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Mrs. Gamp Has Her Eye on the Future
Phiz
October 1843
Steel-engraving
12.3 cm high by 10.3 cm wide (4 ⅝ by 3 ⅞ inches), vignetted
Twentieth monthly illustration for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing p. 320 (1844 edition) in Ch. XXVI.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"No," said Merry, almost crying. "You had better go away, please!" [319/320] With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar to her art; Mrs Gamp rummaged in her pocket again, and took from it a printed card, whereon was an inscription copied from her signboard.
“Would you be so good, my darling dovey of a dear young married lady,” Mrs. Gamp observed, in a low voice, “as put that somewheres where you can keep it in your mind? I’m well beknown to many ladies, and it’s my card. Gamp is my name, and Gamp my nater. Livin’ quite handy, I will make so bold as call in now and then, and make inquiry how your health and spirits is, my precious chick!” [Chapter XXVI, "An Unexpected Meeting, and a Promising Project," pp. 319-320 in the 1844 edition; descriptive headline in the 1867 edition and in Volume 2 of the 1897 edition: "Woo'd and Married and A'."]
Dickens's descriptive headline, added in a late revision to the novel, offers a note of finality to Mrs. Gamp's ministrations to Chuffey and Mercy Chuzzlewit's chances for a happy marriage. Jonas appears to mean that Chuffey has gotten over his old master's death, and that he therefore can be superintended from now on by the new Mrs. Chuzzlewit, the former Mercy Pecksniff. However, his intention is to make sure that nobody from outside the immediate family is about the house to garner any information about Anthony's sudden demise. In the well-known Scottish lyric "Wood'd and Married and a'" (No. 7 in her Songs), Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) uses the line as refrain for a description of a young and beautiful bride who harbours some secret grief:
The Bride she is winsome and bonny, Her hair it is snooded sae sleek, And faithfu' and kind is her Johnny, Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek. New pearlins are cause of her sorrow, New pearlins and plenishing too, The bride that has a' to borrow, Has e'en right mickle ado, Woo'd and married and a'! Woo'd and married and a'! Is na' she very weel aff To be woo'd and married at a?
The refrain, which appears as a descriptive headline adjacent to the illustration, implies that Merry will repent her bargain, and very soon will deeply regret she marrying such a bully. The illustration demonstrates that Jonas has greater regard for the shine on his boots rather than the happiness of his young wife, whom he has brought to the verge of tears.
Phiz's interpretation of "an eye to the future" in the plate's title encompasses both Merry and Sairey. As Mrs. Gamp presents her midwife's card, the young Mrs. Chuzzlewit seems to appeal to the reader for sympathy. Thus, the blighted plant in the fireplace may well symbolize Merry's future as a much put-upon wife and mother. Her anxious look betokens, then, trepidation as to what kind of future she can expect, married to such a brute, and Chuffey's anguish may reflect his concern for her rather than grief over his master's death. Mrs. Gamp's apparently limits her prognostication to Mercy's becoming a mother over the course of the coming year. In the stilted language of business, Merry will prove a "promising project" for the midwife, if not for an undertaker.
The somewhat cluttered design of Mrs. Gamp has her Eye on the Future underscores the arrival of the novel's chief comic character, Sairey Gamp. Although Dickens may not have seen Honoré Daumier's La Garde-Malade in the 22 May 1842 issue of the Paris magazine of topical commentary and humour Le Charivari, Phiz almsy certainly had, for the decrepit image of the French sick-room nurse bears a strong resemblance to the various Phiz illustrations involving Sairey Gamp. Dickens's inspiration, contends Goldie Morgentaler, lay closer to home:
The character was inspired by the nurse of a friend of Angela Burnett Coutts, who had a habit of running her nose along the fender. Dickens confers the same habit on Mrs. Gamp (see ch. 25). At a time when home nursing was the rule, Dickens's portrayal of the snuff-taking, cucumber-loving, gin-swilling, money-grubbing, callous Sarah Gamp gave home nurses a bad name, and, Anne Summers suggests, contributed to the masculinization of the medical profession. [Morgentaler, p. 355]
Left: Harry Furniss's study of the great comic creation for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), Sairey Gamp. Centre: F. O. C. Darley's frontispiece for volume two, "The creetur's head's so hot," said Mrs. Gamp, alluding to her attendance on the old clerk, Chuffey (1863). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig. (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Left: A detail of Phiz's introduction of Sairey Gamp to the narrative-pictorial series: Mrs. Gamp has her Eye on the Future (October 1843). Centre: Kyd's miniature portrait of Mrs. Gamp, walking through the streets with hat, bag, and umbrella, Sairey Gamp (card no. 24, 1910). Right: From Kyd's book of remarkable Dickens characters, Sairey Gamp in watercolour, as seen in Ch. 19.
Above: Fred Barnard's Mrs. Gamp favours the company with an exhibition of professional skill, old Chuffey being the object of her ministrations in Chapter 46 of the Household Edition (1872).
Baillie, Joanna. "Woo'd and Married and a'." Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Alfred H. Miles. George Routledge & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1907. 2 vols.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. 2.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2.
_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes, vol. III. The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. Edited by J. A. Hammerton. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.
Guerard, Albert J. "Martin Chuzzlewit: The Novel as Comic Entertainment." The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Faulkner. Chicago & London: U. Chicago P., 1976. Pp. 235-260.
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.
Morgentaler, Goldie. Chapter 24. "Martin Chuzzlewit. A Companion to Charles Dickens, ed. David Paroissien. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Pp. 348-357.
Steig, Michael. "III. From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978, 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.
Modified 8 January 2019
Last updated 14 November 2024