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Mr. Winkle soothes the refractory steed
Robert Seymour
May 1836
steel engraving
10.5 cm high by 9.5 cm wide, vignetted
Chapter 5, Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, facing p. 47
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Readers who follow the progress of the illustrations in the bound volume of the 1836-37 monthly parts will notice a sharp break in the compositions at this point as Seymour committed suicide while finishing the eight illustration. Dickens briefly tried working with another illustrator, Robert William Buss (1804-75), but found his two plates for the June number quite unsatisfactory. The author and publishers then replaced Buss with Hablot Knight Browne, who became "Phiz" to Dickens's "Boz" for twenty-three years. Once serialisation was winding up, Chapman and Hall replaced Buss's illustrations of the Muggleton-Dingley Dell cricket match and the Fat Boy intruding upon Tracy Tupman and Emily Wardle with much sharper, more humorous engravings by Phiz. However, the odd volume composed of serial instalments still exhibits the work of Seymour's replacement.
In the prolegomena issued with the final double number (November 1837), Chapman and Hall note what the editors of the serial have termed "annexed references." These page numbers, found at the bottom of each serial plate in the first twelve monthly parts, show precisely where the plates (which appeared at the beginning of each instalment) should be inserted, so that, for example, the number for Mr. Winkle Soothes the Refractory Steed is 47. The publisher altered this practice after the twelfth monthly part, and therefore felt that specific "Directions to the Binder" should indicate where each illustration should go in the binding of the parts, so that, for example, Mr. Winkle entering the Sedan Chair (No. 13) should "face page 391." The note suggests that the titles for many of the illustrations had not been finalised when the November 1837 instalment went to press; in the instance just mentioned, the final title for the April 1837 plate is Mr. Winkle's Situation when the Door 'blew to'.
Mr. Pickwick was the very personation of kindness and humanity: he threw the reins on the horse’s back, and having descended from his seat, carefully drew the chaise into the hedge, lest anything should come along the road, and stepped back to the assistance of his distressed companion, leaving Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the vehicle.
The horse no sooner beheld Mr. Pickwick advancing towards him with the chaise whip in his hand, than he exchanged the rotary motion in which he had previously indulged, for a retrograde movement of so very determined a character, that it at once drew Mr. Winkle, who was still at the end of the bridle, at a rather quicker rate than fast walking, in the direction from which they had just come. Mr. Pickwick ran to his assistance, but the faster Mr. Pickwick ran forward, the faster the horse ran backward. There was a great scraping of feet, and kicking up of the dust; and at last Mr. Winkle, his arms being nearly pulled out of their sockets, fairly let go his hold. The horse paused, stared, shook his head, turned round, and quietly trotted home to Rochester, leaving Mr. Winkle and Mr. Pickwick gazing on each other with countenances of blank dismay. A rattling noise at a little distance attracted their attention. They looked up.
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the agonised Mr. Pickwick; "there's the other horse running away!"
It was but too true. The animal was startled by the noise, and the reins were on his back. The results may be guessed. He tore off with the four-wheeled chaise behind him, and Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the four-wheeled chaise. The heat was a short one. Mr. Tupman threw himself into the hedge, Mr. Snodgrass followed his example, the horse dashed the four-wheeled chaise against a wooden bridge, separated the wheels from the body, and the bin from the perch; and finally stood stock still to gaze upon the ruin he had made. [Chapter V, "A Short One — showing among other matters, how Mr. Pickwick undertook to drive, and Mr. Winkle to ride, and how they both did it," pp. 47-48]
Of Seymour's original conception, only this illustration seems to approach what the moody artist had in mind: a Londoner (albeit, not a Cockney) weekend sportsman who in patently trying to maintain a false front consistently reveals his ignorance of field sports. Even compared with the work of more popular illustrators of this scene, Seymour's composition has stood the test of time. As Jane Rabb Seymour remarks of Seymour's interpretation of Winkle as a well-meaning fraud, and a source of considerable amusement,
Seymour's published Sketches (1833-36) attest to his unabated observation of these overequipped, undertrained sportsmen pursuing cats, birds, and stray pigs on foot or on horseback. The artist's sympathies are evident in his work, the animals being far more sensitively portrayed than the Cockneys. Seymour the sportsman may have been snobbishly irritated by these absurd spectacles, but Seymour the artist made valuable use of them. . . . [40]
Compare the Nast illustration of Pickwick's difficulties with the horse rented at The Bull Inn, Rochester, to Phiz's in the same chapter: The horse no sooner beheld Mr. Pickwick advancing with the chaise whip in his hand, &c. and the original serial illustration, Seymour's Mr. Winkle Soothes the Refractory Steed (May 1836), with its exemplary horse. Although Seymour's style is slightly more awkward in the disposition of the figures, he conveys at least as well as the two later illustrators the chagrin that Winkle feels at being exposed as something of a fraud in front of the chief of the Pickwick Club, the individual whom above all others he had hoped to impress with his sporting knowledge and skills.
In terms of his depiction of the recalcitrant horse and the Kentish countryside, this 1836 illustration forcibly demonstrates why Chapman and Hall selected Robert Seymour as their illustrator for the misadventures of a London Nimrod club in the English countryside. Symour's horse is powerful, natural, and graceful, and his background vegetation highly believable. Unfortunately, Dickens was an urbanite with little of the kind of insider knowledge that the project required; no wonder, then, that he and Seymour would have a falling out.
Left: "Bless my soul" exclaimed the agonized Mr. Pickwick, "there's the other horse running away!". Right: The horse no sooner beheld Mr. Pickwick advancing with the chaise whip in his hand, &c. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
The New York cartoonist Thomas Nast's 1874 wood-engraving focusses on the plight of the dismounted Winkle and the stranded Pickwick as the rented chaise rapidly disappears up the road out of Rochester. Phiz's illustration is a less cartoonish 1874 wood-engraving of the farcical scene in which Pickwick, a thorough urbanite, cannot control the horse whom he has rented.
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Chapter 2: "Robert Seymour." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 39-50.
Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers (1836-37). Il. Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall.
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873.
Created 4 July 2002
Last modified 6 January 2020