"Mr. Pickwick" by Fred Barnard — second series for "Character Sketches" (1884-85)

One of six chromolithographs in A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, No. 2: ‘With great pleasure,’ said Mr. Pickwick; the satisfaction of whose countenance, after drinking it, bore testimony to the sincerity of the reply. — Pickwick Papers (1884-85). Colour plate: 10 ½ inches high by 7 ½ inches wide (26.4 cm by 18.8 cm), framed; photogravure: 17.3 cm high by 12.9 cm wide (6 ⅞ by 4 ⅞ inches), vignetted. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: A Verbal Portrait of A Delighted Picnicker

Left: Kyd's version of the original retired business man who determines to conduct a scientific exploration of England's Home Counties: Mr. Pickwick in Player's Cigarette Cards Characters from Dickens, No. 16 (1910).

An old oak afforded a pleasant shelter to the group, and a rich prospect of arable and meadow land, intersected with luxuriant hedges, and richly ornamented with wood, lay spread out before them.

‘This is delightful — thoroughly delightful!’ said Mr. Pickwick; the skin of whose expressive countenance was rapidly peeling off, with exposure to the sun.

‘So it is — so it is, old fellow,’ replied Wardle. ‘Come; a glass of punch!’

‘With great pleasure,’ said Mr. Pickwick; the satisfaction of whose countenance, after drinking it, bore testimony to the sincerity of the reply.

* * * * * * *

‘Well, that certainly is most capital cold punch,’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking earnestly at the stone bottle; ‘and the day is extremely warm, and — Tupman, my dear friend, a glass of punch?’

‘With the greatest delight,’ replied Mr. Tupman; and having drank that glass, Mr. Pickwick took another, just to see whether there was any orange peel in the punch, because orange peel always disagreed with him; and finding that there was not, Mr. Pickwick took another glass to the health of their absent friend, and then felt himself imperatively called upon to propose another in honour of the punch-compounder, unknown.

This constant succession of glasses produced considerable effect upon Mr. Pickwick; his countenance beamed with the most sunny smiles, laughter played around his lips, and good-humoured merriment twinkled in his eye. [Chapter XIX, "A Pleasant Day with an Unpleasant Termination," 128 in the British Household Edition]

This Latest Versus Other Images of Pickwick (1836-1924)

The other popular images of Pickwick for this chapter do not show him at his best, and perhaps that was the reason for their popularity: each shows the somewhat stuffy, slightly self-righteous retired businessman and amateur scientist taken down a peg when a petty local official mistakenly takes the respectable bourgeois for a drunken trespasser.

Barnard, however, has recontextualized the picnic in the woods on Captain Boldwood's estate by eliminating entirely the other figures so obviously present in the text: Pickwick's host, Mr. Wardle; the romantic Pickwickian, Tracy Tupman; and the Cockney wit, Sam Weller. Barnard shows Pickwick not as an urbanite, but as one who enjoys tranquil walks in the Kentish countryside — and more than an occasional glass of wine with elegant petite dejeuner under an ancient English oak, shaded from the summer sun. Oysters on the shell, an open bottle of wine, napkins, cutlery, china plate and a very large clay jug of beer upon which he rests his left hand all imply his immersion in culinary enjoyments. Moreover, Barnard has edited the accompanying text which appears on the page facing the large-scale chromolithograph in order to imply (falsely) that Pickwick is by himself, unobserved, and presenting no image of scientist, antiquarian, and leader of the peripatetic Pickwickians. Here is the essential Pickwick, at leisure in England's green world. But that wheelbarrow behind him strikes a discordant note as it reminds knowledgeable readers of the ensuing scene in the serial novel, and the indignity suffered by the hapless protagonist in the village pound in Mr. Pickwick in the Pound by Phiz (October 1836).

Left: Harold Copping's version of the original serial illustration, with the near-comatose Pickwick stunned, disoriented, and pathetic — an aged bourgeois held up to ridicule as a tresspasser, an urbanite not sufficiently respectful of country boundaries: Mr. Pickwick in the Pound (1924) for Character Sketches from Dickens. Right: Harry Furniss's re-thinking of the Household Edition illustration: The Effect of Cold Punch after the Shooting Party (1910) for the Charles Dickens Library Edition.

Another approach: Phiz's depiction of Pickwick, passed out in the wheelbarrow, in the British Household Edition (1874)

Phiz's approach to this episode in the novel is completely consistent with his original plate: "Who are you, you rascal?" said the captain, administering several pokes to Mr. Pickwick's body with the thick stick. "What's your name?", page 129, Chapter XIX; preface to "Pickwick in the Pound."

Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910

Related Material

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

Barnard, Fred. Character Sketches from Dickens. (16 photogravure illustrations). London, Paris & Melbourne: Cassell, 1885.

Barnard, Fred. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.

Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall, 1836-37.

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. II.

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The Household Edition. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. New York: Harper and Brothers 1873.

A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, Being Facsimiles of Original Drawings by Fred. Barnard. Series 1: Mrs. Gamp, Alfred Jingle, Bill Sikes, Little Dorrit, Sydney Carton, and Pickwick. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1884.

Created 8 February 2025