[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) —> Illustrations of Pickwick Papers —> Next]
The Unexpected Breaking Up of the Seminary for Young Ladies
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
September 1836
Steel Engraving
14 cm high by 11.4 cm wide (5 ½ by 4 ⅜ inches), vignetted
Dickens's Pickwick Papers, Chapter XVI, facing p. 169.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Mr. Pickwick dared not move hand or foot. It was clear that the whole establishment was roused. He made up his mind to remain where he was, until the alarm had subsided; and then by a supernatural effort, to get over the wall, or perish in the attempt.
Like all Mr. Pickwick's determinations, this was the best that could be made under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, it was founded upon the assumption that they would not venture to open the door again. What was his discomfiture, when he heard the chain and bolts withdrawn, and saw the door slowly opening, wider and wider! He retreated into the corner, step by step; but do what he would, the interposition of his own person, prevented its being opened to its utmost width.
"Who's there?" screamed a numerous chorus of treble voices from the staircase inside, consisting of the spinster lady of the establishment, three teachers, five female servants, and thirty boarders, all half-dressed and in a forest of curl-papers.
Of course Mr. Pickwick didn't say who was there: and then the burden of the chorus changed into — "Lor! I am so frightened."
"Cook," said the lady abbess, who took care to be on the top stair, the very last of the group — "cook, why don't you go a little way into the garden?'"
"Please, ma'am, I don't like," responded the cook.
"Lor, what a stupid thing that cook is!" said the thirty boarders.
"Cook," said the lady abbess, with great dignity; "don't answer me, if you please. I insist upon your looking into the garden immediately."
Here the cook began to cry, and the housemaid said it was 'a shame!' for which partisanship she received a month's warning on the spot.
"Do you hear, cook?" said the lady abbess, stamping her foot impatiently.
"Don't you hear your missis, cook?" said the three teachers.
"What an impudent thing that cook is!" said the thirty boarders.
The unfortunate cook, thus strongly urged, advanced a step or two, and holding her candle just where it prevented her from seeing at all, declared there was nothing there, and it must have been the wind. The door was just going to be closed in consequence, when an inquisitive boarder, who had been peeping between the hinges, set up a fearful screaming, which called back the cook and housemaid, and all the more adventurous, in no time. [Chapter XVI, “Too Full of Adventure to be Briefly Described,” 169]
The discovery of Pickwick hiding behind the door of a girls' school is the risque stuff of French farce translated for an English audience. The aged bachelor finds himself inconvenienced by another of Alfred Jingle's devious plans: Pickwick thought he was thwarting the out-of-work actor's elopement with an under-age heiress, so with the best of intentions, he had Sam help him over the wall of Westgate House, a boarding-school for young ladies at Bury St. Edmunds. Jingle's devious plot which Job Trotter has unveiled is extremely plausible since Jingle under the pseudonym "Captain Fitz-Marshall" (seen at Mrs. Leo Hunter's fete champetre in Chapter 15) has already attempted a similar elopement with the daughter of Pickwick's friend, Wardle.
When Trotter, Jingle's servant and accomplice, does not answer his knock at the door as arranged, Pickwick suspects that he has been tricked. Having sent Sam back to the local inn, The Angel, he realizes too late that Jingle has devised this stratagem to get him out of the way while he and Trotter make their escape. Pickwick ultimately catches up with the pair of confidence men in the Fleet Prison (illustration). The embarrassed Pickwick, unable to get back over the wall on his own power, is subsequently discovered by the terrified lady teachers, the timorous Cook, and their curious charges, and learns that Job Trotter and his master are utterly unknown to the inmates, and that therefore the elopement scheme is entirely spurious. The "extra" illustrator, Thomas Onwhyn, followed up this embarrassing moment with yet another for the hapless Pickwick, “Mr. Pickwick stepped out of the closet, and found himself in the presence of the whole establishment of Westgate House” (issued a full year after Phiz's, on September 30, 1837).
Left: Thomas Nast's American Household Edition's engraving for this chapter focuses on Pickwick's tumbling over the garden wall of the girls' school: The immortal gentleman over the wall (1873). Right: Phiz's revised composite woodblock engraving for this scene, The door was just going to be closed in consequence, when an inquisitive boarder, who had been peeping between the hinges, set up a fearful screaming (1874). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert Buss, and Phiz. London: Chapman and Hall, November 1837. With 32 additional illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn (London: E. Grattan, April-November 1837).
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 6.
Dickens, Charles. Pickwick Papers Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Bros., 1873.
Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 51-85.
Created 15 December 2011
Last updated 25 February 2024