"Mr. Weller and his friends drinking to Mr. Pell" or "The Coachmen Drinking the Toast" (Nos. 19 and 20) — forty-first illustration for "Pickwick Papers," Chapter LV, by Phiz or Hablot K. Browne (November 1837)

Mr. Weller and his friends drinking to Mr. Pell, or The Coachmen Drinking the Toast, Nos. 19 and 20; steel-engraving from the November 1837 "double" number, Chapters LIII-LVII of Dickens's Pickwick Papers, facing page 590. Steel-Engraving 11 cm high by 11.8 cm wide — 4 by 4 ½ inches, vignetted, for Parts XIX-XX. Johnannsen (1956) has labelled this Plate 41: it exists in three versions: the rare Plate A from the serial, in which the floor boards run up and down, and there is a knife on the table between the little bottle and the oyster shells; Plate B1, which has no caption; Plate B2; and Plate B3 which contains the legend. "The design would have been much better had the ceiling heat domes been omitted, for they make the plate top-heavy" (Johnannsen, 71). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Details

Passage Illustrated: The Room full of Tony Weller lookalikes

"What should you say to a drop o' beer, gen'l'm'n?" suggested the mottled–faced man. "And a little bit o' cold beef," said the second coachman.

"Or a oyster," added the third, who was a hoarse gentleman, supported by very round legs.

"Hear, hear!" said Pell; "to congratulate Mr. Weller, on his coming into possession of his property, eh? Ha! ha!"

"I'm quite agreeable, gen'l'm'n," answered Mr. Weller. "Sammy, pull the bell."

Sammy complied; and the porter, cold beef, and oysters being promptly produced, the lunch was done ample justice to. Where everybody took so active a part, it is almost invidious to make a distinction; but if one individual evinced greater powers than another, it was the coachman with the hoarse voice, who took an imperial pint of vinegar with his oysters, without betraying the least emotion.

"Mr. Pell, Sir," said the elder Mr. Weller, stirring a glass of brandy–and–water, of which one was placed before every gentleman when the oyster shells were removed — "Mr. Pell, Sir, it wos my intention to have proposed the funs [funds, gilt-edged, guaranteed British government investments] on this occasion, but Samivel has vispered to me —"

Here Mr. Samuel Weller, who had silently eaten his oysters with tranquil smiles, cried, "Hear!" in a very loud voice.

— "Has vispered to me," resumed his father, "that it vould be better to dewote the liquor to vishin' you success and prosperity, and thankin' you for the manner in which you’ve brought this here business through. Here's your health, sir."

"Hold hard there," interposed the mottled–faced gentleman, with sudden energy; "your eyes on me, gen'l'm'n!"

Saying this, the mottled–faced gentleman rose, as did the other gentlemen. The mottled–faced gentleman reviewed the company, and slowly lifted his hand, upon which every man (including him of the mottled countenance) drew a long breath, and lifted his tumbler to his lips. In one instant, the mottled–faced gentleman depressed his hand again, and every glass was set down empty. It is impossible to describe the thrilling effect produced by this striking ceremony. At once dignified, solemn, and impressive, it combined every element of grandeur. [Chapter LV, “Mr. Solomon Pell, assisted by a Select Committee of Coachmen, arranges the Affairs of the elder Mr. Weller,” 590]

Phiz's third and final version of Mr. Weller and his friends drinking to Mr. Pell, re-engraved for the 1838 volume, has the legend; otherwise, it is identical to Plate B2. Note the horizontal floor boards.

Commentary: An Abundance of Illustrations in the 1836-37 Novel

Thomas Onwhyn's "extra" illustration focuses on Tony Weller for page 458 in the original serial numbers: “Mr. Weller surveyed the attorney from head to foot with great admiration, “And what’ll you take, Sir?” “Why, really,” replied Mr. Pell “you’re very _ Upon my word and honour, I’m not in the habit of _ It’s so very early in the morning, that, actually, I am almost _ Well, you may bring me three penn’orth of rum, my dear.”, for the fifteenth inastalment (26 October 1837).

The forty-fourth plate (among those in the final, double number, November 1837) was Phiz's new frontispiece, which Johnannsen designates Plate 43, Etched Title. Normally the number of plates in a serialisation lasting nineteen months would have been just forty (and, indeed, was in successive nineteen-month serialisations of Dickens's works); however, publishers Chapman and Hall had originally contracted the well-known illustrator George Seymour to provide four plates per serial instalment, with less text from the relatively unknown Charles Dickens, the "Boz" of the London Sketches. The changeover occurred in June 1836, when the instalment ran an additional two pages of text (to 28) and the illustrations reduced to just two, Seymour having committed suicide after completing the May 1836 plates:

We started with a number of twenty-four pages [i. e., 12 leaves] instead of thirty-two [i. e., sixteen leaves], and four illustrations in lieu of a couple. Mr. Seymour's sudden and lamented death before the second number was published, brought about a quick decision upon a point already in agitation; the number became one of thirty-two pages with only two illustrations, and remained so to the end. [Charles Dickens, "Preface," The Household Edition, iv]

In the forty-third plate, Tony Weller is giving up the coaching end of the business and claiming his late wife's estate, but, in "cashing out," he wants to be sure that the lawyers do not get the better of him and his son — and so he brings along a few kindred spirits (fellow coachmen) as witnesses to the proceedings with attorney Solomon Pell, the pallid, little man seated at the left-hand end of the table. Pell, small, complacent, and wearing a dark business suit, contrasts in every respect the other, much more "flashy" revellers, who (with the exception of the slender Sam) seem cast from the same elephantine mould.

Dickens provides Tony Weller's motive for bringing along a posse of coachmen earlier in the chapter:

Four versions of Mr. Weller, Sr. — the original and three facsimiles, of equal girth, height, and all particulars of dress — Sam Weller, and the attorney indulge in a farewell toast to their readership of nineteen months, having consumed a vast quantity of raw Colchester Natives whose shells appear on the table. Although Dickens specifies also "a little bit o' cold beef" (481) none is in evidence.Fortunately, The gargantuan coachmen have chosen to stand, for the fragile chairs in the room could scarcely support their weight.

Gasolier Lighting: A Note

As in a number of Phiz's other Pickwick interiors, the room of the public house is lit by twin gas jets in the ceiling above the table. See also, in particular, the scene in the snuggery of the Fleet Prison in The Red-Nosed Man Discourseth), Mr. Pickwick and Sam in the Attorney's Office (Ch. XX), and Seymour's initial illustration, Mr. Pickwick Addresses the Club in Chapter I.

Although Scottish engineer William Murdoch (1754—1839) first produced a device that would replace the oil lamp and the tallow candle sometime between 1792 and 1794, he failed to patent the iron-tubed device for a controlled ignition of coal gas, and his business partners, Boulton and Watt missed their opportunity to establish a monopoly. The use of gas lighting was not fully established when Dickens began his writing career, oil lamps remaining in common use domestically well into the 1840s, although London Bridge was illuminated by gas in 1813, and municipal gas works had been established in Bristol (1816), Manchester (1817), and Birmingham (1819). Shortly after the publication of Pickwick, young Queen Victoria had gas lighting installed in Buckingham Palace, and London's busier streets were gas-lit by 1842, when the city employed some 380 lamplighters. As one can see in Seymour's and Phiz's illustrations of 1836-37, interior gas lighting was at this time generally reserved for shops and public buildings because of coal gas's strong ordour and the need for good ventilation since the device consumed a great deal of oxygen. The first major building to employ a gasolier was the Prince Regent's Brighton Pavilion, which boasted an enormous, fanciful Chinese flying dragon gasolier in the newly expanded banqueting room; a number of smaller, lotus-shaped gasoliers also hang from the ceiling of the the Prince's Music Room.

Later Versions of the Same Scene (1874, 1910)

Compare the 1837 steel engraving to Phiz's 1874 woodcut of the same narrative moment in the first volume of Chapman and Hall's Household Edition (p. 393): The mottled-faced gentleman [the central coachman, back to viewer, as in the 1837 original] reviewed the company, and slowly lifted his hand.

Above: Phiz revises his approach to the comic moment only slightly, but changes the orientation of the plate to permit our seeing more background detail in The mottled-faced gentleman reviewed the company, and slowly lifted his hand! (See page 388.) in the 1874 Household Edition, engraved by one of the Dalziels. Right: In Harry Furniss's revision of Phiz's illustration, the focal character is little Mr. Pell, rather than Tony Weller, whom he seems to have cloned: Solomon Pell and his Clients (1910). [Click on these images to enlarge them.]

Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910

Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the images, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

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. The Posthumous Adventures of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. 14 vols. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. 1.

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.

Guiliano, Edward, and Philip Collins, eds. The Annotated Dickens.2 vols. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. Vol. I.

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.

Johnannsen, Albert. "The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club." Phiz Illustrations from the Novels of Charles Dickens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1956. Pp. 1-74.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004.

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.

Created 15 January 2012

Last modified 2 April 2024