Dumkins by J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") for the 1910 watercolour series: reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 5: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: Pickwick Papers, Chapter VII. 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.]
DUMKINS.
One of the most renowned members of the All-Muggleton team on the occasion of the great match with Dingley Dell. "All-Muggleton had the first innings, and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins . . . walked, bat in hand, to his wicket . . . . The bowlers were changed and bowled till their arms ached, but Dumkins . . . remained unconquered . . . . Was the ball thrown straight up to the wicket, Dumkins reached it before the ball. [Verso of Card No. 5]
Full Passage Illustrated: Dumkins, The Champion of All-Muggleton, Takes the Pitch
All-Muggleton had the first innings; and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins and Mr. Podder, two of the most renowned members of that most distinguished club, walked, bat in hand, to their respective wickets. Mr. Luffey, the highest ornament of Dingley Dell, was pitched to bowl against the redoubtable Dumkins, and Mr. Struggles was selected to do the same kind office for the hitherto unconquered Podder. Several players were stationed, to ‘look out,’ in different parts of the field, and each fixed himself into the proper attitude by placing one hand on each knee, and stooping very much as if he were ‘making a back’ for some beginner at leap-frog. All the regular players do this sort of thing; — indeed it is generally supposed that it is quite impossible to look out properly in any other position.
The umpires were stationed behind the wickets; the scorers were prepared to notch the runs; a breathless silence ensued. Mr. Luffey retired a few paces behind the wicket of the passive Podder, and applied the ball to his right eye for several seconds. Dumkins confidently awaited its coming with his eyes fixed on the motions of Luffey.
‘Play!’ suddenly cried the bowler. The ball flew from his hand straight and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. The wary Dumkins was on the alert: it fell upon the tip of the bat, and bounded far away over the heads of the scouts, who had just stooped low enough to let it fly over them.
‘Run — run — another. — Now, then throw her up — up with her — stop there — another — no — yes — no — throw her up, throw her up!’ — Such were the shouts which followed the stroke; and at the conclusion of which All-Muggleton had scored two. Nor was Podder behindhand in earning laurels wherewith to garnish himself and Muggleton. He blocked the doubtful balls, missed the bad ones, took the good ones, and sent them flying to all parts of the field. The scouts were hot and tired; the bowlers were changed and bowled till their arms ached; but Dumkins and Podder remained unconquered. Did an elderly gentleman essay to stop the progress of the ball, it rolled between his legs or slipped between his fingers. Did a slim gentleman try to catch it, it struck him on the nose, and bounded pleasantly off with redoubled violence, while the slim gentleman’s eyes filled with water, and his form writhed with anguish. Was it thrown straight up to the wicket, Dumkins had reached it before the ball. In short, when Dumkins was caught out, and Podder stumped out, All-Muggleton had notched some fifty-four, while the score of the Dingley Dellers was as blank as their faces. The advantage was too great to be recovered. In vain did the eager Luffey, and the enthusiastic Struggles, do all that skill and experience could suggest, to regain the ground Dingley Dell had lost in the contest—it was of no avail; and in an early period of the winning game Dingley Dell gave in, and allowed the superior prowess of All-Muggleton. [Chapter VII, "How Mr. Winkle, instead of shooting at the Pigeon, and killing the Crow, shot the Crow and wounded the Pigeon; How the Dingley Dell Cricket Club played All-Muggleton, and how All-Muggleton dined at the Dingley Dell expense; with other interesting and instructive matters," Household Edition, 46]
Commentary: A Minor Character Takes Centre Stage
Of the set of 50 cigarette cards, initially produced in 1910 and reissued in 1923, fully 15 or 30% concern a single novel, The Pickwick Papers, attesting to the continued popularity of the picaresque comic novel and also suggesting that the later, darker novels such as Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood offered little for the caricaturist, the only late characters in the series being the singularly unpleasant Silas Wegg and Rogue Riderhood from Our Mutual Friend, and Turveydrop, Jo, Bucket, and Chadband from Bleak House. The popular taste was clearly still towards the earlier farce and character comedy of Dickens.
R. W. Buss's lacklustre serial illustration for this incident: The Cricket Match (June 1836).
Kyd's representations are largely based on the original illustrations by Phiz and Seymour, although the modelling of the figures is suggestive of Phiz's own, expanded series for Household Edition volume of the 1870s. However, neither Seymour nor Phiz depicted the Cricket Match (June 1836: third monthly instalment) at Dingley Dell since the original illustrator had committed suicide on 20 April 1836, and Chapman and Hall did not engage Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) until June. The choice of subject, however, certainly reflects Seymour's conception of the project as a series of country sporting scenes in which the London travellers either participate ineptly or merely observe.
The second anomaly is that Kyd should elect to depict minor figures from the first Dickens novel such as the Dingley Dell cricketers Dumkins and Luffey and the minor antagonist Major Bagstock, but omit significant characters from such later, still-much-read novels as A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Thirteen of the fifty or 26% of the series come from the cast of a single, early novel, Pickwick Papers (1836-37): Pickwick himself, hands behind his back, under his coat-tails (a characteristic pose); smug Dumkins with his cricket bat; another cricketer, the bowler Luffey; the itinerant actor and confidence man Alfred Jingle; the aesthetic Pickwickian, Augustus Snodgrass; Mrs. Bardell's flamboyant counsel, Sergeant Buzfuz; the judge in the case of Bardell v. Pickwick, Mr. Justice Stareleigh; the Cockney wit and street-wise companion of Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller; his affable father, the coachman Tony Weller; the boozy medical student Bob Sawyer; the minor character (brother to Job Trotter) Dismal Jemmy (whose actual surname is "Hutley"); and the comic servant at Dingley Dell, Joe, The Fat Boy. Kyd exhibits a strong male bias, as he realizes only seven female characters in total for the cigarette card series: only the beloved Nell, the abrasive Sally Brass, and the quirky Marchioness from The Old Curiosity Shop, Sairey Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, Aunt Betsey Trotwood from David Copperfield, the burly Mrs. McStinger from Dombey and Son, and the awkward Fanny Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby appear in the essentially comic cavalcade. Additional Kyd studies from Pickwick not in the Player's collection include Mrs. Bardell and the dissenting preacher, the inebriated Mr. Stiggins. Clearly the popular taste in "characters from Dickens" as well as in "novels from Dickens" has changed markedly over the past century, so that even few educated readers would associate this jaunty cricket player with the All-Muggleton match at Dingley Dell in Dickens's first novel.
Parallel Cricketing Scenes by Phiz and Harry Furniss (1874 and 1910)
Left: Harry Furniss's 1910 version incorporates the Pickwickians, and places the cricket match in the background: Mr. Pickwick at the Cricket Match. Right: Phiz's revised version of the cricket scene for the British Household Edition (1874) focusses on the wonder-struck Wardle and the actor hogging the limelight after the game, as Pickwick observes Jingle's performance from the left: Mr. Wardle looked on, in silent wonder.
Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910
- Robert Seymour (1836)
- Robert W. Buss (1836)
- Hablot Knight Brown (1836-37)
- Thomas Onwhyn's "Extra" Illustrations (1837)
- Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1861)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (1867)
- An introduction to the Household Edition (1871-79)
- Thomas Nast (1873)
- Hablot Knight Browne (1874)
- Clayton J. Clarke (1910)
- Harry Furniss (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 the images and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman & Hall: April 1836 through November 1837.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 22 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 2.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 5.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. 1.
_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.
Created 4 January 2015;
Last modified 2 July 2025