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The Professional Gentlemen at Madame Mantalini's
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
October 1838
Steel-engraving
11.6 high cm by 10.6 cm wide, vignetted
Thirteenth plate for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter XXII, facing page 338 in vol. 1 of the Gadshill Edition (1897).
From the silk, Mr. Tix transferred his admiration to some elegant articles of wearing apparel, while Mr. Scaley adjusted his neckcloth, at leisure, before the glass, and afterwards, aided by its reflection, proceeded to the minute consideration of a pimple on his chin; in which absorbing occupation he was yet engaged, when Madame Mantalini, entering the room, uttered an exclamation of surprise which roused him.
"Oh! Is this the missis?" inquired Scaley.
"It is Madame Mantalini," said Kate.
"Then," said Mr. Scaley, producing a small document from his pocket and unfolding it very slowly, "this is a writ of execution, and if it’s not conwenient to settle we’ll go over the house at wunst, please, and take the inwentory."
Poor Madame Mantalini wrung her hands for grief, and rung the bell for her husband; which done, she fell into a chair and a fainting fit, simultaneously. The professional gentlemen, however, were not at all discomposed by this event, for Mr. Scaley, leaning upon a stand on which a handsome dress was displayed (so that his shoulders appeared above it, in nearly the same manner as the shoulders of the lady for whom it was designed would have done if she had had it on), pushed his hat on one side and scratched his head with perfect unconcern, while his friend Mr. Tix, taking that opportunity for a general survey of the apartment preparatory to entering on business, stood with his inventory-book under his arm and his hat in his hand, mentally occupied in putting a price upon every object within his range of vision.
Such was the posture of affairs when Mr. Mantalini hurried in; and as that distinguished specimen had had a pretty extensive intercourse with Mr Scaley’s fraternity in his bachelor days, and was, besides, very far from being taken by surprise on the present agitating occasion, he merely shrugged his shoulders, thrust his hands down to the bottom of his pockets, elevated his eyebrows, whistled a bar or two, swore an oath or two, and, sitting astride upon a chair, put the best face upon the matter with great composure and decency.
"What’s the demd total?" was the first question he asked.
"Fifteen hundred and twenty-seven pound, four and ninepence ha’penny," replied Mr. Scaley, without moving a limb. [Chapter XXI, "Madam Mantalini finds herself in a Situation of some Difficulty, and Miss Nickleby finds herself in no Situation at all"]
The strangers who demand that Mantalini repay a massive gambling debt of over fifteen hundred pounds, Mr. Scaley and Mr. Tix, cause a financial as well as a marital crisis. As a result of her husband's fiscal irresponsibility or, she puts it, "destructive extravagance," Madame Mantalini is thrown into bankruptcy, with the upshot that Kate loses her job. as an apprentice in the Mayfair millinery and dress shop.
Alfred Mantalini's profligate attitude may be a reflection of John Dickens's carelessness about money and his constantly falling into debt, particularly with tradespeople. However, with his cavalier manner, emotional excesses, and his unprincipled exploitation of his doting wife, pseudo-Italian Alfred Mantalini is a Dickens original.
The focus of the Phiz illustration is Madame Mantalini's having fainted: "Poor Madame Mantalini wrung her hands for grief, and rung the bell for her husband; which done, she fell into a chair and a fainting fit, simultaneously." Meanwhile, Mr. Mantalini, having hastily entered the room, affects unconcern as he asks what the bill is. Thus, Phiz has created an inner tension by contrasting the swaggering, roughly dressed interlopers, so conspicuous in a fashionable dress shop, the elegant dresses, and the fashionable young women (left), with the sumptuously attired, apparently careless husband whose profligacy has brought down his wife's business.
Left: In the 1875 British Household Edition Fred Barnard plays up another element of the Mantalini farce, the arrival of a jolly pair of bailiffs: "You can give him that 'ere card, and tell him if he wants to speak to me, and save trouble, here I am; that's all." Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithographic portrait of the florid pseudo-Italian: Mr. Alfred Mantalini, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition.
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s American Diamond Editioncomposite woodblock dual portrait of the comic couple: Mr. and Madame Mantalini (1867). Right: C. S. Reinhart's equally theatrical version of the same scene in the American Household Edition: "Ah!" cried Mr. Mantalini, "interrupted!" (1875).
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
_______. Nicolas Nickleby. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition, ed. Andrew Lang. The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. Vols. IV and V.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1875 [re-print of 1867 Diamond Edition, Vol. IV].
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. I.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-nine illustrations by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. IV.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 2. "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 24-50.
Vann, J. Don. "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, April 1838-October 1839." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 63.
Created 11 April 2009 Last modified 29 July 2021