"Oh my gracious!" said the young woman, "I have found him! Oh! Oliver! Oliver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I've found him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I've found him!" . . .

"What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels; "young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly."

"I don't belong to them. I don't know them. Help! help!" cried Oliver, struggling in the man's powerful grasp. [Chapter 15, "Showing How Very Fond of Oliver Twist, The Merry Old Jew and Miss Nancy were," 110]

The Charles Dickens Library Edition’s Long Caption

"You see he knows me!" cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. "He can't help himself. Make him come home, there's good people, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!" [110]

Commentary: Other Illustrators’ Versions of This Episode

Right: George Cruikshank's original 1837 version of the scene.

Chapter Sixteen, "Relates What Became of Oliver Twist," involves Oliver's being recaptured by the gang at Fagin's instigation. Furniss's illustration, following the parallel original by George Cruikshank, introduces the two adult "career criminals" associated with Fagin's juvenile crew, the loutish Bill Sikes, a housebreaker or burglar, and his doxy (common-law wife), Nancy. Although she is a shrewish figure here, the young prostitute with the heart of gold proves instrumental in the authorities' apprehending Monks later in the novel. Furniss describes the brutal burglar as long, lanky, and physically powerful, but does not employ the romanticism that one finds in the contemporary images of Sikes by Kyd: the tankard-carrying tough with the penetrating gaze of Chapter 16, Bill Sikes (see below), or the somewhat less handsome and less polished thug of the Player's cigarette cards, Bill Sikes (1910). Nor does Furniss provide us with the beautiful, wistful, anxious Nancy (see below) of Charles Pears in the 1912 Waverley Edition. Rather, Furniss's overblown, overdressed Nancy is reminiscent of Cruikshank's original frowzy figure in such illustrations as Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends, which, indeed, is the basis for Furniss's version of the scene.

Whereas Cruikshank, in collaboration with Dickens himself, elected to realize the scene in which Nancy and Sikes abduct Oliver on his way to Mr. Brownlow's book-seller with a package of books, Oliver claimed by his affectionate friends for Bentley's Miscellany, James Mahoney instead introduces the villainous couple prior to their recapturing the boy at Clerkenwell, underscoring the fact that the couple are acting as Fagin's agents. Thus, in the Household Edition Mahoney reveals that, early on, Oliver seems to be the object of behind-the-scenes machinations orchestrated by the master-thief, preparing the reader for the compact between Oliver's half-brother, the malevolent Monks, and Fagin. Neither Cruikshank nor Furniss dwells upon the plot involving Oliver at this point in the story.

Although in the 1867 Diamond Edition Eytinge presents a thoroughly disreputable, ill-kempt, and disconsolate couple in his dual character study entitled Bill Sikes and Nancy (see below), realising the couple as they appear after the botched robbery, in Chapter 39, Felix Octavius Carr Darley in his 1888 Character Sketches from Dickens full-page lithograph revises in a much more realistic manner the original Cruikshank interpretation of the abduction scene in Sikes, Nancy, and Oliver Twist (see below). In contrast to Mahoney, Furniss revises the abduction scene in Oliver trapped by Nancy and Sikes with a dynamic, baroque treatment of the original, with Sikes suddenly bursting out of the beer-shop and into the street as Nancy grabs Oliver.

The Furniss illustration reflects a fundamental re-thinking of the dramatic scene outside the pleb​e​ian beer-house, not so far in distance from the respectable book-seller's at The Green, but socially a very great distance away indeed. Furniss reorganizes the scene so that Oliver's being engulfed by Nancy is foregrounded and Sikes, the enforcer, is caught in the act of entering the scene. Furniss is content not to have so many of the scene's onlookers present (he includes just​ four​), and to focus instead on the three principals, Nancy (centre), Oliver (left of centre) and, looming large, Sikes to the right. Through the hitching post and glass door (on which "Spirits" appears prominently) Furniss implies rather than graphs the beer-shop from which Sikes enters the square. He also gives prominence to Nancy's house-key which she drops in wrestling with Oliver. ​The pair become the evil antithesis ​​of the kindly Mr. Brownlow and his housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin.​

Illustrations from Six Editions, 1837-1890

Left: Eytinge's Bill Sikes and Nancy show the ill-effects of too much drink while they have been hiding from the authorities (1867). Centre: Darley's highly realistic and technically superior study of the trio as they return to Fagin's hideout, Sikes, Nancy, and Oliver Twist (1888). Right: Kyd's study of Sikes undoubtedly reflects the popular conception of Dickens's thug, Bill Sikes (1910).

Left: Charles Pears' psychological study, Nancy, with Sikes's profile as the Shadow of Death (right). Right: Kyd's 1890 chromolithograph of a Macheath-like Bill Sikes.

Above: James Mahoney's Household Edition illustration of Fagin's inquiring as to whether Nancy and Sikes have located the missing Oliver in "You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?" (1871).

Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.].

Bibliography

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1838; rpt. with revisions 1846.

_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.

_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.

_____. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.

_____. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley​ Edition. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.

_____.The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. I (1820-1839).

Forster, John. "Oliver Twist 1838." The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. B. W. Matz. The Memorial Edition. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911. Vol. I, Book 2, Chapter 3.

Kyd (Clayton J. Clarke). Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.

Vann, J. Don. "Oliver Twist." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985, 62-63.

Created 28 January 2015

Last modified 14 February 2020