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"I'll beat you to a pulp, you dogs."
Charles Green
1876
13.8 by 10.7 cm (5 ⅜ by 4 ⅛ inches), framed
Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, The Household Edition, XII, 24.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Reach me yonder hat, my dear, and we’ll go directly." With that, Mr. Quilp suffered himself to roll gradually off the desk until his short legs touched the ground, when he got upon them and led the way from the counting-house to the wharf outside, when the first objects that presented themselves were the boy who had stood on his head and another young gentleman of about his own stature, rolling in the mud together, locked in a tight embrace, and cuffing each other with mutual heartiness.
"It’s Kit!" cried Nelly, clasping her hand, "poor Kit who came with me! Oh, pray stop them, Mr. Quilp!"
"II’ll stop ‘em," cried Quilp, diving into the little counting-house and returning with a thick stick, "I’ll stop ‘em. Now, my boys, fight away. I’ll fight you both. I’ll take both of you, both together, both together!"
With which defiances the dwarf flourished his cudgel, and dancing round the combatants and treading upon them and skipping over them, in a kind of frenzy, laid about him, now on one and now on the other, in a most desperate manner, always aiming at their heads and dealing such blows as none but the veriest little savage would have inflicted. This being warmer work than they had calculated upon, speedily cooled the courage of the belligerents, who scrambled to their feet and called for quarter.
"I’ll beat you to a pulp, you dogs," said Quilp, vainly endeavoring to get near either of them for a parting blow. "I’ll bruise you until you’re copper-coloured, I’ll break your faces till you haven’t a profile between you, I will."
"Come, you drop that stick or it’ll be worse for you," said his boy, dodging round him and watching an opportunity to rush in; "you drop that stick."
"Come a little nearer, and I’ll drop it on your skull, you dog," said Quilp, with gleaming eyes; "a little nearer — nearer yet." [Chapter VI, 23 in the Household Edition; running head, "Mr. Quilp Executes a Brilliant Manoeuvre" (23)].
Up to this point, Dickens has only suggested Daniel Quilp's proclivity for violence, particularly in the scenes on Tower Hill involving his much-put-upon wife and his antagonistic mother-in-law, Mrs. Jiniwin. However, once he has crossed to the Surrey side, Quilp reveals himself ready enough to resort to violence to keep a subordinate in his place. He has already hit the boy who serves as his watchman at the countinghouse, and here he prepares to use his cudgel to admonish the combatants, namely, his own boy and Grandfather Trent's assistant, Kit Nubbles, who has apparently followed Nell in order to protect her as she makes her way through Southwark to Quilp's to deliver Grandfather Trent's note and returning to the Covent Garden area.
From his posture and hers, as well as from Green's caption, we may judge the charged situation: as Quilp threatens to fight both boys at once, Nell leans apprehensively forward, interceding with Quilp: "It's Kit!" cried Nelly, clasping her hands, "poor Kit who came with me! Oh, pray stop them, Mr. Quilp!" (23). In the backdrop Green has placed the shed that serves as Quilp's counting-house, as well as the high-roofed warehouse where his workers used to dismantle superannuated vessels. We surmise from the lack of activity as well as Quilp's loans to Grandfather Trent that the hideous dwarf has switched from industrial activities to loan-sharking. Those loans, which Grandfather Trent will not likely repay, will enable Quilp to manipulate Nell into marrying him.
At this point in the original series, readers have already encountered Quilp twice in the Phiz-Cattermole illustrations at home (Chapter 4) and in his office (Chapter 5), both of which are in essence environmental scenes: we judge the evil character from his manipulativeness at home and his complete control of his environment at work, and we have a sense of Quilp as an acute observer. But Green gives Quilp in an additional aspect not immediately apparent in Dickens's early descriptions of him: Quilp is an active, dynamic bully who enforces his will through the threat of physical violence, a threat which, intimates Green, Quilp is quite prepared to act upon.
Oddly enough, Quilp is absent from the scene at Quilp's Wharf in Chapter VI of the 1840 Master Humphrey's Clock illustration, in which we are probably seeing Quilp's ship-wrecking facility from the perspective of the river, although the narrator remarks that Quilp does not approach his counting-house from the wharf, but arrives at it through a series of alleyways. Dickens states that Quilp's firm no longer actively engages in the dismantling of derelict ships, but Cattermole shows a canon from a British warship of the line as the final remnant of a dismantled vessel. Green similarly provides evidence (in the form of the trunks of masts) that Quilp does indeed run a ship-wrecking business.
This is our first close-up of Quilp in the first six illustrations in Green's program,
which has already established the relationships between Fred, Nell, and their
Grandfather, and has introduced Kit Nubbles. With his propensity for violence and his
interest in replacing his present wife ("Mrs. Quilp No. One") with Nell in four years,
when she will be nearly eighteen, Quilp threatens the stability of the curiosity shop
family. The reader suspects that Grandfather Trent's nocturnal gambling expeditions have
already seriously jeopardized it. Green uses the river not merely as
local colour, but as the context for Quilp's business and his freedom of movement as he
first appears as a tiny figure, crossing the Thames in a small ferry, and then arrives at
his quayside business. Fittingly, our last view of Quilp, right at the end of the
program, will be Quilp's drowning in the river upon which he has done business:
Left: Clayton J. Clarke's amusing caricatures of the demonic villain in the
Player's Cigarette card series, Quilp (Card No. 27, 1910).
Centre: The original edition's depictions of Quilp's business and place of refuge; George
Cattermole has applied his elegant architectural style to an odd subject, the run-down
and apparently activity-less industrial facility which Quilp owns on the Surrey side,
Directly Quilp had shut himself in, the boy stood on before the
door, then walked about on his hands: Quilp's Wharf. Right: Harry Furniss's
introductory character study of the novel's self-satisfied, diminutive villain:
Left: W. H. C. Groome's depiction of Quilp's violent putting down of the fight between his wharf boy and Kit Nubbles: "Now, my boys, fight away.". Right: Thomas Worth's illustration features a fairy-tale dwarf but a realistic setting: "Now, my boys, fight away. I'll fight you both" (1872).
The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd." London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, n. d. [1910?]
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz, George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury and Evans, 1849.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. XII. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. V. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910.
Created 4 May 2019
Last modified 14 April 2026