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Engraved title-page: At the Finger Post
Phiz
July 1844
Steel-engraving
16.5 cm high by 9.7 cm wide, vignetted
Frontispiece for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing frontispiece.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The finger post at the end of the lane, which has been so often mentioned. You can either have Tom Pinch waiting with John Westlock and his boxes, as at the opening of the book; or Mr. Pecksniff blandly receiving a new pupil from the coach (perhaps this will be better); and by no means forgetting the premium in his welcome of the Young Gentleman. Will you let me see the Designs for these two? Source: Margaret Cardwell, "Appendix C: Dickens's Instructions to his Illustrator." Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), pp. 843-845.
Michael Steig in the third chapter of Dickens and Phiz notes that the title-page vignette contains some ambiguities in using the fingerpost as an emblem of a young man's setting out to find his place in the world:
Note how Dickens arrives at the subject: he knows that he wants the fingerpost as an emblematic focus, and after considering a specific scene from the novel decides that he prefers one which does not occur in the book and is an epitome rather than a pure a illustration. Browne's rendering of the subject provides meanings which are not specified in these directions. First, the fingerpost itself is broken — specifically the board pointing in the direction from which Pecksniff has come, implying that to follow him is to go nowhere, and also recalling the description of Pecksniff as a "direction post" which "never goes there" (ch. 2, p. 10). Upon the post is a sign reading "£100 Reward" (or in the drawing and one steel, "100£," a matter of some moment to collectors), which alludes to the premium demanded, and to the criminal, because fraudulent, nature of Pecksniff's dealings with his pupils. [pp. 82-83]
The finger post at the end of the lane, which has been so often mentioned, You can either have Tom Pinch waiting with John Westlock and his boxes, as at the opening of the book; or Mr Pecksniff blandly receiving a new pupil from the coach (perhaps this might be better); and by no means forgetting the premium in his welcome of the young gentleman
Will you let me see the designs for these two?
Note how Dickens arrives at the subject: he knows that he wants the fingerpost as an emblematic focus, and after considering a specific scene from the novel decides that he prefers one which does not occur in the book and is an epitome rather than a pure a illustration. Browne's rendering of the subject provides meanings which are not specified in these directions. First, the fingerpost itself is broken — specifically the board pointing in the direction from which Pecksniff has come, implying that to follow him is to go nowhere, and also recalling the description of Pecksniff as a "direction post" which "never goes there" (ch. 2, p. 10). Upon the post is a sign reading "£100 Reward" (or in the drawing and one steel, "100£," a matter of some moment to collectors), which alludes to the premium demanded, and to the criminal, because fraudulent, nature of Pecksniff's dealings with his pupils. [Steig, pp. 82-83]
Left: In the 1867 Ticknor Fields edition of the novel Sol Eytinge, Jr. has modelled his frontispiece on Phiz's engraving: Tom Pinch. Centre: Fred Barnard's response to Phiz's imaginative interpretation is a realistic study of Tom and his sister as they set up housekeeping for themselves in London: "I am going to begin, Tom. Don't you wonder why I butter the inside of the basin?" (1872 Household Edition frontispiece). Right: Harry Furniss's innovative lithograph, "It was she", frontispiece for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Allingham, Philip V. "Introductory Notes." The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.1 (Feb., 2008): 8-9.
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. Edited by Andrew Lang. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition: 34 volumes. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897. 2 vols.
Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85.
_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual, 2 (1972): 119-149.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Last modified 9 January 2019
