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The Cricket Match
Robert W. Buss
June 1836 (3rd instalment)
steel engraving
11.3 cm high by 9.5 cm wide (4 ⅜ inches by 3 ⅝ inches) vignetted
Chapter VII, Dickens's Pickwick Papers, facing page 69
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
See below for passage illustrated
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
All-Muggleton had the first innings; and the interest became intense when Mr. Dumkins and Mr. Podder, two of the most renowned members of that most distinguished club, walked, bat in hand, to their respective wickets. Mr. Luffey, the highest ornament of Dingley Dell, was pitched to bowl against the redoubtable Dumkins, and Mr. Struggles was selected to do the same kind office for the hitherto unconquered Podder. Several players were stationed, to ‘look out,’ in different parts of the field, and each fixed himself into the proper attitude by placing one hand on each knee, and stooping very much as if he were ‘making a back’ for some beginner at leap-frog. All the regular players do this sort of thing; — indeed it is generally supposed that it is quite impossible to look out properly in any other position.
The umpires were stationed behind the wickets; the scorers were prepared to notch the runs; a breathless silence ensued. Mr. Luffey retired a few paces behind the wicket of the passive Podder, and applied the ball to his right eye for several seconds. Dumkins confidently awaited its coming with his eyes fixed on the motions of Luffey.
"Run — run — another. — Now, then throw her up — up with her — stop there — another — no — yes — no — throw her up, throw her up!" — Such were the shouts which followed the stroke; and at the conclusion of which All-Muggleton had scored two. Nor was Podder behindhand in earning laurels wherewith to garnish himself and Muggleton. He blocked the doubtful balls, missed the bad ones, took the good ones, and sent them flying to all parts of the field. The scouts were hot and tired; the bowlers were changed and bowled till their arms ached; but Dumkins and Podder remained unconquered. Did an elderly gentleman essay to stop the progress of the ball, it rolled between his legs or slipped between his fingers. Did a slim gentleman try to catch it, it struck him on the nose, and bounded pleasantly off with redoubled violence, while the slim gentleman’s eyes filled with water, and his form writhed with anguish. Was it thrown straight up to the wicket, Dumkins had reached it before the ball. In short, when Dumkins was caught out, and Podder stumped out, All-Muggleton had notched some fifty-four, while the score of the Dingley Dellers was as blank as their faces. The advantage was too great to be recovered. In vain did the eager Luffey, and the enthusiastic Struggles, do all that skill and experience could suggest, to regain the ground Dingley Dell had lost in the contest—it was of no avail; and in an early period of the winning game Dingley Dell gave in, and allowed the superior prowess of All-Muggleton. [Chapter VII, "How Mr. Winkle, instead of shooting at the Pigeon, and killing the Crow, shot the Crow and wounded the Pigeon; How the Dingley Dell Cricket Club played All-Muggleton, and how All-Muggleton dined at the Dingley Dell expense; with other interesting and instructive matters," pp. 69-70]
After Robert Seymour's suicide on 20 April 1836, Chapman and Hall scrambled to replace him. The immediate result was two rather lacklustre illustrations (Plates 7 and 8 for Part Three in the monthly serial) by Robert Buss. Owing to the untimely death of the original illustrator, before he had completed the commissioned four etchings for the second number, the May 1836 serial number contained just three plates for the twenty-four pages of letter-press. Chapman and Hall then proposed to Dickens that they alter their original scheme of illustration: Dickens would provide thirty-pages of text, and each part would be accompanied by just two plates. The intention, as Johnannsen remarks, was "to keep the cost of production down" (1). When Buss's replacement, Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'), etched two new plates in October 1836, he chose more interesting subjects which would focus on the misadventures of Pickwick and his three companions, Mr. Wardle and his friends under the influence of the salmon (facing page 76, substituted in November 1838 for the novel's volume edition). Buss's difficulty was occasioned by his never having worked with the new medium of steel-engraving before. Phiz chose the celebratory dinner after the cricket match as a much more humorous and theatrical subject.
The reason for Dickens' dissatisfaction with the Buss plates is perfectly clear, for, while etchings by Buss for other books are infinitely better than these two for Dickens, the latter are very crude and amateurish. Not only arte the drawings bad, but the etching is poorly done. One might excuse the workmanship as due to inexperience in handling a new medium, but the drawings are so childish that in those days before childish drawings were fashionable and considered good art it is surprising that an artist would have the courage to submit them to the publishers. [Johnannsen, pp. 16-17]
The Pickwick principals had no choice at this late date [after Seymour's suicide on 20 April 1836] but to utilize Buss's plates; they could not afford to reveal their true opinion at that time. Though Buss, in retrospect, felt fairly satisfied with 'The Cricket Match' (VII, facing p. 90), his employers obviously did not. They probably found the figures oversized and angular, their poses stiff, and their expressions too uniformly open-mouthed or vacant. In any case, at their earliest opportunity they replaced not only the design but the entire subject. The 'Arbour Scene' was more to their liking (VIII, facing p. 98). By moving the fat boy from behind the amorous couple (fig. 30) to the front in a direct confrontation with them (fig. 31), Buss extracted as much comic potential from the situation as possible. But the publishers and author seem to have shared the artist's later disparagement of its cramped lines and unsubtle use of light and shadow (fig. 32) — even the first letter of his signature was improperly reversed — for they had Browne redesign it completely soon after he replaced Buss on Pickwick ' (fig. 33; cf. fig. 34). (Cohen, pp. 53-55)
The only game of cricket of which I am aware in Dickens’s work, other than that for the final part of "Sunday under Three Heads," The Third Head — Sunday as it might be made — The Churchyard, is that between Muggleton and Dingley Dell in Part III of the Pickwick Papers, which, like “Sunday,” was written during the second half of June 1836. The mocking tone here, however, is very different from the reverence shown the sport in “Sunday Under Three Heads.” Indeed, one wonders in the case of Pickwick just how familiar Dickens was with the game. It might, perhaps, be pedantic to wonder why in the imagined game played on the outskirts of London in “Sunday” the ball, as a characteristic event, is “sent skimming along the ground” when it is the aim of any batsman, an aim sometimes gloriously fulfilled, to send it sailing through the heavens past the boundary line without bouncing, an automatic six runs, or at least beyond the closer fielders, for as many runs as the batsmen think they can risk. But one makes in vain any attempt to follow the game featuring Luffey and Struggles, bowling for Dingley Dell, and Dumkins and Podder, batting for Muggleton (the comic names are revealing, of course), although it must be admitted that Podder does send the balls “flying to all parts of the field.” Eventually Dumkins is caught out and Podder is stumped (no other batsman is named or, perhaps, envisaged as playing), Muggleton’s fifty-four is seen as a high score, “the score of the Dingley Dellers is as blank as their faces” (but they haven’t yet batted), and Luffey and Struggles, again the only players named on their side, seem to be the leading batsmen for their team, as well as the most formidable bowlers. None of this, of course, interferes very much with the fun of reading about the game.
Two plates were made to illustrate a cricket match at about the same time for the same publishers. Robert William Buss (1804-75), the creator of the first, was taken on hurriedly by Dickens’s publishers after the suicide of Robert Seymour. But Buss did not give satisfaction: he had no experience in etching, having been trained as an engraver, and eventually handed his two attempts for Part III (June 1836), Chapters 6, 7, and 8, The Cricket Match and The Fat Boy Awake, over to a professional engraver, “whose faithful execution lacked the verve and spontaneity of the original artist’s hand” (Schlicke 64). Chapman and Hall probably found the figures oversized and angular, their poses stiff, and their expressions too uniformly open-mouthed or vacant” (Cohen, "Robert Buss," Chapter 3, 53). One takes the point of these criticisms, but The Cricket March does actually give the viewer an idea of what happens during a game: one sees the two batsmen, wickets, a wicket-keeper, and a fielder. Admittedly it does not reflect Dickens’s mocking attitude to the faux-heroic players of Muggleton and Dingley Dell and apparently to the game itself.
Left: the Phiz illustration that the publishers substituted for Buss's in the November 1837 volume edition: Wardle and his Friends under the Influence of the Salmon, Plate 9 (Chapter VIII). Right: Phiz's sentimentalised depiction of cricket practice in a country churchyard, The Third Head — Sunday as it might be made — The Churchyard (June 1836) in Timonthy Sparks' "Sunday Under Three Heads." [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Cohen, Jane Rabb. "Chapter Three: Robert Buss." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980, pp. 51-58.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
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).
Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers (1836-37). Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall. Part Three (June 1836).
Johnannsen, Albert. "The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club." Phiz. Illustrations from the Novels of Charles Dickens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Pp. 1-75.
Patten, Robert L. "Buss, Robert William." The Oxford Companion to Dickens, ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 64-65
Created 15 August 2019
Last modified 21 October 2024