Valerie Browne Lester Explains Why Phiz's Images of Little Nell Convey A

PHIZ AND LITTLE NELL

Valerie Browne Lester explains why Phiz’s images of Little Nell convey a story of lechery, desire and sexual awakening – and reveals that this may tell us more about the first rocky year of the artist’s marriage than about Dickens’s heroine

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y great-great grandfather, Hablot his name is given as Hablot Browne. The public was Knight Browne, better known unaware that Phiz and Hablot Browne were one and to the world as “Phiz”, was the the same, and enjoyed comparing the “rival” artists. illustrator of 10 of the novels of Dickens made the expensive choice to use what he Charles Dickens. When I started referred to as “woodcuts”, which were actually wood work on his biography, I became fascinated by study- engravings cut into the end-grain of the wood rather ing his images through a magnifying glass and, para- than on the plank. They had three great advantages Mdoxically, learnt a great deal about his life as well as over etchings: they did not break down, even for print his work. A case in point is what I deduced from his runs of 100,000 copies; they were the same height as images of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. But, the raised type face and could be inked and printed first, let me set the scene. simultaneously with the lettering (unlike etching Charles Dickens wisely decided to hire more than plates which must be wiped and then sent through one artist for Master Humphrey’s Clock, the weekly a rolling press and printed on individual dampened miscellany in which The Old Curiosity Shop and pages); and they could be placed at the exact point in Barnaby Rudge appeared. Each issue had a grinding the text to be illustrated and so retained the closest two-week publication lead and required a minimum relationship to the story. of two illustrations. As principal illustrators, Dick- With my loupe, I found that Phiz’s Nell breathed ens lined up Phiz and George Cattermole, and kept a more vibrant breath than Dickens’s earnest “little Samuel Williams and Daniel Maclise waiting in the creature”. With that sexless phrase, which appears wings; in the end the latter two drew only one image twice on the third page of The Old Curiosity Shop, each for the miscellany. It is hard to be exact about Dickens denies Nell’s sexuality from the start. He the numbers produced by Phiz and Cattermole keeps her, like the memory of his deceased sister- – some of the images are unsigned and their subject in-law Mary Hogarth, innocent and immaculate, matter and styles occasionally overlap – but the best although this does not prevent his characters – Quilp, estimate is 157 for Phiz and 39 for Cattermole. Dick Swiveller, Kit – from desiring her. In creat- George Cattermole (1800-68) was a distinguished ing Nell, Dickens pickles Mary, immortalising her artist, 15 years older than Phiz, famous for water- purity. It is significant that Dickens consistently re- colours, finely rendered architectural drawings and fers to Nell as “the child”, only rarely referring to her illustrations for books by Walter Scott and Edward as a “little girl”, and never as a “young woman”. Nell Bulwer-Lytton. Dickens divided the work between is 14. My next door neighbour is 14 and she is not a him and Phiz accordingly: Phiz was responsible for little girl; nor is she a child. She is a young woman. people (especially low characters), active moments But Phiz begs to differ with Dickens. As Michael and comic rascality, while Cattermole embarked on Steig says: Cattermole’s Nell “is either a wax doll or lofty, antiquarian, angelic and architectural subjects. barely visible, [while] Browne makes us believe in the Dickens was delighted with Cattermole’s designs, ‘cherry-cheeked, red-lipped’ child Quilp describes so but initially did not trust him to transfer them on lecherously.” Phiz’s Nell is a flesh-and-blood ado- to the block. For this, he called in Phiz, who traced lescent with what Diana Phillips calls “that twilight Cattermole’s images before transferring them. With look of half-comprehended sexuality” common to his own designs, Phiz usually drew in reverse directly Lewis Carroll’s photographs of young girls. on to the specially whitened end-grain of the box- It was not until chapter six of The Old Curiosity wood block. He signed most of his images HKB or Shop that Phiz had a chance to draw Nell. Until then HB, not Phiz, but a few are unsigned. On the title he had been busy with images of Quilp, Dick Swiv- page of the bound edition of Master Humphrey’s Clock, eller and other low types. By the time his chance

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1 & 2 Phiz’s first image of Nell clearly shows her fear of Quilp

3 Nell continues to look anxious when she meets the schoolmaster

4 A change of expression. Nell in the schoolroom starts to look coquettish

1 FOR WHOM DID NELL TOLL?

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5 7 came, George Cattermole and Samuel Williams had already made their mark. Cattermole complied with Dickens; his Nell is a “little creature”, whom he placed standing primly in the middle of a disturbing but elegantly cluttered shop. Williams’s Nell, how- ever, is distinctly red-lipped and exudes desirability as she sleeps, her hair spread across the pillow. Williams, an artist and engraver, was the only illustrator of the four to both design and cut an im- age. This allowed him to achieve precisely the effect he wished and makes “Nell Asleep” the most per- fectly executed illustration in the book. All the other images in Master Humphrey’s Clock were hostage to what Phiz referred to as the “relays of woodcutters”: Landells, Gray, Vasey and Williams (who also cut four designs by the other artists). The fourth illustrator, Daniel Maclise, provided his sole image for The Old Curiosity Shop near the end of the book. It is an arresting and complex picture of 6 Nell and the sexton by the well, much admired and reproduced. The American illustrator Felix Darley admired the Maclise Nell so much that he imported 8 her, complete with well but minus sexton, almost line for line into his Dickens Little Folks series. man. The image reeks with sexual allusion: Quilp’s 5 ‘Quilp at the Phiz’s first image of Nell with Quilp (fig 1) is a top hat, the umbrella, the empty drawer – and Nell’s gateway’ is shocker after Williams’s gentle sleeper, and I believe voluptuous mouth. Listen to Dickens’s words: “Mr arguably the the design arose not merely out of Dickens’s text, but Quilp …[patted] her on the head. Such an applica- most peculiar from Phiz’s personal experience. On 28 March 1840, tion from any other hand might not have produced image in The Old Curiosity Shop just about the time Cattermole and Williams were a remarkable effect, but the child shrunk so quickly designing the first Nells, Phiz got married at Trin- from his touch and felt such an instinctive desire to 6 & 7 In ‘Nell and ity Church, Marylebone, at the age of 25. Susannah get out of his reach, that she rose directly and de- the waxworks’ Reynolds, his 16-year-old bride, was an orphan, the clared herself ready to return.” Did Susannah shrink and ‘Nell and the daughter of Abraham Reynolds, a Baptist minister from Phiz this way early in their marriage? gamblers’ she – and I confess to conflating Susannah with Phiz’s Nell continues to look anxious in Phiz’s next three starts to look Nell. Until I magnified the image (fig 2), I had been images of her, and is particularly apprehensive when foxy and curious mystified about why it took the Brownes nearly two she meets the schoolmaster (fig 3). But a change years to produce a child. Susannah later proved to be occurs as she busies herself with embroidery in 8 Dickens extremely fertile and the Dickenses had their first the boisterous classroom; there she looks positively describes Nell at Miss Monflathers’ baby a mere nine months after their wedding. But coquettish (fig 4). Phiz must be making progress school as crying, this picture suggests that in the first year of marriage with his wooing. But her anxious look returns in the but here she Susannah may have been terrified of sex. Look at the next image, and then things become much worse. looks gorgeous distance between the two figures, the anxiety in the “Quilp at the Gateway” (fig 5) is arguably the most face of the young woman and the coarseness of the peculiar image in The Old Curiosity Shop, and with

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“Nell exists in two forms: as Dickens’s and Cattermole’s wan little creature, and as Quilp’s and Phiz’s cherry- cheeked, red-lipped, vibrant young woman”

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9 Nell faints good reason. It is not signed and it is tricky to dis- from shock and down and gives her an expression more self-confi- cern which artist executed it because, in a sense, they exhaustion, but dent than teary. This Nell is a ripe-for-the-picking both did. Dickens wrote to Cattermole that the scene Phiz depicts her young woman, radiating half-comprehended sexual- was intended “expressly with a view to your illustri- more suggestively ity. Susannah, facing forward, is coming round. ous pencil”, presumably because of its architectural But what is happening in fig 9? In the text, Nell interest. But somehow the work landed on Phiz’s 10 Phiz carves faints from a combination of exhaustion and the desk, although Cattermole prepared a preliminary his initials in the shock of seeing the schoolmaster again. Phiz pictures sketch. (Phiz frequently picked up after Cattermole tombstone and the moment after the schoolmaster has taken her in if the latter was hors de combat as a result of sickness writes ‘Aetat 16’ his arms and carried her to the warmth of the inn. – perhaps a sign or foot-dragging when asked to tackle a subject that that Nell (like He leans over her, his arms protecting her, his mouth did not appeal, such as the raven in Barnaby Rudge.) his wife) has close to hers. Nell lies back stunned, gazing at him, At first glance the architecture appears to be pure grown up her lips pursed as for a kiss, her knees wide apart. Cattermole, but on closer inspection Phiz swims In Phiz’s last rendering of Nell (fig 10), she is into focus. No rolling-eyed, tongue-out, monstrous seated with her grandfather in the cemetery. The old statues appear in Cattermole’s sketch, no dwarf, no man strokes her head and holds her hand, while her boy, no cowering Nell. This is Phiz’s territory. dainty ankle peeks from under her transparent skirt. If the engraving represents a chapter in Phiz’s He mutters to her that “she grew stronger every day, sexual wooing of Susannah, he has had a serious and would be a woman soon”. In the background, set-back. Nell’s eyes are wide with fear, her back is Phiz has signed his initials on one of the tombstones, turned to Quilp, she clutches the stonework with a and on the other he has written “AETAT 16.” I take grossly out-of-proportion hand, and her bent and this to be a message that his 16 year-old bride has presumably trembling legs are visible through her “died” and become a woman. skirt. The distance between her and Quilp is great, You may feel that this essay is subjective and self- the same distance as in Phiz’s first picture of them. indulgent, but eight years of living in a biographer’s Quilp raises his stick, even though the text has him straitjacket followed by the liberation of publication leaning on it. Phiz expressing frustration? have driven me to it. So here’s my conclusion: by As in “Quilp at the Gateway”, Phiz’s next two magnifying Phiz’s images of Little Nell and study- images of Nell, “Nell and the Waxworks” (fig 6) ing the clues, it is possible to infer that Phiz’s young and “Nell and the Gamblers” (fig 7), have her back wife, in a year, moved from being a terrified virgin to squarely turned to the men in the pictures, but she a coquette, suffered a reversal of affection, and at last does not look frightened any more. In the first (ap- consummated her marriage – an act that I believe pallingly cut by Landells) she sports a certain foxi- occurred just before Phiz drew his astonishingly tri- ness; in the second, curiosity. Things are looking up. umphant, phallic image of the death of Quilp. Tony Bareham (a specialist in the works of Charles Phiz and Susannah were happily married for 42 Lever, the Irish author for whom Phiz illustrated 17 years and produced 12 children before Phiz died in books) once remarked that he saw a subcurrent of 1882. Little Nell lives for ever, of course, but she is strong sexuality in Phiz’s work and that Phiz man- immortal in two forms: as Dickens’s and Catter- aged to turn even Little Nell into a sexpot. I believe mole’s wan little creature, and as Quilp’s and Phiz’s he was thinking of this image (fig 8), for here Nell cherry-cheeked, red-lipped, vibrant young woman. looks absolutely gorgeous. In Dickens’s text she appears at Miss Monflathers’ school where she soon ——• 1 •—— becomes the victim of that lady’s harsh tongue. Dick- Valerie Browne Lester is the author of Phiz: The Man Who ens describes Nell as crying, but Phiz casts her eyes Drew Dickens, Chatto & Windus, 2004

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