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Passage Illustrated: Smike's Memorial as the Centre of the Children at Play

The grass was green above the dead boy's grave, and trodden by feet so small and light, that not a daisy drooped its head beneath their pressure. Through all the spring and summertime, garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, rested on the stone; and, when the children came to change them lest they should wither and be pleasant to him no longer, their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low and softly of their poor dead cousin. [Chapter LXV, "Conclusion," page 497; running head: "The Whole Summed Up"]

Steig's Commentary on the Culminating Illustration of the Sentimental Plot

Browne is in general less successful with the sentimental plot — the encounters of Nicholas with Madeline, the troubles of Kate, and the fate of Smike. At their worst, such plates are incompetent, as in the portrayal of Madeline in "Nicholas recognizes the Young Lady unknown" (ch. 40) (That Browne was aware that he was having trouble with the pose of Madeline is indicated by the several marginal sketches of her figure in the working drawing. The drawing is in DH, and is reproduced in Michael Slater, ed., The Catalogue of the Suzannet Charles Dickens Collection (London and New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications, 1975), P. 47), or are centered on awkward, melodramatic poses, as in "Nicholas congratulates Arthur Gride on his Wedding Morning" (ch. 54). At their best, they help to sum up the novel's moral themes, as in the designs related to Smike in which the action unfolds in a wooded setting: "The recognition" (ch. 58), and "The children at their cousin's grave" (ch. 65). The latter plate is the last etching in the book and the first appearance of a church since the wrapper, where Ralph Nickleby was seen to be lost to Christianity in a swamp of materialism. Here, the characters are in harmony with Nature, the Church, and with the Christian view of suffering and death as embodied in the story of Smike. It is nothing like what Browne accomplishes by use of frontispieces for summing up the central meanings of a novel (and in this one, a portrait of the author by Maclise is the frontispiece). Although the sentimental style returns from time to time, it remains a far less important aspect of Browne's development away from the caricatural than is what we might call the "sequential" mode. The two novels in Master Humphrey's Clock, which follow almost immediately upon Nicholas Nickleby, are special among Browne's assignments for Dickens, and yet they may be seen as preparations for the next novel in monthly parts, Martin Chuzzlewit, in which Browne's debt to and development of the Hogarthian tradition, the "progress" in all its complex manifestations, first really crystallize. [Steig, Chapter 2, "The Beginnings of "Phiz": Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature," p. 50]

Tailpiece from the British Household Edition (1875)

Above: Barnard's final scene emphasizes the next generation, Uncaptioned tail-piece: The little people could do nothing without dear Newman Noggs — Chap. LXV.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.

Dickens, Charles. 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. 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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