Mrs. MacStinger by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 43: 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.]
MRS. MACSTINGER: Dombey and Son.
Capt. Cuttle's landlady, a martinet with a mop and pail; a widow with numerous encumberances, who holds her lodger as an overlord a serf. The gallant captain escapes his thraldom, mainly through the aid of a seductive brother mariner, Bunsby, who, sad to relate, falls captive to the triumphant MacStinger, and is by her promptly (and matrimonially) fettered for life. [Verso of Card No. 43]
The Passage in Chapter IX upon Which Kyd Based His Illustration
“Wal”r, my lad!” said Captain Cuttle. “Stand by and knock again. Hard! It’s washing day.”
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
“Hard it is!” said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as if he expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.
“Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,” said Walter with a conciliatory smile.
“Is he?” replied the widow lady. “In-deed!”
“He has just been speaking to me,” said Walter, in breathless explanation.
“Has he?” replied the widow lady. “Then p’raps you’ll give him Mrs. MacStinger’s respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his lodgings by talking out of the winder she’ll thank him to come down and open the door too.” Mrs. MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations that might be offered from the first floor.
“I’ll mention it,” said Walter, “if you’ll have the goodness to let me in, Ma’am.”
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their moments of recreation from tumbling down the steps. [Household Edition, Chapter IX, "In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble," 61]
Commentary
Right: Captain Cuttle and his companion are terrified by the landlady at Brig Place: Phiz's The Midshipman is boarded by the enemy (January 1848).
In Kyd's sequence of fifty cards, fully 13 or over 25% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers, but Dombey and Son is represented by just four cards: Captain Cuttle, Card No. 25, Mrs. MacStinger, Card No. 43; and Mr. Dombey, Card No. 42; and Major Bagstock, Card No. 7. Notably, too, the series of fifty cards contains only five other females.
Kyd had eight different models from Phiz alone for the kindly old salt, but only one for his domineering landlady, Phiz's The Midshipman is boarded by the enemy (Chapter XXXIX), after Cuttle thinks he has made good his escape from her clutches. Kyd's study is based directly on Dickens's description of her in Chapter IX as "a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot water" at No. 9, Brig Place, near the India Docks. Kyd shows her as the vigorous and determined landlady rather than the terrifying presence who calls at the Midshipman nautical supply store with the intention of marrying the retired mariner. In Kyd's study, the brawny landlady, with her hair up, is wearing pattens because she is the midst of washing the floor when Walter Gay calls. Thus, unlike many of Kyd's images, this realisation of the secondary character is situationally specific.
Kyd's colour image is much closer to the description of Captain Cuttle's landlady, whom the fin-de-siecle seems to have based on Barnard's image from the Household Edition. However, as a caricaturist he has chosen to emphasize his subject's masculinity, musculature, and ugliness: Mrs. MacStinger has become much more formidable — and much more terrifying — in Kyd's treatment of her. The posture suggests impatience, as if she has better things to do than answer the door at Brig Place for Edward Cuttle's callers.
Other Illustrators' Depictions of Mrs. MacStinger and The Old Sailors (1847 to 1877)
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s character study of the odd couple on their wedding
day:
Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son
- Dombey and Son (homepage)
- Phiz's Illustrations for Dombey and Son, Wholesale Retail & for Exportation (Oct. 1846 - April 1848)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1872)
- William H. C. Groome's Eight Illustrations for Dombey and Son (1900)
- Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
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
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. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1848.
_______. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. III.
_______. Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation, with 61 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. Vol. XV.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. IX.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XVI. Dombey and Son." The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., [1910], pp. 294-338.
Vann, J. Don. "Dombey and Son, . . . October 1846 — April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 67-68.
Created 12 January 2015
Last modified 20 July 2025