Mr. Dombey and the World
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
13.7 cm by 11.2 cm
Dickens's Dombey and Son, Chapter 51, facing the title-page for the second volume of the Illustrated Library Edition (1880).
Image scan and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated: Dombey icily receives Major Bagstock and Cousin Feenix
The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it sees in him, and what it says — this is the haunting demon of his mind. It is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere where he is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the street; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over the shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; and is always busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him.
It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other people’s minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden, purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who accompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly mission.
Mr. Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr. Pitt, upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own map, hanging on the wall.
"An unusually cold spring," says Mr. Dombey — to deceive the world. [Chapter 51, "Mr. Dombey and The World," Vol. II: 335-336]
Commentary: The Eyes of the World upon the Impotent Mr. Dombey
Phiz has commented on the nature of Dombey's abstraction by covering the portrait of Edith Granger (upper centre). However, the cloth has slipped a little, permitting Edith to seem to peer down on her estranged husband below, as if to suggest that she is constantly in his thoughts. The neoclassical bust of William Pitt (1759-1806), Britain's youngest Prime Minister to date, and symbolic of Dombey's emotional detachment, stares down from the wardrobe at the right. Michael Steig in the fourth chapter of Dickens and Phiz notes the effectiveness of Phiz's commenting upon his materials through embedded details:
The next plate to continue the Dombey-Edith-Carker triangle, Mr. Dombey and the World (ch. 51), pleased Dickens, (N, 2: 63.) and is another example of how picture and text may be closely integrated. The "stare of the pictures," and of Pitt's bust, as well as the eyes in the world's "own map, hanging on the wall," all derive from Dickens' text. Among the pictures that Phiz has included are the portrait of the first Mrs. Dombey, once again peering out from behind a cloth, and a staring miniature of little Paul; he has also introduced an especially sardonic and satyr-like Father Time immediately behind Dombey's back (perhaps a reference to Dombey's failure to control time in the case of Paul), an amused face on the urn next to Mr. Pitt, and, upon the fire place, two heads and a naked woman (or a Sphinx?) also regard Dombey. The reminders of Paul and Time imply something more than the shame of cuckoldry, but the withered and drooping flowers are suggestions of sexual impotence, while the Major's way of gesturing with his stick seems aggressively phallic in contrast to Dombey's present languidness. The peacock feathers attached to the mirror — again, hanging down, instead of displayed correctly — have three appropriate emblematic meanings: they are another example of "eyes" looking at Dombey, they inevitably evoke the idea of Dombey's overweening pride, and they symbolize the misfortune which has come to the House of Dombey. [103/104]
Parallel Illustration from The Household Edition (1877)
Above: Fred Barnard's comment on Dombey's self-imposed isolation is to show
his messenger gossiping with other employees at a public house near the firm's offices:
Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son
- Dombey and Son (homepage)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
- O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
- Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
- Fred Barnard's 61 illustrations for the Household Edition (1877)
- Groome's illustrations of the Collins Pocket Edition of Dombey and Son (1900, rpt. 1934)
- Kyd's five Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910
- Harry Furniss's illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. Vol. II.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.
__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.
_________. Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. IX.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 16: Dombey and Son."The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition.Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 294-337.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London (1899) edition.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Ch. 12, "Work, Work, Work." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004, pp. 128-160.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 86-112.
Vann, J. Don. Chapter 4."Dombey and Son, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, October 1846-April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 67-68.
Created 8 August 2015
Last modified 15 January 2021