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Kate Nickleby Sitting to Miss La Creevy
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby
June 1838
Steel engraving
Source: J. A. Hammerton, The Dickens Picture-Book, p. 151.
[Detail]
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
"Well; that’s very right and proper," observed the miniature painter, "and Heaven forbid that I should be the cause of your doing so! But, now, mightn’t he, without feeling it himself, make you and your mama some nice little allowance that would keep you both comfortable until you were well married, and be a little fortune to her afterwards? What would a hundred a year for instance, be to him?"
"I don’t know what it would be to him," said Kate, with energy, "but it would be that to me I would rather die than take."
"Heyday!" cried Miss La Creevy.
"A dependence upon him," said Kate, "would embitter my whole life. I should feel begging a far less degradation."
"Well!" exclaimed Miss La Creevy. "This of a relation whom you will not hear an indifferent person speak ill of, my dear, sounds oddly enough, I confess."
"I dare say it does," replied Kate, speaking more gently, "indeed I am sure it must. I — I — only mean that with the feelings and recollection of better times upon me, I could not bear to live on anybody’s bounty—not his particularly, but anybody’s."
Miss La Creevy looked slyly at her companion, as if she doubted whether Ralph himself were not the subject of dislike, but seeing that her young friend was distressed, made no remark.
"I only ask of him," continued Kate, whose tears fell while she spoke, "that he will move so little out of his way, in my behalf, as to enable me by his recommendation — only by his recommendation — to earn, literally, my bread and remain with my mother. Whether we shall ever taste happiness again, depends upon the fortunes of my dear brother; but if he will do this, and Nicholas only tells us that he is well and cheerful, I shall be contented."
As she ceased to speak, there was a rustling behind the screen which stood between her and the door, and some person knocked at the wainscot.
"Come in, whoever it is!" cried Miss La Creevy.
The person complied, and, coming forward at once, gave to view the form and features of no less an individual than Mr. Ralph Nickleby himself.
"Your servant, ladies," said Ralph, looking sharply at them by turns. "You were talking so loud, that I was unable to make you hear." [Chapter X, "How Mr. Ralph Nickleby provided for his Niece and Sister-in-Law," 117-118]
Phiz establishes Miss La Creevy's somewhat juvenile character effectively by mincing manner and curl-papers (mentioned earlier), and by showing her on her "dusty throne" dispensing kindly advice to Kate as she works on a miniature of her likeness. Like the illustrators Fred Barnard and Harry Furniss, Phiz focusses on the Nicklebys' kindly landlady as both an artist and Kate's confidant. Dickens brings closure to her role as a supportive secondary character by marrying her off to the Cheerybles' clerk, Tim Linkinwater. She is yet another Dickens original, a woman of fifty with the disposition of an adolescent. Here, Phiz suggests captures her devotion to her craft, her age, and even something of her good humour, but is chiefly interested in her relationship to Kate.
Left: In the 1910 CHarles Dickens Library Edition, Harry Furniss depicts Kate sitting for her miniature portrait: Kate Nickleby sits for her Portrait. Centre: In the Diamond Edition, Sol Eytinge, Jr., introduces the miniaturist at work: Miss La Creevy (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's illustration for Chapter 5 introduces the Nicklebys' landlady: "Snubs and Romans are plentiful enough, and there are flats of all sorts and sizes when there's a meeting at Exeter Hall." (1875). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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 9 April 2002 Last modified 17 April 2021
