"A miserable wretch," exclaimed Mr. Knag, striking his forehead. "A miserable wretch." — Fred Barnard's sixteenth illustration for "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"A miserable wretch," exclaimed Mr. Knag, striking his forehead. "A miserable wretch." — Chap. XVIII, p. 113, from the Household Edition of Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, illustrated by Fred Barnard with fifty-nine composite woodblock engravings (1875). 9.3 cm high by 13.7 cm wide (3 ⅝ by 5 ½ inches). Running head: "In the Height of Fashion" (113). [Click on the illustrations to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: A Comic Sparring Match of Stationer and Charwoman

"I don’t want any remarks if you please," said Miss Knag, with a strong emphasis on the personal pronoun. "Is there any fire downstairs for some hot water presently?"

"No there is not, indeed, Miss Knag," replied the substitute; "and so I won’t tell you no stories about it."

"Then why isn’t there?" said Miss Knag.

"Because there arn’t no coals left out, and if I could make coals I would, but as I can’t I won’t, and so I make bold to tell you, Mem," replied Mrs Blockson.

"Will you hold your tongue — female?" said Mr. Mortimer Knag, plunging violently into this dialogue.

"By your leave, Mr. Knag," retorted the charwoman, turning sharp round. "I’m only too glad not to speak in this house, excepting when and where I’m spoke to, sir; and with regard to being a female, sir, I should wish to know what you considered yourself?"

"A miserable wretch," exclaimed Mr. Knag, striking his forehead. "A miserable wretch."

"I’m very glad to find that you don’t call yourself out of your name, sir," said Mrs. Blockson; "and as I had two twin children the day before yesterday was only seven weeks, and my little Charley fell down a airy and put his elber out, last Monday, I shall take it as a favour if you’ll send nine shillings, for one week’s work, to my house, afore the clock strikes ten tomorrow." [Chapter XVIII, "Miss Knag, after doting on Kate Nickleby for three whole Days, makes up her Mind to hate her for evermore. The Causes which led Miss Knag to form this Resolution," 112]

Commentary: Verbal Sparring in the Back Parlour

The scene is the back parlour after closing hours 9ten o'clock) in Mortimer Knag's stationer's shop and modest circulating library in Tottenham Court Road, The City. Miss Knag has just invited her new friends, Kate and Mrs. Nickleby, to join her for supper at her brother's. Barnard readily distinguishes the plucky charwoman by her caricature of a face, rake-thin body, and hideous visage (right). As in the text, the middle-aged stationer has thin hair, and wire-rimmed spectacles.

Mortimer Knag styles himself a "wretch" not because of his unruly charwoman, who refuses orders about boiling water for tea (an impossibility, she asserts, owing to a lack of coal) but because Madame Mantalini rejected him as a prospective hsand. Barnard enjoys the opportunity for a comic interlude that has little to do with even the Mantalini subplot. After the convivial late-night dinner at her brother's shop, three days transpire at Madame Mantalini's before Miss Knag at last turns on Kate when an old lord and his young bride dismiss the middle-aged forewoman in favour of the shop's newest addition, the beautiful, shapely, well-mannered, and well-spoken Kate Nickleby.

The domestic scene is thoroughly a Barnard original: Motimer Knag does not even appear in the original monthly illustrations by Phiz — nor does he appear in the American Household Edition (1875) or later editions. Barnard has apparently chosen this scene for realisation not for its importance in the plot, but rather for its sheer comic value as distraught Mortimer (centre) and his truculent charwoman (right), both completely comic characters, square off. Indeed, Barnard shows little interest in the other three characters: the vain Miss Knag (supporting her brother, left of centre), the voluble, unthinking Mrs. Nickleby (probably back to the viewer, foreground, left), and the beautiful, slender Kate, her ringlets flooding out from under her fashionable bonnet.

Relevant Illustrations from Other Editions (1875-1910)

Above: C. S. Reinhart in the American Household Edition focusses on Kate's progress as Mrs. Mantalini's assistant in Kate trying on the bride's bonnet, — Chapter 18.

Left: Phiz introduces the seamstress's cutting-room director, Miss Knag, to Kate and readers in Madame Mantalin's establishment: Madame Mantalini introduces Kate to Miss Knag (August 1838, instalment 5). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s American Diamond Edition composite woodblock portrait of the diligent dressmaker-milliner and her shiftless husband: Mr. and Madame Mantalini (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithograph representing the fashionable West End dressmaker, What Ralph Nickleby saw at Mrs. Mantalini's, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910).

Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators

Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary 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.]

Bibliography

Barnard, J. "Fred" (il.). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-eight illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume 15. 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 6 August 2021