"Why, what the 'tarnal!" cried the Captain. "Well! I do admire at this, I do!" (1870s). Fortieth illustration by Fred Barnard in the Household Edition for Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (Chapter XXXIV), page 273. 10.5 cm x 13.7 cm, or 4 ⅛ high by 5 ½ inches, framed, engraved by the Dalziels. Running head: “Disappointment of Captain Kedgick," 273. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Passage Realised
After a weary voyage of several days, they came again to that same wharf where Mark had been so nearly left behind, on the night of starting for Eden. Captain Kedgick, the landlord, was standing there, and was greatly surprised to see them coming from the boat.
"Why, what the ‘tarnal!’ cried the Captain. ‘Well! I do admire at this, I do!"
"We can stay at your house until to-morrow, Captain, I suppose?" said Martin.
"I reckon you can stay there for a twelvemonth if you like," retorted Kedgick coolly. "But our people won’t best like your coming back."
"Won’t like it, Captain Kedgick!" said Martin.
"They did expect you was a-going to settle," Kedgick answered, as he shook his head. "They’ve been took in, you can’t deny!"
"What do you mean?" cried Martin.
"You didn’t ought to have received ‘em," said the Captain. "No you didn’t!"
"My good friend," returned Martin, "did I want to receive them? Was it any act of mine? Didn’t you tell me they would rile up, and that I should be flayed like a wild cat — and threaten all kinds of vengeance, if I didn’t receive them?"
"I don’t know about that," returned the Captain. "But when our people’s frills is out, they’re starched up pretty stiff, I tell you!’
With that, he fell into the rear to walk with Mark, while Martin and Elijah Pogram went on to the National.
"We’ve come back alive, you see!" said Mark.
"It ain’t the thing I did expect," the Captain grumbled. "A man ain’t got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views. Our fashionable people wouldn’t have attended his le-vee, if they had know’d it." [Chapter XXXIV, "In Which the Travellers Move Homeward, and Encounter Some Distinguished Characters upon the Way," 273]
Commentary
Supplied with passage money by the benevolent Mr. Bevan of Massachusetts, Martin and Mark, both fully recovered from malaria, make their way by steamboat to New York. Their former landlord at the National Hotel in Watertoast, Captain Kedgick, is vastly amused to find that they have cheated the Eden land-speculators by remaining very much alive and leaving the swamp of Eden rather than being buried there.
Related Materials
- The American Plates, Parts Seven and Nine: Appearance Versus Reality, Expectation versus Fulfillment
- Dickens's 1842 Reading Tour: Launching the Copyright Question in Tempestuous Seas
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the 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
Allingham, Philip V. "Historical Background: America's Eden." The Dickens Magazine: Martin Chuzzlewit. 5.2 (August 2008): 8.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Davis, Paul. "Martin Chuzzlewit, The Life and Adventures of." Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts-on-file and Checkmark, 1998. Pp. 229-237.
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. 1 of 4.
_____. 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. 22 vols. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871-1880. Vol. 2. [The copy of the Household Edition from which this picture was scanned was the gift of George Gorniak, proprietor of The Dickens Magazine, whose subject for the fifth series, beginning in January 2008, was this novel.]
_____. Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 7.
"The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: Fifty-nine Illustrations by Fred Barnard." Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens, Being Eight Hundred and Sixty-Six Drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney, Charles Green, A. B. Frost, Gordon Thomson, J. McL. Ralston, H. French, E. G. Dalziel, F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes. Printed from the Original Woodblocks Engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Pp. 185-216.
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.
3 February 2008
Last modified 25 November 2024