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"The Tuggses at Ramsgate"
George Cruikshank
1839
Copper engraving
11.4 by 9.2 vignetted
"The Tuggses at Ramsgate" — the fourth chapter in "Tales," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, facing p. 251.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Lieutenant Slaughter looked first at one person mysteriously, then at another: then, laid down his cigar, then approached the window on tiptoe, and pointed with his right thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the curtain.
"Slaughter!" ejaculated the captain, rising from table, "what do you mean?"
The lieutenant, in reply, drew back the curtain and discovered Mr. Cymon Tuggs behind it: pallid with apprehension, and blue with wanting to cough.
"Aha!" exclaimed the captain, furiously. "What do I see? Slaughter, your sabre!"
"Cymon!" screamed the Tuggses.
"Mercy!" said Belinda.
"Platonic!" gasped Cymon.
"Your sabre!" roared the captain: "Slaughter — unhand me — the villain's life!"
"Murder!" screamed the Tuggses.
"Hold him fast, sir!" faintly articulated Cymon.
"Water!" exclaimed Joseph Tuggs — and Mr. Cymon Tuggs and all the ladies forthwith fainted away, and formed a tableau. — "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," Chapter 4, "Tales," p. 266-267.
The story did not appear with Cruikshank's overly dramatic illustration until well after its first appearance in print, in Chapman and Hall's Library of Fiction in March 1836, the month after Macrone's first series of Sketches by Boz. The story appeared with the Cruikshank illustration instead of Seymour's in the Chapman and Hall 1839 single-volume edition. The other significant nineteenth-century illustration is that of Fred Barnard for the 1876 volume in the Household Edition. Perhaps not wishing to undercut the comic revelation scene upon which the story closes in an imitation of French farce, Barnard merely shows the scene in which Captain Waters, his wife Belinda, and their friend and co-conspirator Lieutenant Slaughter first meet their prey, the Tuggses, on the deck of the City of London Ramsgate steamer. That Cymon looks nothing like an aristocrat in manner or clothing should suggest to the astute reader that Belinda is flattering the noveau riche family and callow youth as part of some sort of confidence scheme.
Cruikshank's etching is of the same scene as the second Seymour illustration for Chapman and Hall's Library of Fiction, published in March 1836: Seymour's version of the comic climax, Vengeance of Captain Walter Waters and Lieutenant Slaughter. Mr. Cymon Tuggs discovered behind the curtains, at the Waters's lodgings.
[Return to "Great Expectations in "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," or, The Importance of Being Cymon"]
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s interpretation of the flirtatious Belinda and the hapless Cymon, both riding donkeys, The Tuggses at Ramsgate. (1867). Centre: Robert Seymour's study of the Tuggses encamped at beach, in Captain and Mrs. Waters Greeting the Tuggs's Family on Ramsgate Sands. (1836) Right: Robert Seymour's study of the climactic moment in the farce, the "Discovery Scene," Vengeance of Captain Walter Waters and Lieutenant Slaughter. Mr. Cymon Tuggs discovered behind the curtains, at the Waters's lodgings. (1836) [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of the chance meeting of the Waterses and the Tuggses on the deck of the Ramsgate steamer, "So exactly the air of a marquis," said the military gentleman (1876). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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Last modified 7 May 2017