"Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are <em>you</em> up to!" — Book 6, chap. i. The final (twenty-second) volume of the Household Edition of Dickens's Works: Barnard's sixteenth illustration for John Forster's "Life of Charles Dickens" (1879).

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"Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are you up to!"

Fred Barnard

1879

Composite woodblock Engraving by the Dalziels

13.9 cm high by 10.7 cm wide (5 ½ by 4 ¼ inches), 228, framed

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image 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.]

Passage Illustrated: Dickens's Greatest Comic Creation

"The number of the cab had a seven in it I think, and a ought I know — and if this should meet his eye (which it was a black 'un, new done, that he saw with; the other was tied up), I give him warning that he'd better take that umbereller and patten to the Hackney-coach Office before he repents it. He was a young man in a weskit with sleeves to it and strings behind, and needn't flatter himsef with a suppogition of escape, as I gave this description of him to the Police the moment I found he had drove off with my property; and if he thinks there an't laws enough he's much mistook — I tell him that.

"I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways office that morning with my bundle on my arm and one patten in my hand, you might have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman with a large shirt-collar and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipes's hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I wouldn't have no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a turning round a corner, for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing, 'Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are you up to!' I didn't know him from a man (except by his clothes); but I says faintly, 'If you're a Christian man, show me where to get a second-cladge ticket for Manjester, and have me put in a carriage, or I shall drop!' Which he kindly did, in a cheerful kind of a way, skipping about in the strangest manner as ever I see, making all kinds of actions, and looking and vinking at me from under the brim of his hat (which was a good deal turned up), to that extent, that I should have thought he meant something but for being so flurried as not to have no thoughts at all until I was put in a carriage along with a individgle — the politest as ever I see — in a shepherd's plaid suit with a long gold watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a trembling through nervousness worse than a aspian leaf.

"'I'm wery appy, ma'am,' he says — the politest vice as ever I heerd! — 'to go down with a lady belonging to our party.'

"'Our party, sir!' I says.

"'Yes, m'am,' he says, 'I'm Mr. Wilson. I'm going down with the wigs.' [Book VI, "At The Summit. 1847-1852," Chapter i, "Splendid Strolling," "II. Mrs. Gamp is Descriptive," pp. 226-227]

Commentary

With her capacious bonnet and red nose, Dickens's Mrs. Sairey Gamp is instantly recognizable, as is her unique way of forcibly expressing herself. However, such a circumstance as that which Barnard has depicted occurs nowhere in the novel she usurps, Martin Chuzzlewit. Without recourse to Forster's setting the context, the reader can make little sense of what is intended to be a comic interlude.

As the previous section explains, Forster is giving an account of the activities of Dickens's strolling acting company in the summer months of 1847. At Manchester and Liverpool the comopany have achieved stirling receipts with performances of A Good Night's Rest, Turning the Tables, and Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750, all but expenses contributed to the Benevolent Fund for Men of Letters, deserving but impecunious writers such as Leigh Hunt. Among the company were such Dickens stalwarts as illustrators Frank Stone, Augustus Leopold Egg, John Leech, George Cruikshank, with Dickens in the manager's role. As part of the fund-raising activities, Dickens then proposed that he publish a short piece purportedly by Mrs. Gamp herself: "a little jeu d'espirit in form of a history of the [company's] trip, to be published with illustrations from the artists; and his notion was to write it in the character of Mrs, Gamp. It was to be, in the phraseology of that notorious woman, a new 'Piljians Projiss;' and was to bear upon the title page its description as an Account of a late Expedition into the North, for an Amateur Theatrical Benefit, written by Mrs. Gamp (who was an eye-witness), Inscribed to Mrs. Harris, Edited by Charles Dickens, and published, with illustrations on wood by so and so, in aid of the Benefit-fund" (225). Vacationing at Margate, Mrs. Gamp decides to accompany the strollers and their wives (unbeknownst to them), just in case a patient should fortuitously turn up. The gentleman confronting Mrs. Gamp, dressed in the manner of fashionable walkers on The Strand, in a checked suit, is in fact a theatrical hairdresser, Mr. Wilson, who keeps the company's wigs in good order. Her account includes her impressions of the plays themselves as she observes the nightly performances of the "Hammertoors" (226) from the orchestra. In the present illustration on the railway platform Wilson introduces Mrs. Gamp to other notable members of the company: artist George Cruikshank; the author of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, Douglas Jerrold; painter Augustus Egg, R. A.; and the manager, Dickens himself, Mrs. Gamp's "beeograffer" (229).

Other Illustrators' Re-interpretations of Phiz's Divine Sairey (1863-1924)

Left: Harold Copping's 1924 colour lithograph of Betsey and Sairey sharing a convivial glass, in Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig(Chapter 39). Centre: Harry Furniss's realisation of the immortal Dame Part, Mrs. Gamp (1910). Right: Clayton J. Clarke's characterisation of Sairey as endearing rather than professionally irresponsible and thoroughly addicted to gin, Sairey Gamp (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Left: Kyd's Tuck card colour lithograph of Sairey Gamp with an oversized "gamp" (umbrella): Sairey Gamp in The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd" (Clayton J. Clarke, 1911). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition dual character study, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prigg (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's own study of the private nurse as the frontispiece of later editions of Martin Chuzzlewit Mrs. Gamp on the Art of Nursing (Household Edition). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Material

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

Barnard, Fred, et al. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney [and others] printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman & Hall, 1908. Page 573.

[The copy of the book from which these pictures were scanned is in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.]

Dickens, Charles. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. II.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872 and 1874. 3 vols.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.

Created 15 September 2009

Last modified 8 January 2025