Detective Bucket by J. Clayton Clarke (“Kyd”) for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 49: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: Our Mutual Friend. 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.]
DETECTIVE BUCKET. (Bleak House.)
Right: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispiece for Volume Four of the Sheldon & Co. Household Edition (1863): Springing a Mine for Chapter LIV.
A police-inspector and detective in charge of the Tulkinghorn murder case, Mr. Bucket is as far-seeing, as ubiquitous and as “brainy” as the detective of fiction usually is. Furthermore, he has a keen eye, a threatening forefinger, and is by no means a bad sort of fellow when you get to know him. [Verso of Card No. 49]
Passage Realised
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s composite woodblock portrait of the "ghostly" presence of the enigmatic detective: Inspector Bucket in the 1867 Diamond Edition for Chapter XXII, "Mr. Bucket," 403.
The model for Kyd's interpretation of Inspector Bucket is a single Phiz image in the original serial, specifically, the fourteenth (April 1853) instalment's Friendly Behaviour of Mr. Bucket (Chapter XLIII, "Esther's Narrative"). However, Dickens describes the detective in an earlier chapter:
As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt. [Instalment 7, September 1852, Chapter XXII, "Mr. Bucket." Household Edition, 156]
This is also the basis for Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of the knowing detective in the Diamond Edition (1867), which, owing to copyright restrictions, Kyd is not likely to have seen.
Commentary: The Stock Features of Detective Bucket
Harry Furniss's lithographic study of the detective with Mr. George and his family, Mr. Bucket's Pleasant Evening, in the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition Edition for Chapter XLIX.
Although Phiz's image is acceptable as a realisation of the observant detective, Kyd's version more effectively captures Bucket's salient features, complementing the character and role of Inspector Bucket in the novel: a "stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age" (ch. 22), looking much more like a professional man, a physician or lawyer, Kyd's Bucket has the gimlet eye, walking stick, and posture that Dickens describes. This attentive, observant police inspector with the fat forefinger (reminiscent of that of Jaggers, the criminal attorney in Great Expectations, 1861) is up to the task of solving Tulkinghorn's murder, a task that would have been far too challenging for the Bow Street Runners of Oliver Twist. Although more affable and less quirky, Bucket is the forerunner or prototype of Wilkie Collins's Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard in The Moonstone (1868). "Although Dickens denied it, Bucket was probably based on INSPECTOR FIELD of the Metropolitan Police" (Davis 46).
Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Bleak House
Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispiece for Volume Two of the Sheldon & Co. Household Edition (1863): A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room. . . . for Chapter XXII.
- Bleak House (homepage)
- Phiz's Illustrations for Bleak House (March 1852 - September 1853)
- Sir John Gilbert's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1863)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 4, 1863)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1873)
- Harry Furniss's 28 illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- 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. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
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[?].
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1863. Vols. 1-4.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VI.
_______. Bleak House, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873. IV.
_______. Bleak House. Illustrated by Harry Furniss [28 original lithographs]. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. XI.
_______, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 18: Bleak House." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XVII. 366-97.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Vann, J. Don. "Bleak House, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, October 1846—April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 69-70.
Created 22 January 2015
Last modified 27 July 2025