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Hugh
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
(Part VI) 20 March 1841
4 ½ x 3 ¼ inches (11.8 cm by 8.2 cm), vignetted
Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, The Bradbury & Evans single-volume edition of December 1849, Vol. II, Chapter Eleven, 297.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
There were present two, however, who showed but little interest in the general contentment. Of these, one was Barnaby himself, who slept, or, to avoid being beset with questions, feigned to sleep, in the chimney-corner; the other, Hugh, who, sleeping too, lay stretched upon the bench on the opposite side, in the full glare of the blazing fire.
The light that fell upon this slumbering form, showed it in all its muscular and handsome proportions. It was that of a young man, of a hale athletic figure, and a giant’s strength, whose sunburnt face and swarthy throat, overgrown with jet black hair, might have served a painter for a model. Loosely attired, in the coarsest and roughest garb, with scraps of straw and hay—his usual bed—clinging here and there, and mingling with his uncombed locks, he had fallen asleep in a posture as careless as his dress. The negligence and disorder of the whole man, with something fierce and sullen in his features, gave him a picturesque appearance, that attracted the regards even of the Maypole customers who knew him well, and caused Long Parkes to say that Hugh looked more like a poaching rascal to-night than ever he had seen him yet.
"He’s waiting here, I suppose," said Solomon, "to take Mr Haredale’s horse."
"That’s it, sir," replied John Willet. "He’s not often in the house, you know. He’s more at his ease among horses than men. I look upon him as a animal himself."
Following up this opinion with a shrug that seemed meant to say, "we can’t expect everybody to be like us," John put his pipe into his mouth again, and smoked like one who felt his superiority over the general run of mankind.
"That chap, sir," said John, taking it out again after a time, and pointing at him with the stem, "though he’s got all his faculties about him — bottled up and corked down, if I may say so, somewheres or another —" [Chapter the Eleventh, Vol. III, 297-98]
Dickens may have felt that the late introduction of one of the story's antagonists should be underscored by providing a large-scale illustration of the ungentle giant of the stables at the Maypole. The author and his illustrators have already established the swell-headed apprentice Sim Tappertit as Joe Willet's rival for Dolly Varden, but she has never taken his intentions seriously, and Dickens required a more potent — and troubling — antagonist in the romantic plot. However, like Sim, Hugh, the physically powerful but none too bright young ostler at the inn, is an outsider in a novel about the members and fortunes of five families: the Willets of the Maypole at Chigwell, the Haredales of the Warren nearby, the Vardens of Clerkenwell, the Rudges of Southwark, and the Chesters, associated with the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Although he is not strictly a member of any of these families and has no friends or associates, Hugh is an extension or limb of the novel's initial setting, the Maypole Inn. This is where Dickens introduces him, and this is where Phiz describes him: asleep in the stables. Since three months' worth of weekly episodes had already appeared, one can only speculate on why Dickens felt compelled tointroduce an important secondary character; undoubtedly he was developing notions about how he wouldbring the multi-strand plot to closure, and felt Hugh would be useful in knitting together a number of strands.
Cattermole and Phiz depict the charming heroine of the novel, Dolly Varden, some nine
times in in their seventy-six illustrations. Likewise, they depict the loutish Hugh,
horse-wrangler at the Maypole, ten times, including by himself in the Phiz portrait of an
inebriated
Left: F. O. C. Darley's engraved title-page for the 1865 second volume issued by Sheldon and Company: Hugh and Dolly Varden. Left of centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond edition illustration of the sordid, lower-class villains of the melodrama: Dennis and Hugh in Chapter 74 (1867). Right of centre: Harry Furniss's version of Hugh's attempting to intimidate the heroine: Hugh Frightens Dolly (Ch. 21). Right: In Chapter 25, Furniss's representation of the surly villain in quite another social context: Hugh and His Patron (1910).
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ('Phiz') and George Cattermole. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury & Evans, 1849.
_______. Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. Frontispieces by F. O. C. Darley. Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865. 3 vols.
________. Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IX.
________. Barnaby Rudge. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. VI.
Hammerton, J. A. "Ch. XIV. Barnaby Rudge." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. 213-55.
Vann, J. Don. "Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February-27 November 1841." New York: MLA, 1985. 65-66.
Created 1 August 2015
Last modified 3 December 2020