"Mr. Chollop Visits Martin" by Harry Furniss — seventeenth illustrationfor Dickens's"The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" (1910)

Mr. Chollop Visits Martin by Harry Furniss in The Charles Dickens Library Edition, (1910) — from Chapter 33, "Further Proceedings in Eden, and a Proceeding out of It. Martin Makes a Discovery of Some Importance." The conversation between the candid Mark and the persistently nationalistic and dialectal Hannibal Chollop (9.2 high by 14.6 cm wide, framed), which occupies its own page, facing page 545 in Volume 7, Chapter 33, might be better characterized as Mr. Chollop Visits Mark. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Illustrated

"How do you like our country, Sir?" he inquired, looking at Martin.

"Not at all,"was the invalid's reply.

Chollop continued to smoke without the least appearance of emotion, until he felt disposed to speak again. That time at length arriving, he took his pipe from his mouth, and said:

"I am not surprised to hear you say so. It re–quires An elevation, and A preparation of the intellect. The mind of man must be prepared for Freedom, Mr. Co."

"He addressed himself to Mark; because he saw that Martin, who wished him to go, being already half–mad with feverish irritation, which the droning voice of this new horror rendered almost insupportable, had closed his eyes, and turned on his uneasy bed.

"A little bodily preparation wouldn’t be amiss, either, would it, Sir," said Mark, "in the case of a blessed old swamp like this?"

"Do you con–sider this a swamp, Sir?" inquired Chollop gravely.

"Why yes, Sir," returned Mark. "I haven’t a doubt about it myself."

"The sentiment is quite Europian," said the major, "and does not surprise me; what would your English millions say to such a swamp in England, Sir?"

"They'd say it was an uncommon nasty one, I should think," said Mark; "and that they would rather be inoculated for fever in some other way." [Chapter 33, "Further Proceedings in Eden, and a Proceeding out of It. Martin Makes a Discovery of Some Importance," 537]

Commentary: John Bull and The Frontier Uncle Sam

Here, self-styled architect Martin Chuzzlewit of Chuzzlewit & Co., Eden, receives a personal call from the rough-and-ready frontiersman, the Bowie-knife-wielding Hannibal Chollo The deliriousMartin,however, is not up to much conversation as he recovers from malarial fever under a blanket as Mark tries to tend him while attending to household chores. And the barely-seen invalid bears little resemblance to the handsome, well-dressed young bourgeois drawn by Hablot Knight Browne in the 1843-44 serial, and elaborated by seventies illustrator Fred Barnard in The Household Edition, in such illustrations as "I was merely remarking, gentlemen— though it's a point of very little import— that the Queen of England does not happen to live in the Tower of London" (Chapter 21). The Furniss image of Mark Tapley, the second principal figure in the illustration, is bothmore stylized and less realistic than Barnard's in "Well, sir!" said the Captain, putting his hat a little more on one side, for it was rather tight in the crown: "You're quite a public man I calc'late" (Chapter 32). The closest parallel to the Furniss image of the suffering Martin and his dutiful nurse, but lacking the sardonic American visitor, is Fred Barnard's "Jolly!" (see below: Chapter 33).

Over the course of a number of illustrated editions of The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) one may find only a few representations of Dickens's satire on the "civilising" figure of the fully-armed American frontiersman, Chollop, most tellingly realised by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (in the 1867 Diamond Edition).A New York native, Eytinge does not suggest that Chollop is either ignorant, belligerent, or jingoistic; rather, he portrays him as shrewd and tough, though a bit ill-kempt, with a penetrating, uncompromising gaze. Barnard in the 1872 transatlantic Household Edition published as much for American as British consumption by Chapman and Hall and Harper and Brothers accuratelydescribes and highjlights the appearances of both Captain Kedgick and Colonel Diver, but does not offer a comparable portrait of the American frontiersman. In the original 1843-44 narrative-pictorial series, Hablot Knight Browne presents images of such cartoonish Americans as the journalists Diver and Brick, the devious land-agent Zephaniah Scadder, and the former slave, Cicero, but not of the Watertoast Society, Lafayette Kettle, or Chollop — indeed, since the few American chapters have an abundance of quirky characters, most of the novel's illustrators have had to be highly selective in illustrating these satirical chapters. American graphic artist Felix Octavius Carr Darley in the Sheldon and Company "Household" Edition volumes (1863) elected not to depict any of these Swiftian creations based on Dickens's impressions of Americans acquired on his 1842 reading tour of the eastern United States. In contrast, Barnard — although he fails to describe the frontiersman — includes such minor Americans as the porter at Mrs. Pawkins' boarding-house, Captain Kedgick, and General Fladdock.

The Furniss illustration juxtaposes a less-than-flattering image of the pipe-smoking Yankee (minus his numerous weapons, and carrying only the "sword-stick") and a study of the perspiring, hard-working young Englishman (still wearing his top-hat) with a full washtub to the left and the delirious patient to the right. The impressionistic, vigorously drawn figure of the dynamic Englishman in shirt-sleeves, leaning in the doorway with the light behind him, dominates the composition and contrasts the casual, relaxed pose of his pipe-smoking Yankee visitor whose credo is the unchallenged Second Amendment of the American Constitution, "The Right to Bear Arms" (passed on 15 December 1791). He is not the shrewd, well-armed, and potentially violent desperado of the 1867 Eytinge portrait, and therefore does not represent the lawless ethos of the frontier as explored in many of Dickens's American characters in this transatlantic novel.

Related Materials: Background, Setting, Characterization

Other Programs of Illustration, 1843-1923

Relevant Illustrations, 1843-1872

Left: Phiz's emphasis on the salutary effects of Mark's neighbourliness, Mr. Tapley is Recognised by Some Fellow-Citizens of Eden (Chapter 33, January 1844). Centre: Phiz shows Martin in the grip of Giant Despair in this Mississippi Vanity Fair, The Thriving City of Eden as it Appeared in Fact (Chapter 23, September 1843). Right: Eytinge's perceptive portrait of the lawless frontiersman, Hannibal Chollop (1867).

Above: Barnard's realisation of the scene in the Eden cabin when Martin, wasted by exhaustion and illness, nearly expires from malaria, "Jolly!" (1872).

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. , 1990.

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.

__________. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vols. 1 to 4.

__________. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

__________. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2.

__________. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.

Guerard, Albert J. "Martin Chuzzlewit: The Novel as Comic Entertainment." The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Faulkner. Chicago & London: U. Chicago , 1976, 235-60.

Hammerton, J. A. Ch. 15, "Martin Chuzzlewit." The Dickens Picture-Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrations with 600 Illustrations and a Frontispiece by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vois. London: Educational Book, 1910. XVII, 266-93.

Steig, Michael. "III. From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. , 1978, 51-85.

__________. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-49.

Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985.

Created 29 January 2016

Last modified 18 January 2020