"Newman Noggs" — Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s second illustration for Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby" (1867)

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Newman Noggs

Sol Eytinge, Jr.

1867

Wood-engraving

9.9 x 7.5 cm (framed)

Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (Diamond Edition), facing IV, 5.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Ralph Nickleby's Sardonic, "Confidential Clerk"

It was into a place of this kind that Mr. Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr. Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the clerk was dimly visible; that worthy chancing to look up, he beckoned him to attend.

In obedience to this summons the clerk got off the high stool (to which he had communicated a high polish by countless gettings off and on), and presented himself in Mr. Nickleby’s room. He was a tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much too small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons that it was marvellous how he contrived to keep them on.

"Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?" said Mr. Nickleby, in a sharp and grating voice.

"Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the —" Noggs was going to add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted ‘regular time."

"My watch has stopped," said Mr. Nickleby; "I don’t know from what cause." [Chapter II, "Of Mr. Ralph Nickleby, and his Establishments, and his Undertakings, and of a great Joint Stock Company of vast national Importance," 5-6]

Commentary: Who is Newman Noggs?

Newman Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's cynical, long-suffering clerk is yet another iteration of the Comic Man of domestic melodrama. Prior to becoming the curmudgeonly Raph's clerk, Noggs had his own business. However, when he went bankrupt, he became a malcontented alcoholic, whose irrational mental ticks and ironic comments mask his sympathetic nature and genuine insights into human nature.He becomes one of the picaresque hero's chief friends, the Sancho Panza to Nicholas's Don Quixote. Kyd's version of Noggs in the Player's Cigarette Card series captures well the middle-aged alcoholic's rubicund nose, which adds humour to his benign expression. According to Dickens's description of him Chapter 2, Noggs immediately strikes the reader as decidedly odd. Eytinge has subtracted such caricatural elements as the google eyes, but hints at Noggs's quirky nature through the ink-stains on his trousers and hat crammed with gloves.

Illustrations of Ralph Nickleby's Clerk from Other Editions (1839, 1875, and 1910)

Left: Clayton J. Clarke's Player's Cigarette Card No. 46: Newman Noggs (1910). Centre: C. S. Reinhart's American Household Edition realisation of the same scene: Newman Noggs Opened the Door of the Deserted Mansion (1875). Right: Harry Furniss's study of the quirky clerk: Newman Noggs (1910).

Left: Phiz's introduction of the whimsical clerk to the narrative-pictorial sequence: Newman Noggs Leaves the Ladies in the Empty House (July 1838), Chapter 11. Right: Fred Barnard sets the keynote for comedy in Dickens's novel by leading off the Household Edition program with a title-page vignette of Newman Noggs: Uncaptioned Title-Page vignette: (1875).

Related material, including front matter and sketches, by other illustrators

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.

_______. Nicholas Nickleby.Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IV.

_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ed. Andrew Lang. Illustrated by 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.

_______. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.

Last modified 20 April 2021