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The Blighted Hairdresser
Harry Furniss
1910
13.9 x 9.3 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Master Humphrey's Clock, completes Vol. 6 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition; facing page 90.
"'But whose image is
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Sam interchanged a smile with the housekeeper, and proceeded:
‘The young hairdresser hadn’t been in the habit o’ makin’ this avowal above six months, ven he en-countered a young lady as wos the wery picter o’ the fairest dummy. "Now,” he says, “it’s all up. I am a slave!" The young lady wos not only the picter o’ the fairest dummy, but she was wery romantic, as the young hairdresser was, too, and he says, "O!" he says, "here’s a community o’ feelin’, here’s a flow o’ soul!" he says, "here’s a interchange o’ sentiment!" The young lady didn’t say much, o’ course, but she expressed herself agreeable, and shortly artervards vent to see him vith a mutual friend. The hairdresser rushes out to meet her, but d’rectly she sees the dummies she changes colour and falls a tremblin’ wiolently. "Look up, my love," says the hairdresser, "behold your imige in my winder, but not correcter than in my art!" "My imige!" she says. "Yourn!" replies the hairdresser. "But whose imige is that?" she says, a pinting at vun o’ the gen’lmen. "No vun’s, my love," he says, "it is but a idea." "A idea!" she cries: "it is a portrait, I feel it is a portrait, and that ’ere noble face must be in the millingtary!" "Wot do I hear!" says he, a crumplin’ his curls. "Villiam Gibbs," she says, quite firm, "never renoo the subject. I respect you as a friend," she says, "but my affections is set upon that manly brow." "This," says the hairdresser, "is a reg’lar blight, and in it I perceive the hand of Fate. Farevell!" Vith these vords he rushes into the shop, breaks the dummy’s nose vith a blow of his curlin’-irons, melts him down at the parlour fire, and never smiles artervards. ["Mr. Weller's Watch," 90]
In the tales of Gog and Magog and the contributions of Master Humphrey's special guests, Mr. Pickwick and his valet, Sam Weller, Dickens in this 19th century "Miscellany" (modelled after Joseph Addison's 18th century Spectator) seems to be on the verge of discovering the framed tale. In Household Words and All the Year Round in the 1850s and 1860s Dickens would bring this form to managerial perfection, writing the opening and the closing, and having his stable of talented journalists (including Hesba Stretton, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry Morley, and Richard Hengist Horne) compose the intervening tales for particular characters whom Dickens had introduced. But here, in Master Humphrey's Clock we are still a decade away from Dickens's bringing his concept of "writing in company" to fruition in such pieces for the Christmas season as The Seven Poor Travellers (1854). As with Gog and Magog in the 11 April 1840 number, Dickens seems to be trying to set up a frame in anticipation that his literary acquaintances would rise to the occasion. They did not, and ultimately, despite its brilliant serial novels, Master Humphrey's Clock failed because, indefatigible editor and inventive short story writer though he was, twenty-eight-year-old Dickens could not sustain the Miscellany design by himself.
"Mr. Weller's Watch" is actually the informal name of the society of story-telling servants (led, naturally, by Pickwick's valet and his coachman father, Tony Weller) who gather below stairs while Master Humphrey entertains such as upper-middle class visitors as Mr. Pickwick in his library, and pulls the manuscript out of the clock-case. Since it is more a character sketch and an exercise in Cockney dialectal wit than a short story, Deborah A. Thomas in Dickens and the Short Story does not include the piece in her analysis of the short fiction in Master Humphrey's Clock. In the original edition, "Mr. Weller's Watch" led off the June 1840 monthly number (weekly number 7) with an illustration entitled A Rival Club (showing Sam and Tony holding forth at the servants' kitchen table) and an initial-letter vignette by Phiz (30 May 1840, page 97).
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. "Mr. Weller's Watch." Master Humphrey's Clock. (30 May 1840). Illustrated by Phiz and George Cattermole. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1841; rpt., 1849. I, 97-103.
Dickens, Charles. "Mr. Weller's Watch." Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. VI, 83-92.
Hammerton, J. A. "The Story of the Book." Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. VI. i-iii.
Created 25 December 2019