“Miss Podsnsap's Birthday Party” by Harry Furniss — sixth illustration for "Our Mutual Friend" (1910)

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Miss Podsnsap's Birthday Party

Harry Furniss

1910

13.8 cm x 9.2 cm, or 5 ¼ by 3 ¾ inches, vignetted

Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, for Book 1, Chapter XI, “Podsnappery,” facing XV, 144.

Mrs. Lammle was proceeding with every reassuring wile, when the head of Georgina suddenly went back against the wall again and her eyes closed. “Oh! there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh, he’ll be my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh, what shall I do?” — Our Mutual, p. 144.

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: The Embarrassment Occasioned by a Husband-hunting Society Mama

“What I mean is,” pursued Georgiana, ‘that Ma being so endowed with awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere — I mean, at least, everywhere where I am — perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it — I say it very badly — I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean?”

“Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!” Mrs. Lammle was proceeding with every reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back against the wall again and her eyes closed.

“Oh! there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh I know she’s going to bring him here! Oh, don’t bring him, don’t bring him! Oh, he’ll be my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh, what shall I do!” This time Georgiana accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet upon the floor, and was altogether in quite a desperate condition. But, there was no escape from the majestic Mrs. Podsnap’s production of an ambling stranger, with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other framed and glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ, as if he descried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft, brought her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the piano played another ‘set,’ expressive of his mournful aspirations after freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy motions, and the ambler took Miss Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had struck out an entirely original conception. [Book One, “The Cup and the Lip”; Chapter XI, “Podsnappery,” 144]

Commentary: One Scene Embedded in Another at Georgina's Eighteenth Birthday Party

Dickens portrays eighteen-year-old society girl Georgiana Podsnap as inexperienced, sheltered, and easily manipulated. The adolescent is putty in the hands of the recently married Mrs. Sophronia Lammle, with whom she sits, watching her birthday party as it unfolds. Here, Furniss readily distinguishes the engaged, alert and by no means young Mrs. Lammle from the withdrawn, embarrassed Georgina, her head averted. However, the technical brilliance of the composition is how effectively Furniss embeds the interaction of Mrs. Podsnap and a young gentleman — "somebody with a glass in his eye" — for Furniss permits us to see what Georgina sees reflected in the mirror immediately beside her.

Comparable Chapter Illustrations in the Original & Diamond Editions, 1864 & 1867

Left: Marcus Stone's August 1865 panoramic study of the society gathering that forms the backdrop for Miss Podsnap's conversation with Mrs. Lammle: Podsnappery. (Part 4). Sol Eytinge, Junior's study of the Philistine, Mr. John Podsnap, Georgina's haughty father, in the same chapter: Mr. Podsnap (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

Illustrations by Marcus Stone (40 plates from the Chapman and Hall edition of May 1864 through November 1865)
Frontispieces by Octavius Carr Darley (4 photogravures from the Hurd and Houghton Household Edition of 1866)
Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
James Mahoney (58 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1875)
Harry Furniss (28 lithographs from the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, 1910)
Clayton J. Clarke (two studies from his designs for the Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910)

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].

Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]

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. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. The Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. 21 vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865]. Vol. XIV.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VIII.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. 441-442.

Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 74.

Created 1 August 2025