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Tragedy in the Arbour
Harry Furniss
1910
14.4 cm x 9.9 cm (5 ⅝ inches by 3 ¾ inches), vignetted
Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing II, 104.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"I wants to make your flesh creep," replied the boy.
— Pickwick, p. 105.
"Missus!" shouted the fat boy.
"Well, Joe," said the trembling old lady. "I'm sure I have been a good mistress to you, Joe. You have invariably been treated very kindly. You have never had too much to do; and you have always had enough to eat."
This last was an appeal to the fat boy's most sensitive feelings. He seemed touched, as he replied emphatically —
"I knows I has."
"Then what can you want to do now?" said the old lady, gaining courage.
"I wants to make your flesh creep," replied the boy.
This sounded like a very bloodthirsty mode of showing one’s gratitude; and as the old lady did not precisely understand the process by which such a result was to be attained, all her former horrors returned.
"What do you think I see in this very arbour last night?" inquired the boy.
"Bless us! What?" exclaimed the old lady, alarmed at the solemn manner of the corpulent youth.
"The strange gentleman — him as had his arm hurt — a-kissin' and huggin' —"
"Who, Joe? None of the servants, I hope."
Worser than that," roared the fat boy, in the old lady’s ear.
"Not one of my grandda'aters?"
"Worser than that."
"Worse than that, Joe!" said the old lady, who had thought this the extreme limit of human atrocity. "Who was it, Joe? I insist upon knowing."
The fat boy looked cautiously round, and having concluded his survey, shouted in the old lady’s ear —
"Miss Rachael." [Chapter VIII, "Strongly Illustrative of the Position," 105-6]
What Joe (supposedly asleep) observed when Rachel Wardel and Tracy Tupman were engaged in a chaste tryst in the arbour at Dingley Dell he now communicates to Old Mrs. Wardle, the family matriarch. However, Joe does not realise that, in communicating his secret, he is being observed and overheard by the devious out-of-work actor Alfred Jingle, who has attached himself to the Pickwickians with an ye to the main chance. Armed with this knowledge of Miss Rachael's romantic inclinations, Jingle determines to exploit her vulnerability.
By his sheer bulk, Joe, Wardle's page, is immediately recognizable, as is the slender, sharp-featured Jingle in his swallow-tail coat. The subtitle for the illustration identifies precisely the narrative moment that Furniss has in mind: "I wants to make your flesh creep," replied the boy — Pickwick, p. 105. However, since the old lady is somewhat hard of hearing, she is not yet shocked; that shocked response occurs when Joe identifies the object of Tupman's romantic liaison as the old lady's own daughter.
Left: The Phiz illustration which replaced Buss's in November 1837 for the volume edition: The Fat Boy Awake Again. Right: Phiz's revision of the earlier plates: Mr. Tupman looked round. There was the fat boy The British Household Edition, 1874).
Left: R. W. Buss's original June 1836 steel-engraving, The Arbour Scene. Nast appears to have modelled his 1873 wood-engraving on Phiz's rather than Buss's version for the American Household Edition. Nast treats the subject comically, as Tupman, arm in a sling, assures Rachael Wardle that they have not been detected: "He knows nothing of what has happened," he whispered, page 52, in the American Household Edition.
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Created 4 April 2024