"You can give him that 'ere card, and tell him if he wants to speak to me, and save trouble, here I am; that's all." — Fred Barnard's nineteenth illustration for "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"You can give him that 'ere card, and tell him if he wants to speak to me, and save trouble, here I am; that's all". — Chap. xxi, p. 132. To face p. 132 [full-page illustration]. 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). 13.3 cm high by 1767 cm wide (5 ¼ by 7 inches). Running head: "Remorse of Mr. Mantalini" (133). [Click on the illustrations to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: The lecherous Sir Mulberry Hawk thrown off-balance

The Professional Gentlemen at Madame Mantalini's (October 1838), by Phiz in the original serial edition.

Wait a minnit," said the man in the green coat, closing it softly, and standing with his back against it. "This is a unpleasant bisness. Vere’s your govvernor?"

"My what — did you say?" asked Kate, trembling; for she thought "governor" might be slang for watch or money.

"Mister Muntlehiney," said the man. "Wot’s come on him? Is he at home?"

"He is above stairs, I believe," replied Kate, a little reassured by this inquiry. "Do you want him?"

"No," replied the visitor. "I don’t ezactly want him, if it’s made a favour on. You can jist give him that ‘ere card, and tell him if he wants to speak to me, and save trouble, here I am; that’s all."

With these words, the stranger put a thick square card into Kate’s hand, and, turning to his friend, remarked, with an easy air, "that the rooms was a good high pitch;" to which the friend assented, adding, by way of illustration, ‘that there was lots of room for a little boy to grow up a man in either on ‘em, vithout much fear of his ever bringing his head into contract vith the ceiling." [Chapter XXI, "Madam Mantalini finds herself in a Situation of some Difficulty, and Miss Nickleby finds herself in no Situation at all," 132]

Commentary: Barnard introduces the bailiffs into Madame Mantalini's establishment

Although the comic incident involving the seamier side of London life is pivitol in the Mantalini subplot, Barnard devotes a full page to the arrival of the jolly bailiffs to collect the husband's debt. Indeed, of Barnard's fifty-nine wood-engravings for the British Household Edition volume, only five in total occupy a full page. This dramatic scene in which the pair of street-wise debt-collectors announce their arrival to Kate occurs immediately before the half-page illustration in which Barnard shows Mantalini theatrically attempting suicide with a blunt breakfast knife in Chapter 21. In both, Kate is caught up in the Mantalinis' marital and financial problems, acting as an objective witness to her mistress's distress and the husband's irresponsibility.

The street-wise strangers who demand that Mantalini repay a massive gambling debt of over fifteen hundred pounds, Mr. Scaley and Mr. Tix, cause a marital as well as a financial crisis. As a result of her husband's fiscal irresponsibility or, she puts it, 'destructive extravagance,' Madame Mantalini is thrown into bankruptcy, with the upshot that Kate loses her job. as an apprentice in the Mayfair millinery and dress shop which the odious Miss Knag, the former deputy, snaps up.

Alfred Mantalini's profligate attitude may be a reflection of John Dickens's carelessness about money and his constantly falling into debt, particularly with tradespeople. However, with his cavalier manner, emotional excesses, and his unprincipled exploitation of his doting wife, pseudo-Italian Alfred Mantalini is a Dickens original.

Other Editions' Versions of The Elegant but Over-the-top Italianate Husband

Left: In the 1875 British Household Edition Fred Barnard plays up the comic element of the Mantalinis' fortunes, the arrival of a jolly pair of bailiffs: "You can give him that 'ere card, and tell him if he wants to speak to me, and save trouble, here I am; that's all." Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithographic portrait of the florid pseudo-Italian: Mr. Alfred Mantalini, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition.

Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s American Diamond Editioncomposite woodblock dual portrait of the comic couple: Mr. and Madame Mantalini (1867). Right: C. S. Reinhart's equally theatrical version of the Mantalini suicide scene in the American Household Edition: "Ah!" cried Mr. Mantalini, "interrupted!" (1875).

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 4 August 2021