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Pinch Starts Homeward with The New Pupil
Phiz
February 1843
Steel-engraving
14.6 cm high by 9 cm wide, vignetted
Fourth regular monthly illustration for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing page 58 (1844 edition) in the fourth chapter.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It was not precisely of that convenient size which would admit of its being squeezed into any odd corner, but Dick the hostler got it in somehow, and Mr. Chuzzlewit helped him. It was all on Mr Pinch's side, and Mr. Chuzzlewit said he was very much afraid it would encumber him; to which Tom said, "Not at all;" though it forced him into such an awkward position, that he had much ado to see anything but his own knees. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the wisdom of the saying was verified in this instance; for the cold air came from Mr Pinch's side of the carriage, and by interposing a perfect wall of box and man between it and the new pupil, he shielded that young gentleman effectually; which was a great comfort. [Chapter 5, "Containing a full Account of the Installation of Mr. Pecksniff's new Pupil into the Bosom of Mr. Pecksniff's Family. With all the Festivities held on the Occasion and the great Enjoyment of Mr. Pinch," page 58 in the 1844 edition; descriptive headline in the 1868 edition: "The New Pupil"; descriptive headline in the 1897 edition: "The Ride Home"]
The other plate for the February 1843 number, Pleasant little family party at Mr. Pecksniff's, although likewise expository in that it introduces significant characters in the narrative, contrasts of the pleasantness shared experience of setting out from the inn on the plodding ride home from Salisbury with the acrimoniousness of the family meeting. The genuine friendliness of the kindly Tom Pinch towards the new architectural apprentice sharply contrasts the dark assemblage of the House of Chuzzlewit over which presides the bad eminence of Pecksniff, a black pillar of calm and complacency amidst the fractiousness of the greedy relatives of Old Martin. The interior scene of family turmoil admirably contrasts the scene on the other plate that serial readers would have encountered prior to delving into the letterpress of the February 1843 number. Instead of multiple figures in a variety of poses in the Pecksniff dining-room, the reader merely has to decode the attitudes and characters of just two young men on the gig as the hostler prepares to hoist the brooding newcomer's luggage into the back of the vehicle. Tom cheerfully accommodates Martin's having placed his large steamer-trunk behind the footboard, and genially addresses the inn's bluff-looking functionary. Young Martin, however, has muffled himself up inside his great-coat, signifying his aloofness and oyster-like emotional state. Seen dimly through the archway is the gallery of the old coaching inn, a setting familiar to Dickens's readers in The Pickwick Papers and fast becoming an anachronism in the railway age. Steig notes that the juxtaposition between this and the other plate for the second monthly instalment is telling as it contrasts brooding Martin and the man who in time he might have become if his egotism had received no check, his "degraded relative" Chevy Slyme:
It is one of the ironies of young Martin's lack of self-awareness that he in so many ways resembles those he disdains. This irony is brought out in "Pinch starts homeward with the new Pupil" (ch. 5) through the similarity of Martin's head, halfway submerged in its collar, and that of his degraded relative Chevy Slyme — the man he later so urgently wishes to avoid — in the preceding plate. Slyme in his abjectness is the embodiment of total selfishness and is admired as such by the sycophantic Tigg. Thus this plate marks a significant beginning of Martin's progress. [Steig, Chapter 3, p. 66]
Allingham, Philip V. "Phiz's Illustrations, Part One." [Ch. 2-7] The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.1 (Feb., 2008): 12-15.
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.
_____. 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.
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.
Monod, Sylvère. "External and Additional Material." Martin Chuzzlewit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985. Pp. 173-185.
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.
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 6 March 2019
Last updated 12 November 2024