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Emotion of Mr. Kenwigs on Hearing the Family News from Nicholas
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
February 1839
Steel-engraving
12.4 high cm by 11 cm wide, vignetted
Twenty-second plate for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter XXXVI.
Source: J. A. Hammerton, The Dickens Picture-Book, p. 160.
"At Portsmouth, Henrietta Petowker is," observed Mr. Kenwigs.
"Yes," said Nicholas, "Mr. Lillyvick is there."
Mr. Kenwigs turned pale, but recovered, and said, that was an odd coincidence also.
"The message is from him," said Nicholas.
Mr. Kenwigs appeared to revive. He knew that his niece was in a delicate state, and had, no doubt, sent word that they were to forward full particulars. Yes. That was very kind of him; so like him too!
"He desired me to give his kindest love," said Nicholas.
"Very much obliged to him, I'm sure. Your great-uncle Lillyvick, my dears," interposed Mr. Kenwigs, condescendingly explaining it to the children.
"His kindest love" resumed Nicholas; "and to say that he had no time to write, but that he was married to Miss Petowker."
Mr. Kenwigs started from his seat with a petrified stare, caught his second daughter by her flaxen tail, and covered his face with his pocket-handkerchief. [Chapter XXXVI, "Private and Confidential; relating to Family Matters. Showing how Mr. Kenwigs underwent violent Agitation, and how Mrs. Kenwigs was as well as could be expected," Part 11, February 1839]
Victorian domestic farce is certainly the style of both the passage illustrated and the illustration itself. Phiz's composition suggests the cluttered realism of the contemporary staging of French farce. Phiz seems to have both shrunk and sidelined Nicholas in orderto shed the spotlight upon the Kenwigses and their nurse, a comic domestic subject allowing the artist to give free vent to his penchant for humourous caricature. In making this selection, however, Phiz has bypassed one of the key meetings in the plot, that of Nicholas Nickleby and the benevolent businessman Charles Cheeryble at the local employment office.
Left: Fred Barnard's 1875 woodblock engraving of the same comic scene: With this the doctor laughed; but he didn't laugh half as much as a married friend of Mrs. Kenwig's, who had just come in from the sick chamber — Chap. XXXVI in the British Household Edition. Right: C. S. Rinhart's 1875 woodblock engraving of the same comic scene: "I should say," said Mr. Kenwigs, abruptly, and raising his voice as he spoke, "that my children might come into a matter of a hundred pounds apiece, perhaps." — Chap. XXXVI in the American Household Edition.
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 4 May 2009 Last modified 23 August 2021