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Florence Dombey from “Dombey and Son”
Felix O. C. Darley
Annin-Loomis
1861, rpt. 1856
12 x 7.9 cm (4 ¾ by 3 ¼ inches) vignetted
Composite woodblock engraving
Frontispiece with Florence Dombey, Mr. Toots, and Diogenes for Dombey and Son in Dickens' Little Folks, published by Clark, Austin & Maynard (New York: 1861).
[Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Left: Harry Furniss's portrait of Toots's wedding speech: Mr. Toots makes a speech (1910). Left of centre: Barnard's realisation of Toots as a schoolboy at Dr. Blimber's, a fashion-plate even then: "Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?" inquired Mr. Toots. (1877). Right of centre: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the fatuous but fashionable Regency beau and his boxing trainer: Mr. Toots and the Chicken (1867). Right: Clayton J. Clarke's watercolour study: Mr. P. Toots (1910).
In Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son, Mr. Toots, who is infatuated with Florence, kindly gives her the dog Diogenes as a parting gift. Diogenes is the large, clumsy, and protective dog that had taken a liking to little Paul Dombey. Diogenes, despite his unkempt, shaggy appearance, becomes dear to Florence.
The sixth full-page illustration for Dombey and Son: Florence Dombey. Sol Eytinge, Jr. 8.5 cm high by 10 cm wide, framed. The Diamond Edition of Dickens's Works, Volume III (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867), facing page 117. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
As an American nineteenth-century illustrator, Sol Eytinge, Jr., is very likely to have studied all of Darley's composite woodblock engravings for the 1861-63 Household Edition, including his studies of Florence Dombey, Mr. Toots, and the shaggy Diogenes. In his dual portrait of Florence and Paul's friend, Eytinge is apparently alluding to the passage in Chapter 18 when Toots, Paul's best friend at school, reveals that he has bought Diogenes for Florence because the large-breed dog was so attached to her brother.
"I say! Miss Dombey!" blubbered Toots.
"Yes," said Florence.
"There’s a friend he took to very much at last. I thought you’d lIke to have him, perhaps, as a sort of keepsake. You remember his remembering Diogenes?"
"Oh yes! oh yes" cried Florence.
"Poor Dombey! So do I," said Mr. Toots.
Mr. Toots, seeing Florence in tears, had great difficulty in getting beyond this point, and had nearly tumbled into the well again. But a chuckle saved him on the brink.
"I say," he proceeded, "Miss Dombey! I could have had him stolen for ten shillings, if they hadn’t given him up: and I would: but they were glad to get rid of him, I think. If you’d like to have him, he’s at the door. I brought him on purpose for you. He ain’t a lady’s dog, you know,’ said Mr Toots, ‘but you won’t mind that, will you?"
In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained from looking down into the street, staring through the window of a hackney cabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had been ensnared, on a false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, he was as unlike a lady’s dog as might be; and in his gruff anxiety to get out, presented an appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave short yelps out of one side of his mouth, and overbalancing himself by the intensity of every one of those efforts, tumbled down into the straw, and then sprung panting up again, putting out his tongue, as if he had come express to a Dispensary to be examined for his health.
But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a summer’s day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighborhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice; he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that parting remembrance of him, and that request that he might be taken care of, than the most valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand of Mr. Toots and kissed it in her gratitude. And when Diogenes, released, came tearing up the stairs and bouncing into the room (such a business as there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!), dived under all the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his eyes became unnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out of his head; and when he growled at Mr. Toots, who affected familiarity; and went pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the enemy whom he had barked at round the corner all his life and had never seen yet; Florence was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle of discretion.
Mr. Toots was so overjoyed by the success of his present, and was so delighted to see Florence bending down over Diogenes, smoothing his coarse back with her little delicate hand — Diogenes graciously allowing it from the first moment of their acquaintance — that he felt it difficult to take leave, and would, no doubt, have been a much longer time in making up his mind to do so, if he had not been assisted by Diogenes himself, who suddenly took it into his head to bay Mr. Toots, and to make short runs at him with his mouth open. Not exactly seeing his way to the end of these demonstrations, and sensible that they placed the pantaloons constructed by the art of Burgess and Co. in jeopardy, Mr. Toots, with chuckles, lapsed out at the door: by which, after looking in again two or three times, without any object at all, and being on each occasion greeted with a fresh run from Diogenes, he finally took himself off and got away. [The Diamond Edition of Dombey and SonChapter 18, "Father and Daughter," 145]
Left: Fred Barnard's study of Florence in mourning for the same chapter, It was repeated, often — very often, in the shadowy solitude; and broken murmurs of the strain still trembled on the keys, when the sweet voice was hushed in tears. (1874). Right: Phiz's original study of Florence and Diogenes, the dog who was little Paul's constant companion at Dr. Blimber's: Poor Paul's Friend (March 1847).
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Canton: Ohio U. P., 1980.
Darley, Felix Octavius Carr (illustrator). "Florence Dombey" from “Dombey and Son” in Dickens' Little Folks. New York: Clark, Austin, and Maynard, 1861 (rpt. of 1856 frontispiece).
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.
_______. Dombey and Son.16 Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and A. V. S. Anthony (engraver). The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Ch. 12, "Work, Work, Work." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. 128-160.
Schlicke, Paul. (Ed.). "Dombey and Son." The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. 183-88.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 86-112.
Created 18 June 2025
Last modified 5 July 2025