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The Board
Phiz
November 1843
Steel-engraving
13 cm high by 10.8 cm wide (5 by 4 ⅛ inches), vignetted
Twenty-first monthly illustration for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing p. 327 (1844 edition) in Ch. XXVII. Descriptive headline: "The Labourer Worthy of His Hire" (1897)
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"And how are you, Mr. Montague, eh?" said the Medical Officer, throwing himself luxuriously into an easy-chair (they were all easy-chairs in the board-room), and taking a handsome gold snuff-box from the pocket of his black satin waistcoat. "How are you? A little worn with business, eh? If so, rest. A little feverish from wine, humph? If so, water. Nothing at all the matter, and quite comfortable? Then take some lunch. A very wholesome thing at this time of day to strengthen the gastric juices with lunch, Mr Montague."
The Medical Officer (he was the same medical officer who had followed poor old Anthony Chuzzlewit to the grave, and who had attended Mrs Gamp's patient at the Bull) smiled in saying these words; and casually added, as he brushed some grains of snuff from his shirt-frill, "I always take it myself about this time of day, do you know!"
"Bullamy!" said the Chairman, ringing the little bell.
"Sir!"
"Lunch." . . . .
"By your leave there!" cried Bullamy, without. "By your leave! Refreshment for the Board-room!"
"Ha!" said the doctor, jocularly, as he rubbed his hands, and drew his chair nearer to the table. "The true Life Assurance, Mr Montague. The best Policy in the world, my dear sir. We should be provident, and eat and drink whenever we can. Eh, Mr. Crimple?"
The resident Director acquiesced rather sulkily, as if the gratification of replenishing his stomach had been impaired by the unsettlement of his preconceived opinions in reference to its situation. But the appearance of the porter and under-porter with a tray covered with a snow-white cloth, which, being thrown back, displayed a pair of cold roast fowls, flanked by some potted meats and a cool salad, quickly restored his good humour. It was enhanced still further by the arrival of a bottle of excellent madeira, and another of champagne; and he soon attacked the repast with an appetite scarcely inferior to that of the medical officer. ["The Board," Chapter XXVII, "Showing that Old Friends may not only appear with New Faces, but in False Colours: that People are prone to Bite: and that Biters may sometimes be Bitten," pp. 22-24, facing plate in the 1897 edition; descriptive headline in the 1867 edition: "The Board and its Chairman"]
The doctor has already drawn his chair up to the table in preparation for lunch as he touches the leg of the resident Director, Mr. Crimple (right) — which he had done earlier to make a point about the necessity of Crimple's replenishing the "animal oil" in his body. Bullamy, the officious porter, holds the tray covered with a linen cloth, while the under porter delivers a decanter of madeira (rather than a "bottle") and bottle, still corked, of champagne. The "profusion of rich glass, plate, and china" is not yet evident, and Bullamy has yet to draw back the "snow-white cloth" to reveal a handsome repast.
Phiz has employed the simple visual strategy that he has used on a number of occasions to reveal Pecksniff's character: to demonstrate Tigg's vanity and egocentricity he has positioned a life-sized portrait of the life-assurance director immediately above his head. The effect is to remind the reader of Tigg Montague/Montague Tigg's double identity as cadger and confidence man, a former soldier who abandoned his post under fire and who has been Chevy Slyme's hanger-on before his reincarnation as the Chief Executive Officer of he Anglo-Bengalee Life Assurance Company.
The arrival of Bullamy and the under porter occurs well after the company physician's discussion of board-member and secretary Mr. David Crimple's leg ("The doctor let Mr. Crimple's leg fall suddenly"), and the resident director has "acquiesced rather sulkily" at Dr. Jobling's recommending frequent eating and drinking as "The best Policy in the world," an obvious pun on "insurance policy." Since Dickens only describes Jobling in some detail after the arrival of lunch depicted, Phiz must have felt it necessary to use the plate as a visual introduction to the firm's Medical Officer: "a portentously sagacious chin, . . . his gold watch-chain of the heaviest, and his seals of the largest" (1897 edition, Vol. 2, p. 25). However, the illustration shows him engaged in conversation with Mr. Montague, several pages earlier, so that the picture is an amalgam of moments illustrated, and introduces as a feature of the "ornamental department" superintended by Tigg himself as the window-dressing of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company's board-room, which Phiz has furnished exactly as instructed, with a luxurious Turkey carpet, an impressive portrait of the director, and comfortable easy-chairs.
Several pages in advance of the luncheon scene which Phiz has chosen for the illustration, Dickens mentions the oil portrait as the dominating feature of the board-room: "a Turkey carpet in it, a sideboard, a portrait of Tigg Montague, Esquire, as chairman; a very imposing chair of office" (Phiz shows Tigg's as having a much higher back than the other two armchairs, making it a virtual throne). However, the composition does not permit Phiz sufficient scope for "a long-table, set out at intervals with sheets of blotting-paper, foolscap, clean pens, and ink-stands" (Vol. 2, p. 21, 1897 edition), with the result that the table is cluttered, and therefore affords no room for the tray that Bullamy is about to deposit.
And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. — "The Gospel according to St. Luke," 10:7 in The King James Bible.
The languid pose of the Director and the corpulent complacency of the firm's doctor compel the reader to disagree with the biblical aphorism that the "Labourer is worthy of his hire," or rather disagree with the notion that these indolent, fashionably dressed, middle-aged bourgeoisie are "labourers" in the first place. Dickens's deployment of the allusion as a running head is particularly pertinent to the substantial luncheon that the three corporate directors enjoy at the shareholders' expense. Later illustrators likewise depict Tigg as enjoying the best of everything that others' money can buy.
Above: Fred Barnard's derivative image of the fraudulent financier and his victim, The Spider and the Fly (Tigg and Jonas, with the portrait in the background) in Chapter 28 of the Household Edition (1872).
Above: Harry Furniss's interpretation of the same characters, Jonas Chuzzlewit and Montague Tigg, in Chapter 38 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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 Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. 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.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
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