"Oh Chiv, Chiv," murmured Mr. Tigg, 'You have a nobly independent nature, Chiv." (1872). Ninth composite woodblock engraving by Fred Barnard for Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (Chapter VI), page 49. 9.3 cm x 13.7 cm, or 3 ¾ high by 5 ⅜ inches, framed. Engraving by the Dalziels for The Household Edition.
Passage Realised: The Despondent Chevy Slyme and his Jolly Hanger-on, Montague Tigg
Mr. Tigg replenished his friend’s glass, pressed it into his hand, and nodded an intimation to the visitors that they would see him in a better aspect immediately.
"Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill, eh!" repeated Mr. Slyme, after a sulky application to his glass. "Very pretty! And crowds of impostors, the while, becoming famous; men who are no more on a level with me than — Tigg, I take you to witness that I am the most persecuted hound on the face of the earth."
With a whine, not unlike the cry of the animal he named, in its lowest state of humiliation, he raised his glass to his mouth again. He found some encouragement in it; for when he set it down he laughed scornfully. Upon that Mr Tigg gesticulated to the visitors once more, and with great expression, implying that now the time was come when they would see Chiv in his greatness.
"Ha, ha, ha," laughed Mr. Slyme. "Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill! Yet I think I’ve a rich uncle, Tigg, who could buy up the uncles of fifty strangers! Have I, or have I not? I come of a good family, I believe! Do I, or do I not? I’m not a man of common capacity or accomplishments, I think! Am I, or am I not?"
"You are the American aloe of the human race, my dear Chiv," said Mr. Tigg, "which only blooms once in a hundred years!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr Slyme again. "Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill! I obliged to two architect’s apprentices. Fellows who measure earth with iron chains, and build houses like bricklayers. Give me the names of those two apprentices. How dare they oblige me!"
Mr. Tigg was quite lost in admiration of this noble trait in his friend’s character; as he made known to Mr Pinch in a neat little ballet of action, spontaneously invented for the purpose.
"I’ll let ‘em know, and I’ll let all men know," cried Chevy Slyme, "that I’m none of the mean, grovelling, tame characters they meet with commonly. I have an independent spirit. I have a heart that swells in my bosom. I have a soul that rises superior to base considerations."
"Oh Chiv, Chiv," murmured Mr Tigg, "you have a nobly independent nature, Chiv!" [Chapter VII, "In which Mr. Chevy Slyme asserts the independence of his spirit; and the Blue Dragon loses a limb," page 56 in the 1872 edition.]
Commentary: An Engaging Sychophant
Left: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s Montague Tigg and Chevy Slyme (1867).
Barnard's version of this scene recalls Iago's bolstering the sagging spirits of his aristocratic dupe Roderigo in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice. The persuasive confidence man, Montague Tigg, here attempts to rally the despondent Chevy Slyme, who has lost his hopes amidst so numerous a contingent of possible Chuzzlewit heirs.
The positioning of this illustration relative to the text illustrated is highly proleptic, and its interpretation is, moreover, conditioned by the subsequent, full-page illustration, "You're a pair of Whittingtons, gents, without the cat; . . my name is Tigg; how do you do?". Thus, Barnard gives the comical character who will become a confidence man and financial swindler a higher profile than he might seem to merit at this point in the novel. In the original serial, Phiz does not introduce the outsized personality until his illustration for Chapter XXVII (November 1843): The Board.
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, with 59 illustrations by Fred Barnard. Household Edition, 22 volumes. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. 2. [The copy of the Household Edition from which these pictures were scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, proprietor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2008, was this 1843-44 novel.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated Sterling Edition. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne and Frederick Barnard. Boston: Dana Estes, n. d. [1890s]
Kyd [Clayton J. Clarke]. Characters from Dickens. Nottingham: John Player & Sons, 1910.
Steig, Michael. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock and Martin Chuzzlewit." Ch. 3, Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U.P., 1978. Pp. 51-85. [See e-text in Victorian Web.]
Steig, Michael. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz. Dickens Studies Annual 2 (1972): 119-149.
Last modified 10 July 2016
Last updated 17 November 2024