"Mrs. Gamp, on the Art of Nursing" by Fred Barnard

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Mrs. Gamp, on the Art of Nursing

Fred Barnard

Colour lithography

1884

22.8 cm (9 inches) high by 17.5 cm (7 inches) wide, framed

"With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness, with one eye on the future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly spiritous . . . Mrs. Gamp rummaged in her pocket and took from it a printed card. 'Put that somewheres where you can keep it in your mind . . . I'm well known to many ladies, and it's my card. Gamp is my name, and Gamp is my nater.'" — Chapter XXVI, "An Unexpected Meeting and a Promising Project." [Click on illustration to enlarge it.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links.]

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Passage Illustrated: Barnard's Take on Dickens's Comic Masterpiece

She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp — the nose in particular — was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. [Chapter XIX, "The Reader is brought into Communication with Some Professional Persons, and Sheds a Tear over the Filial Piety of Good Mr. Jonas."]

Commentary: Humanizing the Harridan

Although Charles Dickens introduces us to one of his greatest comic creations, Mrs. Sarah ["Sairey"] Gamp, in the eighth instalment of the novel (August 1843), Fred Barnard in his 1884 coloured lithograph, completed a dozen years after his initial composite woodblock engravings for the novel in the Household Edition, seems to be thinking of the divine Sairey as she appears in Chapter XXV. Barnard's caption, "Mrs. Gamp on the Art of Nursing," is thematically connected with that chapter's title: "Is in part professional; and furnishes the reader with some valuable hints in relation to the management of a sick chamber." The colour portrait, however, also constitutes Barnard's rethinking of the character of the hideously fat, repulsive, swollen-visaged private nurse given him by Dickens and Phiz. Here, in the full-page 1884 study Sairey Gamp is more than a capacious bonnet and bibulous mangler of Cockney English. Rather, Barnard imbues her with a kind of sagacity in her knowing glance. As is appropriate to such a one-off study, he has surrounded her with bottles (medicinal and otherwise), and has emphasized her enormous umbrella, from which she takes her name. Instead of showing her turning her eyes upward, as is her wont, Barnard has her thoughtfully (perhaps even speculatively) gazing at the viewer, as if that viewer and consumer of Barnard's art is about to become her next client.

Various Illustrators' Interpretations of The Divine Sairey (1843-1924)

Left: Harold Copping's 1924 colour lithograph of Betsey and Sairey sharing a convivial glass, in Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig (Chapter 39). Centre: Harry Furniss's realisation of the immortal Dame Part, Mrs. Gamp (1910). Right: The original serial illustration in which Phiz introduced the sickroom nurse: Mrs. Gamp Has Her Eye on the Future (Chapter XXVI, October 1843). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Left: Kyd's Tuck card colour lithograph of Sairey Gamp with an oversized "gamp" (umbrella): Sairey Gamp in The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd" (Clayton J. Clarke, 1911). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Diamond Edition dual character study, Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prigg (1867). Right: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's 1863 frontispiece "The creeter's head's so hot, said Mrs. Gamp (American Household Edition, vol. 4). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Above: Fred Barnard's Mrs. Gamp favours the company with an exhibition of professional skill, old Chuffey being the object of her ministrations in Chapter 46 of the Household Edition (1872).

Related Material

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.

_____. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863. Vol. 2 of 4.

_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2.

_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated Sterling Edition. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne and Frederick Barnard. Boston: Dana Estes, n. d. [1889?]

A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, Being Facsimiles of Original Drawings by Fred. Barnard. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1884.

Created 25 January 2025