Dick Swiveller and The Marchioness
Fred Barnard
1885
11.1 x 9 cm framed
Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case. — Ch. XXXIV.
One of six lithographs in A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard. . .. Series 3 (1885). [Click on illustration to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [Commentary continues below. Mouse over the text for links.]
Context of the Illustration: Dick encounters the Brasses' Servant-girl
"Come in!" said Dick."Don’t stand upon ceremony. The business will get rather complicated if I’ve many more customers. Come in!"
"Oh, please," said a little voice very low down in the doorway, "will you come and show the lodgings?"
Dick leant over the table, and descried a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing of her visible but her face and feet. She might as well have been dressed in a violin-case.
"Why, who are you?" said Dick.
To which the only reply was, "Oh, please will you come and show the lodgings?"
There never was such an old-fashioned child in her looks and manner. She must have been at work from her cradle. She seemed as much afraid of Dick, as Dick was amazed at her. [Chapter XXXIV, British Household Edition, 126]
Commentary: Foregrounding an Interesting Pair of Secondary Characters
Although Barnard foregrounds and emphasizes an adolescent Dick Swiveller, law clerk to Sampson Brass, the "small servant" plays a significant role in the chromolithograph. What distinguishes this 1885 version of the adolescent Dick from his predecessors in the Master Humphrey’s Clock (25 April 1840 through 6 February 1841) and Household Edition, Barnard’s chief sources? Dick is hardly the drunken sot or belligerent tough of the two previous series. Barnard gives us a far more appealing adolescent who seems genuinely interested in the Brasses’ small servant, whom he dubs “The Marchioness.”
The plot with the Trents and Daniel Quilp is well advanced before Dickens reverts to these two apparently minor characters in the Brasses' law offices at Bevis Marks in what was originally serial instalment no. 19 (12 September 1840). As requested by their foremost client, Quilp, the odious brother and sister take on Dick as a law clerk, directly under dictatorial Sally's supervision. When the practitioners are away from the office, Swiveller is in charge, although he knows far less about the management of the dreary household than the peculiar servant-girl (who may be Sally's love child by Quilp). In Barnard's realisation of the law office, the girl has just come up from the cellar to ask Dick to show the rental apartment on the first floor to an elderly "Single Gentleman."
Originally just a dissolute young associate of Fred Trent, Dick emerges at this point as a secondary protagonist, whose comic and romantic trajectory will contrast the self-sacrifice and premature death of the angelic Little Nell. His relationship with the servant-girl gradually develops from the momentous scene onward, and constitutes a strong antiphonal strain of genial character comedy in their cribbage playing and beer drinking, a past time which culminates in a romance between the heir to his aunt's estate and "Sophronia Sphynx," whom Dick educates and subsequently marries in Chapter LXXIII.
A Dick Swiveller Gallery: Relevant Illustrations from Various Editions, 1840-1912
Left: A nattily dressed Dick roughs up Quilp in the street, much to the delight of the passersby, in Phiz's 4 July 1840 contribution to Master Humphrey's Clock (Part 12). Right: The Household Edition, Vol. XII, realisation of Dick and The Marchioness by Charles Green: "Oh, please," said a little voice very low down in the doorway, "will you come and show the lodgings?" (for Chapter XXXV).
Left: A self-assured Dick shows "The Single Gentleman" the room for rent in Phiz's 12 September 1840 contribution to Master Humphrey's Clock: Mr. Swiveller's Appointment (tailpiece, Part 22). Centre: The celebrated and often illustrated game of cribbage which Dick teaches the small servant in Groome's The Marchioness considered which to play (1900). Right: Phiz gives Dick plenty of attitude in his 3 October 1840 contribution to Master Humphrey's Clock (headpiece, Part 25): Mr. Swiveller's Libation.
Left to right: Phiz continues to depict Dick as something of a wastral in his 8 August 1840 contribution to Master Humphrey's Clock (No. 17): Quilp's Discovery. In the American Household Edition (1872), Dick takes an interest in the welfare of the Brasses' small servant in "Clear that off, and then you'll see what's next." (Chapter LVII).
Later Studies of Dick and The Marchioness (1900 to 1924)
Left to right: Furniss's pair of plates focussing on the relationship of the rowdy clerk and the waif: Dick Swiveller hears the Marchioness say "No!" and The Marchioness (1910). Harold Copping's duel chromolithographic character study Dick Swiveller Meets the Marchioness (1924). A fashionably dressed Dick menaces a scruffy Quilp for rent in Darley's 1888 study: Dick Swiveller and Quilp, from 'The Old Curiosity Shop'. Kyd in his Player's Cigarette Card studies makes Dick a Regency fashion plate (Number 11, 1910).
Various Artists' Illustrations for Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (1841-1924)
- The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works."
- George Cattermole (13 plates selected)
- Hablot Knight Browne (61 wood-engravings)
- Felix O. C. Darley (4 photogravure plates)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (12 wood engravings)
- Thomas Worth (54 wood engravings)
- W. H. C. Groome (8 lithographs plus engraved title)
- J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (13 lithographs from watercolours)
- Harry Furniss (31 lithographs plus engraved title)
- Harold Copping (2 chromolithographs selected)
Six Illustrations in the Original 1840 Serial Depicting the Marchioness
- Mr. Brass at the Keyhole (Chapter XXXV)
- The Small Servant's Dinner (Chapter XXXVI)
- The Marchioness playing Cards (Chapter LVII)
- A Quiet Game at Cribbage (Chapter LXIIV)
- The Marchioness in the Chaise (Chapter LXV)
- Delicacies for Mr. Swiveller (Chapter LXVI)
Relevant illustrations from other editions, 1867-1924
Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s dual character study of one of Dickens's oddest
couples,
Thomas Green chose to end his length series of illustrations for the American Household Edition of the novel with the married life of the Swivellers, depicting the formerly androgynous Small Servant as the charming young woman Sophronia: Upon every anniversary Mr. Chuckster came to dinner (1872).
Related Material
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz, George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841. Rpt., 1849 by Bradbury and Evans (3 vols. in 2).
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop, with 39 illustrations by Charles Green. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Vol. XII.
A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, Being Facsimiles of Original Drawings by Fred. Barnard. Series 3: Wilkins Micawber; Miss Betsey Trotwood; Captain Edward Cuttle; Uriah Heep; Dick Swiveller and The Marchioness; and Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1885.
Created 2 February 2025