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Passage Illustrated: Introducing the Kindly Boffins in their Bower

‘Mrs. Boffin, Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘is a highflyer at Fashion. And her make is such, that she does it credit. As to myself I ain’t yet as Fash’nable as I may come to be. Henerietty, old lady, this is the gentleman that’s a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire.’

‘And I am sure I hope it’ll do you both good,’ said Mrs. Boffin.

It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row, like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table, formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and colour, but were expensive articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendent from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boffin’s footstool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr. Wegg also noticed, with admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow ornamentation as stuffed birds and waxen fruits under glass-shades, there were, in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country. [Chapter V, "Boffin's Bower," 38]

Commentary: Characters, or Caricatures?

Henrietta ("Henerietty") Boffin, as eager to acquire knowledge of the classics of modern literature as her bustling husband, has dressed (or should one say "over-dressed"?) to receive the vistor who will read the "decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire." Eytinge's manner of representation verges on caricature, but there is none of the cartoon-like playfulness of Eytinge's great American contemporaries, John McLenan, illustrator of A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations for Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization in the late eighteen-fifties and early eighteen-sixties, or political cartoonist Thomas Nast.

Only sketchily does Eytinge give us the parlour of The Bower or Harmony Jail, and the clock incorectly registers one o'clock (in the afternoon, one presumes), although it is evening when Silas Wegg calls. Whereas Eytinge depicts Boffin in a suit, the text clearly indicates that Noddy is "in an undress garment of short white smock-frock." One can only assume, therefore, that Eytinge is not introducing us to the elderly couple at the moment of Wegg's arrival — after all, he does not appear in the illustration — but rather earlier that day, when one supposes Noddy Boffin mentioned to his wife that they would be receiving an oral reading that evening. Eytinge's intention, then, appears simply to have been to establish the benign character and mutual devotion of the Boffins, sparkling-eyed and youthful in their appreciation of life, despite their age and working-class background.

Bibliography

Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Vol. VIII. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.

Winter, William. "Charles Dickens" and "Sol Eytinge." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 181-202, 317-319.

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