"The Arbour Scene" — illustration for "Pickwick Papers" by R. W. Buss

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The Arbour Scene

Robert W. Buss

June 1836

steel engraving

12.1 cm high by 9.2 cm wide, vignetted

Chapter 8, Dickens's Pickwick Papers, facing page 74

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

See below for passage illustrated

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.]

Passage Illustrated

. . . the lady [gave] a very unaffected start, and exclaimed in an affrighted tone —

"Mr. Tupman, we are observed! — we are discovered!"

Mr. Tupman looked round. There was the fat boy, perfectly motionless, with his large circular eyes staring into the arbour, but without the slightest expression on his face that the most expert physiognomist could have referred to astonishment, curiosity, or any other known passion that agitates the human breast. Mr. Tupman gazed on the fat boy, and the fat boy stared at him; and the longer Mr. Tupman observed the utter vacancy of the fat boy's countenance, the more convinced he became that he either did not know, or did not understand, anything that had been going forward. Under this impression, he said with great firmness —

"What do you want here, Sir?" [Chapter VIII, "Strongly illustrative of the position, that the course of true love is not a railway," p. 74]

The Substituted Phiz Illustration of this scene (added in November 1837)

Above: the Phiz illustration that the publishers substituted fior Buss's in the November 1837 volume edition: The Fat Boy Awake Again. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

References

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Chapter 3: "Robert Buss." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 51-58.

Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers (1836-37). Il. Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall. Part Three (June 1836).

Last modified 15 August 2019