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Warm Reception of Mr. Pecksniff by His Venerable Friend
Phiz
July 1844
Steel-engraving
12.9 cm by 10.5 cm, vignetted
Penultimate plate for Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter LII, facing p. 599 (1844 edition).
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The original 1844 edition of Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit placed Warm Reception of Mr. Pecksniff by His Venerable Friend (the thirty-seventh monthly illustration of the novel) facing p. 599 in the fifty-second chapter (instalment XIX-XX), "In which the Tables are turned, completely Upside Down." Descriptive headline in the 1867 edition: "Mr. Pecksniff surprisingly rewarded": descriptive headline in the 1897 edition: "Mr. Pecksniff Brought Low."
[Seth Pecksniff] advanced with outstretched arms to take the old man's hand. But he had not seen how the hand clasped and clutched the stick within its grasp. As he came smiling on, and got within his reach, old Martin, with his burning indignation crowded into one vehement burst, and flashing out of every line and wrinkle in his face, rose up, and struck him down upon the ground.
With such a well-directed nervous blow, that down he went, as heavily and true as if the charge of a Life-Guardsman had tumbled him out of a saddle. And whether he was stunned by the shock, or only confused by the wonder and novelty of this warm reception, he did not offer to get up again; but lay there, looking about him with a disconcerted meekness in his face so enormously ridiculous, that neither Mark Tapley nor John Westlock could repress a smile, though both were actively interposing to prevent a repetition of the blow; which the old man's gleaming eyes and vigorous attitude seemed to render one of the most probable events in the world. [Chapter LII, "In which the Tables are turned, completely Upside Down," pp. 464-465 in the Gadshill Edition]
With a kinetic energy reminiscent of that of Blake's God of the Old Testament, Old Martin reasserts his authority over the fractious Chuzzlewit clan by thrashing the hypocritical Pecksniff after denouncing him. Despite his persuasive, subtle speeches and postures betokening his abject humility (foreshadowing the equally hypocritical Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, 1849-50), Pecksniff seems to shrink under the glaring light of truth in old Martin's accusations and chastizement with his walking-stick. To complete the poetically just conclusion to the narrative, Young Martin and Old Martin are reconciled in the presence of John Westlock and Mark Tapley. In the climactic scene of Old Martin's revealing himself in his true colours, despite Tom's best efforts to keep them on their shelves and John Westlock's efforts to catch them, two books constituting embedded commentary have fallen: Moliere's Le Tartuffe and Milton's epic Paradise Lost have tumbled down beside Pecksniff. Regarding these embedded texts Monod remarks,
Steig further points to various possible sources of Phiz's inspiration, such as French artists like David, Fragonard and Daumier. On the other hand, he courteously and irrefutably corrects the conjecture of an earlier French critic that Dickens himself had initiated the reference to Tartuffe in one of the last plates, presenting the discomfiture of Mr. Pecksniff (pp. 139-41). This does not invalidate the notion that Dickens was influenced by Molière in the creation of Pecksniff. Phiz recognized and proclaimed it. By leaving the plate unmodified, Dickens fully sanctioned this recognition. [Monod, p. 183]
Phiz reminds us through their presence and the bust on the shelf that the room in which Pecksniff receives his comeuppance is the private library that Tom has taken six months to organize in The Temple. The book titles comment ironically on Pecksniff's reversal of fortune as a hypocrite and facsimile of transformed Satan. According to Steig, both titles underscore Pecksniff's fall and metamorphosis. Like Satan in his final appearance in Paradise Lost, a stunned and shrunken Pecksniff abjectly cowers at the blow he is about to receive. Old Martin's hand points outward, as if expelling the anarchic force, his hand like that of Urizen the Creator of the Material World in William Blake's celebrated 1794 watercolour. Old Martin's dramatic pose (combined with his Hebraic skullcap) implies that, like the Old Testament's Jehovah, he is about to visit his wrath upon the unrighteous. This, then, constitutes a comic Last Judgment. Like William Blake's deity, by the power of his shamanic rod the old man will define Pecksniff's future by excluding him from the extended Chuzzlewit family. His coat streams out behind him as if, like the Michelangelo figures on the Sistine Ceiling, he is inspired by a wind of prophecy. In anger and determination, he strides forward, a towering figure recalling the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. Fred Barnard's Household Edition version of this scene is static rather than kinetic. In his realistic wood-engraving entitled The Fall of Pecksniff. Barnard communicates little of this sense of energy and this powerful connotation of divine wrath present in the original July 1844 steel-engraving.
Although Phiz's illustration reflects the general disposition of characters as described in Dickens's letter to the artist in June 1844 for the final instalment, matters of costuming and setting, as well more subtle issues such as body language, he had left to Phiz's discretion. However, Phiz pencilled in the following at the foot of Dickens's letter:
Mrs. Lupin & Mary — behind Martin's chair. Yg. Martin on the other side. Tom & his sister. Old Man — Pecksniff. John Westlock & Mark [reproduced in Dickens and Phiz, page 77]
And, indeed, Phiz has disposed the figures as instructed, but some forward and other back in order (in contrast to Fred Barnard's The Fall of Pecksniff. to create the illusion of depth. Mark Tapley is recognizable by his unkempt hair, jacket with large lapels, and waistcoat — he is not wearing a hat, however. Old Martin's raised cane points toward Young Martin, perhaps implying that the penitent youth has now displaced the hapless architect as the principal Chuzzlewit heir and the old man's favourite. the overturned inkwell about to fall on Pecksniff will only add to his sense of degradation, but it also reminds us that Old Martin will have no further need of ink once he has changed his will in favour of Martin Junior and Mary. Phiz has avoided he static aspect of a typical Cruikshankian tableau by catching his figures in the midst of movement, like the Daphne and Apollo of the Baroque sculptor Bernini. Although Dickens specifies that Old Martin will strike Pecksniff down "with a well-directed blow" (Chapter LII), but Phiz creates a sense of expectation in the reader, who in the serial encounters the illustration at the beginning of the instalment, long before the textual moment realised.
Above: Fred Barnard's realizes the same scene in far more low key and a far more realistic, "Sixties" vein as The Fall of Pecksniff, in which the male principals dominate the composition, as Old Martin delivers judgment upon the prostrate Pecksniff. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Allingham, Philip V. "Phiz's Illustrations, Part Four." [Ch. 38-52] The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.4 (August, 2009): 8-13.
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. 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.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Margaret Cardwell. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). The Clarendon Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Monod, Sylvère. "External and Additional Material." Martin Chuzzlewit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985. Pp. 173-185.
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. [See e-text in Victorian Web.]
_____. "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 4 May 2019