"The antic fellowand Sikes" by Frederic W. Pailthorpe — eighteenth illustration for "Oliver Twist" (1886)

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The antic fellow and Sikes

Frederic W. Pailthorpe

1886

10.6 cm high by 9.1 cm wide (4 inches by 3 ½ inches), vignetted

Eighteenth illustration for Oliver Twist in F. W. Pailthorpe's twenty-onehand-tinted engravings for the 1838 three-volume Richard Bentley (first) edition. This illustration is keyed to vol. III, p. 205.

[Click on image to enlarge it. See below for passage illustrated, commentary and comparisons with other illustrators' work; mouse over the text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: The Haunted/Hunted Sikes

There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly hesitated. The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.

"It's all bought up as fast as it can be made," said the fellow. "There are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a galvanic battery, always a-working upon it, and they can't make it fast enough, though the men work so hard that they die off, and the widows is pensioned directly, with twenty pound a-year for each of the children, and a premium of fifty for twins. One penny a square! Two half-pence is all the same, and four farthings is received with joy. One penny a square! Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, mud-stains, blood-stains! Here is a stain upon the hat of a gentleman in company, that I'll take clean out, before he can order me a pint of ale."

"Hah!" cried Sikes starting up. "Give that back."

"I'll take it clean out, sir," replied the man, winking to the company, "before you can come across the room to get it. Gentlemen all, observe the dark stain upon this gentleman's hat, no wider than a shilling, but thicker than a half-crown. Whether it is a wine-stain, fruit-stain, beer-stain, water-stain, paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain, or blood-stain —

The man got no further, for Sikes with a hideous imprecation overthrew the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the house. [Chapter 48, "The Flight of Sikes," p. 274 in the 1846 edition]

Commentary: The Fugitive Sikes

Having brutally murdered Nancy in Chapter 47 on the supposition that she has impeached on the gang, Sikes escapes northward. While in the little village of Hatfield, near the great house built by Sir Robert Cecil in 1611 (replacing the late 15th c. palace on this site where the future Queen Elizabeth spent part of her childhood, and held her first council of state as monarch in 1558), Sikes visits the nearby Eight Bells, a public house familiar to Dickens when as a young reporter in 1835 he covered the disastrous fire that destroyed much of the Jacobean mansion. Dick Turpin, the infamous highwayman, is reputed to have jumped from the second-storey of The Eight Bells onto his steed, Black Bess, to avoid capture by the Bow Street Runners, an historical feature that may have prompted the young author to associate the brutal burglar with the public house.

Here, the fugitive Sikes hears passengers just alighted from a London coach discussing the recently discovered murder of a woman in Spitalfields, so that he now realizes that hue and cry is about to be raised for him. When a conflagration breaks out in the manor house, Sikes heroically joins the firefighters and works tirelessly to save as much property as possible. Tony Lynch in Dickens' England adds that Dickens uses this occasion to insert what amounts to a topical allusion in having Sikes (perhaps suddenly struck by altruism, but more likely tempting Providence to punish him) fight the fire, for "Dickens was in fact remembering the fire of 1835 at Hatfield House" (109). Pailthorpe emphasizes Sikes's "Neanderthal" features: his sun-browned skin, unshaven visage, and coarse features.

Later, Harry Furniss in his 1910 lithographic series offers three illustrations depicting the sensational events in the final days of the Hogarthian blackguard: the dark plate The Death of Nancy, the humorous taproom scene at The Eight Bells, The Flight of Bill Sikes, and the peculiar rendition of Sikes's hanging in which Sikes himself is not in the frame at all, The End of Sikes. On the other hand, one of Pailthorpe's two direct sources, the 1871 Household Edition illustrations of James Mahoney, depict Sikes more realistically. He is not a mere caricature when he drags his dog away from Nancy's corpse in He moved backward, towards the door: dragging the dog with him. But Mahoney does not focus at all upon the murderer's flight northward, resolving Sikes's story visually with the scene on the roof-tiles of the gang's hideout at Jacob's Island rookery with And creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet. Like Furniss a quarter-of-a-century later, F. W. Pailthorpe describes the scene in the taproom at The Eight Bells when a mountebank (an "antic fellow") tries to make Sikes's blood-stained hat the object of a demonstration of the efficacy of his patent product that removes stains. Sikes responds with fear and suspicion when the enterprising salesman grabs his hat. Compare Pailthorpe's caricatural treatment of yet another public house scene with the more impressionistic style in Furniss's The Flight of Bill Sikes after the Murder.

Relevant Illustrations from the original serial (1839), Diamond Edition (1867), and Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)

Left: George Cruikshank's description of Sikes's trying to destroy the only witness to Nancy's murder: Sikes attempting to destroy his dog (January 1839). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Junior's Bill Sikes and Nancy (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's Charles Dickens Library Edition lithograph The Flight of Sikes (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Related Material

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by. F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.2 vols.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.

_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.

Forster, John. "Oliver Twist 1838." The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. B. W. Matz. The Memorial Edition. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911. Vol. 1, book 2, chapter 3. Pp. 91-99.

Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1774; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmetts Insurrection in 1803]. London: A & C Black, 1903. OT = pp. 1-106]. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004. Pp. 1-28.

Lynch, Tony. "London Bridge." Dickens's England: An A-Z Tour of the Real and Imagined Locations. London: Batsford, 2012. Pp. 131-132.

Pailthorpe, Frederic W. (Illustrator). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. London: Robson & Kerslake, 1886. Set No. 118 (coloured) of 200 sets of proof impressions.

Created 14 February 2015

Last updated 6 December 2021