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Passage Illustrated: Leaving Home before the Railway Age

Here he caught the coachman’s eye. The coachman winked. "Remarkable fine woman for her time of life," said the coachman.

"I quite agree with you," returned Tom. "So she is."

"Finer than many a young ‘un, I mean to say," observed the coachman. "Eh?"

"Than many a young one," Tom assented.

"I don’t care for ‘em myself when they’re too young," remarked the coachman.

This was a matter of taste, which Tom did not feel himself called upon to discuss.

"You’ll seldom find ‘em possessing correct opinions about refresh- [420-421] ment, for instance, when they’re too young, you know," said the coachman; "a woman must have arrived at maturity, before her mind’s equal to coming provided with a basket like that."

"Perhaps you would like to know what it contains?" said Tom, smiling.

As the coachman only laughed, and as Tom was curious himself, he unpacked it, and put the articles, one by one, upon the footboard. A cold roast fowl, a packet of ham in slices, a crusty loaf, a piece of cheese, a paper of biscuits, half a dozen apples, a knife, some butter, a screw of salt, and a bottle of old sherry. There was a letter besides, which Tom put in his pocket.

The coachman was so earnest in his approval of Mrs Lupin’s provident habits, and congratulated Torn so warmly on his good fortune, that Tom felt it necessary, for the lady’s sake, to explain that the basket was a strictly Platonic basket, and had merely been presented to him in the way of friendship. When he had made the statement with perfect gravity; for he felt it incumbent on him to disabuse the mind of this lax rover of any incorrect impressions on the subject; he signified that he would be happy to share the gifts with him, and proposed that they should attack the basket in a spirit of good fellowship at any time in the course of the night which the coachman’s experience and knowledge of the road might suggest, as being best adapted to the purpose. From this time they chatted so pleasantly together, that although Tom knew infinitely more of unicorns than horses, the coachman informed his friend the guard at the end of the next stage, "that rum as the box-seat looked, he was as good a one to go, in pint of conversation, as ever he’d wish to sit by." [Chapter XXXV, "Tom Pinch departs to seek his Fortune. What he finds at Starting," pp. 420-421] in the 1844 edition]

Commentary by Michael Steig

Tom's next appearance is a step further along the way of his progress, in Mr. Pinch departs to seek his fortune (ch. 36). An image introduced early in the novel's text is taken up here and once again in the title page vignette. In his introduction of Pecksniff, Dickens had remarked, "Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there" (ch. 2, p. 10); he later emphasizes the actual fingerpost to Salisbury and beyond, which becomes important enough as a symbol for him to exhort Browne not to forget it in the title page. In the present plate it points Tom on his journey, as it had Mark and Martin before him.

Although they at times achieve great insight, the illustrations in Martin Chuzzlewit usually operate on a simpler level of moral commentary than does the text at its most incisive. Thus the four horses that are to take Tom's coach to London in Mr. Pinch departs ... are, unlike the ones that run away with Tigg and Jonas' carriage, tightly controlled by the coachman, although the contrast of the lively coach horses with Mrs. Lupin's staid old mare implies that Tom is starting on a road which will lead him to greater fulfillment in life.

Much of this fulfillment turns out to be vicarious, as Tom watches relationships develop between his sister Ruth and John Westlock (depicted in Mr. Pinch and Ruth unconscious of a visitor [ch. 39]), and Martin and Mary. [Dickens and Phiz, pp. 74-75]

The Frontispiece of the July 1844 number versus the February 1844 Plate

We may regard the frontispiece (otherwise, The New Pupil) and Pinch Departs to Seek His Fortune as companion pieces. In the February 1844 illustration the apprentice, having learned much from the master and having become a part of the fabric of the social life of the Wiltshire village, departs; in the July 1844 illustration, one of the last which Phiz completed for the series, a young man bent upon becoming an architect (presumably young Martin Chuzzlewit) arrives, and is met at the fingerpost by Pecksniff with his gig, which is turned towards the reader, with the horse grazing beside the pupil's trunk. Conversely, the gig in the earlier illustration, with the horse's head turned away from the reader, is the vehicle owned by the hostess of the Blue Dragon. Already in the frontispiece the vehicle which has brought the youth is departing, the horses careering off right. In the February illustration of Tom's departure, the horses, left, are rearing, as if eager to be on their way; however, the driver is reigning them in to give Tom time to receive Mrs. Lupin's basket and respond to her greeting.

We can see the driver and the half-dozen passengers more clearly in the February engraving, in which the guard is hoisting up Tom's trunk from the man on the ground. The emphases of these two similar illustrations complement each other, as Pecksniff welcomes the youth (centre) in the frontispiece, whereas Mrs. Lupin bids Tom farewell in the centre of the February plate. In the latter, the size of the fingerpost in background semms to signal its reduced importance. A curious difference in the two fingerposts (supposedly the same element seen from two different perspectives) is that, in the frontispiece, the fingerpost has rounded nob on top (symbolizing the world that awaits, perhaps) and a vesitigial third arm, partially broken off, as opposed to that in the February plate, which points in only two directions (presumably, Salisbury and London). The departure plate is the more energetic, suggesting through the rearing of the four horses the eagerness of the passengers to off. The significant difference, however, lies in the authenticity of feeling behind Mrs. Lupin's farwell and the pro forma welcome offered by a glib Mr. Pecksniff.

Related Materials: Later Illustrations

• Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
• Fred Barnard (60 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1872)
• Clayton J. Clarke (five studies from three sources, 1910)
• Harry Furniss (twenty-eight lithographs for the Charles Dickens Library Edition, 1910)

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.

Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy in Works. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall: 1866, rpt. 1874.

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 Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872.

_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Andrew Lang. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition: 34 volumes. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897. 2 vols.

_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Edited by Margaret Cardwell. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). The Clarendon Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Monod, Sylvère. "External and Additional Material." Martin Chuzzlewit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985. Pp. 173-185.

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.

_____. "Martin Chuzzlewit's Progress by Dickens and Phiz." Dickens Studies Annual, 2 (1972): 119-149.

Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.

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