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Nicholas Recognizes the Young Lady Unknown
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
April 1839
Steel-engraving
12.4 high cm by 11 cm wide, vignetted
Twenty-fifth plate for Dickens's Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter XL.
Source: J. A. Hammerton, The Dickens Picture-Book, p. 162.
Nicholas stammered out an awkward apology, and was precipitately retiring, when the young lady, turning her head a little, presented to his view the features of the lovely girl whom he had seen at the register-office on his first visit long before [ch. 16, when he had noted her "countenance of most uncommon beauty, though shaded by a cloud of sadness"]. Glancing from her to the attendant, he recognized the same clumsy servant who had accompanied her then; and between his admiration of the young lady's beauty, and the confusion and surprise of this unexpected recognition, he stood stock-still, in such a bewildered state of surprise and embarrassment that, for the moment, he was quite bereft of the power either to speak or move. [ch. 40, "In which Nicholas falls in Love. He employs a Mediator, whose Proceedings are crowned with unexpected Success, excepting in one solitary Particular," Part 13, April 1839]
Paralleling the "recognition" scene in the previous illustration (for Chapter 38) this first illustration for April 1839 involves another recognition, as fortuitous as the prior one was unfortunate. In the midst of attempting to discover whether his Uncle Ralph was behind Squeers's apprehension of Smike, Nicholas unexpectedly encounters a beautiful young woman in the Cheerybles' office. Apparently beseeching Charles Cheeryble for some favour, she is on her knees at his feet as her female attendant looks on. Thus, Phiz and Dickens intensify the sense of mystery surrounding the beautiful young lady whom Nicholas recognizes from the Registry Office.
Left: Harry Furniss brings in the romantic interest for the Madeline Bray plot with this melodramatic recognition scene: Nicholas comes in upon an awkward scenen (1910). Right: C. S. Reinhart's 1875 American Household Editioncomposite woodblock engraving of Nicholas's finally meeting Madeline: "I must speak to her — I will! I will not leave this house without.".
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition study of the novel's belatedly introduced secondary heroine: Walter Bray and Madeline (1867). Right: Fred Barnard's 1875 woodblock engraving of the Nicholas and Madeline: "I must beseech you to contemplate again the fearful curse to which you have been impelled.", in the British Household Edition, Ch. 53.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
_______. Nicolas Nickleby. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition, ed. Andrew Lang. The Works of Charles Dickens in Thirty-four Volumes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. Vols. IV and V.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1875 [re-print of 1867 Diamond Edition, Vol. IV].
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. I.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-nine illustrations by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. IV.
__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 2. "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 24-50.
Vann, J. Don. "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, April 1838-October 1839." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 63.
Created 4 May 2009 Last modified 24 September