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Balm for the Wounded Orphan
Phiz
October 1843
Steel-engraving
12.3 cm high by 10.3 cm wide, vignetted
Nineteenth monthly illustration for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, eighth instalment, facing p. 296 (1844 edition) in Ch. XXIV; descriptive headline: "A Silent Walk" (1897)
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Don’t make a noise about it," he said. "It’s nothing worth mentioning. I didn’t know the road; the night’s very dark; and just as I came up with Mr Pinch" — he turned his face towards Tom, but not his eyes — "I ran against a tree. It’s only skin deep."
"Cold water, Merry, my child!" cried Mr. Pecksniff. "Brown paper! Scissors! A piece of old linen! Charity, my dear, make a bandage. Bless me, Mr Jonas!"
"Oh, bother your nonsense," returned the gracious son-in-law elect. "Be of some use if you can. If you can’t, get out!" Miss Charity, though called upon to lend her aid, sat upright in one corner, with a smile upon her face, and didn’t move a finger. Though Mercy laved the wound herself; and Mr Pecksniff held the patient’s head between his two hands, as if without that assistance it must inevitably come in half; and Tom Pinch, in his guilty agitation, shook a bottle of Dutch Drops until they were nothing but English Froth, and in his other hand sustained a formidable carving-knife, really intended to reduce the swelling, but apparently designed for the ruthless infliction of another wound as soon as that was dressed; Charity rendered not the least assistance, nor uttered a word. But when Mr Jonas’s head was bound up, and he had gone to bed, and everybody else had retired, and the house was quiet, Mr Pinch, as he sat mournfully on his bedstead, ruminating, heard a gentle tap at his door; and opening it, saw her, to his great astonishment, standing before him with her finger on her lip. [Chapter XXIV, "Reports Progress in certain homely Matters of Love, Hatred, Jealousy, and Revenge," page 296 in the 1844 edition]
Phiz depicts Tom's coming to Jonas's aid, even though the sulky bully hardly deserves such kindness. Phiz could as easily have depicted Tom's unexpectedly thrashing Jonas for his insulting tone and unpleasant insinuations, but has chosen to show Tom exercising Christian forgiveness. Dickens and Phiz ironically describe Jonas as an "orphan" (a conventional subject for pity and concern) — although he may well be responsible for his father's death. The putting down of the bully here is as unexpected as Oliver's beating the viciously facetious Noah Claypole for insulting his dead mother in Oliver Plucks up a Spirit (April 1837).
Phiz has depicted the room in Pecksniff's house in the little Wiltshire village which serves as the backdrop for the action. We have seen it, decked out as a museum to likenesses of Pecksniff and his architectural drawings, before, in Meekness of Mr. Pecksniff and his charming daughters (initial instalment: January 1843), Mr. Pinch and The New Pupil on a Social Occasion (third instalment: March 1843), and Mr. Pecksniff Renounces the Deceiver (fifth instalment: May 1843). However, each instance seems to reveal another aspect of architectural conceptions of the designing architect — here, for example, images of churches (centre, rear) have replaced those of engines, monuments, and a factory or poor house (Chapter VI, March 1843), as Tom lives the Christian message of forgiveness and charity, even to one's enemies.
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of the Jonas's encounter with Tom in the woods that precedes his receiving first-aid, He flourished his stick over Tom's head; but in a moment it was spinning harmlessly in the air, and Jonas himself lay sprawling in the ditch in the Household Edition (1872). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Left: Hablot Knight Browne's depiction of Tom Pinch's subsequently leaving Pecksniff's employ, Mr. Pecksniff Discharges a Duty Which He Owes to Society (Chapter 31, December 1843). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of the virtuous clerk playing the organ, which he does both here and at the end of the book, Tom Pinch (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's interpretation of Tom's leaving Pecksniff's employ, The Dismissal of Tom Pinch (1910).
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Hammerton, J. A. Ch. 15, "Martin Chuzzlewit." The Dickens Picture-Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrations with 600 Illustrations and a Frontispiece by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Pp. 266-293.
Harvey, John R. Ch. 6, "Dickens and Browne: Martin Chuzzledwit to Bleak House." Victorian Novelists and Their Illustrators. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington and London: Indiana U. P., 1978.
_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.
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Last modified 8 January 2019