"Mr. Crummles looked, from time to time, with great interest at Smike, with whom he had appeared considerably struck from the first. He had now fallen asleep, and was nodding in his chair." — Barnard's twenty-first illustration for "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

Mr. Crummles looked, from time to time, with great interest at Smike, with whom he had appeared considerably struck from the first. He had now fallen asleep, and was nodding in his chair. — Chap. xxii, p. 144, 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). 9.4 cm high by 13.7 cm wide (3 ⅞ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Running head: "Recruits for the British Drama" (145). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: Vincent Crummles Studies Nicholas and Smike

The Country Manager Rehearses a Combat (October 1838), by Phiz in the original serial illustration for Ch. XXII.

"Do you know the town at all?" inquired the manager, who seemed to consider himself entitled to the same degree of confidence as he had himself exhibited.

"No," replied Nicholas.

"Never there?"

"Never."

Mr. Vincent Crummles gave a short dry cough, as much as to say, "If you won’t be communicative, you won’t;" and took so many pinches of snuff from the piece of paper, one after another, that Nicholas quite wondered where it all went to.

While he was thus engaged, Mr. Crummles looked, from time to time, with great interest at Smike, with whom he had appeared considerably struck from the first. He had now fallen asleep, and was nodding in his chair.

"Excuse my saying so," said the manager, leaning over to Nicholas, and sinking his voice, "but what a capital countenance your friend has got!"

"Poor fellow!" said Nicholas, with a half-smile, "I wish it were a little more plump, and less haggard."

"Plump!" exclaimed the manager, quite horrified, "you’d spoil it for ever." [Chapter XXII, "Nicholas, accompanied by Smike, sallies forth to seek his Fortune. He encounters Mr. Vincent Crummles; and who he was, is herein made manifest," 144]

Commentary: Vincent Crummles Introduced as a Possible Employer

Mr. and Mrs. Crummles and The Phenomenon (1867), by Eytinge in the Diamond Edition.

Barnard establishes the actor-manager's interest in the oddly matched wayfarers, who have but recently escaped from Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire. Already, Crummles seems to be thinking of casting the gaunt, melancholy Smike as the indigent apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. In the original serialisation, Dickens's first illustrator, Phiz, illustrated the same chapter with a far less reflective moment, the scene in the Portsmouth theatre involving the rehearsing of a stage-combat under Crummles' studious direction. Dickens modelled his colourful thespian, Vincent Crummles, upon an actual theatrical personality, T. D. Davenport (1792-1851).

Although flamboyant and hyperbolic, Crummles has a compassionate streak that Barnard and Reinhart effectively communicate here. In 1837, just the year before Dickens's started work on the picaresque novel, Davenport had leased the Portsmouth Theatre to showcase the terpsichorean and thespianic talents of his precocious daughter, Jean (1829-1903), a leading juvenile actress of the period who made a celebrasted American tour.

Introducing the Hyperbolic Vincent Crummles, Dickens's Version of Thomas Davenport

Thomas and Jean Davenport: The Originals of Crummles and Daughter in Nicholas Nickleby (1838)

Other editions' illustrations for this chapter and Vincent Crummles (1867-1910)

Left: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithographic depiction of the wayfarers at the Portsmouth theatre, backstage: Nicholas and Smike behind the Scenes, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition. Right: In the 1875 British Household Edition Fred Barnard introduces the actor-manager whom the wayfarers encounter at Portsmouth: Mr. Crummles looked, from time to time, with great interest at Smike, with whom he had appeared considerably struck from the first. He had now fallen asleep, and was nodding in his chair.

Related material by other illustrators (1838 through 1910)

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-nine illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume 15. Rpt. 1890.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875.

__________. "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.

Schweitzer, Maria. "Jean Margaret Davenport." Ambassadors of Empire: Child Performers and Anglo-American Audiences, 1800s-1880s. Accessed 19 April 2021. Posted 7 January 2015. .

Created 2 August 2021