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Uncaptioned illustration to begin Chapter One, page 1.
Fred Barnard
1872
11.2 cm x 14.3 cm, or 4 ¼ high by 5 ½ inches, framed.
composite wood-block, engraved by the Dalziels.
[Pecksniff prostrate at the foot of his own steps, incident from the second chapter.]
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text 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.]
Fred Barnard's narrative-pictorial sequence for the thirty-year-old picaresque novel begins earlier than Phiz's. The chief illustrator of the Household Edition begins, as it were, almost at the beginning, immediately after the rambling, almost Swiftian Chuzzlewit genealogy of the opening chapter. For this, the story's first comic scene, Barnard prepares the reader a full chapter in advance, seizing upon the most engaging moment with which to lead off his pictorial sequence and introduce his Tartuffian antagonist, architect Seth Pecksniff.
An undignified, partly stunned Seth Pecksniff has just been knocked off his feet at his own front-door steps by the boisterous Wiltshire wind, and his daughter, shading her candle, unable to discern his prostrate figure on the ground in the darkness, is operating under the delusion that she is the victim of some practical-joking street-boy who, having knocked, has ducked around the corner to observe the fun from hiding. Realizing the text's first piece of real action, the uncaptioned woodcut sits above the opening of the first chapter but pertains to the second.
Dressed in the respectable garb of the English bourgeoisie circa 1840, in professional tailcoat, collar, his immaculate beaver lying by his feet, Pecksniff struggles to get up on his left elbow. This attire Barnard has borrowed directly from Phiz's early illustrations for the novel, notably Pleasant Little Family Party at Mr. Pecksniff's (February 1843). Whereas Phiz's initial Pecksniff plates depict the antagonist as a self-satisfied and collected hypocrite, Barnard cannot resist the comic possibilities of the novel's opening scene, in which the usually loquacious architect has been momentarily stunned into speechlessness by his fall. As in the text, his daughter shields her candle from the raging wind which scatters leaves above her parent, whom she cannot see in the dusk. Instead of the brass knob on the street-door, Barnard focuses on the wrought-iron railings which connect Miss Pecksniff at the top of the stairs, her skirt and apron blowing vigorously towards stage left and her fallen father. Rather than struggle with the pictorial impossibilities of the first chapter, Barnard has utilized this key page in the 1872 large-scale text to introduce the self-important humbug who will present himself as a rival to young Martin as a potential husband for Mary Graham and a potential heir for old Martin.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Il. F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vol. 2 of 4.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, volume 2. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871-1880. The copy of the Household Edition from which this picture was scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, proprietor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2008, was this novel.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.
Kyd [Clayton J. Clarke]. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.
Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85. [See e-text in Victorian Web.]
Steig, Michael. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz. Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.
Created 6 July 2016
Last updated 16 November 2024