"Is the sight of me so dreadful, Henrietta Petowker?" [Page 141] by Charles Stanley Reinhart (1875), in Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Harper & Bros. New York Household Edition, for Chapter XXV. 9 x 13.7 cm (3 ⅝ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Running head: "Mr. Crummles as Father" (141). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Passage Illustrated: Henrietta Petowker marries the London Water-rate Collector
Nicholas Instructs Smike in the Art of Acting (November 1838).
By the combined exertions of these young gentlemen and the bridesmaids, assisted by the coachman, Miss Petowker was at length supported in a condition of much exhaustion to the first floor, where she no sooner encountered the youthful bridegroom than she fainted with great decorum.
"Henrietta Petowker!" said the collector; "cheer up, my lovely one."
Miss Petowker grasped the collector’s hand, but emotion choked her utterance.
"Is the sight of me so dreadful, Henrietta Petowker?" said the collector.
"Oh no, no, no," rejoined the bride; "but all the friends — the darling friends — of my youthful days — to leave them all — it is such a shock!"
With such expressions of sorrow, Miss Petowker went on to enumerate the dear friends of her youthful days one by one, and to call upon such of them as were present to come and embrace her. This done, she remembered that Mrs. Crummles had been more than a mother to her, and after that, that Mr. Crummles had been more than a father to her, and after that, that the Master Crummleses and Miss Ninetta Crummles had been more than brothers and sisters to her. These various remembrances being each accompanied with a series of hugs, occupied a long time, and they were obliged to drive to church very fast, for fear they should be too late. [Chapter XXV, "Concerning a young Lady from London, who joins the Company, and an elderly Admirer who follows in her Train; with an affecting Ceremony consequent on their Arrival," 140-141]
Commentary: A Farcical Marriage Staged
Nicholas and Smike have no sooner joined Vincent Crummles' company at the Portsmouth Theatre than the London water-rate collector, Mrs. Kenwigs' wealthy bachelor uncle, Mr. Lillyvick, arrives to propose marriage to the company's leading lady, Londoner Henrietta Petowker. Since she has been a headliner at the celebrated Drury Lane Theatre, she is held in high esteem by the company — and Lillyvick coverts the salary she can command. She accedes to Lillyvick's marriage proposal here, and the pair are married in a rather theatrical ceremony, with the actor-manager (left, in eighteenth-century costume) taking the role of the Father of the Bride. She later escapes Lillyvick's control by running off with a naval officer.
Reinhart adds to Dickens;'s satirizing the corpulent, middle-aged Lillyvick as a youthful groom by making the bride and her attendants both plain and elderly. The physical condition of the married couple here is appropriate to Dickens's suggestion that, at their advanced ages, they are lucky to have found somebody to marry. The two bridesmaids (the actresses Miss Snevellicci and miss Ledrook) are likewise rather advanced in age, so that the illustrator suggests the ludicrous natur eof the whole occasion.
Related material by other illustrators (1838 through 1910)
- Nicholas Nickleby (homepage)
- Phiz's 38 monthly illustrations for the novel, April 1838-October 1839.
- Cover for monthly parts
- Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, engraved by Finden
- "Hush!" said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder. (Vol. 1, 1861)
- The Rehearsal (Vol. 2, 1861)
- "My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir?" (Vol. 3, 1861)
- Newman had caught up by the nozzle an old pair of bellows . . . (Vol. 4, 1861).
- Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 18 Illustrations for the Diamond Edition (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 59 Illustrations for the British Household Edition (1875)
- Harry Furniss's 29 illustrations for Nicholas Nickleby in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
- Kyd's four Player's Cigarette Cards (1910).
Scanned image, colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Barnard, J. "Fred" (il.). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-nine illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume 15. Rpt. 1890.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875.
__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al.. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Created 13 August 2021