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Paul puzzling Mrs. Pipchin
Harry Furniss
1910
14.5 x 9.5 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation, the Charles Dickens Library Edition, IX, facing 128.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs. Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about. [Chapter VIII, "Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character," 108]
In this updated fairytale of the children held captive by an old witch, Dickens specifically labels Mrs. Pipchin an "ogress." Both Phiz and Furniss have apparently incorporated details description of Mrs Pipchin from Diocklens's description of her:
This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was generally spoken of as "a great manager" of children; and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they didn’t like, and nothing that they did — which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton. [103]
Dickens's genius in Dombey and Son is that he manipulates the narrative in order to offer multiple perspectives on a child's view of the adult world. Florence, who is a little older than the other child characters, is nevertheless victimized by the witch-like Mrs. Brown, but she responds to the traumatic experience of being threatened, held against her will, and robbed with resourcefulness and common sense. Likewise, at the Brighton boarding house of yet another fairytale crone, the ugly, aged widow whose system of managing children is simply to terrify them, Paul iz resilient and unperturbed. Being ill-conditioned and ill-favoured works to Mrs. Pipchin's advantage since her very ugliness and meanness support her style of "management." Apparently when his father was incarcerated for debt Charles Dickens, aged 12, boarded with such an elderly widow named Mrs. Roylance. While the Dickens family were living at 4 Gower Street North, John Dickens was arrested for debt on 20 February 1824 and consigned to the Marshalsea Prison, where the rest of the family except Charles joined him. While working at Warren's Blacking Factory at 3 Chandos Street, Hungerford Market, CD roomed with Mrs. Roylance in Little College Street, Camden Town, in order to be closer to work. He saw his family only on Sundays. Having read Forster's Life of Dickens (1872-74), Furniss would likely have recognized the origins of Mrs. Pipchin, both in Dickens's own childhood and in the fairytales that fed his imagination as a child. Furniss also had the advantage of having been able to study Phiz's portrait of Mrs. Pipchin before attempting his own illustration of an elderldy women with a hooked nose and repulsive face.
Left: Phiz's December 1846 introduction of the terrifying child-minder whom Paul cows in the eighth chapter, Paul and Mrs. Pipchin. Left of centre: John Leech's celebrated 1847 parody: "Dombey and Son" — Lord Russell as Paul Dombey. Centre: Paul's only escape from the dreary halls of the child-minder Brighton establishment is accompanying his sister to the beach in Chapter 8: Listening to the Sea (1877). Right: Barnard's 1877 illustration of the father and son sitting wordlessly before the fire may owe as much to Leech as Phiz: Dombey and Son.
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.
_______. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. IX.
Last modified 29 December 2019