Passage Illustrated: A Helping of Keats with a Dash of Shelley

The favourite attitude of the poetical young gentleman is lounging on a sofa with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling, or sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, staring with very round eyes at the opposite wall. When he is in one of these positions, his mother, who is a worthy, affectionate old soul, will give you a nudge to bespeak your attention without disturbing the abstracted one, and whisper with a shake of the head, that John’s imagination is at some extraordinary work or other, you may take her word for it. Hereupon John looks more fiercely intent upon vacancy than before, and suddenly snatching a pencil from his pocket, puts down three words, and a cross on the back of a card, sighs deeply, paces once or twice across the room, inflicts a most unmerciful slap upon his head, and walks moodily up to his dormitory. [Chapter X, "The Poetical Young Gentleman," pp. 56-57]

Commentary: John Milkwash, A Melancholy Cross between Keats and Shelley

Having made the acquaintance of the family funny man, Mr. Griggins, at the Christmas party in Chapter VIII, "The Funny Young Gentlemen," we encounter the theatrical young gentleman in Chapter IX before making the superficial acquaintance of an aesthetic young man who seems to be channeling Romantic poets John Keats (died 1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (died 1822) simultaneously. Phiz has given the poetical John an aesthetic, soulful expression and a Shelleyesque collar, but the poet, sitting bolt upright on the couch, does not appear to be pouring forth his innermost yearnings to the young lady or his own bespectacled mother. Phiz has caught precisely the pseudo-poet's "melancholy" and "plaintive countenance" and his abstracted manner, to say nothing of his uncut, lanky hair. The scene depicted apparently involves the young lady's unlocking her album (centre) "to receive the young gentleman's original impromptu contribution" (60). But the volatile John Milkwash has yet to start up from the couch crying, "Love did you say!" and laughing maniacally like the villain of many an Adelphi melodrama (popularly known as an "Adelphi Screamer"), Mr. O. Smith, otherwise, Richard J. Smith, nicknamed "Obi" after the western desperado that he portrayed in John Fawcett's Obi; or, Six-Fingered Jack (1829).

Related Material

• Theatres in Victorian London

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 23 April 2023