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Mr. Tapley Acts Third Party With Great Discretion
Phiz
June 1843
Steel-engraving
14.1 cm high by 10.5 cm wide, vignetted
Twelfth regular monthly illustration for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing page 178 (1844 edition) in the fourteenth chapter; descriptive headline in the 1868 edition: "The Lovers Part"; in the 1897 edition: "Martin Unfolds His Plans."
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Fine weather indeed," Martin bitterly soliloquised, "to be wandering up and down here in, like a thief! Fine weather indeed, for a meeting of lovers in the open air, and in a public walk! . . . But he was stopped on the road to this reflection, if his thoughts tended that way, by her appearance at a short distance, on which he hurried forward to meet her. Her squire, Mr. Tapley, at the same time fell discreetly back, and surveyed the fog above him with an appearance of attentive interest.
"My dear Martin," said Mary.
"My dear Mary," said Martin; and lovers are such a singular kind of people that this is all they did say just then, though Martin took her arm, and her hand too, and they paced up and down a short walk that was least exposed to observation, half-a-dozen times. [Chapter XIV, "In which Martin bids adieu to the Lady of his Love; and Honours an obscure Individual whose Fortune he intends to make, by commending her to his Protection," pp. 177-178]
In the dynamic moment realized, Mark with suitable discretion pretends to be intent upon the fog while Martin takes a letter he has written from his pocket, and reads it aloud to Mary, presumably to enjoy her praising his noble treatment of Tom Pinch: "'My dear Tom Pinch.' That's rather familiar perhaps, but I call him my dear Tom Pinch, because he likes it, and it pleases him" (Ch. 14). Since scene takes place in St. James' Park, London, the towers in the background probably belong to Westminster Abbey.
Dickens avoids any suggestion of impropriety in Martin's courtship of the chaste Mary Graham, his grandfather's nurse and companion, by underscoring the public nature of the site and making Mark's presence obvious. While he is away making his fortune in America, Martin entrusts Tom Pinch with the care of Mary, despite the fact that he has not known Tom very long — but perhaps such an egoist as Martin Chuzzlewit has made few true friends in school or among the extended Chuzzlewit clan. The English oaks in St. James's Park subtly prepare us for Martin and Mark's misadventures in the unforgiving American wilderness with its primeval trees that are mere distortions of their European cousins in The Thriving City of Eden as it Appeared in Fact (September 1843).
Left: Harry Furniss's comic re-interpretation of the same scene, "Mark Taplewy's Sympathetic Sneeze (Charles Dickens Library Edition, 1910), Chapter 14. Right: Fred Barnard's focus on the tenderness of the lovers, Seeing that there was no one near, and that Mark was still intent upon the fog, he not only looked at her lips, but kissed them into the bargain, in the Household Edition (1872).
Allingham, Philip V. "Phiz's Illustrations, Part Two." [Ch. 16-23] The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.2 (August, 2008): 9-13.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. II.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Modified 8 January 2019
Last updated 12 November 2024