Job Trotter encounters Sam in Mr. Muzzle's kitchen
Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)
December 1836
Steel Engraving
Dickens's Pickwick Papers
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Phiz has realised the early nineteenth-century kitchen in loving detail, with a roaring fire to the left and garlic and cured meats hanging above a scene of plenty and conviviality which Jingle's manservant in mulberry-coloured livery, a former actor accustomed to exaggerating his tearful emotions, now enters:
In the midst of all this jollity and conviviality, a loud ring was heard at the garden gate, to which the young gentleman who took his meals in the wash-house, immediately responded. Mr. Weller was in the height of his attentions to the pretty house- maid; Mr. Muzzle was busy doing the honours of the table; and the cook had just paused to laugh, in the very act of raising a huge morsel to her lips; when the kitchen door opened, and in walked Mr. Job Trotter. [chapter 25]
The picture's emphasis on physical and situation humour reminds us that we are still in the world of the Regency, when Dickens wrote such comic "Sketches" as "Horatio Sparkins" (February 1834) for The Monthly Magazine and The Morning Chronicle, and his lightweight romantic comedies such as Is She His Wife? Or, Something Singular (6 March 1837 at London's St. James's Theatre). In this scene we are still very much in the world of the episodic, picaresque novel.
Details
References
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
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.
Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers (1836-37). London: Chapman & Hall.
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Last modified 8 December 2011