[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Henry Furniss —> The Pickwick Papers —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
The Effect of Cold Punch after the Shooting Party
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 cm x 9.5 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing II, 256.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The basket having been repacked, and it being found perfectly impossible to awaken Mr. Pickwick from his torpor, some discussion took place whether it would be better for Mr. Weller to wheel his master back again, or to leave him where he was, until they should all be ready to return. The latter course was at length decided on; and as the further expedition was not to exceed an hour’s duration, and as Mr. Weller begged very hard to be one of the party, it was determined to leave Mr. Pickwick asleep in the barrow, and to call for him on their return. So away they went, leaving Mr. Pickwick snoring most comfortably in the shade.
That Mr. Pickwick would have continued to snore in the shade until his friends came back, or, in default thereof, until the shades of evening had fallen on the landscape, there appears no reasonable cause to doubt; always supposing that he had been suffered to remain there in peace. But he was not suffered to remain there in peace. And this was what prevented him.
Captain Boldwig was a little fierce man in a stiff black neckerchief and blue surtout, who, when he did condescend to walk about his property, did it in company with a thick rattan stick with a brass ferrule, and a gardener and sub-gardener with meek faces, to whom (the gardeners, not the stick) Captain Boldwig gave his orders with all due grandeur and ferocity; for Captain Boldwig’s wife’s sister had married a marquis, and the captain's house was a villa, and his land "grounds," and it was all very high, and mighty, and great.
Mr. Pickwick had not been asleep half an hour when little Captain Boldwig, followed by the two gardeners, came striding along as fast as his size and importance would let him; and when he came near the oak tree, Captain Boldwig paused and drew a long breath, and looked at the prospect as if he thought the prospect ought to be highly gratified at having him to take notice of it; and then he struck the ground emphatically with his stick, and summoned the head-gardener. [Chapter XIX, "A Pleasant Day with an Unpleasant Termination," 263]
It was determined to leave Mr. Pickwick asleep in the barrow, and to call for him on their return. So away they went, leaving Mr. Pickwick snoring most comfortably in the shade, where he was found by Captain Boldwig and his two gardeners. — Pickwick, 263.
Mr. Pickwick comes to the pound through his own follies: the folly of being out on a rainy night, hiding in a private garden to prevent the elopement of a stranger; the folly of watching a shooting expedition from a wheelbarrow; the folly of consuming too much veal pie and imbibing too much cold punch. For correction, he is isolated from his fellow Pickwickians, and divided from the villagers by the wooden fence of the pound. [Robert L. Patten, "Boz, Phiz and Pickwick in the Pound," 580]
The inebriation scene (probably as a result of the wide circulation in Britain and America of the Household Edition volumes) in the popular consciousness replaced the earlier embarrassing scene of Pickwick in the village pound executed by Phiz for the original serial. Having studied (at the least) Phiz's 1874 illustration, Furniss, however, has reconfigured both the juxtaposition, placement, and size of the four figures in the "rude awakening" scene on Boldwig's estate. Pickwick, comatose and surrounded by vegetation, occupies the foreground, whereas Furniss has relegated the rigid Boldwig and his varlets to the horizon line. Furniss has placed them in steep perspective, as if to suggest their minimal role in the continuing narrative. The illustrator conveys Boldwig's pomposity by his ramrod posture and prominent rattan walking-stick, suggestive of military authority. As yet in the 1910 illustration, Boldwig has not approached the oak tree and the gardener, Hunt, has yet to draw his master's attention to the bottles and other detritus of the Pickwickian picnic. As they approach the spot momentarily, Wilkins will draw Boldwig's attention to the wheelbarrow and its sleeping occupant. The oak tree's gnarled trunk effectively creates two spaces within the composition, with Boldwig alert and accompanied by none-too-bright servants in cameo, and Pickwick, sprawled full length, depicted as binary opposites.
Left: The frontispiece of the 1874 Household Edition, probably completed during the previous year illustrations: Detail of Pickwick in the Pound. Right: Phiz's original October 1836 steel-engraving, number 17 of the serial plates: Pickwick in the Pound.
Left: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispiece showing Pickwick being transported to the hunt in a wheelbarrow: Making a Point — "What's the Matter with the Dogs' Legs?" (1861). Centre: The cover of the Dick's Standard Plays (1065) adaptation Pickwick. A Farce in Three Acts by William Lehman Rede (The Adelphi, 1837). Right: Harold Copping's version of the original serial illustration, with Pickwick stunned, disoriented, and pathetic — an aged bourgeois held up to ridicule: Mr. Pickwick in the Pound (1924) for Character Sketches from Dickens (1924). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Phiz revises his approach to the chapter to show the dramatic moment at which Captain Boldwig apprehends him for trespass and public intoxication in "Who are you, you rascal?" said the captain, administering several pokes to Mr. Pickwick's body with the thick stick. "What's your name?"" (1874). Nast, like Phiz, has altered the subject, from Pickwick in the village pound in the serial, to Pickwick apprehended by Captain Boldwig in "Who are you, you rascal?"," page 117, Chapter XIX.
Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall, 1836-37.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. 14 vols.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 5.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.
Patten, Robert L. "Boz, Phiz and Pickwick in the Pound." English Literary History 36 (1969): 575-591.
Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985.
Created 14 September 2019
Last modified 5 February 2020