[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]
The Broker's Man
George Cruikshank
1836
Etching on copper
10.4 x 9.3 cm vignetted
"The Broker's Man" — the fifth chapter in "Our Parish," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, First Series (8 February 1836), facing p. 18.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
'My name's Smith,' says he, 'and I called from Johnson's about that business of Thompson's.'— 'Oh,' says the other, quite down on him directly, 'How is Thompson?' says he; 'Pray sit down, Mr. Smith: John, leave the room.' Out went the servant; and the gentleman and Fixem looked at one another till they couldn’t look any longer, and then they varied the amusements by looking at me, who had been standing on the mat all this time. 'Hundred and fifty pounds, I see,' said the gentleman at last. 'Hundred and fifty pound,' said Fixem, 'besides cost of levy, sheriff's poundage, and all other incidental expenses.' — 'Um,' says the gentleman, 'I shan't be able to settle this before to-morrow afternoon.' — 'Very sorry; but I shall be obliged to leave my man here till then,' replies Fixem, pretending to look very miserable over it. 'That's very unfort'nate,' says the gentleman, 'for I have got a large party here to-night, and I'm ruined if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the matter — just step here, Mr. Smith,' says he, after a short pause. So Fixem walks with him up to the window, and after a good deal of whispering, and a little chinking of suverins, and looking at me, he comes back and says, 'Bung, you're a handy fellow, and very honest I know. This gentleman wants an assistant to clean the plate and wait at table to-day, and if you're not particularly engaged,' says old Fixem, grinning like mad, and shoving a couple of suverins into my hand, 'he'll be very glad to avail himself of your services.' Well, I laughed: and the gentleman laughed, and we all laughed. . . . — Chapter 5, "The Broker's Man," p. 21.
The sketch, originally unillustrated, first appeared in the Evening Chronicle on 28 July 1835 as "Sketches of London, No. 18: The Parish." The narrator is not the avuncular voice one hears throughout the Sketches by Boz, but rather that of Bung, one of the candidates for Beadle in Chapter 4, "The Election for Beadle."
One of the 'Parish' sketches, the last but one to be published ('The Broker's Man', Evening Chronicle, 28 July) features Dickens's first attempt at characterised narrator within the narration. Mr Bung, who works for a broker, that is, someone whose job it is to value goods seized for unpaid rent or other debts, tells Boz various anecdotes, comic and pathetic, of his professional life. There is some evidence to suggest that Dickens's friends and admirers considered this sketch a particularly fine one. George Hogarth [Editor of the Evening Chronicle and subsequently Dickens's father-in-law] evidently treasured a proof of it which Dickens asked him to loan to Thomas Beard who wanted to show it to a friend. — Michael Slater, "'The Copperfield Days': 1828-1835," p. 52.
As Peter Ackroyd points out, Dickens mined his father's unfortunate ordeals with brokers and bailiffs for such sketches as "A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle," in which the protagonist is conducted to a lock-up house in the vicinity Chancery Lane as a result of debt.
Dickens was using his private family experiences even though they have no direct relation to the plot of the story which he was composing — either he was being a good reporter and wanted to make use of the material which he had observed so woefully at first hand, or he simply had to put down the episode in fictional form in order to deal with it properly and to come to terms with his own feelings. [p. 160]
Reinforcing the impressions that one receives from Bung's narrative of the characters and setting of the comic anecdote, Cruikshank shows the jolly resident of the house as possessing every indication of affluence, for he seems to be one of those
people with good incomes who get into difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day and week after week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I was put in possession of, was a gentleman’s house in this parish here, that everybody would suppose couldn’t help having money if he tried. [20]
The broker's man (right) gratefully accepts the coins from his employer, the sly-faced Mr. Fixem, as the man whom they have come to dun before breakfast laughs good-naturedly. The elegant furnishings of the small dining-room are entirely Cruikshank's invention, but certainly suggest that the master of the house has good taste and aspires to be a gentleman (like John Dickens), if indeed he is not one, merely fallen upon hard times. The seventeenth-century family portraits, the bust of the ancient philosopher above the cabinet, the fashionable Regency chairs with striped fabric, the elegantly dressed breakfast table with its large silver taureen, the ornately framed mirror over the mantelpiece, marble-faced fireplace and brass fender, the highly patterned Turkey carpet, and the neoclassical plaster cornice all suggest comfort, discernment, and class — one can well imagine such a room as existing in Mr. Brownlow's home in Pentonville, as depicted by Cruikshank in Oliver recovering from fever (August 1837). Resembling the kindly Samaritan Mr. Brownlow in Dickens's Oliver Twist, the laughing master of the house in his ruffled shirt, silk dressing-gown, waistcoat, slippers, and stirrup trousers contrasts "Mr. Smith" and his employee, Bung, who both wear less fashionable attire, breeches and stockings, although sharp-faced, balding Fixem has a fob and respectable top-hat.
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of the broker's man (Bung), the master of the house, and his guest who must be kept in the dark about Bung's real identity, "Why the Devil ain't you looking after that plate?". [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.
Dickens, Charles. "The Broker's Man." Chapter 5 in "Our Parish." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839, rpt. 1890.
Dickens, Charles. "The Broker's Man." Chapter 5, "Our Parish."Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Long, William F., and Paul Schlicke. "Bung Against Spruggins: Reform in 'Our Parish.'" Dickens Quarterly 34, 1 (March 2017): 5-13.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Last modified 5 April 2017