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Bob Sawyer's Party. The visitors having all departed, in compliance with the rather pressing request of Mrs. Raddle, the luckless Mr. Bob Sawyer was left alone, to meditate on the probable events of the morrow, and the pleasures of the evening.
Harry Furniss
1910
14.1 cm x 9.5 cm (5 ½ by 3 ⅝ inches), framed
Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing II, 456.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Mr. Pickwick found it in vain to protest his innocence, so hurried downstairs into the street, whither he was closely followed by Mr. Tupman, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass. Mr. Ben Allen, who was dismally depressed with spirits and agitation, accompanied them as far as London Bridge, and in the course of the walk confided to Mr. Winkle, as an especially eligible person to intrust the secret to, that he was resolved to cut the throat of any gentleman, except Mr. Bob Sawyer, who should aspire to the affections of his sister Arabella. Having expressed his determination to perform this painful duty of a brother with proper firmness, he burst into tears, knocked his hat over his eyes, and, making the best of his way back, knocked double knocks at the door of the Borough Market office, and took short naps on the steps alternately, until daybreak, under the firm impression that he lived there, and had forgotten the key.
The visitors having all departed, in compliance with the rather pressing request of Mrs. Raddle, the luckless Mr. Bob Sawyer was left alone, to meditate on the probable events of the morrow, and the pleasures of the evening. [Chapter XXXII, “Describes far more fully than the Court Newsman ever did, a Bachelor's Party, given by Mr. Bob Sawyer at his Lodgings in the Borough,” pp. 454-455]
Furniss has translated Phiz's May 1837 steel-engraving Conviviality at Bob Sawyer's by focussing on the aftermath, when the landlady, the determined Mrs. Raddle, has ejected Bob's guests in the wee-hours. Thus, the scene involves Bob and Ben at their bachelor rooms in the Borough rather than at their medical clinic in Bristol. Having been an innocent party at the bacchanal, Pickwick is aggrieved at Mrs. Raddle's characterization of him as the worst of the lot.
Furniss depicts Bob Sawyer as a fashionably-dressed youthful party-goer and party-giver in checkered stirrup pants and cravat. The admired disorder of glasses and bottles gives credence to the wisdom of Mrs. Raddle's insisting upon the party's breaking up and the young guests (with Pickwick, whom she regards as disreputable for associating with such youthful revellers) departing. The chapter comes as something of a comic relief after Pickwick's interview with his legal pleader in the coming trial involving Mrs. Bardell. The bachelor party's comic songs have kept the neighbourhood of Lant Street in the Borough awake into the early hours of the morning, and the irascible landlady has insisted Bob dismiss his drunken guests. The disreputable medical student has borrowed money from her, and is behind in his rent.
But Furniss's focus is on a young bourgeois of some style and possibly some intelligence wasting his life. The overturned chair represents the general disorder of the bachelors' apartment, and the full punch bowl six drinking glasses, the overturned bottles, and Bob's posture fully convey his dissolute lifestyle in a way that his merely raising a glass in the previous illustrators' interpretations has not.
Left: Phiz's original engraving for the thirteenth instalment of the serial novel, Conviviality at Bob Sawyer's (May 1837). Centre: Phiz's Household Edition woodcut reworks his original 1837 steel engraving as Mr. Bob Sawyer's boy . . . . peeped through the glass door, and thus listened and looked on at the same time (1874). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s dual portrait of the slong-suffering Ben Allen and his bibulous, extroverted friend and business partner, the ebullient Bob, Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben Allen for Chapter XXXVIII (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
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 Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. 1.
_____. 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 8 March 2024