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"And may I — May I —?"
John McLenan
12 cm by 12 cm wide (4 ¾ inches square)
Dickens's Great Expectations, Harper's Weekly V (16 February 1861): 101.
Plate 18 (facing p. 98) in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
“My dear friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, when he and I and the collation were alone, “I give you joy of your good fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!”
This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of expressing himself.
“To think,” said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me for some moments, “that I should have been the humble instrument of leading up to this, is a proud reward.”
I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever said or hinted, on that point.
“My dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook; “if you will allow me to call you so —”
I murmured “Certainly,” and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, “My dear young friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph. — Joseph!” said Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate adjuration. “Joseph!! Joseph!!!” Thereupon he shook his head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in Joseph.
“But my dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “you must be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here’s one or two little things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not despise. But do I,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he had sat down, “see afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may I — may I —?”
This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was fervent, and then sat down again. [Chapter XVIII, 101]
McLenan sees his subject and the butt of his visual satire as the favourite target of French visual satirist Honoré Daumier (1808-79) — the overweight, puffed up, egotistical, self-congratulatory, complacent bourgeois merchant "Uncle" Pumblechook. Unfortunately, McLenan resorts to his familiar stereotype of the odious, middle-aged bourgeois with a bulbous nose, indicative of excessive drinking. The American caricaturist delights in the grotequeness of Pumblechook, pillorying his character by drawing him (or over-drawing him) as "a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man" well suited to his pompous-sounding name.
Pip, left, and Pumblechook, right, in the Barnwell parlor (sic). This plate appears on the same page as the previous plate.
Left: F. W. Pailthorpe's portrait of the seedsman amounts to visual satire for the same scene in "And may I — May I —?" (1885). Right: Kyd's satirical watercolour of the pompous drygoods merchant: Mr. Pumblechook (c. 1900).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vol. IV (1860).
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 9 November 2021