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Mrs. Gamp Makes Tea
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
May 1844
Steel-engraving
13.5 cm high by 10.3 cm wide, vignetted
Illustration for Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The original 1844 edition of Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit placed Mrs. Gamp Makes Tea (the thirty-fourth monthly illustration of the novel) facing p. 528 in the forty-sixth chapter (instalment XVII). The descriptive headline in the 1867 edition runs "Mrs. Harris is again referred to"; in the 1897 edition: "Mrs. Gamp Presides."
"And quite a family it is to make tea for," said Mrs. Gamp; "and wot a happiness to do it! My good young 'ooman" — to the servant-girl — "p'raps somebody would like to try a new-laid egg or two, not biled too hard. Likeways, a few rounds o' buttered toast, first cuttin' off the crust, in consequence of tender teeth, and not too many of 'em; which Gamp himself, Mrs. Chuzzlewit, at one blow, being in liquor, struck out four, two single, and two double, as was took by Mrs. Harris for a keepsake, and is carried in her pocket at this present hour, along with two cramp-bones, a bit o' ginger, and a grater like a blessed infant's shoe, in tin, with a little heel to put the nutmeg in; as many times I've seen and said, and used for candle when required, within the month."
As the privileges of the side-table — besides including the small prerogatives of sitting next the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one, and always taking them at a crisis, that is to say, before putting fresh water into the tea-pot, and after it had been standing for some time — also comprehended a full view of the company, and an opportunity of addressing them as from a rostrum, Mrs. Gamp discharged the functions entrusted to her with extreme good-humour and affability. Sometimes resting her saucer on the palm of her outspread hand, and supporting her elbow on the table, she stopped between her sips of tea to favour the circle with a smile, a wink, a roll of the head, or some other mark of notice; and at those periods her countenance was lighted up with a degree of intelligence and vivacity, which it was almost impossible to separate from the benignant influence of distilled waters.
But for Mrs Gamp, it would have been a curiously silent party. Miss Pecksniff only spoke to her Augustus, and to him in whispers. Augustus spoke to nobody, but sighed for every one, and occasionally gave himself such a sounding slap upon the forehead as would make Mrs Todgers, who was rather nervous, start in her chair with an involuntary exclamation. Mrs Todgers was occupied in knitting, and seldom spoke. Poor Merry held the hand of cheerful little Ruth between her own, and listening with evident pleasure to all she said, but rarely speaking herself, sometimes smiled, and sometimes kissed her on the cheek, and sometimes turned aside to hide the tears that trembled in her eyes. Tom felt this change in her so much, and was so glad to see how tenderly Ruth dealt with her, and how she knew and answered to it, that he had not the heart to make any movement towards their departure, although he had long since given utterance to all he came to say.
The old clerk, subsiding into his usual state, remained profoundly silent, while the rest of the little assembly were thus occupied, intent upon the dreams, whatever they might be, which hardly seemed to stir the surface of his sluggish thoughts. [Chapter XLVI, "In which Miss Pecksniff makes Love, Mr. Jonas makes Wrath, Mrs. Gamp makes Tea, and Mr. Chuffey makes Business," pp. 527-528 in the 1844 edition; descriptive headline in the 1868 edition: "Mrs. Harris is again referred to"; in the 1897 edition: "Mrs. Gamp Presides."]
Phiz has provided two illustrations for this crucial chapter, the longest in the novel (it encompasses twenty-five pages of the forty-three page number). Both depict the area in London near Mrs. Todgers's rooming-house. In the first, Mr. Moddle is Led to the Contemplation of his Destiny, Tom and his sister encounter Miss Charity Pecksniff and her maudlin fiancée, August Moddle, in front of an upholtsterer's shop. The morose youth (one of the characters whose presence like those of Tom, Ruth, and Charity links this plate to the previous) appears again in the present illustration, hand languidly to his head, in the centre of the composition, beside his controlling fiancée.
Other recognisable characters in the scene are the "Other" with whom he remains infatuated (Mercy Chuzzlewit, now Jonas's unhappy wife), Old Chuffey, and Mrs. Todgers, the new character being a household servant all figure in the refreshment scene over which Sairey Gamp (extreme left) presides at the fuming teapot. This is he first of the three group scenes which bring the various elements of the complicated plot to closure, complementing such developments as Jonas's murder of Tigg, Betsey Prig's challenging Sairey Gamp as to the reality of Mrs. Harris, Old Martin's punishing Pecksniff's for his duplicity, and August Moddle's escaping Charity's grasp on their wedding day. As Dickens draws these various threads of the plot together, Phiz makes Mrs. Todgers (right foreground) an image of fate. The two plants in pots, neither of them flowering but somehow surviving, suggest the fates of the Pecksniff sisters, one about to become a widow and the other to be left at the altar an old maid.
Above: Fred Barnard's realisation of the later scene in Chapter 46 scene in which Moddle confesses to Tom his determination to avoid marrying Charity at any cost, Mr. Moddle, with a dark look, replied: "The drivers won't do it" (1872), suggesting that he is contemplating making himself as traffic fatality in order to avoid marrying Charity. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Andrew Lang. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition: 34 volumes. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897. 2 vols.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 51-85. [pp. 73-74; see e-text in Victorian Web.]
_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual, 2 (1972): 119-149.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Last modified 28 April 2019