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Great Excitement of Miss Kenwigs at the Hairdresser's Shop
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
August 1839
Steel-engraving
10.7 cm by 10.5 cm, vignetted
Chapter LII in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, facing p. 322, vol. 2 in the Gadshill Edition.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The full title from the covers of the twenty monthly numbers, April 1838-October 1839, Dickens gives as The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Containing a Fauthful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the Nickleby Family, edited by "Boz".
The applicant stared; grinned at Newman Noggs, who appeared highly entertained; looked slightly round the shop, as if in depreciation of the pomatum pots and other articles of stock; took his pipe out of his mouth and gave a very loud whistle; and then put it in again, and walked out.
The old gentleman who had just been lathered, and who was sitting in a melancholy manner with his face turned towards the wall, appeared quite unconscious of this incident, and to be insensible to everything around him in the depth of a reverie — a very mournful one, to judge from the sighs he occasionally vented—in which he was absorbed. Affected by this example, the proprietor began to clip Miss Kenwigs, the journeyman to scrape the old gentleman, and Newman Noggs to read last Sunday’s paper, all three in silence: when Miss Kenwigs uttered a shrill little scream, and Newman, raising his eyes, saw that it had been elicited by the circumstance of the old gentleman turning his head, and disclosing the features of Mr. Lillyvick the collector.
The features of Mr. Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If ever an old gentleman had made a point of appearing in public, shaved close and clean, that old gentleman was Mr. Lillyvick. If ever a collector had borne himself like a collector, and assumed, before all men, a solemn and portentous dignity as if he had the world on his books and it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector was Mr. Lillyvick. And now, there he sat, with the remains of a beard at least a week old encumbering his chin; a soiled and crumpled shirt-frill crouching, as it were, upon his breast, instead of standing boldly out; a demeanour so abashed and drooping, so despondent, and expressive of such humiliation, grief, and shame; that if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers, all of whom had had their water cut off for non-payment of the rate, could have been concentrated in one body, that one body could hardly have expressed such mortification and defeat as were now expressed in the person of Mr. Lillyvick the collector.
Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr. Lillyvick groaned: then coughed to hide it. But the groan was a full-sized groan, and the cough was but a wheeze.
"Is anything the matter?" said Newman Noggs.
"Matter, sir!" cried Mr. Lillyvick. "The plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left."
This speech — the style of which Newman attributed to Mr. Lillyvick's recent association with theatrical characters — not being quite explanatory, Newman looked as if he were about to ask another question, when Mr. Lillyvick prevented him by shaking his hand mournfully, and then waving his own. [Chapter LII, "Nicholas despairs of rescuing Madeline Bray, but plucks up his Spirits again, and determines to attempt it. Domestic Intelligence of the Kenwigses and Lillyvicks"]
This scene could easily be from one of Dickens's earliest Sketches by Boz, because, like the London sketches, it reveals the young writer's penchant for character comedy and journalistic eye for detail in situations common enough in lower middle-class early nineteenth-century London. However, this particular meeting of the varied cast of characters is neither entirely random or accidental, since coincidence connects Newman Noggs, Miss Kenwigs, and the gentleman being shaved. The comic and domestic action, constituting a "recognition scene," contrasts with the more serious and tumultuous action scene, The Last Brawl between Sir Mulberry and His Pupil" in the previous month's illustrations.
In Chapter 52, "Nicholas despairs of rescuing Madeline Bray, but plucks up his Spirits again, and determines to attempt it. Domestic Intelligence of the Kenwigses and Lillyvicks," Dickens loosely stitches the comic subplot which involves the Kenwigses to the main plot, which revolves around the conspiracy of the old moneylender Arthur Gride and Ralph Nickleby against the heiress Madeline Bray and her invalid father. The point of conjunction depicted here is the local hairdresser's-cum-barber's in the neighbourhood of the Kenwigses' residence, where Ralph Nickleby's clerk, Newman Noggs (who is reading a newspaper in Phiz's illustration), rents the upstairs rooms. Providentially, Lillyvick has returned to London after Miss Petowker abandoned him in favour of a half-pay officer, and is now reunited with his relatives. In the barbershop, Phiz cannot pass up the opportunity to depict the coal-heaver ("the applicant" who has just been rejected as a customer), even though he has left before the "recognition" scene occurs:
The applicant stared; grinned at Newman Noggs, who appeared highly entertained; looked slightly round the shop, as if in depreciation of the pomatum pots and other articles of stock; took his pipe out of his mouth and gave a very loud whistle; and then put it in again, and walked out.
Left: C. S. Reinhart in the American Household Edition depicts the family reunion after the actress's running off with a naval officer: Mrs. Kenwigs threw herself upon the old gentleman's neck (1875). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of the reunited Kenwigs family after the actress has run off: The Kenwigs Family and Mr. Lillyvick (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's introduction of the Kenwigs family in Chapter 14: "I can — not help it, and it don't signify," sobbed Mrs. Kenwigs. "Oh! they're too beautiful to live, much too beautiful!" in the British Household Edition. (1875)
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ed. Andrew Lang. Illustrated by 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 2, "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 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. Page 63.
Created 9 May 2009 Last updated 23 September 2021