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Mr. Pinch is Amazed by an Unexpected Apparition
Phiz
June 1844
Steel-engraving
13 cm high by 10.3 cm wide, vignetted
Twenty-ninth monthly illustration for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing p. 576 (1844 ed.) in Ch. L.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The original 1844 edition of Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit placed Mr. Pinch is Amazed by an Unexpected Apparition (the thirty-sixth monthly illustration of the novel) facing p. 576 in the fiftieth chapter (instalment XVIII). The third descriptive headline in the 1868 edition (fifth in the 1897 edition) is "Tom's Employer at Last!"
The door stood open. As the tread advanced, Tom looked impatiently and eagerly towards it. When a figure came upon the landing, and arriving in the doorway, stopped and gazed at him, he rose up from his chair, and half believed he saw a spirit.
Old Martin Chuzzlewit! The same whom he had left at Mr. Pecksniff's, weak and sinking!
The same? No, not the same, for this old man, though old, was strong, and leaned upon his stick with a vigorous hand, while with the other he signed to Tom to make no noise. One glance at the resolute face, the watchful eye, the vigorous hand upon the staff, the triumphant purpose in the figure, and such a light broke in on Tom as blinded him. [Chapter L, "Surprises Tom Pinch very much, and shows how certain Confidences passed between him and his Sister," page 575 in the 1844 edition]
In Mr. Pinch is amazed by an unexpected apparition (June 1844), Phiz presents palpable evidence to affirm that Tom has faithfully carried out his commission. Now that Tom has restored order and made sense of the chaos in the private library, Old Martin chooses to resolve the mystery of the unknown benefactor by revealing himself in his true colours, not just to Tom but also to the reader. Writer and illustrator both emphasize the transformation of the Chuzzlewit patriarch, yet another of the novel's many metamorphoses. No longer a weak, sickly, paranoid, and deluded senior, Old Martin in Phiz's plate appears "vigorous" and in control of his faculties (and, the reader suspects, the plot, for he was responsible for Pecksniff's dismissing Martin as well as Fips' retaining Tom to restore order to the library). In the illustration intended to accompany Chapter 50, the vase now contains blooms, the chairs are upright, the shelves well stocked, and the table's writing implements in good order and ready to use. The bookcase is surmounted by something not seen in the previous plate describing the library, Mysterious Installation of Mr. Pinch (March 1844) — a classical bust of a blind patriarch or bard, perhaps Homer, Virgil, or Aesop (certainly somebody whose work according to the judgment of posterity has earned him such a memorial, in contrast to numerous busts of Pecksniff that one sees in the novel's earlier illustrations). That the figure represented is Aesop would be appropriate since his fables often involve the exposure of vice, the correction of faulty thinking, the abasement of the proud, and the application in the narrative of the principle of Nemesis.
Allingham, Philip V. "Phiz's Illustrations, Part Four." [Ch. 38-52] The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.4 (August, 2009): 8-13.
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. [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 8 January 2019