"'And how have you been?' said Gride." — Chapter 47. C. S. Reinhart's forty-third illustration for Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby" (1875)

"And how have you been?' said Gride. [Page 254] by Charles Stanley Reinhart (1875), in Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Harper & Bros. New York Household Edition, for Chapter XLVII. 9.0 x 13.7 cm (3 ½ by 5 ⅜ inches), framed. Running head: "Going to be Married" (255). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated: Introducing Arthur Gride

"Noggs!" cried Ralph, "where is that fellow, Noggs?"

But not a word said Newman.

"The dog has gone to his dinner, though I told him not," muttered Ralph, looking into the office, and pulling out his watch. "Humph! You had better come in here, Gride. My man’s out, and the sun is hot upon my room. This is cool and in the shade, if you don’t mind roughing it."

"Not at all, Mr. Nickleby, oh not at all! All places are alike to me, sir. Ah! very nice indeed. Oh! very nice!"

"The person who made this reply was a little old man, of about seventy or seventy-five years of age, of a very lean figure, much bent and slightly twisted. He wore a grey coat with a very narrow collar, an old-fashioned waistcoat of ribbed black silk, and such scanty trousers as displayed his shrunken spindle-shanks in their full ugliness. The only articles of display or ornament in his dress were a steel watch-chain to which were attached some large gold seals; and a black ribbon into which, in compliance with an old fashion scarcely ever observed in these days, his grey hair was gathered behind. His nose and chin were sharp and prominent, his jaws had fallen inwards from loss of teeth, his face was shrivelled and yellow, save where the cheeks were streaked with the colour of a dry winter apple; and where his beard had been, there lingered yet a few grey tufts which seemed, like the ragged eyebrows, to denote the badness of the soil from which they sprung. The whole air and attitude of the form was one of stealthy cat-like obsequiousness; the whole expression of the face was concentrated in a wrinkled leer, compounded of cunning, lecherousness, slyness, and avarice.

Such was old Arthur Gride, in whose face there was not a wrinkle, in whose dress there was not one spare fold or plait, but expressed the most covetous and griping penury, and sufficiently indicated his belonging to that class of which Ralph Nickleby was a member. Such was old Arthur Gride, as he sat in a low chair looking up into the face of Ralph Nickleby, who, lounging upon the tall office stool, with his arms upon his knees, looked down into his; a match for him on whatever errand he had come.

"And how have you been?" said Gride, feigning great interest in Ralph’s state of health. "I haven’t seen you for — oh! not for —"

"Not for a long time," said Ralph, with a peculiar smile, importing that he very well knew it was not on a mere visit of compliment that his friend had come. "It was a narrow chance that you saw me now, for I had only just come up to the door as you turned the corner."

"I am very lucky," observed Gride.

"So men say," replied Ralph, drily.

The older money-lender wagged his chin and smiled, but he originated no new remark, and they sat for some little time without speaking. Each was looking out to take the other at a disadvantage. [Chapter XLVII, "Mr. Ralph Nickleby has some confidential Intercourse with another old Friend. They concert between them a Project, which promises well for both," 254-255]

Commentary: Another Villain Brought on Stage to Advance the Picaresque Plot

Reinhart provides the now familiar backdrop of Ralph Nickleby's offices at Golden Square, London, to introduce yet another stock villain from melodrama, the lascivious septuagenarian miser (Arthur Gride). Reinhart places Ralph in a superior position, on his clerk's stool, to reduce Gride's height further, as if to emphasize the fact that Gride is Ralph's creature, and will do his bidding. As in several of the other series in the scenes that involve the diminutive, elderly Gride, the illustrator contrasts not merely the physical sizes of the villains but their differing ages by Gride's eighteenth-century suit and Nickleby's Regency clothing; however, somewhat incongruously, Reinhart has updated the 75-year-old bachelor's ensemble with a top-hat and cane in the contemporary fashion. Moreover, Gride is not wearing the knee-breeches and stockings that one finds in Dickens's portraits of characters from the eighteenth-century, but trousers and spats. As elsewhere, according to Dickens's original descriptions of Ralph's clothing, the money-lender (although never shown as riding a horse) wears boots. The heavy ledgers and high-topped desk suggest the pair are conducting their clandestine conference in the office assigned to the clerk, Newman Noggs.

Parallel Illustrations from Earlier Editions (1839-1876)

Left: Phiz introduces Gride as plotting but subservient to Ralph in The Consultation [between Arthur Gride and Ralph Nickleby] (June 1839). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition study of the novel's miserly villains: Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithograph of the aged miser and the middle-aged money-lender: Arthur Gride and Ralph Nickleby in the Charles Dickens Library Edition.

Related material by other illustrators (1838 through 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. I.

_______. Nicholas Nickleby. With 39 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, 1839.

_______. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.

__________. "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 12 September 2021