With this the doctor laughed; but he didn't laugh half as much as a married friend of Mrs. Kenwig's, who had just come in from the sick chamber, forChap. XXXVI; thirty-fourth illustration for the British Household Edition, illustrated by Fred Barnard with fifty-nine composite woodblock engravings (1875). The framed illustration is 9.5 cm high by 13.8 cm wide (3 ¾ by 5 ⅜ inches), p. 236. Running head: "Petrifying Intelligence" (231). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Passage Illustrated: Nicholas Announces the Marriage of Mr. Lillyvick to Kenwigs
Well, Mr. Kenwigs," said Dr. Lumbey, "this makes six. You’ll have a fine family in time, sir."
"I think six is almost enough, sir," returned Mr. Kenwigs.
"Pooh! pooh!" said the doctor. "Nonsense! not half enough."
With this, the doctor laughed; but he didn’t laugh half as much as a married friend of Mrs. Kenwigs’s, who had just come in from the sick chamber to report progress, and take a small sip of brandy-and-water: and who seemed to consider it one of the best jokes ever launched upon society.
"Why, ma’am," said Mr. Kenwigs, "it’s not exactly for me to say what they may be, or what they may not be. It’s not for me to boast of any family with which I have the honour to be connected; at the same time, Mrs Kenwigs’s is — I should say," said Mr. Kenwigs, abruptly, and raising his voice as he spoke, "that my children might come into a matter of a hundred pound apiece, perhaps. Perhaps more, but certainly that."
"And a very pretty little fortune," said the married lady.
"There are some relations of Mrs. Kenwigs’s," said Mr. Kenwigs, taking a pinch of snuff from the doctor’s box, and then sneezing very hard, for he wasn’t used to it, "that might leave their hundred pound apiece to ten people, and yet not go begging when they had done it." [Chapter XXXVI, "Private and confidential; relating to Family Matters. Showing how Mr Kenwigs underwent violent Agitation, and how Mrs. Kenwigs was as well as could be expected," 233-234]
Commentary: Kenwigs Counts His Chickens
Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition study of the growing family in need of inheritances: The Kenwigs Family and Mr. Lillyvick (Chapter 52) (1867).
Despite the arrival of sixth child and his wife's continuing "confinement," Kenwigs is in a sanguine mood. After all, the latest arrival is boy (whose birth he contemplates proudly announcing in the newspaper) and his children may well come into substantial inheritances when Mrs. Kenwigs's uncle, the miserly London rate-collector, dies. As the attending physician, Dr. Lumley, dandles last-year's infant before the doting father, the neighbour drinks brandy-and-water, but leaves the supervision of the other children to the eldest, the dictatorial Morleena. Shortly, however, Nicholas will disrupt the domestic idyll with the latest news from Portsmouth: Lillyvick has just married the Drury Lane actress. Suddenly Kenwigs's hopes for his children's fortunes are dashed as the new wife will inherit all.
Placing the physician rather than Kenwigs in the centre, Barnard creates a momentary confusion for the reader as he has realised the ill-shaven Dr. Lumbley's dandling the second-youngest Kenwigs child on his knee. However, Barnard provides several clues as to which of the two men is the physician and which the father. The professional man, laughing and self-assured, wears a black suit. As in the more farcical treatment by C. S. Reinhart in the American Household Edition, here the eldest child, Morleena, wearing the aegis of her indisposed mother's authority, chastizes her sisters before the fireplace, and girls' clothing, recently washed, dries on a frame before the fire. Barnard realistically has included such details to suggest the Kenwigses' strained circumstances. He uses a noble sideboard to represent their aspirations towards middle-class status, which Lillyvick's legacy to the Kenwigs children would assure. Thus, the sixties realist has set the stage for the bad news that Nicholas conveys at the close of the chapter: Lillyvick's marriage to Henrietta Petowker, and the concomitant loss of those hundred-pound legacies.
Other Editions' Versions of the The Kenwigses (1839-1910)
Left: Phiz treats the same subject with considerably more caricature and more than a dash of farce as Nicholas delivers the bad news: Emotion of Mr. Kenwigs on Hearing the Family News from Nicholas (February 1839), Chapter 36. Right: FC. S. Rinhart's 1875 woodblock engraving of the same comic scene: "I should say," said Mr. Kenwigs, abruptly, and raising his voice as he spoke, "that my children might come into a matter of a hundred pounds apiece, perhaps." — Chap. XXXVI in the American Household Edition.
Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators
- Nicholas Nickleby (homepage)
- Phiz's 38 monthly illustrations for the novel, April 1838-October 1839.
- Cover for monthly parts
- Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, engraved by Finden
- "Hush!" said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder. (Vol. 1, 1861)
- The Rehearsal (Vol. 2, 1861)
- "My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir?" (Vol. 3, 1861)
- Newman had caught up by the nozzle an old pair of bellows . . . (Vol. 4, 1861).
- Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 18 Illustrations for the Diamond Edition (1867)
- C. S. Reinhart's 52 Illustrations for the American Household Edution (1875)
- Harry Furniss's 29 illustrations for Nicholas Nickleby in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Kyd's four Player's Cigarette Cards (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. XV. 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 26 August 20211