Hablot Knight Browne's title-page vignette "Pickwick in a wheelbarrow" for Charles Dickens's "Pickwick Papers" (British Household Edition, 1874)

Mr. Pickwick finds himself in a wheelbarrow — in Captain Boldwig's Pound. Title-page vignette by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) for the British Household Edition (1874) of Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Composite woodblock engraving, 8 x 7.3 cm (3 by 2 ¾ inches); engraved by the Dalziels. Facing the frontispiece. [Click the images to enlarge them.]

Passage Anticipated: Drunken Pickwick Brought in a Wheelbarrow to the Pound

Meanwhile Mr. Pickwick had been wheeled to the Pound, and safely deposited therein, fast asleep in the wheel-barrow, to the immeasurable delight and satisfaction not only of all the boys in the village, but three-fourths of the whole population, who had gathered round, in expectation of his waking. If their most intense gratification had been awakened by seeing him wheeled in, how many hundredfold was their joy increased when, after a few indistinct cries of "Sam!" he sat up in the barrow, and gazed with indescribable astonishment on the faces before him.

A general shout was of course the signal of his having woke up; and his involuntary inquiry of ‘What’s the matter?" occasioned another, louder than the first, if possible.

"Here's a game!" roared the populace.

"Where am I?" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.

"In the pound," replied the mob.

"How came I here? What was I doing? Where was I brought from?"

"Boldwig! Captain Boldwig!" was the only reply. [Chapter XIX, "A Pleasant Day with an Unpleasant Termination," 130]

Commentry: A Proleptic Reading

This title-page vignette, the second illustration in the Chapman and Hall Household Edition (1874), faces the frontispiece,but anticipates a scene some fifty pages hence, in Chapter XIX. Phiz directs the reader neither by caption nor quotation to turn to page 130 in the nineteenth chapter to decipher the meaning of Pickwick's lying in a wheelbarrow or his shocked expression. Nor does Phiz depict the other key components of the scene that provide a visual context: the enclosure, the impounded animals, and the gleeful spectators. Perhaps Phiz expected readers of the new Household Edition volume of 1874 would already be familiar with his earlier version of the famous comedic scene, either from reading an earlier edition — Chapman and Hall, London, first published Pickwick in nineteen monthly parts, from April 1836 through November 1837 — or from having seen the original October 1836 steel-engraving Pickwick in the Pound in the window of a bookseller's. In this updated version, even a donkey, also apprehended for trespass, laughs at the hapless protagonist, who, like a prodigal, is keeping company with swine. The style of this later, much simplified version of the scene, seems far cruder and heavier than Phiz’s earlier work.

In the title-page vignette of the Household Edition, Phiz suggests by the fence-posts behind Pickwick and the wheelbarrow that the novel's dubious hero is indeed in the pound, but spares him the humiliation of being surrounded by three-quarters of the population of the village who pelt him with vegetables and "a few other little tokens of the playful disposition of the many-headed" (130), that is, the mob. As Robert L. Patten notes in "Boz, Phiz and Pickwick in the Pound," Phiz has juxtaposed the stray animals, the derisive villagers, and the tower of the village church for thematic purposes, so that it may seem odd that neither of the Household Edition illustrators chose to replicate in full this scene of the protagonist's social degradation as Pickwick awakes to find himself an object of scorn and without the support of Sam and his fellow Pickwickians. Patten points out in that "Pickwick's follies are the result of an excess of appetites that, in moderation, are beneficial" (581) since they serve to reinforce camaraderie and fellowship. Phiz has placed him with other creatures whose appetites have led them astray. Michael Steig is somewhat critical of Patten's attempt to link Pickwick in the Pound (October 1836) thematically the other illustration for Part 7, Mr. Pickwick and Sam in the Attorney's Office (Chapter XX).

In the original steel engraving, Pickwick, who is still feeling the effects of multiple glasses of cold punch, has been transported as a "drunken plebeian" (130) in the wheelbarrow from the scene of his debauch on Captain Boldwig's land at One-tree Hill (the very name suggestive of Christian redemption through suffering) to the local impound. In assessing the frontispiece, the reader must recall how Phiz had depicted Pickwick surrounded by the villagers, a stray donkey (which is apparently laughing at the inebriate), and three pigs, despite the fact that the text in Chapter XIX Dickens mentions no such creatures as Pickwick's companions.

An adaptation of Phiz's original serial illustration Pickwick in the Pound (October 1836) for the cover and title-page of Dicks' Standard Play 1065.

In the sixteenth plate for The Pickwick Papers (October 1836), Pickwick, who still feels the effects of multiple glasses of cold punch, has been transported as a "drunken plebeian" in the wheelbarrow from the scene of his "debauch" (a picnic, in fact) on Captain Boldwig's land at One-tree Hill (the very name suggestive of Christian redemption through suffering) to the local impound. The 1836 steel-engraving, in turn, became the basis within a year for the cover of Dicks' Standard Play 1065 and the title-page of Pickwick. A Farce, In Three Acts, William Lehman Rede's dramatic adaptation of Dickens's novel, first performed at The Adelphi Theatre, on 3 April 1837 — although the serial did not arrive at its final instalment until the November 1837 double number.

In the title-page vignette, Phiz anticipates Pickwick's extreme embarrassment at awakening from a drunken stupor in the village pound, surrounded by errant animals indicative of atavistic impulses and uncivilised behaviour. Apprehended in a comatose condition on Captain Boldwig's estate and treated like a common vagabond, Pickwick, heretofore a respectable, well-off bourgeoisie, discovers what it feels like to be unjustly judged and incarcerated. The scene anticipates his being sentenced to the Fleet Prison after he loses his case against Mrs. Bardell, who has sued him for breach of promise of marriage.

Left: Phiz's original serial illustration Pickwick in the Pound (October 1836). Right: Thomas Nast's 1873 cartoonish wood-engraving, "Who are you, you rascal?" (Chapter XIX in the American Household Edition).

A second approach: Phiz's depiction of Pickwick, passed out in the wheelbarrow, later in the British Household Edition (1874)

Phiz's approach to this episode in the novel is completely consistent with his original plate: "Who are you, you rascal?" said the captain, administering several pokes to Mr. Pickwick's body with the thick stick. "What's your name?", page 129, Chapter XIX; preface to "Pickwick in the Pound."

Left: Harold Copping's version of the original serial illustration, with poor Pickwick stunned, disoriented, and pathetic — an aged bourgeois held up to ridicule: Mr. Pickwick in the Pound (1924) for Character Sketches from Dickens. Right: Harry Furniss's re-thinking of the Household Edition illustration: The Effect of Cold Punch after the Shooting Party (1910) for the Charles Dickens Library Edition.

Related Material

Other artists who illustrated this work, 1836-1910

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. Formatting by George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image 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 and Checkmark Books, 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).

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

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Vol. 4.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. 6.

_______. Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 2.

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.

Patten, Robert L. "Boz, Phiz and Pickwick in the Pound." English Literary History, 36 (1969): 575-591.

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.

Last modified 9 April 2024