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Smike's Delusion
Harry Furniss
1910
5 ½ by 3 ¾ inches (14.1 cm high x 9.3 cm wide), vignetted
With eyes almost starting from their sockets, Smike was shrieking for help. "Be calm," cried Nicholas, "you have been dreaming." "No, no, no!" cried Smike. "There — there — behind the tree!" — p. 775
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing IV, 784.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
He had brought Smike out in his arms — poor fellow! a child might have carried him then — to see the sunset, and, having arranged his couch, had taken his seat beside it. He had been watching the whole of the night before, and being greatly fatigued both in mind and body, gradually fell asleep.
He could not have closed his eyes five minutes, when he was awakened by a scream, and starting up in that kind of terror which affects a person suddenly roused, saw, to his great astonishment, that his charge had struggled into a sitting posture, and with eyes almost starting from their sockets, cold dew standing on his forehead, and in a fit of trembling which quite convulsed his frame, was calling to him for help.
"Good Heaven, what is this?" said Nicholas, bending over him. "Be calm; you have been dreaming."
"No, no, no!" cried Smike, clinging to him. "Hold me tight. Don’t let me go. There, there. Behind the tree!"
Nicholas followed his eyes, which were directed to some distance behind the chair from which he himself had just risen. But, there was nothing there. [Chapter LVIII, "In which one Scene of this History is closed," 775-776]
Left: C. S. Reinhart's less caricatural and more realistic version of the death of Smike: "Now," he murmured, "I am happy.". Right: Phiz is not clear in his caption that Brooker is merely a conjuration of the dying Smike's fancy: The Recognition (September 1839).
Although the illustration at the close of the Phiz sequence, The Recognition (September 1839), seems to reify or legitimize Smike's paranoia as he approaches premature death, Furniss through his caption, Smike's Delusion, may be suggesting that Smike does not actually see either Ralph Nickleby or his former clerk, Brooker. However, in the composition of the plate Furniss does depict a rundown, disreputable Brooker lurking nearby, revealing the state of Smike's psyche — the lingering fear that he will be forcibly returned to Squeers's custody. Brooker, as Dickens only lately revealed, had deposited the boy at Dotheboys hall years earlier. In Chapter 44, Brooker, spurned by Ralph Nickleby, proves instrumental in bringing down his former employer.
Brooker, despite the implications of the caption, does indeed appear in Furniss's version of the scene of Smike's impending death, perhaps due to consumption, to which the insalubrious living conditions and poor treatment he received at Squeers' hands may have been contributing factors. Ironically, although he engineered Snawley's testimony, Ralph knew nothing of his son's being alive because Brooker, aggrieved at Ralph's treatment, pretended that the boy had died. Perhaps Ralph's attempts to get back at Nicholas by plotting with Snawley and Squeers to recapture Smike "hasten the boy's death" (Bentley, 240).
However, it is possible that the caption is alluding to another of Smike's "delusions," for at the Nicklebys' cottage at Bow he has fallen hopelessly in love with Kate. What Furniss foregrounds is Nicholas's devotion to the emaciated, terrified boy. As in the original Phiz interpretation, Furniss has set the scene outside (rather than, as in the Household Edition, indoors) in order to insert the terrifying figure in the background. Furniss contrasts the "delusional" Smike with the calm demeanour of his faithful attendant, Nicholas, and the tranquility of the natural setting. Furniss uses the gnarled, distorted oak to externalize Smike's continuing fears of that shadowy figure from his past.
Barnard, J. "Fred" (illustrator). Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, with fifty-eight illustrations. The Works of Charles Dickens: The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume 15. Rpt. 1890.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. I.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. With 39 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, 1839.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.
__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al.. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.
Created 2 October 2021