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The Tuggsses at Ramsgate
George Cruikshank
1839
Etching on copper
11.2 x 9.4 cm vignetted
"The Tuggses at Ramsgate," Chapter 4 in "Tales," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, originally published on 31 March 1836 with two illustrations by Robert Seymour in Chapman and Hall's Library of Fiction.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Lieutenant Slaughter looked first at one person mysteriously, then at another: then, laid down his cigar, then approached the window on tiptoe, and pointed with his right thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the curtain.
"Slaughter!" ejaculated the captain, rising from table, "what do you mean?"
The lieutenant, in reply, drew back the curtain and discovered Mr. Cymon Tuggs behind it: pallid with apprehension, and blue with wanting to cough.
"Aha!" exclaimed the captain, furiously. "What do I see? Slaughter, your sabre!"
"Cymon!" screamed the Tuggses.
"Mercy!" said Belinda.
"Platonic!" gasped Cymon.
"Your sabre!" roared the captain: "Slaughter — unhand me — the villain's life!"
"Murder!" screamed the Tuggses.
"Hold him fast, sir!" faintly articulated Cymon.
"Water!" exclaimed Joseph Tuggs — and Mr. Cymon Tuggs and all the ladies forthwith fainted away, and formed a tableau. — "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," Chapter 4, "Tales," p. 266-267.
The story did not appear with Cruikshank's overly dramatic illustration until well after its first appearance in print, in Chapman and Hall's Library of Fiction on 31 March 1836, the month after Macrone's first series of Sketches by Boz. The story appeared with the Cruikshank illustration instead of Seymour's in the Chapman and Hall 1839 single-volume edition. The other significant nineteenth-century illustration is that of Fred Barnard for the 1876 volume in the Household Edition. Perhaps not wishing to undercut the comic revelation scene upon which the story closes in an imitation of French farce, Barnard merely shows the scene in which Captain Waters, his wife Belinda, and their friend Lieutenant Slaughter first meet the Tuggses on the deck of the Ramsgate steamer. That Cymon looks nothing like an aristocrat in manner or clothing should suggest to the astute reader that Belinda is flattering the noveau riche family as part of some sort of confidence scheme.
Cruikshank's etching is of the same scene as the second Seymour illustration for Chapman and Hall's Library of Fiction, published in March 1836: Seymour's version of the comic climax, Vengeance of Captain Walter Waters and Lieutenant Slaughter. Mr. Cymon Tuggs discovered behind the curtains, at the Waters's lodgings.
[Return to "Great Expectations in "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," or, The Importance of Being Cymon"]
Left: Fred Barnard's realistic wood-engraving of the chance meeting of the Waterses and the Tuggses on the deck of the Ramsgate steamer, "So exactly the air of a marquis," said the military gentleman (1876). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s The Tuggses at Ramsgate (1867) — Cymon riding a donkey with the seductive Belinda Waters. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Last updated 31 October 2024