"Mr. Winkle Shut Out" — Harry Furniss's thirty-third regular illustration for Dickens's "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" (1910)

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Mr. Winkle Shut Out. All this time he was shivering with cold, and every time he raised his hand to the knocker the wind took the dressing-gown in a most unpleasant manner.

Harry Furniss

1910

14.2 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, 528.

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Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: Mr. Winkle in a "Clothing Dilemma" at Bath

‘Take it away, take it away,’ cried Mr. Winkle. ‘Here’s somebody coming out of another house; put me into the chair. Hide me! Do something with me!’

All this time he was shivering with cold; and every time he raised his hand to the knocker, the wind took the dressing-gown in a most unpleasant manner.

‘The people are coming down the crescent now. There are ladies with ‘em; cover me up with something. Stand before me!’ roared Mr. Winkle. But the chairmen were too much exhausted with laughing to afford him the slightest assistance, and the ladies were every moment approaching nearer and nearer.

Mr. Winkle gave a last hopeless knock; the ladies were only a few doors off. He threw away the extinguished candle, which, all this time he had held above his head, and fairly bolted into the sedan-chair where Mrs. Dowler was. [Chapter XXXVI, “The Chief Features of which, will be found to be an Authentic Version of The Legend of Prince Bladud, and a most Extraordinary Calamity that befell Mr. Winkle,” 524]

Commentary: Another Embarrassing Moment for the Hapless Winkle

Furniss has translated Phiz's April 1837 steel-engraving Mr. Winkle's Situation when the Door "blew-to" by placing the suffering Winkle in nightcap and dressing gown in the background, upper right, and the highly amused, corpulent chairman and his companion, the thin link-carrier, in the foreground. The other figures are minimized, so that, for example, the lady in the sedan chair, Mrs. Dowler, is barely noticeable as Furniss immerses everything else in darkness. Although Furniss effectively utilizes juxtaposition and caricature for his situational comedy, Phiz's including the housefront and considerably more detail, particularly about the highly embarrassed Winkle himself, far more visually interesting and entertaining. Dickens's stock "irate man," Captain Dowler, is barely visible in the Furniss plate, and of the second sedan-chair carrier all we can see is his bearded head.

Scenes with The Trio on the Road to Birmingham in Other Editions (1837-1874)

Left: Phiz's original engraving for the thirteenth instalment of the serial novel, Mr. Winkle's Situation when the Door 'blew-to' (April 1837). Centre: Phiz's Household Edition woodcut reworks his original 1837 steel engraving as He no sooner heard the horrible threat of the valorous Dowler, than he bounced out of the sedan (1874). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s portrait of the severe, choleric retired military man, Captain Dowler for Chapter XXXV (1867).

Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910

Bibliography

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 6 March 2024