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Mr. Pickwick at the Seminary for Young Ladies. "Look at me. Do I look like a robber?"
Harry Furniss
1910
14.2 cm x 9.2 cm (5 ½ by 3 ½ inches), framed
Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing II, 225.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
‘Ladies — dear ladies,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Oh. he says we’re dear,’ cried the oldest and ugliest teacher. ‘Oh, the wretch!’
‘Ladies,’ roared Mr. Pickwick, rendered desperate by the danger of his situation. ‘Hear me. I am no robber. I want the lady of the house.’
‘Oh, what a ferocious monster!’ screamed another teacher. ‘He wants Miss Tomkins.’
Here there was a general scream.
‘Ring the alarm bell, somebody!’ cried a dozen voices.
‘Don’t — don’t,’ shouted Mr. Pickwick. ‘Look at me. Do I look like a robber! My dear ladies — you may bind me hand and leg, or lock me up in a closet, if you like. Only hear what I have got to say — only hear me.’
‘How did you come in our garden?’ faltered the housemaid.
‘Call the lady of the house, and I’ll tell her everything,’ said Mr. Pickwick, exerting his lungs to the utmost pitch. ‘Call her — only be quiet, and call her, and you shall hear everything.’ [Chapter XVI, “Too full of Adventure to be briefly described,” 229]
Once again, Furniss offers a reinterpretation of an illustration by Hablot Knight Brown. Instead, however, of depicting the unwitting dupe crunched behind a door as the teachers and students erupt into the garden, Furniss has flipped the situation so that the reader is positioned behind as he turns to confront the staff of and students of the ladies seminary. In the September 1836 instalment's humorous illustration The Unexpected Breaking Up of the Seminary for Young Ladies, Phiz has marginalized the hapless protagonist behind the enormous, stout door as the equally large headmistress is emerging, candle in hand, followed by several subordinates and a host of students. This situation is not what Pickwick had expected as he had thought to foil Jingle's plan to run away with an heiress from the academy. Instead, he encounters the head teacher (referred to as both a "spinster" and the "lady abbess"), three teachers, five female servants, all half-dressed, and some thirty boarders. Furniss makes the scene more theatrical by giving Pickwick a broad gesture and putting him, as it were, in the spotlight. In the background he shows far more of the building's interior, with another adult female on the staircase.
Left: Phiz's original engraving for the seminary episode, The unexpected breaking up of the Seminary for young ladies (Chapter XVI, September 1836). Centre: Phiz's Household Edition woodcut reworks his original 1836 steel engraving as The door was just going to be closed in consequence, when an inquisitive boarder, who had been peeping between the hinges, set up a fearful screaming (1874). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Left: Thomas Nast's cartoonish The immortal gentleman over the garden wall in the American Household Edition (1873). Right: Thomas Onwhyn's extra illustration for this chapter, Mr. Pickwick stepped out of the closet, and found himself in the presence of the whole establishment of Westgate House (30 June 1837). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert Buss, and Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, November 1837. With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837).
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 6.
_____. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.
Created 13 March 2024