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Mysterious Appearance of the Gentleman in Small-Clothes
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby
July 1839
steel engraving
Source: J. A. Hammerton, The Dickens Picture-Book, p. 166.
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Scanned image colour correction, sizing, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.
Advancing to the door of the mysterious apartment, they were not a little surprised to hear a human voice, chaunting with a highly elaborated expression of melancholy, and in tones of suffocation which a human voice might have produced from under five or six feather-beds of the best quality, the once popular air of '"Has she then failed in her truth, the beautiful maid I adore!" Nor, on bursting into the room without demanding a parley, was their astonishment lessened by the discovery that these romantic sounds certainly proceeded from the throat of some.man up the chimney, of whom nothing was visible but pair of legs, which were dangling above the grate; apparently feeling, with extreme anxiety, for the top bar whereon to effect a landing.
A sight so unusual and unbusiness-like as this, paralysed Tim Linkinwater, who after one or two gentle pinches at the stranger's ankles, which were productive of no effect, stood clapping the tongs together, as if he were sharpening them for another assault, and did nothing else.
"This must be some drunken fellow," said Frank. "No thief would announce his presence thus."
As he said this, with great indignation, he raised the candle to obtain a better view of the legs, and was darting forward to pull them down with very little ceremony, when Mrs. Nickleby, clasping her hands, uttered a sharp sound, something between a scream and an exclamation, and demanded to know whether the mysterious limbs were not clad in small clothes and worsted stockings, or whether her eyes had deceived her?
"Yes," cried Frank, looking a little closer. "Small-clothes certainly, and — and — rough grey stockings, too. Do you him, ma'am?" [Chapter XLIX, "Chronicles the further Proceedings of the Nickleby Family, and the Sequel of the Adventure of the Gentleman in the Small-clothes"]
Although the oral tale may well be much older, the story of the three little pigs first appeared in print in 1849, in James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales. Consequently, Dickens and Phiz are not necessarily alluding to the children's story of the braggadocio wolf caught in the chimney in this forty-ninth chapter, "Chronicles the further proceedings of the Nickleby family, and the sequel of the adventure of the gentleman in the small-clothes" (originally, Part 16, July 1839). The subplot involving Mrs. Nickleby's demented suitor offers suitable comic counterpoint to the more serious, "business" aspect of marriage (Ralph Nickleby's plotting with Arthur Gride against the Brays to acquire Madeline's inheritance). The identification of a uni-dimensional character by some detail of costume, facial distinction, or habitual phrase had been a standard "short-hand" method of characterization for Dickens ever since The Pickwick Papers. A secondary comedic feature is Mrs. Nickleby's chagrin that her "suitor" seems to have shifted his attention to Miss Le Creevy. The figures in the illustration, set in the Nicklebys' cottage, are Mrs. Nickleby (left); Kate Nickleby and Frank Cheeryble, nephew of the merchant brothers; their clerk, Tim Linkwater (centre), holding the tongs as he pinches the stranger's ankles to ascertain that they are real and not the appendages of a dummy; and the lower extremities of the lunatic neighbour (in the fireplace, the disembodied head having appeared already in plate 26: see below). As Jacqueline Banerjee remarks of the clothing and appearances of this character, "One character, a demented neighbour who seeks out Mrs. Nickleby in an unconventional way in Chapter 49, by coming down the chimney, is identified only by his attire: he is the 'gentleman in Small-clothes' (breeches), the designation suggesting his diminished mental capacity as well as identifying him."
Left: In the original serial edition, Phiz complicates the multiple-marriage plot with the peculiar neighbour's romantic declaration for Mrs. Nickleby: Mysterious Appearance of theGentleman in Small-Clothes (July 1839). Centre: In the British Household, Fred Barnard presents a comedic scene with the bizarre neighbour combines a passion for gardening with a romantic interest in Mrs. Nickleby: "Aha!" cried the old gentleman, folding his hands, and squeezing them with great force against each other. "I see her now; I see her now! My love, my life, my bridge, my peerless beauty! She is come at last — at last — and all is gas and gaiters." (1875). Right: Phiz introduces the Gentleman in Small-clothes as wooing Mrs. Nickleby over the garden wall: The Gentleman next door declares his Passion for Mrs. Nickleby (April 1839).
Banerjee, Jacqueline. "Self-Presentation and Self-Realisation in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby."
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 9 May 2009 Last modified 12 September 2021