[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Harry Furniss —> Little Dorrit —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
The Plotters
Harry Furniss
1910
detail from an illustration 13.9 cm high x 9.4 cm wide, vignetted.
Dickens's Little Dorrit, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Book the Second, "Poverty," Chapter 10, "The Dreams of Mrs. Flintwinch thicken," facing XII, 577.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The key of the door below was now heard in the lock, and the door was heard to open and close. In due sequence Mr. Flintwinch appeared; on whose entrance the visitor rose from his chair, laughing loud, and folded him in a close embrace.
"How goes it, my cherished friend!" said [Blandois, rolling Mr. Flintwich [sic] about.] "How goes the world, my Flintwinch? Rose-coloured? So much the better, so much the better! Ah, but you look charming! Ah, but you look young and fresh as the flowers of Spring! Ah, good little boy! Brave child, brave child!"
While heaping these compliments on Mr. Flintwinch, he rolled him about with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.
"I had a presentiment, last time, that we should be better and more intimately acquainted. Is it coming on you, Flintwinch? Is it yet coming on?" [Book the Second, "Riches," Chapter 10, "The Dreams of Mrs. Flintwinch thicken," 567: the wording of picture's original caption has been emphasized]
Fin-de-siécle illustrator Harry Furniss has reinterpreted the secondary antagonists of the novel. In this scene, the murderer Rigaud (alias "Lagnier" and now "Blandois"), having returned to London from Italy, warmly greets his "old friend," Mrs. Clennam's cunning business associate and confidant, Jeremiah Flintwinch. In the twenty-eight Charles Dickens Library Edition illustrations, the melodramatic Gallic scoundrel appears just three times, most prominently in this twentieth lithograph based on a vigorous pen-and-ink sketch which, unlike James Mahoney's realistic interpretation in the 1873 Household Edition, captures the whimsical and the fantastic elements of the villain as visualized by Phiz in 1856=57.
The chief illustrators of the book in the nineteenth century, Phiz and Mahoney, and the first great Dickens illustrator of the twentieth, Furniss, have all focussed on the same aspect of the relationship between the French swindler and murderer and the crusty keeper of Mrs. Clennam's personal and business secrets, Jeremiah Flintwinch, who ultimately absconds to Holland with his mistress's fortune. Whereas Phiz and Mahoney, like Furniss, exploit to the situation for its character comedy as they use it to advance the plot, Furniss seems simply interested in the contrast between the stone-faced Englishman and the flayboyant, satanic Frenchman, emphasizing the difference in their height and in their faces.
Left: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispiece for the fourth volume of the novel, Closing In — Book II, Chapter XXX. Centre: Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the anxious Affery and her calculating husband, Mr. and Mrs. Flintwinch (1867). Right: a detail of the English and French villains, short Flintwinch and tall Blandois, Mrs. Clennam and the Plotters — a detail (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: Phiz's study of Rigaud (now, "Blandois") embracing the reluctant Englishman as Mrs. Clennam and Arthur Clennam observe, Mr. Flintwinch receives the Embrace of Friendship (Book 2, Chapter 10; Part 13, December 1856). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Above: James Mahoney's study of Rigaud (now, "Blandois"), Affery, and Arthur Clennam in this chapter, "Pray tell me, Affery," said Arthur, "who is this gentleman? (Book 2, Chapter 10, in the 1873 Household Edition). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. , 1990.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). The Authentic Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1901 [rpt. 30 May 1857 volume].
_____. Little Dorrit. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.
_____. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. 14 vols.
_____. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873. Vol. 5.
_____. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 12.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 19: Little Dorrit." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 398-427.
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. [Rpt. of the London 1899 edition]
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
"Little Dorrit — Fifty-eight Illustrations by James Mahoney." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Gordon Thomson, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. McL. Ralston, J. Mahoney, H. French, Charles Green, E. G. Dalziel, A. B. Frost, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1907.
Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1999.
Steig, Michael. "VI. Bleak House and Little Dorrit." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. , 1978, 131-298.
Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985.
Created 22 May 2016
Last modified 29 January 2020