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Passage Illustrated: The Sad Decline of Smike

In a fortnight’s time, he became too ill to move about. Once or twice, Nicholas drove him out, propped up with pillows; but the motion of the chaise was painful to him, and brought on fits of fainting, which, in his weakened state, were dangerous. There was an old couch in the house, which was his favourite resting-place by day; and when the sun shone, and the weather was warm, Nicholas had this wheeled into a little orchard which was close at hand, and his charge being well wrapped up and carried out to it, they used to sit there sometimes for hours together.

It was on one of these occasions that a circumstance took place, which Nicholas, at the time, thoroughly believed to be the mere delusion of an imagination affected by disease; but which he had, afterwards, too good reason to know was of real and actual occurrence.

He had brought Smike out in his arms — poor fellow! a child might have carried him then — to see the sunset, and, having arranged his couch, had taken his seat beside it. He had been watching the whole of the night before, and being greatly fatigued both in mind and body, gradually fell asleep.

He could not have closed his eyes five minutes, when he was awakened by a scream, and starting up in that kind of terror which affects a person suddenly roused, saw, to his great astonishment, that his charge had struggled into a sitting posture, and with eyes almost starting from their sockets, cold dew standing on his forehead, and in a fit of trembling which quite convulsed his frame, was calling to him for help.

"Good Heaven, what is this?" said Nicholas, bending over him. "Be calm; you have been dreaming."

"No, no, no!" cried Smike, clinging to him. "Hold me tight. Don’t let me go. There, there. Behind the tree!"

Nicholas followed his eyes, which were directed to some distance behind the chair from which he himself had just risen. But, there was nothing there. [Chapter LVIII, "In which one Scene of this History is closed," 410-411]

Commentary: Smike's Paranoia about Brooker's Persecution

Nicholas seems both solicitous and anxious about his friend's condition, and Smike looks around in severe apprehension, sure that he has seen Ralph Nickleby's agent, the man who took him as a child to Dotheboys' Hall, lurking nearby. Phiz actually presents Brooker as a serpent in Eden, violating the otherwise tranquil garden. Although the text implies that Smike's imagination has deceived him, Phiz depicts the cunning Brooker as he attempts to overhear the cousins' conversation. In other words, the picture creates doubt in the reader's mind about Nicholas's dismissing Smike's apprehensions as delusions, for Brooker is standing "leaning upon his stick, and looking" (412) at Smike. In the background is the Devonshire farmhouse where the sickly Smike and Nicholas have been staying. Although the tree is not that under which Nicholas's father is buried, Phiz's positioning Smike under the fruit tree reflects his asking to be buried under that other tree. Although Nicholas "wheels" his debilitated friend into the orchard where he can lie on the rustic couch, Phiz has dispensed entirely with the wheels on the invalid's couch. Convinced that Brooker, a childhood boogeyman, is lurking nearby, Smike seems suitably disoriented and apprehensive. At the back Phiz has made a significant addition to the scene: Kate, who, even if not present, is very much in Smike's thoughts. Phiz has also added a small side-table and a glass and a small bottle with which Nicholas hopes to comfort his declining friend, although whether both glass and bottle contain medicine or wine Phiz does not clarify by labelling. They have been in this retreat scarcely two weeks, and Smike is already dying.

Parallel Illustrations from the American Household Edition (1875)

Left: C. S. Reinhart's less caricatural and more realistic version of the death of Smike: "Now," he murmured, "I am happy.". Right: Harry Furniss specifies in his caption that Brooker is merely a conjuration of the dying Smike's fancy: Smike's Delusion in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910).

Bibliography

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.

__________. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With fifty-two illustrations by C. S. Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. I.

__________. Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. IV.

__________. "Nicholas Nickleby." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard et al.. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 2, "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 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. Page 63.

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Created 11 May 2009

Last modified 24 September 2021