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Mr. Wegg and Mr. Venus in Consultation
Sol Eytinge
Composite woodblock engraving
1867
9.9 cm high by 7.4 cm wide (3 ⅞ by 2 ⅞ inches), frontispiece for Dickens's Our Mutual Friend in the Diamond Edition (Boston: Ticknor & Fields), facing page 52.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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While Dickens in "Mr. Wegg Looks after Himself" (Chapter VII) establishes Mr. Venus's character by detailed description of the natural curiosities with which his shop abounds and his "sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a tangle of reddish-dusty hair" (48), Eytinge is clearly more interested in Mr. Venus's one-legged customer, Silas Wegg. Here, Eytinge illustrates a specific moment in order to underscore Wegg's obsession with retrieving his severed limb. Dickens, interested in Venus, describes him minutely from the front:
The owner of the face has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that. [50]
Eytinge, on the other hand, shows him from the back, and focuses on Wegg:
"I don't know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light." Mr. Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot, beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he compares with Mr. Wegg's leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding-boot. "No, I don't know how it is, but so it is. You have got a twist in that bone, the best of my belief. I never saw the likes of you." [52]
The above excerpts reveal that Eytinge is attempting to realize a single textual moment, studying Wegg's reaction to seeing his missing limb. The mummified baby in the jar and the articulated skeleton (upper right) and the skull and leg-bone underneath Venus's chair suggest rather than delineate the contents of the shop, and of course his cup of tea sits on the table by Wegg, ready to be consumed. But the focus of the piece is clearly Wegg himself, a pirate in middle-class garb, his neanderthal-like head illuminated by the flaring candle.
Since the "Diamond Edition" of the novel appeared in time for the start of Dickens's American reading tour (November 1867 through April 1868) and occurred ahead of Eytinge's trip to England (May-June 1869), one cannot assume that the illustrator had much opportunity to discuss with the author Dickens's own conception of the novel. Eytinge may well have been able to study Marcus Stone's original Sixties' style illustrations for the Chapman and Hall (May 1864 through November 1865) serialisation. Consequently, the image of Silas Wegg here is likely informed by Stone's realisations of the decidedly odd character.
Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Vol. VIII. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Winter, William. "Charles Dickens" and "Sol Eytinge." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 181-202, 317-319.
Created 27 March 2017 last updated 16 March 2023