, [n. d., 1912?].
A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, Being Facsimiles of Original Drawings by Fred. Barnard. Series 3: Wilkins Micawber; Miss Betsey Trotwood; Captain Edward Cuttle; Uriah Heep; Dick Swiveller and The Marchioness; and Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1885.
Created 12 August 2012
Last modified 3 February 2025