The unfortunate Native suffered terribly
W. H. C. Groome
1900
12 x 8.2 cm, framed
Lithograph
Dickens's Dombey and Son (pp. 426 + 422), facing page 344.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated: The Major takes out his Frustrations out on The Native
Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend Dombey’s House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who knew Joe better, wouldn’t hear of such a thing. The unfortunate Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes. [Chapter LVIII, "After a Lapse," 358]
Commentary: A Significant Minor Character - "The Native"
Major Bagstock, standard bearer and beneficiary of Empire, has his unnamed native servant kitted out in the fashionable style of a gentleman's gentleman, in a tailcoat with epaulettes. But Groome reminds readers of the Native's colonial origins with his silk trousers and turban, a sure indication of his South Asian origins, although the text implies (based on the far-flung corners of Empire where his employer has served) that he is an African.
Even though the Native is a secondary and essentially one-dimensional character, Dickens uses him as a comic foil to the self-important, blustering Major Bagstock. The Native, Bagstock's general factotum (indeed, as far as the text reveals, his only servant), is presumably a "native" whom Bagstock has trained as a domestic servant and imported from an unspecified British colony. Unlike most of the characters whom Groome has portrayed, the Indian-attired valet has no proper name, but answers to any "vituperative epithet" that the imperious Major may choose to hurl at him. Groome departs from the precedents of Phiz and Barnard by depicting the Major's servant in eastern slippers, short trousers, silken vest, and turban.
Other Illustrators' Depictions of Major Bagstock and The Native (1847 to 1910)
Left: Phiz's March 1847 serial illustration
Left: Clayton J. Clarke's Player's Cigarette Card No. 7 watercolour study: Major Bagstock (1910). Centre: Harry Furniss's portrait of the egocentric retired military man: Joe B. (1910). Right: Phiz's second study of the Major and his valet, Chapter 26: "Joe B. Is Sly, Sir, Devilish Sly" (detail: June 1847).
Related Material
- Dombey and Son (homepage)
- Phiz's 40 serial illustrations for Dombey and Son (1846-48)
- Felix Octavius Carr Darley's Captain Cuttle . . . too his own [watch] down from the mantel-shelf for Volume 4 of Dombey and Son, Wholesale Retail & for Exportation, 1862
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 Illustrations for Dombey and Son, 1877
- Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
- Harry Furniss's illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Harold Copping's Captain Cuttle's Bright Idea, 1924.
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow, 1900, rpt. 1934. 2 vols. in one.
Created 25 January 2021