Mr. Smallweed Breaks the Pipe of Peace by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne) for Bleak House, facing p. 338 (ch. 34, "A Turn of the Screw"). 10 cm x 13.4 cm (4 x 5 ½ inches), vignetted. For passage illustrated, see below. [Click on the illustration to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: The Money-lender Turns the Screw on Mr. George

"You can ask me anything, Mr. George." (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed to-day.)

"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"

"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.

"Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just mention to him what our understanding is."

Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr. Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.

"But I think you asked me, Mr. George" — old Smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now — "I think you asked me, what did the letter mean?"

"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."

Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.

"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"

The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity has now attained its profoundest point.

"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!" [Chapter XXXIV, "A Turn of the Screw," 338; Project Gutenberg etext (see bibliography below)]

Commentary: The Blustery Money-lender shows his true colours

Since Tulkinghorn is convinced that acquiring Hawdon's papers will reveal the dead man's romantic liaison with Honoria Dedlock, he presses the irascible money-lender for them. When George Rouncewell and Matthew Bagnet, both in debt to him over financing the shooting gallery in Leicester Square, attempt to thwart him, he reveals his true nature. Joshua Smallweed shows no mercy to people who owe him money, and enjoys inflicting emotional pain on others. Here, he drops all pretence of being George's "dear friend," breaking to pieces the pipe he habitually offers his client and ordering his daughter, Judy, to remove the pair from his parlour since they have refused to comply with his demands for Hawdon's personal correspondence (which will palpably connect him to the dead law-writer Nemo). Smallweed has been able to lay claim to the deceased Krook's possessions because Smallweed's senile wife is Krook's only living relation. After this unpleasant interview, Smallweed drives Mr. George into bankruptcy by calling in debts, in turn threatening Bagnet's music shop. Since Smallweed holds the upper hand and since Tulkinghorn agrees to remove the twin threats if George hands over his former Captain's correspondence, Trooper George relents, thereby saving Bagnet's business as well as his own.

Other​ Illustrations​ of Grandfather Smallweed and George (1877 and 1910)

​

Left: Harry Furniss's somewhat derivate version of the scene, with the irascible Joshua Smallweed looming much larger than in Phiz's illustration: Grandfather Smallweed's Anger (1910). Right: Fred Barnard's realisation of Grandfather Smallweed: "I have come down," repeated Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the property." — Chap. xxxiii (1873) in the Household Edition.

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions

Image scan and text by George P. Landow; additional text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image 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

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Bradbury & Evans. Bouverie Street, 1853.

_______. Bleak House. Project Gutenberg etext prepared by Donald Lainson, Toronto, Canada (charlie@idirect.com), with revision and corrections by Thomas Berger and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. Seen 9 November 2007.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 6. "Bleak House and Little Dorrit: Iconography of Darkness." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 131-172.

Vann, J. Don. "Bleak House, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, October 1846—April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 69-70./


Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

Phiz

Bleak
House

Next

Created 14 November 2007

Last modified 13 March 2021