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Wardle and his Friends under the Influence of the Salmon
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
November 1837
Steel Engraving
11.6 cm high by 11 cm wide (4 ½ high by 4 ¼ inches wide)
Dickens's Pickwick Papers, facing p. 76
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
They rushed into the kitchen, whither the truants had repaired, and at once obtained rather more than a glimmering of the real state of the case.
Mr. Pickwick, with his hands in his pockets and his hat cocked completely over his left eye, was leaning against the dresser, shaking his head from side to side, and producing a constant succession of the blandest and most benevolent smiles without being moved thereunto by any discernible cause or pretence whatsoever; old Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance, was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman muttering protestations of eternal friendship; Mr. Winkle, supporting himself by the eight-day clock, was feebly invoking destruction upon the head of any member of the family who should suggest the propriety of his retiring for the night; and Mr. Snodgrass had sunk into a chair, with an expression of the most abject and hopeless misery that the human mind can imagine, portrayed in every lineament of his expressive face.
"Is anything the matter?" inquired the three ladies.
"Nothing the matter," replied Mr. Pickwick. "We — we're — all right. — I say, Wardle, we're all right, ain't we?" [Chapter VIII, "Strongly illustrative of the Position, that the course of true love is not a Railway," 76]
Illustrator R. W. Buss submitted a trial design for this very subject, but his treatment was so far below Dickens's standard that the author rejected it and dismissed Buss, whose Fat Boy and Muggleton cricket match illustrations had already disappointed the publishers. Buss's difficulty lay in the fact that he had never worked with steel engraving. Since this substitute illustration does not appear in any of the novel's serial instalments, Phiz clearly produced it expressly for the November 1837 volume edition.
Although this illustration now accompanies Chapter VIII in what was originally the third (June 1836) serial instalment, Phiz developed it as as substitute for The Cricket-Match well after the the publication of that third instalment; since it does not appear in any of the serial instalments and its title does not appear in the "Instructions to the Binder" in the last double number, Phiz may well have produced this illustration as late as early November 1837.
The Muggleton-Dingley Dell cricket match has ended well for the players from both sides — as well for the supposed West Indian cricket expert, Alfred Jingle — since both sides celebrated with a magnificent repast and copious alcoholic beverages at the Blue Lion Inn in nearby Muggleton. After numerous toasts, the Dingley Dell team left for home, but did not arrive back until past 1:00 A. M., to the growing alarm of the Wardle daughters and the spinster aunt, Rachael. Over the course of the day, injured Pickwickian Tracy Tupman has been courting Rachael Wardle, but the reader wonders whether Wardle's page, Joe the fat boy, will report Tupman's advances to his master, especially since in Phiz's illustration of the cricketeers' homecoming Jingle and Wardle seem to be on such friendly terms and Jingle has already determined to romance the spinster aunt and secure her inheritance for himself, cutting Tupman out entirely by running away with her.
The salmon dinner, served after the cricket match, is patently not the source of the Pickwickians' inebriation. Rather, the great room of the Blue Lion Inn, Muggleton, was the scene not merely of a "Devilish good dinner" (to quote the omnivorous Jingle in Chapter Seven), but of vociferous toasts accompanied by the consumption of "old port — claret — good — very good — wine," again, citing Jingle's account of events earlier that evening.
Meanwhile, Phiz draws the reader's attention to the tipsy homecoming of old Wardle and Jingle (centre, with Wardle rather off-balance), Mr. Pickwick (steadying himself against the kitchen table, hat askew, to the left), Snodgrass (collapsed into an old-fashioned chair and apparently unconscious, down right), and Winkle, leaning against the eight-day clock (right) — all exactly as Dickens describes them. However, whereas the writer focuses on the feelings of these characters, Phiz admirably conveys their exteriors: their expressions, postures, and clothing. He also contrasts these inebriates in the foreground with the concerned faces of a primarily female company in the background, as if the plate is supporting the temperance themes which artist George Cruikshank so assiduously pursued in the eight-page narrative cartoon The Bottle (1847) and in the seven-plate sequel The Drunkard's Children (1848). Clearly, the anxious watchers (including Tupman, centre rear, identifiable by the sling) have been up all night, and enter the kitchen in some alarm as the clock indicates 1:20 A. M.
Johannsen notes that the earliest imprints of the substitute plate bear Phiz, del. lower centre, and on the right page 76.
It is a beautiful piece of work in design, humor, and as an etching. The shocked faces of the family as contrasted with the amusement shown by the servants are exceedingly well done, and the sub-dual of the background shows an excellent piece of etching. [19]
Left: The original illustration by R. W. Buss that was later replaced by the Phiz illustration for the 1838 bound volume edition: The Cricket-Match. Right: Phiz's new scene in the refreshment tent for the Household Edition, Mr. Wardle looked on, in silent wonder as pseudo-expert Jingle holds forth about cricket and wine. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert Buss, and Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, November 1837. With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837).
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.
Johnannsen, Albert. "The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club." Phiz Illustrations from the Novels of Charles Dickens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1956. Pp. 1-74.
Lester Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
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 Pickwick Papers, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, April 1836-November 1837." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. P. 61.
Created 30 September 2019
Last modified 21 September 2024
