Passage Illustrated: The Popular Bourgeois Parlour Comedian

When the round game and several games at blind man’s buff which followed it were all over, and we were going down to supper, the inexhaustible Mr. Griggins produced a small sprig of mistletoe from his waistcoat pocket, and commenced a general kissing of the assembled females, which occasioned great commotion and much excitement. We observed that several young gentlemen — including the young gentleman with the pale countenance — were greatly scandalised at this indecorous proceeding, and talked very big among themselves in corners; and we observed too, that several young ladies when remonstrated with by the aforesaid young gentlemen, called each other to witness how they had struggled, and protested vehemently that it was very rude, and that they were surprised at Mrs. Brown’s allowing it, and that they couldn’t bear it, and had no patience with such impertinence. But such is the gentle and forgiving nature of woman, that although we looked very narrowly for it, we could not detect the slightest harshness in the subsequent treatment of Mr. Griggins. Indeed, upon the whole, it struck us that among the ladies he seemed rather more popular than before! [Chapter VIII, "The Funny Young Gentlemen," 48]

Commentary

Although the illustration is situated in the text opposite the opening page of the sketch, we must wait some four pages to encounter the passage it realizes. In this upper-middle-class drawing room lit by sizeable chandolier, the young women outnumber their male counterparts eight to five, and dominate the interior scene, as in the previous engraving, The Domestic Young Gentleman (Chapter VI). The figures here with one exception, the middle-aged couple at the door (left) in eighteenth-century fashions, are young members of the late Regency or early Victorian period: thoroughly contemporary with the slight publication in which they appear as exemplars of their class and generation. And the "funny young gentleman," centre, is particularly representative of the type one finds (says the volume's Dedicator) "at an annual family Christmas party" (44).

However, the only element in the illustration that suggests a Christmas party is the "sprig of misletoe" that Griggins is holding above the space between the young ladies. In anticipation of actually perusing the letterpress, the reader naturally wonders why the young woman in the centre seems alarmed or upset with the behaviour of that "droll dog Griggins" (44), whom the company had so recently welcomed with delight. In fact, the accompanying text does nothing to answer the questions that the illustration has provoked, and we conclude the chapter without receiving any explanation for the young lady's anxiety.

Bibliography

Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.

Caswell, Edward. Sketches of Young Ladies: In Which These Interesting Members of the Animal Kingdom Are Classified, According to Their Several Instincts. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 31 December 1836.

Dickens, Charles. Sketches of Young Couples. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1840.

Dickens, Charles. Sketches of Young Gentlemen. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1838.

Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.

Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. "Sketches of Young Couples." The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. P. 237.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-85.

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Created 12 May 2023