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The Free and Easy
Frederic W. Pailthorpe
1886
9 cm high by 7.8 cm wide (3 ½ inches by 3 inches)
Dickens's Oliver Twist
[Click on image to enlarge it. See below for passage illustrated, commentary and comparisons with other illustrators' work; mouse over the text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples; which was the sign by which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons: was the public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured. Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Fagin walked straight upstairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about: shading his eyes with his hand, as if in search of some particular person.
The room was illuminated by two gas-lights; the glare of which was prevented by the barred shutters, and closely-drawn curtains of faded red, from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened, to prevent its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was so full of dense tobacco smoke, that at first it was scarcely possible to discern anything more. By degrees, however, as some of it cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a long table: at the upper end of which, sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand; while a professional gentleman with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner.
As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he could. When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment, after which, the professional gentleman on the chairman’s right and left volunteered a duet, and sang it, with great applause. [Chapter XXVI, "In Which a Mysterious Character Appears upon the Scene; And Many Things, Inseparable from this History, are Done and Performed," p. 139 in the 1846 edition]
Despite the disreputable company and the state of intoxication of the customers, the vibrancy of the colours and the variety of poses and costumes render this realisation of the Saffron Hill public house almost charming. Having learned that Sikes and Toby Crackit have botched the burglary at Chertsey and that Oliver is probably dead, Fagin (upper left) has taken a series of alleyways, ascended a staircase, and now enters the low haunt of inebriates and tobacco aficionados known as The Cripples. Using a very full palette, Pailthorpe shows the very moment that Fagin enters in hopes of finding Sikes. As Dickens indicates, the master of ceremonies, hammer in hand, is at the head of the table, where a young woman is singing a ballad, accompanied by a blue-nosed pianist (lower left), playing a spinnet. And, also as Dickens indicates, the crowded room is filled with clouds of tobacco smoke emanating from sundry pipes. The whole, purgatorial scene has the ghastly illumination of twin gas-jets
Of the ten men crammed together in the small taproom, five are wearing their hats, a sure sign that the normal rules of social decorum matter not a jot at The Three Cripples. In polite, middle-class society, wearing a hat indoors, especially in the presence of older people, was regarded as disrespectful. The caricatural faces of the pub's clientele, especially the comatose harridan in the large bonnet (right), are worthy of Cruikshank or Rowlandson.
Left: Harry Furniss's later version of the same scene in "a low public-house, in the filthiest part of Little Saffron Hill": Fagin and Noah understand each other (1910). Centre: George Cruikshank's The Jew & Morris Both begin to understand each other (Part 19, November 1838). Centre: Mahoney's . [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.
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Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1838; Chapman and Hall, 1846.
_______. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. 1 (1820-1839).
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.
_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.
_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.
Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1774; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmetts Insurrection in 1803]. London: A & C Black, 1903. OT = pp. 1-106]. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.
Pailthorpe, Frederic W. (Illustrator). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. London: Robson & Kerslake, 1886. Set No. 118 (coloured) of 200 sets of proof impressions.
Created 11 February 2015 Last modified 6 December 2021