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Joe the Fat Boy and Sam Weller from “Pickwick Papers”
Felix O. C. Darley
Annin-Loomis
1856
12 by 7.9 cm (4 ¾ by 3 ¼ inches) vignetted
Steel engraving
Frontispiece with the Joe the Fat Boy and Sam Weller for Pickwick Papers in Dickens' Little Folks, originally published by Clark, Austin & Maynard (New York: 1861): facing title-page.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The compiler, in arranging this volume, had in mind the merry adage, "Laugh and grow fat;" and thought it not unwise, after many volumes prefaced with moral hints, to give the history of the inimitable "Samuel" and "Joe," as a cheerful parting with the readers of "Dickens' Little Folks."
{Newtonville, Mass.}
"Joe, Joe!" said the stout gentleman, when the citadel was taken, and the besiegers and besieged sat down to dinner. "Damn that boy, he's gone to sleep again. Be good enough to pinch him, sir —— in the leg, if you please; nothing else wakes him —— thank you. Undo the hamper, Joe."
The fat boy, who had been effectually roused by the compression of a portion of his leg between the finger and thumb of Mr. Winkle, rolled off the box once again, and proceeded to unpack the hamper, with more expedition than could have been expected from his previous inactivity.
"Now we must sit close," said the stout gentleman. After a great many jokes about squeezing the ladies' sleeves, and a vast quantity of blushing at sundry jocose proposals, that the ladies should sit in the gentlemen's laps, the whole party were stowed down in the barouche; and the stout gentleman proceeded to hand the things from the fat boy (who had mounted up behind for the purpose) into the carriage. [Chapter III, "A field-day and bivouac —— More new friends; and an invitation to the country," pp. 29-30]
Contrary to the expectations that the plate creates in the reader, "The Fat Boy Joe, and Samuel Weller" offers no scene in which Joe interacts socially with Mr. Pickwick's Cockney valet, Sam Weller. Darley seems to be attempting to place these two comic figures in the scene in which the Pickwickians arrive at Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, not far from Rochester. In creating these figures Darley has clearly consulted the first edition of Pickwick for Phiz's versions of Joe (introduced in The Fat Boy Awake Again, Chapter VIII) and Sam, who makes his initial appearance two chapters later, in First Appearance of Mr. Samuel Weller (July 1836). Joe appears in Chapters IV through IX, and then not again until Chapter XXVIII.
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). "Joe the Fat Boy and Sam Weller" from “Pickwick Papers” in Dickens' Little Folks. New York: Redfield, 1856. Pp. 2-186.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman & Hall: April 1836 through November 1837, with a "Preface" (1847).
Vann, J. Don. "The Pickwick Papers, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, April 1836-November 1837." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. P. 61.
Last modified 18 June 2024