"And you're agoing to desert your colors, are you, my lad?" — thirty-third illustration by W. L. Sheppard for Dickens's "Dombey and Son" (American Household Edition, 1873)

"And you're agoing to desert your colors, are you, my lad?" by W. L. Sheppard. Thirty-third illustration for Dickens's Dombey and Son in the American Household Edition (1873), Chapter XXXIX, "Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner," p. 224. Page 225's Heading: "Captain Cuttle is Deserted by Rob the Grinder." 10.7 x 13.7 cm (4 ⅛ by 5 ⅜ inches) framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: The devious Rob the Grinder bids Captain Cuttle farewell

Sheppard's uncaptioned title-page vignette of Captain Cuttle.

“What? didn’t you know that I was going to leave you, Captain?” asked Rob, with a sneaking smile.

The Captain put down the paper, took off his spectacles, and brought his eyes to bear on the deserter.

“Oh yes, Captain, I am going to give you warning. I thought you’d have known that beforehand, perhaps,” said Rob, rubbing his hands, and getting up. “If you could be so good as provide yourself soon, Captain, it would be a great convenience to me. You couldn’t provide yourself by to-morrow morning, I am afraid, Captain: could you, do you think?”

“And you’re a going to desert your colors, are you, my lad?” said the Captain, after a long examination of his face. [Chapter XXXIX, "Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner," 224]

Commentary: Another plot complication at The Little Midshipman

Clayton J. Clarke's watercolour study of the genial sailor: Captain Cuttle (1910).

In the second half of Dickens's Dombey and Son illustrators keep readers well abreast of the domestic melodrama unfolding around the genial Captain Edward Cuttle at Sol Gills' marine shop, even as they advance the readers' understanding of Edith's and Florence's internal conflicts, and James Carker's machinations. Like Dickens, the illustrators foil the scenes of high life at the Princess Place mansion with the domestic troubles that seem to overwhelm the hard-working lower-middle class denizens of the nautical instrument shop in Leadenhall Street.

In the Sheppard illustration, we are in the parlour at the back of The Little Midshipman. A year has now almost transpired since Sol Gills disappeared and Walter was reported lost at sea aboard Dombey's Son and Heir. In all this time, Captain Cuttle has run the Little Midshipman with the assistance of Gills’s shop-boy, Rob the Grinder. But as the year draws to a close, Rob (installed there by Carker) is growing restive and Cuttle worries about the contents of Sol Gills’ sealed envelope. Morally and emotionally stunted by his wretched experiences at the Charitable Grinders' School, Rob Tootle always has his eye to the main-chance, so that now he quits his position in the shop in order to undertake more lucrative work. assisting Carker in his plotting against his employer.

Having treated Rob the Grinder with avuncular kindness which he thought Rob returned, Ned Cuttle is shocked by Rob's announcement over tea and the evening newspaper that he is giving up raising pigeons and will be leaving his post at The Little Midshipman. When the good Captain accuses him of desertion, Rob counterfeits both being indignant and upset; "The stricken Grinder wept [crocodile tears], and put his coat-cuff in his eye." The reader naturally wonders what Rob is up to, and where his new "berth" may be. Once out the shop and heading down the street, Rob grins to himself in triumph.

The Little Midshipman: A Note

The wooden statue of the Little Midshipman in the Dickens House Museum, London.

The real Wooden Shipman, the chandlery owned by Walter Gay's uncle, Solomon Gills, stood at No. 157 Leadenhall Street, opposite East India House, London. In the Dickens novel, the navigational instruments shop serves as one of the story's principal settings. Here, Captain Cuttle and Sol Gills commiserate with Walter Gay; here, Florence comes, to corroborate the news that Walter has been lost at sea, and later seeks refuge with the avuncular Captain Cuttle. "The firm removed to Minories on the demolition of their Leadenhall Street premises, and the effigy [of the Little Midshipman that Dickens was accustomed to pat affectionately whenever he walked from Covent Garden past East India House] is carefully preserved from the weather inside their office at No. 123" (p. 129) wrote Dickensian editor Walter Dexter in 1929. The eighteenth-century wooden figure now resides in the Dickens House Museum, Doughty Street, London.

Phiz's, Barnard's, and Darley's Cuttle Plates (1862, 1867, and 1877)

Left: Phiz's title-page vignette recalls Captain Cuttle's custodianship of Sol Gills' shop: Rob the Grinder Reading with Captain Cuttle, in serial with the last number, April 1848. Centre: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's's realisation of Captain as caregiver: Captain Cuttle . . . took his own [watch] down from the mantel-shelf (1862). Right: Barnard's moving realisation of Ned Cuttle's processing the disastrous news of Walter's probable death and Sol's disappearance: And reading softly to himself, in the little back-parlour, and stopping now and then to wipe his eyes, the captain, in a true and simple spirit, committed Walter's body to the deep (1877).

Four years after Sheppard's American Household Edition Fred Barnard realised precisely the same scene: "And you’re a going to desert your colours, are you, my lad?" said the Captain, after a long examination of his face.

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son (1846-1910)

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

Bibliography

Dexter, Walter. "The Little Midshipman." Dickensian 25: 129.

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. L. Sheppard. The Household Edition. 18 vols. New York: Harper & Co., 1873.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1862. Vols. 1-4.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [62 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880. II.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 61 wood-engravings. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow, 1900, rpt. 1934. 2 vols. in one.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. IX.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.

Created 14 February 2022