Sairey Gamp by J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 24: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
SAIREY GAMP (Martin Chuzzlewit.)
The greatest of all Dickens' great creations; an old-time "nurse," with an equal relish for "a lying-in" [childbirth] or a [dressing a corpse] laying-out;" a fat old woman with a husky voice and a moist eye, and one "whose society it is difficult to enjoy without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits." She has a phantom friend — a Mrs. Harris — and prefers the bottle to be "left on the chimbley-piece" at her own "dispogal." [Verso of No. 24]
Original Passage from Chapter XIX in which Mrs. Gamp Enters the Narrative
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs Gamp — the nose in particular — was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits.
Phiz's three original serial appearances of Sairey Gamp. Left: Mrs. Gamp Has Her Eye on the Future (October 1843). Centre: Mrs. Gamp Makes Tea (May 1844). Right: Mrs. Gamp Propoges a Toast (June 1844).
Commentary: The Immortal Sairey — Or Not!
Among the set of 50 cigarette cards, initially produced in 1910 and reissued in 1923 just three cards are devoted to the cast of The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (January 1843-July 1844), or 6% of the total: Seth Pecksniff, no. 23; Sairey Gamp, no. 24; and the indefatigibly ebullient and "jolly" Mark Tapley, no. 34 — characterisations based on the original serial illustrations of Dickens's regular visual interpreter in the 1840s, Phiz, who introduced the comic sickroom nurse in Mrs. Gamp Has Her Eye on the Future in Chapter XXVI (October 1843, the tenth monthly number). Of the thirty-eight regular steel-engravings that Phiz produced the Chapman and Hall nineteen-month serial, she appears in just three.
Although Dickens originally aligned the boozy Sairey with the novel's deceivers and hypocrites, the voluble alcoholic grew beyond that original orientation in the minds and hearts of the Victorian novel-reading public. She became over the course of fifty chapters an endearing, comedic figure — primarily a comic voice rather than an amusing image. Thus, Kyd was at something of a disadvantage in that he had to depict the repulsive appearance without the accompanying humorous discourse of Dickens's dialogue and narrative commentary. In the sequence of cards in the storage sleeve, numbers 20 through 30, she is by far Kyd's weakest production: she is massive, completely filling the frame, but her physiognomy communicates nothing about her character: she is, as it were, merely the inhabitant of a voluminous dress and an overarching headpiece, and the bearer of a gigantic reticule, and an umbrella.
Other Illustrators' Interpretations of Phiz's Divine Sairey (1863-1924)
Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition friontispiece, Mrs. Gamp, on the Art of Nursing (1879). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition dual character study, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prigg (1867). Right: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's 1863 frontispiece "The creeter's head's so hot, said Mrs. Gamp (American Household Edition, vol. IV). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Left: Harold Copping's 1924 colour lithograph of Betsey and Sairey sharing a convivial glass, in Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig(Chapter 39). Centre: Harry Furniss's realisation of the immortal Dame Part, Mrs. Gamp (1910). Right: Clayton J. Clarke's characterisation of Sairey as endearing rather than professionally irresponsible and thoroughly addicted to gin, Sairey Gamp (1898). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Related Material
- The Immortal Sairey! — A Gallery of Dickens's Mrs. Gamp by Phiz and Others (1843-1910)
- Mrs. Gamp: The Genesis of the Divine Sairey
- The Divine Sairey Gamp: Not a Character, but an Enduring Comic Masterpiece
Relevant Illustrations fron Various Editions (1843-1910)
Artists Who Worked on Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)
- Hablot Knight Browne (40 steel engravings)
- Felix Octavius Carr Darley (3 lithographs)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (15 wood engravings)
- Fred Barnard (59 wood engravings)
- Harry Furniss (29 lithographs plus engraved title)
- Harold Copping (3 chromolithographs selected)
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography: Martin Chuzzlewit
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Dickens, Charles. The Dickens Souvenir Book. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871-1880. The copy of The Dickens Souvenir Book from which these pictures were scanned is in the collection of the Main Library of The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B. C.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. II.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. II.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VII.
Hammerton, J. A. "XVI. Martin Chuzzlewit." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XVI, pp. 266-293.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, . . . January 1843 — July 1844." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 66-67.
Created 11 January 2015
Last updated 19 July 2025