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Mark Tapley and Tom Pinch
Harry Furniss
1910
14.5 x 9.4 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Chapter 5, "Containing a Full Account of the Installation of Mr. Pecksniff's New Pupil . . . ," VII, facing 80.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"But bless my soul, Mark," said Mr. Pinch, who in the progress of his observation just then made the discovery that the bosom of his companion's shirt was as much exposed as if it was Midsummer, and was ruffled by every breath of air, "why don't you wear a waistcoat?"
"What's the good of one, Sir?" asked Mark.
"Good of one?" said Mr. Pinch. "Why, to keep your chest warm."
"Lord love you, sir!" cried Mark, "you don't know me. My chest don't want no warming. Even if it did, what would no waistcoat bring it to? Inflammation of the lungs, perhaps? Well, there'd be some credit in being jolly, with a inflammation of the lungs."
As Mr. Pinch returned no other answer than such as was conveyed in his breathing very hard, and opening his eyes very wide, and nodding his head very much, Mark thanked him for his ride, and without troubling him to stop, jumped lightly down. And away he fluttered, with his red neckerchief, and his open coat, down a cross-lane; turning back from time to time to nod to Mr. Pinch, and looking one of the most careless, good-humoured comical fellows in life. His late companion, with a thoughtful face pursued his way to Salisbury. [Chapter 5, "Containing a Full Account of the Installation of Mr. Pecksniff's New Pupil." 72-73: the picture's original caption has been emphasized]
This situation in the sleepy Wiltshire was re-enacted again and again in nineteenth-century Europe as young men left the country village for the better wages and increased opportunities of the cities and of the colonies, as well as of America. The 1910 Furniss illustration is his re-interpretation of Hablot Knight Browne's March 1843 Mark Begins to be Jolly Under Creditable Circumstances (see below) for Chapter 7. However, whereas the scene in the serial plays out against the backdrop of the marketplace, traditional local inn, and finger-post indicating the distances to Salisbury and London, in the Furniss illustration the dialogue realised occurs with Tom Pinch in the driver's seat of his employer, Pecksniff's gig, and jolly Mark bestriding a fence, suggesting that he is going beyond the traditional boundaries and expectations of village life, dominated by the mediaeval church spire, rising above the green world of the rural village, and pointing heavenward (upper left). Chomping at the bit for change and challenge, he eschews the restrictions of the traditional village life, just as the proud steed ready the pull the gig away at a double canter.
Although Mark has risen early, in part, one suspects, to avoid tearful farewells, already the villagers, in the Phiz steel-engraving their children, several dogs, Tom Pinch (left) and the Widow Lupin herself (in the window, centre) are up to see him off, the plate's realisation of the event paralleling Dickens's description, but for the crowd of young admirers that Dickens implies in "children enough to hand down human natur to the latest posterity" (Ch. 7, Penguin 172, Oxford 102). Though both a crowd scene and a set piece (a "departure" in a "progress"), the picture has both drama and pathos without any sense of crowding. Phiz has, as it were, filled in the blanks in Dickens's mere half-page description of the departure scene, adding the buildings and subtracting the garden. Something of the energy of the dashes and reiterated "good-by'es" in the letterpress is communicated through the waving hands of Tom, the conclave of wheelwrights, and the crowd in front of the inn, so vividly realised in the clear air that we are soon to exchange for the smog of Todgers's and vicinity. Phiz's humanizing touch is the lone child, right, whose posture, gesture, and facial expression reveal how much everyone in the little community will miss jolly Mark. His jacket blows in the stiff breeze from left to right, a wind of destiny that in agitating the bottom of his garment draws the eye to the significant words on the poster: "Lost, Stolen." Reiterating the left-to-right movement is the fingerpost above Mark's beaver, with the word "Salisbury" just decipherable. The church spire and the gables of the Blue Dragon reinforce the upward movement of Mark's figure, as if heaven, emigration, and the pursuit of jollity under trying circumstances are all connected.
Rather than attempt so profound a synthesis of sociological commentary and textual illustration, mid-nineteenth-century American illustrator Sol Eytinge, Jr., depicted Mark with young Martin outside their ramshackle log-cabin in the ironically named township of Eden on the banks of the pestilential Mississippi, Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley (see below) — a dual character study that, like the second American "Household" Edition frontispiece by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1863), is based on the figure of Mark one sees throughout Phiz's steel-engravings. However, in "Jolly sort of lodgings," said Mark (see below), Darley has made Mark a sharper dresser, his sporting clothing contrasting the more sober, professional and bourgeois clothing of his partner in misery, young Martin. The "flash" waistcoat and top-boots perhaps reference his having served as an hostler at the Blue Dragon Inn.
However, the direct source for Furniss's realisation of Mark's farewell to the comforts and limitations of village life is the vital image of the hostler in Barnard's Household Edition wood-engraving He turned a whimsical face and a very merry pair of blue eyes on Mr. Pinch (1872: see below). Having, like Furniss and other later illustrators, read the entire text in advance and therefore having realized the importance of the jovial Mark to the subsequent narrative, the social realist and humorist Barnard divides the focus of the composition between a full-length study of Mark, blocking our view of Pecksniff's horse (not nearly the nag of Dickens's description or Phiz's plate — and one of the surest indications that this illustration is Furniss's source), and a representation of a substantial gig, surmounted by another significant though secondary character, Mr. Pinch, not previously introduced in Barnard's sequence. However, in Furniss's sequence, Tom has already appeared twice — in the full-page lithographic frontispiece with young Martin and in miniature beside Mark in the ornamental title-page, upper right, in Characters in the Story. The slouchy-brimmed hat and riding pants (not specified by the authorial voice) contribute to an overall impression of the whimsical character's jauntiness, and contribute to Furniss's "Go West, young man" interpretation of the ebullient Mark. The looming spire implies his immediate destination: Sailsbury, the nearest town of any size.
Left: Phiz's Mark Begins to be Jolly Under Creditable Circumstances (March 1843). Centre: Eytinge's Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley (1867). Right: Kyd's cigarette card image of the inveterate optimist, Mark Tapley (1910).
Left: Darley's frontispiece for volume two, "Jolly sort of lodgings", alluding to Mark's deciding to join young Martin on the voyage to America. Right: Furniss's own study of the jolly hostler, Mark Tapley, depicting Mark's cheerfully waving good-bye to all he has known.
Above: Barnard's He turned a whimsical face and a very merry pair of blue eyes on Mr. Pinch (1872).
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Created 24 November 2015
Last modified 16 January 2020