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Dismal Jemmy by J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") for the watercolour series (1910): reproduced on John Player cigarette card no. 20: Ninety-two Characters from Dickens: The Pickwick Papers. 2 ½ inches high by 1 ¼ inches wide (6.3 cm high by 3.3 cm wide). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

DISMAL JEMMY (The Pickwick Papers)

A strolling player, brother of Job Trotter, in every way worthy of relationship to that tearful hypocrite. How cheerfully he greets compassionate Mr. Pickwick. — “Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace? The calm, cool water seems to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash; and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes for ever.” [Verso of Card No. 20]

Passage Illustrated: Dismal Jemmy Shares His Obsession with a Watery Suicide

Mr. Pickwick was roused from the agreeable reverie into which he had been led by the objects before him, by a deep sigh, and a touch on his shoulder. He turned round: and the dismal man was at his side.

‘Contemplating the scene?’ inquired the dismal man.

‘I was,’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘And congratulating yourself on being up so soon?’

Mr. Pickwick nodded assent.

‘Ah! people need to rise early, to see the sun in all his splendour, for his brightness seldom lasts the day through. The morning of day and the morning of life are but too much alike.’

‘You speak truly, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘How common the saying,’ continued the dismal man, ‘“The morning’s too fine to last.” How well might it be applied to our everyday existence. God! what would I forfeit to have the days of my childhood restored, or to be able to forget them for ever!’

‘You have seen much trouble, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick compassionately.

‘I have,’ said the dismal man hurriedly; ‘I have. More than those who see me now would believe possible.’ He paused for an instant, and then said abruptly —

‘Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace?’

‘God bless me, no!’ replied Mr. Pickwick, edging a little from the balustrade, as the possibility of the dismal man’s tipping him over, by way of experiment, occurred to him rather forcibly.

‘I have thought so, often,’ said the dismal man, without noticing the action. ‘The calm, cool water seems to me to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your miseries and misfortunes for ever.’ The sunken eye of the dismal man flashed brightly as he spoke, but the momentary excitement quickly subsided; and he turned calmly away, as he said —

‘There — enough of that. I wish to see you on another subject. You invited me to read that paper, the night before last, and listened attentively while I did so.’

‘I did,’ replied Mr. Pickwick; ‘and I certainly thought —’

‘I asked for no opinion,’ said the dismal man, interrupting him, ‘and I want none. You are travelling for amusement and instruction. Suppose I forward you a curious manuscript — observe, not curious because wild or improbable, but curious as a leaf from the romance of real life — would you communicate it to the club, of which you have spoken so frequently?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, ‘if you wished it; and it would be entered on their transactions.’

‘You shall have it,’ replied the dismal man. ‘Your address;’ and, Mr. Pickwick having communicated their probable route, the dismal man carefully noted it down in a greasy pocket-book, and, resisting Mr. Pickwick’s pressing invitation to breakfast, left that gentleman at his inn, and walked slowly away. [Household Edition, Chapter V, "A short one — showing, among other matters, how Mr. Pickwick undertook to drive, and Mr. Winkle to ride, and how they both did it," pp. 29-30]

Other Images of Tale-Teller Dismal Jemmy and His Melancholy Tale (1836-1910)

Left: Thomas Nast's behind-the-scenes approach to the story of the alcoholic clown, "Never shall I forget the repulsive sight that met my eyes as I turned around" in the American Household Edition (1873). Centre: Harry Furniss's Charles Dickens Library Edition characterisation of the teller of the tale that reduces the dying pantomime clown to a pair of claw-like hands, The Stroller's Tale (1910). Right: Robert Seymour's original serial engraving focuses on the principals in the inset narrative: The Dying Clown (April-May, 1836). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Commentary: Wishing for a Watery Suicide

The novel's first interpolated short story, originally published in the second serial instalment (May 1836), was accompanied by a piece of social realism, The Dying Clown, a standard death-bed scene. In the British Household Edition volume, published in London the year following the Harper & Bros. volume, Phiz seems to have avoided the melancholy subject of the professional entertainer's drinking himself to death to escape his morbid delusions. See Barbara Gates's "Cases and Classes: Sensational Suicides and Their Interpreters" and George Cruikshank's The Maniac Father and the Convict Brother are gone — the Poor Girl, Homeless, Friendless and Deserted, Destitute, and Gin-mad Commits Self Murder in The Drunkard's Children (1848). Seymour committed suicide on 20 April 1836, after being forced to redraw the illustration The Dying Clown for the forthcoming serial instalment.

Mystified by Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle’s continuing absence, Mr. Pickwick welcomes them back enthusiastically. Then Mr. Snodgrass begins to provide, in some detail, the cause of their prolonged absence, on Pickwick's casually introducing them to “Dismal Jemmy,” a friend of the stranger (Alfred Jingle). Presently, “Dismal Jemmy” (otherwise, Jeremy Hutley, an out-of-work actor and Job Trotter’s brother) resumes the cautionary tale that he was about to narrate for Pickwick. The first-person interpolated narrative concerns a talented but temperamental actor with a drinking problem, and is appropriately entitled “The Stroller’s Tale” since both the narrator and the protagonist are “strollers.”

"Dismal Jemmy" in Dickens's first novel is not so much a character as a narrative voice or a dominating tonal quality in the first of the picaresque novel's inset narratives. This particular melancholy short story is distinguished by the fact that its illustrator was not Phiz, but Dickens's initial artistic collaborator, Robert Seymour, who coincidentally committed suicide in his back garden a week before the plate was printed. The virtue of these interpolated tales is that they admirably fill out the monthly instalments with entirely different narrative voices. The morose Jem Hutley, nicknamed "Dismal" because of his constantly considering reverting to suicide as a recourse for his problems, is in fact another out-of-work thespian and Job Trotter's brother-in-law. His obsession with self-destruction (particularly the all-too-common expedient of committing suicide by drowning oneself in the Thames) renders him a distinctive "voice" most suitable for the narrator of the interpolated “Stroller’s Tale” in The Pickwick Papers, Chapter III, which opened the second monthly instalment (May 1836): The Dying Clown. This is the first of the novel's nine such interpolated tales, often involving the supernatural, the others being these:

Related Materials: Dickens's Short Fiction, 1833-1868

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 them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, nd. [1910?]

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

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837). London: Chapman & Hall: April 1836 through November 1837.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.

_______. 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. 22 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 2.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 5.

_______. 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 Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.


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