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Nicholas Congratulates Arthur Gride on his Wedding Morning
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
August 1839
Steel-engraving
11.1 cm by 10.5 cm, vignetted
Chapter LIV in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, facing p. 362, vol. 2 in the Gadshill Edition.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Gride hesitated. Ralph being, by this time, as furious as a baffled tiger, made for the door, and, attempting to pass Kate, clasped her arm roughly with his hand. Nicholas, with his eyes darting fire, seized him by the collar. At that moment, a heavy body fell with great violence on the floor above, and, in an instant afterwards, was heard a most appalling and terrific scream.
They all stood still, and gazed upon each other. Scream succeeded scream; a heavy pattering of feet succeeded; and many shrill voices clamouring together were heard to cry, "He is dead!"
"Stand off!" cried Nicholas, letting loose all the passion he had restrained till now; "if this is what I scarcely dare to hope it is, you are caught, villains, in your own toils."
He burst from the room, and, darting upstairs to the quarter from whence the noise proceeded, forced his way through a crowd of persons who quite filled a small bed-chamber, and found Bray lying on the floor quite dead; his daughter clinging to the body.
"How did this happen?" he cried, looking wildly about him.
Several voices answered together, that he had been observed, through the half-opened door, reclining in a strange and uneasy position upon a chair; that he had been spoken to several times, and not answering, was supposed to be asleep, until some person going in and shaking him by the arm, he fell heavily to the ground and was discovered to be dead.
"Who is the owner of this house?" said Nicholas, hastily.
An elderly woman was pointed out to him; and to her he said, as he knelt down and gently unwound Madeline's arms from the lifeless mass round which they were entwined: "I represent this lady's nearest friends, as her servant here knows, and must remove her from this dreadful scene. This is my sister to whose charge you confide her. My name and address are upon that card, and you shall receive from me all necessary directions for the arrangements that must be made. Stand aside, every one of you, and give me room and air for God's sake!"
The people fell back, scarce wondering more at what had just occurred, than at the excitement and impetuosity of him who spoke. Nicholas, taking the insensible girl in his arms, bore her from the chamber and downstairs into the room he had just quitted, followed by his sister and the faithful servant, whom he charged to procure a coach directly, while he and Kate bent over their beautiful charge and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore her to animation. The girl performed her office with such expedition, that in a very few minutes the coach was ready.
Ralph Nickleby and Gride, stunned and paralysed by the awful event which had so suddenly overthrown their schemes (it would not otherwise, perhaps, have made much impression on them), and carried away by the extraordinary energy and precipitation of Nicholas, which bore down all before him, looked on at these proceedings like men in a dream or trance. It was not until every preparation was made for Madeline’s immediate removal that Ralph broke silence by declaring she should not be taken away.
"Who says so?" cried Nicholas, rising from his knee and confronting them, but still retaining Madeline's lifeless hand in his.
"I!" answered Ralph, hoarsely. [Part 17, August 1839: Chapter LIV, "The Crisis of the Project and its Result," pp. 361-362; running head — "Madeline Is Rescued"].
The plate's title lends a further degree of irony to the climactic moment since Nicholas and death providentially rescue Madeline Bray from Gride's clutches as once again Nicholas frustrates his uncle's designs. The melodramatic nature of the scene in chapter 54, "The Crisis of the Project, and its Result," so obvious in the rhetoric of Nicholas as he cows the misers, is also reflected in the physical disposition and poses of the characters in Phiz's plate. Thus, text and illustration work together to underscore a memorable moment in the main plot. While the indignant youth (centre) attempts to comfort Madeline Bray (her limp hand signifying her unconsciousness) with his left hand, he denounces the two malignant plotters (Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride, left) as "Wretches" with his right hand.
The melodramatic sequence beginds with the arrival of the aged groom and his best man to collect their prize at Bray's apartments near the King's Bench Prison. Madeline's father, conflicted about granting his permission for the marriage, had retired with his daughter when Nicholas and Kate unexpectedly arrived, just before a thump on the floor above them announces Bray's collapse. Bray has died of either stroke or heart attack, presumably as a result of the stress engendered by the insupportable situation. The precise moment that Phiz has realized is when, having carried Madeline insensible downstairs to be ministered to by his sister (identified by her bonnet in the illustration) and tearful servant (right), as the virtuous hero of the melodrama Nicholas notes that the villainous Gride's hold over Bray has miraculously come to an end: "That the bond, due today at twelve, is now waste paper. That your contemplated fraud shall be discovered yet. That your schemes are known to man, and overthrown by Heaven. Wretches, that he defies you both to do your worst!" (Part 17, August 1839).
The theatrical composition of the vertically-oriented illustration focuses the reader's attention on the commanding posture and gestures of the protagonist by placing him in the centre and his adversaries to the left. The bridegroom and his best man, still wearing "a couple of large white favours" pinned to their coats, look faintly ridiculous as well as cowed. Phiz emphasizes their wrinkled, shrunken visages in contrast to Nicholas's youthful countenance and manly demeanour. Implausible as this plot gambit may sound, Dickens prepares us for it through Bray's mentioning a dream he had about the floor falling away from under him as he was about to escort Madeline to the ceremony.
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition study of the novel's miserly villains: Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride (1867). Centre: Fred Barnard's Household Edition illustration for this chapter involves Nicholas's entreating Madeline not to go through with the marriage: "I must beseech you to contemplate again the fearful curse to which you have been impelled." (1875). Right: Harry Furniss's energetic and more focussed version of the elopement: Nicholas rescues Madeline (1910).
Above: C. S. Reinhart's 1875 woodblock engraving of Nicholas's stealing the aged miser's bride: And then, taking the beautiful burden in his arms, rushed out in Chapter 54 of the American Household Edition.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ed. Andrew Lang. Illustrated by 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.
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.
Thomas, Deborah A. "Chapter 2: Imaginative Overindulgence." Dickens and the Short Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. 7-31.
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 18 September 2021